FAQs for the site's neighbours
Last updated on 10/02/2012.
Q: You say that you will protect your sites for agriculture but how will you prevent tenants from breaching the condition that they must be employed in agriculture? Aren't they protected by the Human Rights Act? You may know that the illegal site attracting the recent press coverage over the difficult eviction was owned by the local authority. Public authorities are bound by the Human Rights Act 1998 so it is unlawful for them to act in a way that is incompatible with one of the Human Rights (as laid down in the Human Rights Convention). The ELC are not a public body so are outside this legislation and are caught by the ordinary laws affecting residential properties and farm business tenancies. Although formalities have to be gone through to evict a tenant who occupies a property as his or her home we will not face the human rights arguments that the local authorities must deal with.
Q: How can anyone be financially viable on 6 or 7 acres of marginal land? This question was asked of us at a Parish Council meeting that we attended in 2010. In order to provide a satisfactory answer to this question we commissioned research into the viability of existing ecological small farms (those based on 10 acres or less). The result was the publication Small is Successful: Creating a Sustainable Livelihood on Ten Acres or Less. This report looked at the finances of 8 case study holdings - six of which started on marginal land - and found that a modest living was derived on a small acreage by intensive and diverse cropping; high value crops; and adding value to raw products through processing and / or direct marketing. The publication featured in the Research Council UK’s (2011) report Big Ideas for the Future: UK research that will have a profound effect on our future. This report identified the 100 most important pieces of research likely to shape the UK’s future.
Q: You have projected that together the three smallholdings will generate an average of two extra vehicle trips per day (return trips). How will the tenants run their businesses and have a social life with such little car use?
Lammas, a development of nine low impact smallholdings, monitors the traffic generated by each smallholding. It found that in the first 18 months of being established the smallholding residents and their visitors generated an average of just 1.34 return trips per day. As they are now out of the initial set-up phase they expect this figure to fall even lower. Vehicle use is low because those living in low impact developments make greater use of walking and cycling, allocate time to co-ordinate deliveries from and to the site and to sharing vehicles and journeys, and discourage their visitors from using vehicles when visiting.
Q: If the smallholders sell their produce in Wellington which is 5 / 6 miles away, how could the food be 'low carbon'?
Taking tomatoes as an example, the most significant contributors in increasing carbon in the food chain are: greenhouses heated with fossil fuels; air freighting; refrigeration over long periods; and the use of a vehicle by the consumer to purchase food, particularly if they are purchasing small quantities at a time. If the tenants at Greenham filled their car with tomatoes and drove them 5 miles back and forth to Wellington, they would only be producing ~20 grams of carbon per kilo of produce. This compares with ~1,500 grams of carbon per kilo of produce for tomatoes heated in a conventional greenhouse, and a massive ~8,000 grams per kilo for air freighted tomatoes. Even field grown Spanish tomatoes sold here are calculated to be accountable for ~700 grams of carbon per kilo of tomatoes. To further reduce their emissions the tenants should: ensure that their vehicle is as full as possible; in time, look at moving to a vehicle powered on renewables (bio-diesel or electric, for example). Or maybe make use of a horse and cart?!
