The Development stage will enable us to firm up these proposals and as part of this process we will be including consultation and getting input from the public, neighbours and other interested parties to ensure we’ve considered all the issues and opportunities. These will also be integrated with the work the Curlew Recovery project that the Duchy of Cornwall is leading on.

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Alongside this, we’ll be developing plans to improve existing public rights of way and access routes, and how we can build in roles for volunteers, apprenticeships and trainees into the Delivery Stage.

 

On Commons the process is more complex, so we propose to build on the findings of the Fursdon Review and the Foundation of Common Land’s ‘Common Cause’ Project, expanding on the learning from Dartmoor and across the country. With their input, and using an independent facilitator we plan to work with graziers, landowners, public bodies, NGO’s, the general public and other stakeholders with the aim of developing a set of agreed guiding principles and a Vision for the future for each Common. This stage of extensive dialogue and facilitation between the many interested stakeholders aims to overcome an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, will aim to jointly produce a widely supported Vision and Delivery Plan that balances the possibly conflicting priorities of ecology, heritage, food production, water supply, Natural Flood Management, carbon sequestration, recreation and military use.

 

A key part of communicating the resulting Vision will be through visualisation, with artist’s illustrations created of how we want the area to look like in 20, 50, 100 years’ time.

 

Following on from the Vision, we will then update the management plans for each common. These will:

 

• align with the plans for the home farms, to ensure that conservation grazing animals have somewhere to go year-round.

• ensure that no one piece of land (i.e., neighbouring common or home farm) is treated detrimentally at the expense of another piece under good management to ensure we are taking a system wide approach.

• recognise the historic and cultural landscape, being sensitive to landscape character

• calculate the true cost of providing conservation grazing (getting right animals in right place at right time)

• Include wildfire planning

 

In parallel, we will also be looking at the economics of Dartmoor farming, as underlying all our proposals is the need for our farming businesses to be economically sustainable. As the adage goes, you can’t go green, if you’re in the red. Over the past decade, on average, livestock farms in Less Favoured Area’s like Dartmoor lost over £10,000 each year on their agricultural enterprises. It is only through income from BPS, agri-environment and diversification they offset these losses and make a modest profit. 

 

The Less is More and Farming at the Sweet Spot reports indicate that changing practices in upland areas so they are less intensive and more focused on nature restoration can increase profitability.

 

This and other evidence suggest that farmers would be financially better off, moving to a system that minimises bought in feed and fertiliser, has more cattle and less sheep, and the majority of youngstock sold each autumn rather than over-wintered. However, before farmers commit to this major change, more evidence is needed.

To provide this we propose to work with the Countryside Fund to offer farm business analysis and consider an approach to stocking that delivers the right economic and environmental outcomes; both on home farms and commons. This will re-visit the use of the stratified livestock system to increase the number of cows available to summer graze whilst reducing wintering pressure and on-farm costs. 

 

Alongside this are a number of other workstreams, including;

• Support for threatened species (e.g. Curlew, Marsh Fritillary)

• Expansion of native woodland (inc. hedges and wood pasture)

• Access Improvement Plans

• Plans for reaching net-zero

• Improving water quality

• Climate resilience

• Tackling invasive species

• Developing marketing of Dartmoor meat

• Improving animal, health and welfare 

• Providing volunteer opportunities

• Developing traineeship and apprenticeship programmes

• Building on the Duchy’s recently launched mental health strategy
   

More details of these will be shared on our website and our e-newsletter (sign-up below).

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