By Andrea Meanwell, farming officer, the Lake District National Park Authority:

DURING the lockdown period I have been busy typing up 12 land management plans as part of the Environmental Land Management test that we are running in the Upper Derwent catchment.

These are based upon discussions that I have had with the farmers on their farms about what public goods they already provide on their farms, and what opportunities farmers see for doing more to provide public goods in the future.

We have talked through six public goods: clean air; clean water; protection and mitigation of environmental hazards; mitigation of and adaptation to climate change; thriving plants and wildlife; and beauty, heritage and engagement. The farmers have provided information about what they are doing to provide that public good - for example, fencing off watercourses for clean water - and what they could do in the future, such as restoring peat bogs to help mitigate climate change. It is a new way of thinking for many farmers, and it can be challenging trying to identify which public good a particular action is supporting.

Farmers are also given the opportunity to feed back to the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs their opinions about public goods, and many farmers are of the opinion that food production is a public good. There are opportunities to support food production through the productivity grants to improve animal welfare, but food production has not been identified as a public good in the Agriculture Bill. Many farmers are also of the belief that their low-intensity farming systems - producing high-quality food with a low carbon footprint - should also be valued more by consumers. A lot of ‘free range’ Cumbrian lamb and beef is sold to supermarkets where consumers do not have any information about the origin of the product.

I had some time off work last week to work on our farm. We were again required to test all the cows on our farm for tuberculosis because of a local outbreak. Thankfully we were TB free, but the whole process was very exhausting, as our beef herd is not used to going in and out of a cattle crush. Our hired bull was also too large to fit easily into our cattle crush. I was very relieved when the vet drove away from the farm on Friday afternoon without any reactors.