OAKBANK NEWS AND BLOG

As I made my way to Oxford for my second year at the Conference, the weather warnings made a part of me wonder if we’ll all end up snowed‑in together in the Examination Rooms, Ministers included. It would certainly allow plenty of time for the kind of in‑depth conversations farming needs right now! Joking aside, the Oxford Farming Conference always feels like the perfect place to take stock of where policy in practice is heading, particularly in England. December brought some

Today, the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published the new Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) for England , - a "detailed roadmap" to deliver legally binding environmental targets under the Environment Act 2021. Alongside the EIP, the government has announced £500 million in public funding for Landscape Recovery , designed to leverage private finance such as Biodiversity Net Gain units and carbon credits, and £85 million to improve and r

Defra confirms a one-year Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier extension for over 5,000 English farmers, offering payment continuity and environmental delivery support.

You can hardly go to an arable farming event without hearing about "cover crops" and "catch crops". But are they worth the space, time...

Local Nature Recovery Strategies (LNRSs)  are spatial plans, stemming from the Environment Act 2021, to drive habitat restoration, nature-based solutions and environmental improvements across England. With nature in decline (e.g. species studied across the UK have declined on average by 19% since 1970) and in the context of national targets for reversing this decline, LNRSs should provide locally led roadmaps showing where best outcomes (i.e. most needed and most likely to su