The Allerton Project research book is published today!

‘Farming with the Environment: Thirty Years of Allerton Project Research’ is published today.

The book is a detailed but accessible account of the wide range of agri-environmental research that we have carried out since the project started in 1992. Topics covered include farmland ecology, the design of new management practices to enhance farmland wildlife, soil management and health, catchment management, and water quality and ecology and much more. One chapter explores land management issues from the farmer and farm business perspective. Another draws on our research work to emphasise the need to understand and accept the complexity of many of the issues in order to make meaningful changes that will meet both farming and environmental objectives. The practical and policy implications of our research form a strong theme for the book.

We have achieved much in the 30 years of the Allerton Project's research activities. In recent years, songbird breeding numbers have consistently been around 90% higher than in the 1992 baseline. In the intervening years, numbers have fluctuated in response to our changes in management, providing valuable information on how different species are affected by different management practices. We have made a major contribution to the suite of habitat management options available to farmers through agri-environment schemes, particularly wild bird seed crops, supplementary feeding, grass margins and beetle banks. Our research has taught us much about how best to manage soils to achieve multiple benefits, and about the management of water at the catchment scale.

The research described in the book has been carried out by our own research staff on the farm at Loddington, by other GWCT researchers, by several PhD students, and numerous research partners from other organisations. While all these people are too numerous to mention individually in the book, beyond citation of their respective contributions, our current small research team at Loddington is represented by John Szczur, Jenny Bussell Gemma Fox and myself.

John Szczur is our Ecologist and has been with the Allerton Project since it started in 1992. He has an exceptional knowledge of plant, vertebrate and invertebrate identification and ecology and carries out a lot of the wildlife survey work at and around Loddington, as well as much of the sample and data collection for our Water Friendly Farming project. Dr Jenny Bussell is our Soil Scientist and has considerable experience of soil function and greenhouse gas flux in a wide range of natural and agricultural systems across the UK and abroad. She joined us in 2019. Gemma Fox has been our Research Assistant since 2017 and has previous experience as an Animal Health Inspector as well as considerable personal experience of beef and sheep farming. She collects much of the data associated with our soil and livestock research.

Our combined expertise forms a core around which we have assembled a considerable network of research partners to enable us to carry out wide-ranging interdisciplinary research. The publication of our book enables us to make this work accessible to a wide audience to inform management practice on-farm, and national land use policy.

Farming with the environment

Thirty years ago today, I drove from my then home in Hampshire to Loddington in Leicestershire to conduct a night-time spotlight count of brown hares. That was the start of thirty years of data collection on what was to become the Allerton Project research and demonstration farm.

The breadth of our research over the past thirty years has been possible through collaboration with researchers from other organisations and universities, as well as the expertise of the Allerton Project’s own staff. Multiple collaborations over the years have brought specialist expertise that has enabled us to cover topics as diverse as aquatic ecology, water quality, flood risk management, soil management and biology, carbon sequestration, ruminant nutrition, greenhouse gas emissions, agroforestry, game management, farmland ecology, pollinators and crop pest predators. This interdisciplinary approach has also extended into the social sciences and economics, recognising the multiple influences on farmers’ decision making.

All this work is described in my forthcoming book, covering the thirty years of research at the Allerton Project. Publication of the book comes during a period of considerable change in the way food is produced and agricultural land is managed, not only in the UK, but across much of Europe, North America and other parts of the globe. This is an appropriate time to share our learning to inform this process.

Allerton Project songbird numbers

As farmers across the country focus their attention on the Big Farmland Bird Count it’s time to reflect on how songbird numbers on our own farm have changed since the Allerton Project started thirty years ago. Overall numbers of breeding songbirds doubled in the first seven years of the project in response to management by our gamekeeper at the time, Malcolm Brockless, comprising habitat management, winter feeding and predator control. This was a remarkable achievement against the context of continuing declines across the country.

We monitor bird numbers using a combination of annual transects which provide an estimate of relative abundance, and a detailed census of all breeding birds which we carry out every five or six years. Despite removing many of the beneficial management practices for research purposes in the second decade of the project, causing bird numbers to drop, our recent transects reveal that songbird numbers have bounced back and in 2021 were 91% above the 1992 baseline year.

The detailed territory mapping is particularly useful for assessing numbers of the less numerous species and the data from the 2021 territory mapping are just in. As indicated by the transect data for overall songbird abundance, the territory mapping data reveal that many species have increased substantially, but not all have done so.

Recent population changes for long-term nationally declining songbird species (Allerton Project and BTO BBS data).

It is particularly interesting to consider the species that declined nationally between the 1970s and 1990s and are ‘red-listed’ as a cause for conservation concern. Some of these have subsequently increased slightly nationally, and regionally in the East Midlands (based on BTO data), while others have experienced slight continuing declines. Those species that have increased slightly in the East Midlands have increased very substantially at Loddington, while skylark and yellowhammer which have declined slightly in the region, have not increased at Loddington.

It is gratifying to record the considerable conservation success for species such as song thrush, dunnock, bullfinch, linnet and reed bunting. As well as increasing numbers at Loddington, improved adult survival and breeding success may be contributing to the wider population of these species through dispersal from the farm. This may even be the case for skylark and yellowhammer. Much of our management is known to benefit these species, along with others, and it is possible that abandoned territories in the area around Loddington are being occupied by birds dispersing from the farm rather than remaining on it to swell the breeding numbers. We cannot know for sure, but it is good to report that songbird numbers at Loddington are very considerably higher than they were when we took the farm on thirty years ago.