What does the delivery of public goods mean?

GWCT Wales Matt Goodall reports from the Royal Welsh Show

Delivering public goods on your farm:

The focus of future support schemes lies on the delivery of more public goods from the land. This fairly new concept is still in its infancy and how Welsh Government will measure it is largely unknown – creating uncertainty for the farming community.

The uncertainty leads to many unanswered questions such as:

• What public goods are currently being delivered and what public goods can be delivered?
• Will the work already undertaken in the last schemes continue to count?
• How will public goods be measured and paid for?
• What gap will there be between schemes?

Welsh Government’s consultation ‘Sustainable Farming and our Land’ moves towards answering some of these questions with proposals such as that the Sustainable Farming Payment will be available for both maintenance and creation, which is good news.

“With the Basic Payment Scheme ending in 2021, there is no better time to become familiar with the science that the GWCT has produced,” says Matt, relating to both the farmed environment and wildlife conservation.

GWCT has demonstrated over its 26 years of research at the Allerton Project how to improve soil health, improve water filtration, reduce soil erosion, sediment and nutrient runoff and in turn improve water quality.

“It has further demonstrated how to reverse the decline in farmland birds” says Matt, explaining that all of this work has been done whilst maintaining farm profitability, demonstrating that it is possible to have a successful, profitable farm business whilst delivering public goods such as increased biodiversity.

However, there is unfortunately no silver bullet solution and every farm is different, offering differing challenges but also different opportunities too,” he adds.

Fortunately, GWCT Wales is able to offer biodiversity assessments where we can tell you what you’re currently delivering and, most importantly, what potential your farm has to deliver more public goods and outline how to do it.

If you are interested in the work of the GWCT please don’t hesitate to get in touch. Contact Matt on mgoodall@gwct.org.uk.