World Environment Day is the United Nations day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action to protect our environment.
Previous themes have included awareness on beating air pollution and 2018's theme on beating plastic pollution was where we started to see Second Nature gain traction and become a foundation within Cranswick. (World Environment Day 2018)
The theme for 2020 is Time for Nature and what we can do For Nature and we have focused on Climate Smart Farming within this year’s theme.
Our goal is for all Cranswick owned farms to be carbon-neutral by 2030. We aim to achieve this by adopting regenerative agricultural methods that improve soil health and organic matter levels, conserve water, sequester carbon, encourage biodiversity and recycle farm waste.
Some of the steps we have already taken;
- Over the past two years we have increased soil organic matter by an average of 10 per cent to support higher levels of CO2 cycling as well as future crop yields and irrigation efficiency.
- Investigating how we can reprocess manure from finishing sheds, removing and cleaning the water to leave a more valuable organic fertiliser, ultimately helping our partner farms to reduce their reliance on artificial products.
- Scaling up work to measure the carbon footprint of our farms and livestock as well as shifting towards certified sources of soya for our animal feed.
- Exploring alternative protein sources such as UK grown peas, beans and soya to further improve our land use and carbon impacts.
- Planted Wildflower grass margins around our outdoor pig units to encourage biodiversity. These margins also act as a buffer strip to slow water run-off, prevent soil erosion and leaching of field nutrients.
- Some of our breeding units are now on grass and we plan in the future to support our energy crop growers to make use of their grass leys after harvest.
We continue to be inspired by nature, not only on our farms but in how we apply a circular economy framework for our waste strategies and gear up our Changemakers to volunteer to protect our local green spaces.
(Photos by our talented colleague, Colin Stone, Breeding Farms Manager)
Visit www.thisissecondnature.co.uk for more info on our Second Nature journey.