Farming with Nature, in Sompting

For centuries there was mixed farming on the Sompting downs.  Some slopes were permanent flower-rich pasture, and some were in arable.  The arable land would by turns have cereal or brassica crops or temporary grass leys.  The grazing sheep and cows were important not only for their wool meat and milk, but also because their dung naturally fertilized the arable ground.   Soil and wildlife were fairly well conserved but this changed in the second half of the twentieth century.

After World War Two, it was so important to feed the hungry nation that much more of the downland was ploughed up.  Chemical fertilizers and pesticides allowed continuous production of winter wheat without need of animals.  Church and Upton farms (now Titch Hill Farm) had fewer cattle than before, and hardly any sheep but for a small Southdown Sheep breeding flock. Lychpole Farm was without animals altogether.  For a time the farms achieved the big output increases that were demanded, but it was not sustainable: soil quality deteriorated and input costs rose.  Downland wildlife also suffered as the new farm habitats no longer met their needs.

A new approach was developed, to make the business of farming for the environment viable for farmers, alongside the business of producing food  
 

From about 2000 onwards, Sompting Estate brought in new farm tenants who restored a more traditional system of sheep and cattle grazing to the Sompting downs.  Some arable fields were reverted to pasture, and the arable fields grew an increased range of crops in rotation with leys and winter stubble crops for animals to feed on.

 

The farms took advantage of Higher Level Countryside Stewardship schemes to help do more for nature, always considering the heritage of what had worked sustainably on the land before the mid-twentieth-century intensification of agriculture. 

 

Local memories, such as Bill Lindfield's memories of working on this land as a farm boy in the 1940s, pointed us towards new ways of applying traditional land management methods. Many wildlife and soil surveys and careful planning have gone into informing today's land management. 

 

The result of these changes is that the soil is improved, insects and birds thrive, and the whole system is more self-sustaining, with animal feed crops as well as food crops being grown on the farms.   But this landscape and environment management system, where rotational grazing brings life back to the soil in nature's way, depends on mixed farming being profitable.  The government should be giving nature-friendly English farmers a level playing field with better-supported nations across Europe; we also need customers to understand fair pricing and to buy more local meat and other foods and drinks such as our Titch Hill wine.

 

Other conservation work has included dewpond restoration, scrub clearance to favour the unique species-rich chalk grassland of the downs, renovation of overgrown hedgerows full of dead elms, and new hedge planting.  From 2010-2025 we planted on average a kilometre of mixed native-species hedges every year.