A personal record of fell farming in the Lake District

Mervyn Edwards spent over 40 years working as a government adviser in North West England, 20 years in agri-business followed by 20 years in agri-environment before retiring from Natural England in 2011. The attached notes  are a personal record of his thoughts on fell sheep farming,  reflecting on many happy years of working as a ‘Ministry’ (of Agriculture) adviser with farmers in the Lake District .

Mervyn concludes that there are a number of developments which have undermined the practice of traditional fell sheep farming and are supporting the trend of declining number of fell sheep farmers. This particularly applies to the high open fells, largely designated as common land. The drivers for change include:

• Traditional hill farming systems have been dented by the new practices encouraged by succession of agri-environment schemes. Perhaps, fell sheep farming is becoming a seasonal practice and farmers are just making use of the fells for summer grazing
• The sense of purpose and motivation of some fell sheep farmers has been undermined by the requirements of agri-environment schemes
• Agri-environment scheme payments have, for the larger farmers, provided some of the capital and released labour to manage livestock on additional land or start a new enterprise. Consequently, the importance of the fell sheep enterprise has declined on some farms with increasing interest devoted to extending or developing an in-bye or lowland flock which are more productive and not subject to the restrictive nature of agri-environment agreement.
• Fell sheep farming is increasingly dominated by the larger fell farms
• There is a possibility of some abandonment on areas of the high fells and less time taken to shepherd fell flocks on the heft.

Mervyn concludes that:

"If there is a desire to maintain the culture of fell sheep farming, I think a more rounded approach is required in the application of agri-environment schemes to include consideration of agricultural production, delivered by advisers who have a credible understanding of fell sheep farming.  Whilst change is inevitable, there is a need for respecting the role of fell sheep farmers as producers of food, possibly for a niche market. Otherwise, fell sheep farmers will be replaced by ‘conservation graziers’ who will probably not have the same skill and motivation to practice effective shepherding of the fells.  This will mean broadening the objectives of agri-environment schemes (to put more emphasis on ‘agri’) and providing more resource for mentoring and monitoring agreements."

You can download the report here