Dexter Beef RSS

CAP, Conservation Grazing, Dexter Beef, Farm mechanisation, Farm subsidies, Floodplain Meadows, Grassfed Beef, Lapwing, Lost meadows, National Meadows Day, Natural England, Sustainable Farming Incentive, Yorkshire Ings - July 3, 2022

Sustainable Farming - where is the incentive?

In 2005 English Nature (the former name of Natural England) published the paper The importance of livestock grazing for wildlife conservation, which detailed the concerns over the changes to farm support at the time which took away production subsidies and replaced them with simplified land area payments. This move meant that farmers no longer needed to produce anything from the land to receive the payment, which was made available simply to own agricultural land. It was anticipated that this would result in reduced grazing of biodiverse grasslands and the subsequent gradual decline of grassland biodiversity.

Isn't all beef grassfed?

One of the most common questions I am asked is whether our beef is grassfed. At Rosewood Farm we produce 100% grassfed beef as a by-product of conservation. That means that our animals graze pastures and meadows throughout the summer and autumn and are fed hay and/or silage made from grass during the late Winter and early Spring when grass growth is naturally slower. The conservation element comes from the fact that as well as producing beef our animals are grazing with the aim of encouraging and preserving botanical diversity in the pastures. This means that our pastures are not...

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