Mee Farmers are a mixed arable-soft fruit enterprise farming across 277 hectares in Northamptonshire and supplying blueberries into M&S. The site is run by the Mee Family: Zoe, Peter, Emily, Charlie and Charlotte. The Mee family moved to the site in 1994 and farmed solely arable crops until 2014, when they started to grow blueberries. The farm straddles two national character areas (Rockingham Forest and Northamptonshire Vales) and they recently won the British Farming Awards Family Farming Business of the Year and the FWAG East Farm Conservation Award.

What are the most innovative practices/approaches taking place on site?

The Mee’s involvement as an M&S baseline farm means that the habitat on the farm has been mapped and quality scored on the Land App. The Mees also recently received AgriSound pollinator recording devices as a part of M&S’s AgriSound roll out across the baseline farm group. These devices will allow pollinator visits to different habitats and crops on the farm to be measured, which will help the Mees to answer research questions and generate interesting findings which will be great to share across the grower base.

The Mees also have an innovative nematode application machine for the treatment of vine weevils, a major pest of blueberries. The machine is a modified dosatron, which means that the nematodes don’t have to be applied through their irrigation system (which would kill and injure many of the nematodes in the process, reducing the efficiency of the procedure). They are also considering investing in the use of lacewings to control aphids, but are waiting on previous investments to return and for the support funding to invest in biological control to continue to improve.

How do you go about species monitoring around the farm and what have been your findings?

The Mees have developed good relationships with volunteers from the Northamptonshire Bird Club and Northamptonshire Butterfly Club, as well as working with their farm staff to monitor their focus species (butterflies and lapwing, as well as snipe and yellowhammer). Through their species monitoring efforts, they’ve recorded over 30 different species of birds and 19 species of butterfly on the farm, including iconic species such as kingfishers and skylark. They’ve also found the “iRecord Butterflies” app to be helpful for identifying local species and learning more about their habitat requirements and seasonality.

An interesting finding that they’ve made from their efforts in monitoring is that monitoring throughout the year is key, since individual species counts can vary due to the weather, time of year and other factors. They also find that monitoring biodiversity informally through listening to the variety in the birdsong can help to give additional information about how well biodiversity is flourishing in different areas of the farm. A good example of the challenges with monitoring is their focus species, lapwings. As a habitat for the lapwings, a 2 year legume mix has been planted close to a wetland/floodplain area on the farm. This has meant that the Mees visit the area less to avoid disturbing the birds and also that the lapwings have dense and high cover from predators. The Mees are confident that the population is doing well, but the new habitat makes them difficult to monitor, although new nests in a neighbouring farm provides supporting evidence that the population is increasing.

How have you developed habitat connectivity around the farm?

The Mees have been working on gapping up their existing hedgerows, having planted over 840 metres of hedges to do so, as well as planting an additional 300 metres of new hedgerow. They have also made sure to make use of native species local to the area when doing this and have made sure that their cutting schedule ensures a reliable source of food for birds and other animals. The extensive grass margins around the farm also help to boost habitat connectivity, with their cutting approach providing a mix of shorter grass as drying off areas for species such as grey partridge chicks, dead and tussocky grass providing nesting cover for yellow hammer and longer grass offering forage, shelter and nesting habitats for key bird species on the farm such as snipe.

As was previously mentioned, the Mees have also planted areas of legume mixes and wild bird seed plots which provide year-round nesting, foraging and breeding habitats for bird species, as well nectar for pollinators. They’ve found that these legume mixes are great habitats, as well as supporting good soil health, but did note that the financial investment for good quality and diverse seed mixes can be high and that they can be difficult to establish. The Mees have found that as a result of these improvements to habitat the red kite population on the farm is doing really well and noted that there are often knock on benefits to wildlife beyond what you expect when you build out a habitat plan.

Do you access any funding options to support your biodiversity work?

Mid-tier countryside stewardship options help to fund a lot of the habitat management and enhancement approaches around the farm including grass margins, legume and herb-rich grasslands and hedgerow planting as well as hard tracks and other methods of avoiding soil erosion. The mixed farming system of blueberries and arable makes this much more economical, with the arable land taking up a much larger area. One difficulty they have had within countryside stewardship has been the strict time limits of the options, since it has meant that they’ve been forced to plant hedgerows during periods of poor rainfall, leading to increased failure rates. The Mees have also begun to trial emerging SFI options such as companion cropping (IPM3), no use of insecticide (IPM4), Integrated Pesticide Management Plan (IPM1) and hedgerow management (HRW2) which they found to be simple and relatively straightforward options that work well alongside the existing Countryside Stewardship Mid-Tier options on the farm.

How have you found the events and opportunities to work with advisors within the modules?

Zoe and Emily attended the 2022 M&S event on beneficial insects (hosted at G’s), as well as the recent water resilience event hosted at Rookery Water. They felt that the G’s event improved their practical understanding of beneficial insects and that, when combined with the FWAG visit to their farm, it helped them to decide on focus species and gave more direction to their biodiversity planning. They also highlighted that the events give them a great opportunity to meet local growers and see practical real-world examples of innovative techniques being put into action. For example, G’s work with AgriSound devices helped to convince the Mees to be involved in the roll out of the devices to their own farm.

What are your future plans for biodiversity on-farm?

The Mees are in discussion with some local farmers and the Wildlife Trust to start a cluster group for the area and highlighted that agreeing with others on key goals and prioritising membership of active, interested and engaged members is key to these discussions. They feel that involvement in a cluster group will allow them great access to learning more from other farmers in the area, and that it may also help with future funding applications for work on biodiversity in the area. A local cluster group would also fit with their goal to improve the quality and connectivity of river habitat along the River Nene and its tributaries.

Alongside their interest in cluster groups, the Mees are also keen to replace some of the pine trees that they have on the farm with a mix of native trees, clear out some overgrown spinneys and improve pond habitats on the farm. Lastly, the Mees are also interested in trialling supplementary feeding around the farm, since they feel that this wouldn’t be too time consuming and could provide significant value for local biodiversity.

What is your approach to IPM on farm, and how long have you been implementing it?

Since the Mees were growing only arable crops up until 2014, it was on this side of this business that they first began to explore an IPM approach. They find that consulting a range of agronomists can be really helpful, since this allows them to collect different viewpoints and solutions, allowing for more pragmatic decisions. Over time, their understanding and uptake of an IPM approach has grown stronger and they’ve integrated this into all steps of their decision-making processes, especially with pest monitoring, thresholds and soil sampling. They’ve also cut out prophylactic PPP use and have begun to make use of natural enemies, biopesticides and molasses-based products that help to speed up the breakdown of glyphosate and increase fertiliser use efficiency.

The Mees highlighted pest monitoring as the most impactful aspect of IPM around the farm, since they find that if pests and diseases are monitored then they can be reacted to earlier, giving more options to resolve the problem.  A pest species that is key for them to monitor is spotted wing drosophila, given their ability to cause significant damage to yield. Another key group are aphids, although the Mees have found that they have been controlled well by the abundant ladybird populations on the farm, which thrive in the great habitats they’ve created and also seem to have increased in population as they’ve adopted regenerative practices on their arable land.

Lastly, the Mees have found that the IPM risk assessment that they’ve developed within the Farming with Nature programme has helped them to evaluate how well they’re doing on IPM and to identify areas where they can improve in the future.

What pests are you most worried about over the next 5-10 years?

The risk of introduction of invasive species and new diseases from global supply chains and climate change are a big concern of the Mees in the next 5-10 years. New diseases can devastate yields and damage fruit quality, while invasive species can have a range of impacts, from feeding on crops to killing pollinators that are key to local biodiversity and crop production (as in the case of Asian Hornets). A clear past example of the damage that invasive species can cause is Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD), which was introduced to Europe and North America in around 2008 and now causes significant problems for fruit production. The Mees highlighted that a major problem for introduced species is how long it can take for a control strategy to be devised (while in the meantime yields suffer), especially in smaller sectors with less research funding. The Mees are now controlling SWD through the use apple cider vinegar as a deterrent and by stripping plants at the end of the year and practicing other good hygiene. Through these interventions they keep numbers low, although the species is always a concern and must be closely monitored.