I normally concentrate on sea buckthorn matters for the blog, but this week has had a focus which reminds me that farming is not a single enterprise operation.
Devereux farm is located on the East coast of the UK. The business has two farms. Devereux farm faces the Hamford Water national nature reserve. A conservation area designated also as a Ramsar Site for its special importance as a 2000 hectare area of salt marsh, intertidal mud and sand habitats which attract thousands of winter migratory birds from Siberia amongst other places. Walton hall farm, 140 hectares, is on the Naze peninsula – 4 miles from Devereux farm, and like Devereux is protected from the sea by 5m high, concrete faced sea walls.
In 2004, the UK government Department for Food and Rural Affairs published a consultation paper on the possible withdrawal of maintenance from sea walls that they thought did not protect land of high value ( agricultural land). Since then, farmers on the east coast have been working with the agency to find a solution to the rising costs of sea wall maintenance and how to continue protecting their land.
Climate change is a difficult factor to quantify. Since 2000 we have had more incidents of extreme rainfall, one particular incident in 2012 flooded 60 hectares of land at Walton. The sea is also becoming more aggressive. In 2013, a surge tide came down the east coast and broke the sea walls in 63 places causing extensive flooding. Projected sea level rise was suggested as 6mm per year. This was downgraded in 2006 to 4mm for the first 25 years of this century – then doubling for the next and rising to 15mm per year as the century comes to an end. Add to this predictions, which are being recorded now – wind speeds are increasing with an impact that wave height is becoming more extreme and we have an increasing issue as to how to view our future as coastal farmers.
An example of this has been the fact that the Naze at Walton has a soft sediment cliff frontage facing the sea which is designated a geological site of special scientific interest. In its sediments are fossils particulkarly from 55 million years ago, but also the site shows evidence of being the most southerly point that the ice sheets reached in the UK in the last Ice Age. This scientific interest means that the cliuffs cannot be protected from the sea in order to allow them to erode and the fossils within the cliff to be washed out so they can be collected and studied.
This is all very interesting, but as the cliff line receeds 1.4m a year every year there will come a time when there is no more cliff left. At one point that will be next year, and the result will flood over 70 hectares of our land. It will also flood the sewage treatment works that serves the local area, removing their services for 22,000 people and polluting an important conservation site.
It was this issue that started the whole sea buckthorn project. We knew that this was going to happen and that we might lose land to the sea, but hoped it would not be for 50 years. Sea buckthorn is a high value crop that can be grown on a smaller area. This will maintain the viability of the farm when we stand to lose half of our land.
So over the past two weeks I have made presentations to our local government committees to galvanise understanding of the issues. The problem is that the sea is all powerful, relentless in its action upon the coast. But that does not mean that nothing can be done. In times of low government budgets any action needs to be targeted, affordable, local and innovative. It seems to need almost the same approach as we are taking in developing sea buckthorn.
Defending our coastline and our farm is a trial of effort and ingenuity. At the same time we have our first crop of sea buckthorn to manage; our website is up, but as work in progress. The threat of losing a large amount of our farm now looking real so it is becoming essential that the sea buckthorn development at Devereux farm converts research into a viable and economically sustainable business. Looking at our first crop on the plants now, I do feel modestly confident that success is on the way.
