Farmers & Landowners
Adapting the Levels can support farmers & landowners on the Somerset Levels and Moors to adapt to the increased risks of flooding and drought brought about by climate change
Our aim is to improve business resilience, while protecting the landscape and the wider communities.
There are two main ways we can offer support:
Proving funds for on farm capital works
Facilitating the creation of Moor Associations
Changing Climate, Changing Business: Climate change is happening now in the South West and we are already vulnerable to extreme weather. We need to plan for both current and future vulnerability. This film highlights the impact of climate change on tourism businesses across South West England and the steps they are taking to combat its effects.
Funding Capital Works
As the consequences of climate change continue to worsen, Adapting The Levels can help farms plan for a sustainable and productive future.
The project’s farm advisers have been chosen for their farming backgrounds and ability to understand the many complexities facing farmers and land managers. They are looking to work with individual farms to find solutions to some of the problems that could affect farm businesses going forward.
Farmers can meet with our advisers 1:1, and through discussion and collaborative planning, define how capital works funding can best benefit their farms.
The project focuses on natural flood management and natural process solutions, as well as other appropriate restoration works. These will be 100% funded, individual on farm investments.
Keep checking the website for meetings and events you can get involved with.
For a chat about how this project could benefit you and to access the funds, or find out more about natural flood management and how it could work on your farm, please get in touch.
Moor Associations
One section of Adapting The Levels is intended to help facilitate the creation of Moor Association groups, wherever interest lies in the region.
These Associations have proven successful on some Somerset Moors already, where they have helped people come together to build a more resilient future for this special landscape.
The traditionally summer grazed landscape of the Somerset Levels and Moors has lead to a fractured land ownership pattern, where neighbouring fields are often owned by different people, and continuous blocks of land greater than 100 acres are rare. This, coupled with the economically marginal nature of extensive livestock farming and the complexities of managing such a rich and sensitive ecosystem, means that farming businesses in the area face some unique challenges.
As the economic and environmental pressure on farming grows, it is hoped that developing a mutual support network for farmers, land managers and owners will help them to better overcome the challenges of contemporary farming on the Somerset Levels and Moors.
By working collaboratively in groups called Moor Associations, participants can benefit from economies of scale such as reducing the cost of contractors, sharing equipment, accessing new grant funding streams, collaborating on larger ecosystem service delivery opportunities or just getting together occasionally for a chinwag.
If you or anyone you know is interested in participating in a Moor Association in your area or you would like to know more, please get in touch.
“The Somerset Levels are an ever-changing, largely man-made landscape, and what we see today is a snapshot in its long history. Over the millennia, from primitive times, those who have lived in this unique place, who know how to read its nature and who respect, understand and deeply value it, have learnt how to live alongside the challenges that come with calling this landscape home. The changing climate now requires these same people of the Somerset Levels to adapt again in order to create a new vision for a climate resilient future. ””