Water friendly farming
Water Friendly Farming is the UK’s longest running and most detailed catchment scale agri-environment research demonstration project.
Do freshwater pollution mitigation measures work?
In the UK we spend many millions of pounds each year on measures to mitigate the impact of agricultural pollution on freshwaters. There is also a rapid increase in the use of natural flood management to help prevent downstream flooding of urban areas.
Surprisingly there is still little information about how well these measures work. We urgently need to get this evidence to ensure that the measures we use are effective and that money is well spent.
Water Friendly Farming aims to do just that.
Bringing together agri-environment expertise
Water Friendly Farming is a long-term collaboration between Freshwater Habitats Trust, Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project, the University of York, the Environment Agency and landowners in the three catchments. Many other organisations and individuals have supported the project since 2010.
The success of Water Friendly Farming relies on our combined expertise and experience.
Testing pollution mitigation measures
The objective of Water Friendly Farming is to find out, for the first time, how wide-scale mitigation measures can successfully provide the benefits we need:
- Clean water to support fish, aquatic invertebrates, plants and other wildlife – and for the benefit of us all.
- better flood storage to reduce the risks of flooding downstream.
Since 2010, we’ve been working with landowners in three Leicestershire catchments to test the effectiveness of landscape-wide agri-environment measures for reducing the impact of rural land use on freshwaters and the services they provide.
Sharing our knowledge
Through Water Friendly Farming, we are learning more about the effectiveness of agri-environment and natural flood management measures.
We are making these results available to landowners, practitioners, policy makers, researchers – and indeed anyone who is interested in understanding more about these schemes. We have also brought together resources to help landowners who are interested in natural flood management and creating freshwater habitats for biodiversity.
"Globally, freshwater ecosystems in rural landscapes are under pressure from a wide range of pollutants. The aim of the project is to provide a reality check on the extent to which, by introducing landscape-wide mitigation measures, we can reduce rural water pollution, hold back flood water and protect freshwater biodiversity."
Water Friendly Farming project update report, 2016.
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