Floods, Floods and More Floods

Earlier this week I was speaking to a colleague who had just returned from a holiday in Sri Lanka and she remarked that the only news she had seen about the UK while she was away was a CNN report concerning the flooding on the Somerset Levels. I think this highlights the severity of the situation which is facing farmers and householders on the Somerset Levels.

Certainly the Media have embraced the situation which has attracted the attention of government ministers, the Prime Minister and last week even the Prince of Wales, all of whom have acknowledged the plight of those whose livelihoods and homes are being threatened by rising flood waters.

Back in early January I wrote about the flooding, explaining that winter flooding is not in general as damaging to agriculture as the summer floods we saw in 2012, but I have to say I was not expecting the situation to continue getting worse over the ensuing four weeks.

At the time of writing this article, householders and livestock are being evacuated from villages such as Moorland as the water levels continue to rise. There are properties being flooded which have not flooded in living memory, while James Winslade, a farmer from Moorland has had to transport more than 500 of his cattle to Sedgemoor Market which has opened its doors to act as a collection centre for evacuated stock from where other farmers can pick them up to re-home them.

Sedgmoor Market auctioneer, Robert Venner said the support from local farmers and businesses has been “absolutely staggering”. But Ian Johnson, NFU spokesman in the South West, said the flooding and misery caused to farmers and homeowners was “completely avoidable.”

Country Land and Business Association (CLA) South West Director, John Mortimer, said that everyone involved, including the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, now agreed that dredging was essential as a rapid solution.

“Work should start as soon as practically possible but it may well need to continue for some years until the whole system – including those sections managed by the Internal Drainage Boards - has yielded up its stored silts and deposits,” he said.

He went on to comment, “The initial work should be paid for by Central Government but we will then have to deliver a full and detailed appraisal of what it will cost to maintain and manage the system once it has been restored to design capacity.”

However, with more storms forecast, it seems inevitable that things are going to get worse before they get better but perhaps the one good thing that has come out of all this misery is the acceptance, at the very highest level, that extra money will need to be provided by government to dredge the main water courses even if the ongoing responsibility will then revert to farmers and landowners in the locality.

James Stephen MRICS FAAV
Partner
Rural Practice Chartered Surveyor, Wells
T: 01749 683381
E: james.stephen@carterjonas.co.uk

Memories of 2012 have come 'flooding' back

The memories of 2012 have unfortunately come flooding back (excuse the pun) to many in recent weeks and the Somerset Levels in particular seem to have taken the brunt in this area. The main road to Taunton is once again cut off and we see pictures of villagers being supplied with essential goods by boat.

 

No doubt the issue of dredging the main water courses more effectively will become a hot topic of conversation but it has to be remembered that winter flooding was a regular feature of farming on the levels in the past. The problem this time is that it has followed the devastating floods of 2012 which has left some farmers still recovering from the effects of those floods which started in April and continued on and off throughout the summer and beyond.

 

Such summer flooding is far more damaging than winter flooding because it occurs during the growing season, killing grass and other crops, preventing grazing and damaging soil structure when machinery or livestock cross waterlogged soils. This leads to short and long term impacts on the farmers affected. They not only lose summer grazing and fodder stocks which need to be replaced in order to maintain livestock numbers in the short term they also face the cost of re-establishing grass swards and sorting out the damage to the soil structure in the long term.

 

It is these latter issues which are most likely to cause some farmers particular problems now, in that the grass leys which were reseeded last year are still relatively immature and may not survive the winter flooding which older permanent pastures would probably survive relatively unscathed. The type of grass seed used will also be important in that some of the modern short term leys will struggle to survive periods of flooding whereas many of the old permanent pasture seed mixes are far more resistant to such conditions. However, such seed mixes are less productive and so farmers have to balance the risk flooding against the productivity of the grass.

 

So, although these floods will have been devastating for some I would suggest, provided they do not last too long, they will have done significantly less damage to farmland than was the case in 2012. But whether or not a farm has been flooded, the very wet conditions make looking after livestock in particular difficult. Out wintered stock need to be moved more regularly to prevent the land becoming poached, mud is everywhere hindering virtually everything you need to do, manure and slurry become difficult to handle in wet yards and rainwater fills the slurry lagoons threatening an overspill and yet it is difficult to spread the slurry on waterlogged land without causing soil damage and risking a pollution incident.

 

Thus, all in all wet weather just makes farming difficult and unpleasant work although most will be glad the rain did not come as snow – let’s just hope that is not what February has in store for us.

James Stephen MRICS FAAV
Partner
Rural Practice Chartered Surveyor, Wells
T: 01749 683381
E: james.stephen@carterjonas.co.uk