Fens Land Management Survey: Summary Report

In 2024, we conducted survey interviews with 64 farms and 8 nature reserves across the East Anglian Fens to better understand how land managers interact with the landscape, to inform discussions on farming, food security and building a sustainable and resilient future. This report is a summary of the data gathered. All the data reported here is for the farming season 2021-22. The region cultivates a wide variety of crops – over 40 varieties of crops in this survey sample. About 52% of the total farmland was producing food, 28% animal feed, and 6% bioenergy. Around 90% of farms used at least one practice that would form part of a regenerative agriculture system. We also discuss employment, business diversification, soil types and solar energy production capacity. For example, over 60% of landholdings diversified into at least one other business, building lettings, tourism/catering, and land leasing were popular. This report also discusses participation in agri-environment schemes, with about 58% of the farms surveyed were in at least one scheme, with Countryside Stewardship being the popular scheme. All nature reserves participated in higher level stewardship. We also discuss barriers and opportunities of these schemes, with farmers saying that the key factor encouraging stewardship is financial and barriers to participation include difficulty in obtaining information, lengthy application processes and unreliable application portals. This report presents a snapshot of land management practices across the Fens, balancing food production and environmental sustainability while simultaneously adapting to policy changes, environmental challenges and opportunities.