With the College's heavy focus towards the land-based sectors, biodiversity and natural resource management represent an important element of our teaching, research and consultancy activities. In addition to this, the College also farms around 490 hectares of land using both conventional and organic approaches. Successfully integrating sympathetic natural resource and environmental management with commercial farming is a key objective for the College in its farm management decisions.

Environmental Stewardship

The land at the College farms at Harnhill and Coates is in a combination of Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship (HLS), Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) and Organic Entry Level Stewardship (OELS) schemes. All of these schemes commit the College to delivering a range of environmental management measures. They build on a long-standing commitment to this type of activity - the College having previously been a member of the old Natural England Countryside Stewardship Scheme.

The College farms lie within a target area for The Cotswolds Farmland Bird Project and this was a key consideration in deciding on management options for the College’s environmental stewardship scheme agreements. The Cotswolds Farmland Bird Project is a joint initiative between Natural England and the Cotswold Conservation Board and has the objective of helping to reverse the decline in farmland birds. It focuses on six bird species – the grey partridge, lapwing, turtle dove, yellow wagtail, tree sparrow and corn bunting – and aims to encourage land managers to adopt measures that provide nesting habitat and summer and winter food for farmland birds (the three main things that they need to survive). In order to play its role in helping to deliver the objectives of the Cotswolds Farmland Bird Project, the College has, through its environmental stewardship agreements, committed to a range of management options designed to benefit farmland birds covering, in total, around 7% of the arable area. These include fixed and rotational wild bird covers, beetle banks, over-winter stubbles and floristically enhanced field margins.

In addition to these management options, the College has also committed to a range of other options through its environmental stewardship schemes. These include the beneficial environmental management of hedge and field boundaries, resource protection options and cultivated fallow plots to promote opportunities for rare arable plants. This range of options was chosen, not only to reflect and enhance the particular natural characteristics of the College farms (for example, the requirements of specific Biodiversity Action Plan species such as the brown hairstreak butterfly), but also to illustrate, for demonstration and educational purposes, the range of opportunities available to manage natural resources sympathetically in a farming context.

Students and staff can find out more about the College's agri-environment schemes by visiting the environment section of the intranet.

LEAF Innovation Centre

The College is proud to be a LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) Innovation Centre. Research and demonstration projects, often involving outside funding and other external organisations, are a continual part of the College farms' programme.