The barn owls have become one of Richard Peace's favourite sights on the farm. As dusk falls near the woods edging his land outside Nuneaton in Warwickshire, the birds emerge to hunt over fields he has spent years managing. This year he wanted to do more to help them thrive.
To encourage the owls, Richard planned to leave some crops unharvested near the woodland where they live. "Obviously that will bring some of the wildlife out of the woods, like voles and mice, and I was hoping that the barn owls would then thrive even more than they are already," he said. But leaving part of a crop in the ground comes at a cost.
The government offers support to farmers carrying out environmental work through schemes that pay for so-called public goods, from improving habitats to boosting biodiversity. For Richard, accessing some of that £310m funding seemed straightforward enough. All he had to do was submit an application.
What he did not realise was that he was entering a race against thousands of other farmers for that limited pot of cash. "We looked at 8am and it wasn't live. I had things to do so I went to work on the farm," he said.
"Checked again at lunchtime, it was live and I started. We had a few errors but I did get to the end of the form and submitted it. "I was minutes too late and the scheme had been subscribed.
The money pot was exhausted." Richard is among thousands of farmers who missed out after funding was snapped up within hours. He believes smaller family farms may have been at a disadvantage. While some larger businesses could dedicate staff to monitoring the application process, Richard spent the morning carrying out day-to-day work on the farm before returning to complete his submission.
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