Bayer CropScience has launched two centres of excellence to promote practical and meaningful approaches to improving on-farm biodiversity. Based at the company’s research farms at Chishill and Shelford, both in Cambridge, the Biodiversity Centres have a wealth of fauna and flora living alongside crop protection field trials.
The launch was held at the Chishill farm, which, formally an orchard producing both apples and plums, has been converted into combinable crops for trial plots, where chemical pesticides can be tested before becoming available. After talks from all companies involved, which included words from Mike Read, the field trails manager at Bayer CropScience, Jim Egan from the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) and Chris Bailey from RSPB, a tour of the 20 hectare farm followed, showing how Bayer CropScience has been both concentrating on chemical advancement as well as maintaining the natural surroundings. Some traditional features had been there for over 100 years; including the pattern of hedgerows, some trees and a number of small woodlands and ponds. This is all part of the company’s commitment to sustainable agriculture.
Andrew Orme, managing director of Bayer CropScience explained, “We have been developing our sites at Chishill and Shelford for the last four years, implementing measures to enhance the wildlife alongside our commercial operations, thus proving that the two can work hand in hand. We now want to share our work and experiences and show how implementing these measures can actually have a positive environmental effect”.
The Biodiversity Centres are a platform to discuss and demonstrate conservation farming to growers, distributors, consultants and agronomists and they are a way of informing the wider community and local schools of the changes that have taken place in modern agriculture.
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