Gers Auch Policy and trees

Wed 19 Oct
Departed Bordeax for a long drive south. Wet weather front with plenty of rain meaing that the scenery rather obscured by rain and driving conditions less than ideal - but a good day for travel rather than being in the field. 4.5 hours later I arrive in the region of Gers to the town of Auch to meet Alain Canet.
Almost immidiatley I know I have met a kindrid spirit. ALain is passionate about agroforestry and is a 'do-er' - he has taken it ouon himself to create the larger and more active of the two agroforestry associations in Fr and travels extensively talking to high level politicians about AF and incusion in policy. I suspect in many ways the succes of Fr AF is down to his drive and passion suported by INRA research.
How did I fin this out - well in typical french fashion - on arrival the first thing on the agenda, lunch - not a quick sandwich but reasturant, tapas  and salad starters (fab), beef and veg (wonderful), fromage course (great) and creme caramell desert (yummy) followed by coffee and of course the obligatory van rouge throughout......nothing special or extraordinary for the french just normasl fab food and time spent eating and talking...amazingly the plat des jour for only Euro10...£8!!!!!! each + van rouge of course.

So in the afternoon we visited the 'Arbe & Pasage 32' offices *Trees in the landscape region 32..  The organisation has ' association' status with government. it has no core funding and only gets income from advisory work for designing and implementing AF so is semi ortonomal but driven by gov policy etc. In france there are 22 regions and 100 departments (area 32 is one department - Gers is a regions). within the area 32 there are over 500 communities or i gues a UK equavalent is a parish. so lots to go at. some 250 plus farms in the region of Gers with agroforestry.
Gov support funds treee establishment to c. 70% with 30% contribution from farmer. Goiv policy recognises the multifunctional benefits of AF and has emraced adoption and advisory support etc. A current focus is working with the departemnt of transport for tre establihment on verges and along roads for pollution capture (water and air) and carbon sequestration as well as landscape benefits.
Looked that the process of design and accounting which is all Pc automated - very slick. also looked at many pics and publications on AF and discuissed ways of sharing this on an EU basis - although translatioin required.
During the afternoon looked around the town of AUch for an hour with Alain plus a cpl of coffe stops en route....The evening was spent at Alains house with wife and daughter discussing AF policy further and consuming 'Duck en confit' plus van rouge an ice creme....yum......

French connections 15-16 Oct 2011

France – part 2 of European Nuffield tour

15 October

Harrietts birthday went well with a birthday part ay pizza express and 9 very loud 9 yr olds!....after putting the children to bed I set of for the 2.5hr drive to Folkstone, Kent. Arrived late evening and stayed in a travel lodge overnight.

16 October

Jus son frontier!

Early rise to -2 deg C and having to scrape the ice from the windscreen of the car – first hard autumn frost of the year! Departed for the Eurotunnel and arrived 7.40am only to be waved straight on to an early train departing 8am (not my planned 8.50am). drive straight on, park, listen to the announcements, watch the partition doors close and we are off…32 mins later we are in France!...fantastic service. Depart Calais and immediately you notice how quiet the roads are in France.

I drove for an hour for so and stopped at the ‘Somme’ to look at a graveyard and grap a cup of tea. You get the feeling amongst to undulating open fields that this must have been a terrible place during a battle.  I then drove across the plains of Normandy. Which all looked green and bountiful after recent rains.

From north Normandy through Rouen and on to le Mans was an easy journey on the ‘payage’ toll roads but expensive having spent over £40 on tolls today! Also a little awkward at toll booths in a right hand drive car with the ticket/pay machine on the left…pull up, jump out the car and get ticket etc without trying to piss the Frenchman behind you off too much!

After le Mans travelling south its notable how much drier it became with grass green turning  to brown. Stopped i9n a picnic place for 40 mins fo0r as roadside late lunch and a rest and it was nice to feel the warm sun on my back whilst eating lunch. Travelled further south into the Loire valley and over the Loire rive. Notable to see lots of apple orchards – home of the French golden delicious that put the UK apple industry into massive decline in the 1980’s. also lots of vineyards.

Arrived Beaupereu in good time but the trusty Tom Tom could not locate the address so I phoned my host Yves Gabory. His wife valarie came to meet me and I stayed put at the supermarche car ark. Followed her home to a nice 150yr old  farm house which they are still renovating.

Valarie Gabory and the children entertained me and chuckled at my poor French but we got along fine. Yves was delayed as he was running an agroforestry exhibition at an agricultural show. Yves is the director of the Bocarge on agroforestry one of two national agroforestry associations in france.

Around an evening dinner of roast chicken, potatoes and salads we chatted and exchanged stories and experiences. I think the van rouge sand the Calvados helped as well!!!. Yves & Valarie were so hospitable and made me feel very welcome.

Monday 17^th Oct

Monks, trees and chateau’s

Awoke early to a cold and misty morning. Breakfast with the Gabory’s and an early departure to Yves office to collect a colleague. Yves is a director of the Bocarage agroforestry association of France. There are two associations in france and they don’t always agree on things….The operate x1 extension officer per 7-8 villages, and they for m a network of x100+ officers throughout France.

Yves has mad a submission to Dacian Calios and the EU for inclusion of agroforestry into pillar I of the CAP as well as Pillar II. He has asked me to look over the proposal and give him feedback..

We visited the ‘Abbey Bell Fontaine’ a 80ha organic farm around a monastery. All the food grown is for the monks and a small farm market. The agroforestry is impressive with c.45ha under agroforstry using oak, lime, birch, poplar, Noyer |(black walnut)  etc planted in rows 30-52m apart creating 2.5ha alleys. The farm is in organic conversion (2 yrs) and has been planted to clover and Lucerne as fertility building.

The farm will use the trees for biomass woodchip production and they have an impressive wood chip heating system. The building its housed in has a very clever sliding roof to allow larger tractors/ trucks tip loads etc. The farms agroforestry is overlooked by a magnificent tower.

Some interesting use of over winter green manure mixtures of oats and phacelia.

Late morning I set of on a road trip south east to Poitiers and on to my next host. The journey was easy going but slow at times on a more cross country route but through some large open arable landscapes nr Poitiers. Stopped for some lunch (sandwich) at the town of Chauvignywith an ancient bastile fortified town centre.

Just after lunch I arrived at the farm of Gilles Corou. A fantastic C17 chateau. I was treated to a hot chicken meal with van rouge and we discussed agrofotrestry and also that we had both worked in agricultural development in Africa.

In the afternoon visited the farm and looked at alley cropping of oak, sweet chestnut, peasr, apple, black walnut, elm and cedar.

On part of the farm the agroforestry is interplsanted with alley crops of what/OSR etc but on other areas it is set-aside. With changed regulations he does not see the pressure to cereal crop in between on the poorer soils on the farm.

In another agroforestry plantation the farm has 500 trees with Truffles underneath. ‘black gold’ I think is the correct translation!!!!

I was treated ti an excellent meal of duck, beans, rice, fromsge and of course van rouge!!!!. We talked for a cple of hours on soil biology, Africa, agroforestry and policy….dictionaries Fr:English and visa versa in constant use!!

Tues 17^th Oct

Breakfast with Gilles Corou in the dining room – very grand. A mist and autumnal morning. I departed by 8am for a 2.5hr drive to Les Eduts nr the coast and a visit to Claude Jollet.

Claude is truly the pioneer of agroforestry in France having established his first system between 1970 and 1974 with black wallnut and sweet chestnut. He farms 190ha of land which is split 150ha arable with 40ha under agoforestry trees spaced at 14m row spacings with 12m alleys and 10m between walnut trees. The trees are now very large and very impressive. There is some shading because of the E:W orientation which he admits is not ideal but crop yields are respectable at 8-9t/ha for wheat. In the alleys he operates a roptation of red clover or vetch for 1-2 yrs as green manure then wheat, barley, sunflower. He is nort organic an sprays of the clover with glyposate for crop entry.

The meeting was rather challenging as claude speaks no English and my French is rather shoolboy in nature. However the combination of agricultural language, drawings and google trqanslate in the office won out and we had an enjoyable and informative exchange. Claude like us has limited equipment choosing to use contractors for most work and just owning the specialist equipment – like his self propelled nut harvester which looks like the mother of all pooper scoopers and is a fantastic piece of kit.

Had a wonderful dejinier at a local inn of salad starter, roast pork and veg, crème Brulee coffee and of course van rouge……..but only a bit as lots of driving to do etc.

Wished Claude well and departed south, driving through Cognac and through many vineyards to Bordeaux...even some of the rounderbouts have vines on them...every bit of space used for wine etc....although i guess this is chateau 'Fumes'....!!!!

more soon

RSPB visit whitehall farm

The RSPB agriculture policy team spend much of their time in meetings in Defra offices, sat at desks, or on trains to Brussels. So we gave them the opportunity to get out on farm and talk to farmers with a visit to Whitehall Farm in Peterborough.
The team works on a number of farming and environment issues, including agri-environment, ways to support more sustainable agriculture, reform of the CAP and livestock issues. RSPB often hear through their advisors and through letters from farmers how much many of them support or rely on agri-environment schemes, and it is wonderful to get the opportunity to see policy being put into practice, and farmers embracing the concept of agri-environment and delivering public benefits alongside their farming operation.
RSPB though that Whitehall farm is a fascinating site.  A commercial organic operation, it is unique in the region in its use of agro-forestry. RSPB commented that rows of young apple trees bordered on both sides with pollen and nectar strips, with a 24m 'field' left between rows for the rotational crops were quite a sight to see. The concept is that the fruit trees will provide an additional valuable crop each year, from the same area of land used for cropping. The crop and the trees require resources at different times of the year, as they have different growing cycles (and different harvest times). Could this approach become a more common farmland view in future? RSPB are looking  forward to hearing how the system performs at Whitehall farm.
They also had interest in the farm's HLS agreement, granted largely for the farm's farmland bird interest. The farm provides not only the pollen and nectar strips to provide insects in spring time, but also wild bird seed mixtures to provide farmland birds with over winter food. The farm boasts a wide variety of farmland birds which are declining in the wider countryside.
We think th team had a great day, which resulted in a lot of food for thought for the team as they returned once more to their desks. We welconme them back anytime.

Whitehall Agroforestry

30th June 2011
After a morning of presentations at Holmewood hall on Agroforestry, we opend the doors of Whithall farm to host the UK's Farm Woodland Forum for the afternoon, hosting some 40 people.
I hope that they found teh afternoon interesting and stimulating. Certailny the commonets were positive and I think it was refreshing for many to see a commercial agroforestry site rather than one established for research. I guess time will tell as to how the word spreads about what we are doing with Agroforestry at Whitehall Farm.

USA - views from a foreigner

Observations

So some observations from my nearly 4 weeks in the USA;

1. iPhone with Tom Tom – Brilliant – door to door faultlessly all over the USA
2. Flags – Patriotism is high everywhere – ive never seen so many flags on porches, in gardens, over shops, car lots etc etc……I guess us brits are more reserved and ned a royal wedding to shake the union Jack
3. Mowing grass – I have never seen so many mowers operating….in gardens, on verges, in parks, on campuses etc. The grass ‘medians’ between freeway lanes are superwide and stretch for hundreds of miles – they top them frequently – I wonder if anyone has thought that they would make excellent hey!....also some of the front grass curtlages in front of some factories are larger than some of my cropping fields – I wonder If they would let me grow some onions on them???
4. Gas (petrol) is $3.90/ gallon c.60p/litre at the pumps – and they are moaning about price hikes! – I think climate change and dwindling oil reserves will come as a shock
5. No diesel cars in the USA – I believe it’s a Detroit conspiracy…..With the long distances you would expect lots of TDI cars…but no. Yes smaller cars being driven than 20 yrs ago when I last visited, cars are typically not much bigger than in the UK but all are large engine petrol cars which on a good day do 30mpg….many pickup trucks only doing 10-15mpg…..
6. Humidity at 95% in Georgia – takes some getting used to – Feels like someone dripping hot water over you and sticking you in an oven……
7. Corn and Soy beans in the mid west – Miles upon miles of nothing but corn and soy beans – Im only seeing them at 1-2 feet high but I bet by August it looks like a continual swathe of green. The endless prairies go on for ever but are not featureless or unlikeable…
8. Trees and hills in PA – I had forgotten how green and tree covered Pennsylvania was from visiting 20 yrs ago. Its very pretty with long high ridges and deep valleys with streams and rivers…50% of the state is covered by trees….beautiful.
9. Cinnamon – Other than a bit in apple pie we Brits don’t realy do cinnamon…In the USA however its popular. Cinnamon bread, toast, buns, breakfast cereals, coffee etc etc etc. Some supermarket Isles smell of cinnamon
10. Meal ‘sides’ – Im used to ordering a meal and that’s what I get….as ordered. In the USA you get a whole bunch of ‘sides’ as well….a side of fries, a salad, bread etc all accompany the main event….so I have to remember not to order too big a main dish as the meal doubles in size with all the ‘sides’
11. Supersize – The Germans have extra engineering chromosomes, the Indians and extra small biz chromosome, the Brits an extra queuing one…the USA…well I think they have an extra ‘supersize’ chromosome…
12. Wonderful hospitality -  I cant fault it. I have been treated so very well by so many people and made to feel so welcome. I have seen wonderful things, met great people, generated good contacts and made some truly special friends. I hope I get to see some of them again. I think the Christmas card list has expanded somewhat.
13. Thank you USA and all my hosts and new friends.

Final travel blog from USA soil

Wed 15 June

Said a farewell to Mike Jacobsen and his family, thanking them for their kind hospitality, hosting me the last two days. Went into Penn State University. The Uni has a student population of c.40,000 students at the ‘State College’ campus plus other campus sites. State College is truly a university town, around which everything revolves…The campus is immaculate and well laid out. The American Football field is massive and has a capacity of 110,000 people….as big as most premiership football teams in the UK, however only 6 games per year are played in the stadium and practise is elsewhere….Crikey!

Went to the forestry department with Mike Jacobsen and gave a presentation n EU and UK agroforestry including outlining what we are doing at Whitehall farm. Some useful discussion re ecological impacts and in particular use of different trees and biomas to benefit pollinators earlier in the season.

Filled the car with more inexpensive fuel (US$30 to fill the car c.£21!!)…and set out for route 80 east taking me through the heart of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Newark Airport. Stopped for lunch and was unfortunate to be first on the scene of a motorbike/car accident…..poor chap got badly mangles and I helped by applying some pressure to a bloody wound. Thankfully the police came quickly and I departed – washed up / cleaned up. Thankfully I had already eaten my steak lunch….I may have thought differently had it been before lunch. Funny though, the Boy Scout training from 30 yrs ago kicked in….…….4.75 hrs later and after hunting for the hire car drop off for half an hour I arrive – seems the ‘hire car drop off’ signs don’t apply to Alamo hire car and I should have trusted my faultless Tom Tom on my iPhone….certainly the best purchase I made for the trip. It has taken me door to door everywhere without any problems – Im converted to iPhone and Tom Tom…..Technophobe goes all Tecky!!!

So now just the 8.5hr flight to London with Virgin Atlantic – Richard Branson better treat me well…..

Agroforestry in practice PA style

Tuesday 14 June

Bloomsburg with Mike Jacobsen for an agroforestry workshop with USDA staff. A workshop designed to provide a better overview of AF to technical staff. Useful for me as there was some very high quality presentations on land use in PA and attitudes to management as well as information on AF systems and options for non timber forest products such as Ginseng production. With 50% of PA in woodland its prob a difficult sell to many to adopt AF, but when landowners are looking at harvesting timber there is a real option to Thin woodland, create understorey grass and develop silvopasture systems with livestock….

We viosited Fork Farm in the afternoon where just that is being undertaken with thinning of woodlands and grazing with Angus Cattle, followed by free range poultry and then Glos Old Spot pigs in rotation using ‘mob grazing’ approaches – ie very high number for veryt short periods. i.e 10-100 cows per ac for 5-10 hrs only before moving then resting pasture. The principle – graze 30%, trample, 60% leave 30% to regrow – plus dunging and Organic Matter trampling leads to improved soil life and better productivity. Interestingly an analogy to ancient Buffalo grazing – large numbers moving on quickly…

A strange occurrence was that we walked c.1-2 miles on the farm walk, over a road, up a hillside and down again. The host farmer was followed by a solitary gosling…who chatted all the way – a determined bird who was centre stage for all group discussions! A very good day. On the way back to mikes went shopping for T shirts and baseball caps for the kids and bough 3 pairs of levi jeans at £6 each!