Featured Farmer: Michael Calvert

Michael Calvert is an arable farmer from Carrowdore near Newtownards and an enthusiastic participant in the Countryside Management Scheme.

He is the winner of the 2009 Nature of Farming award. The prize, sponsored by the RSPB, Butterfly Conservation, Plantlife and the BBC’s Countryfile magazine, is the most prestigious award for farming in harmony with the environment.

Cereal fields on the farm are surrounded by margins of wild bird cover, rough grass and conservation cereals (cereals not sprayed with herbicide allowing arable weeds to grow). These measures provide for a greater diversity of seed bearing plants and invertebrates which are food for birds and mammals.

He keeps the spring sown cereals as stubble over the winter that supplies seed for species such as the linnet and yellowhammer. Michael has been in the RSPB Yellowhammer Recovery Project since 2006.

Other habitats on the farm include species rich wet grassland and fenland in which are found snipe, dragonflies and orchids.

Michael also has restored field boundary hedgerows and planted a small area of native trees.