Countryside Maintenance and Management Activities 2010-11

Defra's latest statistics on Countryside Maintenenace and Management Activities (CMMA) final estimates, released 28 June 2012, show that over 52,193 farms of the 56,294 farms in the Farm Business Survey (FBS) population carried out some kind of countryside maintenance and management activities in 2010-11. The number includes 99% of LFA grazing livestock and 98% of cereal farms. The lowest rate was for Pig farms at 58%. Rates of participation according to farm size were 95% for small farms, 94% for medium-sized farms and a lower rate of 88% for large farms.

Costs involved for farms with CMMA ranged from £2,327 for General Cropping farms to £392 for Pig farms with an average of £1,675 per farm for participating farms. The average cost per hectare was £11.75. Costs for CMMA as a proportion of total farm costs were much higher for Lowland and LFA grazing livestock farms, 2.2% and 2% respectively, with an average of 1% or less for other farms.

The most common CMMA overall was Boundary features such as hedges and wall maintenance with 82% of all participating farms doing such work including 96% of LFA grazing livestock farms. Other CMMAs include trees and woodland, historic and landscape features, buffer strips, arable land, range of crop types, soil and water protection, grassland and other activities not included in Entry Level Stewardship (ELS).

Some of the CMMAs contribute to the Campaign for the Farmed Environment targets. These include some Buffer strip activities, field corner management, overwintered stubble, uncropped land, beetle barks, skylark plots, wild bird seed mixture or pollen and nectar mixture, conservation headlands and reverted arable area (higher level stewardship (HLS)) from the Arable land ELS scheme option group.