Experts, advisers and farmers came together at Hempstead Farm, Sittingbourne, Kent on Wednesday June 4 at a Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE) event on how farmers can help the pollinators that play a vital role in our crop production.

The morning kicked off with an introduction from host farmer Oliver Doubleday on his approach to pollinators. This was followed by a presentation from Dr Mike Garratt of the University of Reading on the value of pollinators to UK crops. His team's research shows that not only are pollinators vital to crops, for fruit quality pollinators are worth £36.7M to Cox and Gala apple production in the UK.

Sam Page of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, showed how to create and manage the farmland features that help pollinators all year round. While mass flowering crops such as orchards, oilseed rape and field beans can be a highly beneficial food source for wild bees, these flowers are only available for limited periods of time. "It is vital to ensure there are other habitats within the landscape which provide flowers throughout spring and summer," said Sam, "particularly at times when mass flowering crops are not available."

Sam's recommendations have been borne out by recent findings from an international team, reporting in Nature Communications this week, who concluded that the variety of habitats on farms is the most important factor in determining biodiversity, which makes the agro-ecosystem function healthily (particularly supporting pollinators and plants).

Updates on CAP reform, the new environmental land management scheme and CFE were followed by a tour of the farm. Taking in an established orchard, new orchard plantings with built in pollinator habitats and open arable land, the walk highlighted the need to integrate pollinator friendly habitat within the orchard or arable system as much as possible. A wide ranging discussion included how to maintain pollinator friendly habitats through spraying, cutting and harvesting regimes, the potential to make existing swards and field margins more diverse, and the potential for features to count as a future Ecological Focus Areas.

The University of Reading is carrying out significant research into pollinators and farmers and growers can obtain practical guidelines from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Seed suppliers and companies such as Syngenta can provide support and materials and the Campaign for the Farmed Environment has information and contacts and can put people in touch with each other.

One of the farmers at the event, Marion Regan, managing director of Hugh Lowe Farms one of the UK’s leading soft fruit producers, said, "As a soft fruit grower I am acutely aware of the importance of pollinators to the quality and yield of our crops, so it was very interesting to learn more about conserving native species of pollinators as well as honeybees."