News

When grassland aerating helps the townsfolk as well as farmers

The recent and continuing rain and floods once again put strain on the drainage systems, the fire brigade pumps, and on insurers who are called on for compensation.
    As ditches and streams are cleared to allow for faster run-off, so the volume of floodwater downstream becomes increased. This in turn means that river levels rise faster and more dangerously, causing damage and the call for better flood defences. In many respects it's a vicious circle.
    Turn the clock back a few decades, when drainage was less efficient, and you'd see more flooding upstream in low lying fields, and the water would often take some days to recede, and this of course meant that downstream locations were saved from having to handle such a large volume over a short space of time.

Making grassland porous

There's no doubting that spiking or aerating grassland makes it far more porous and able to absorb water, and it is quite bizarre that the mandarins in Defra haven't seized on the idea as an inexpensive and effective way of reducing flooding. ONe can only suppose they have the political need to instigate huge and 'in-your-face' flood defences, of the kind that are opened by Secretaries of State and which can then have their signature, and that of their political party on them for ever more. Such projects are, as always, seen as gifts from the almighty, not work that has been funded by hard working taxpayers.

In 2006 I tried to interest the newly appointed Hilary Benn in the notion of encouraging farmers to spike their grassland as a means of reducing flooding, and, ever the politician, his eyes opened wide while he gave me contacts in his department. As in nearly always the case, the contacts prove hard to get hold of "I'm sorry that I am away from my desk at present, please leave a message" is the reply one gets from the majority of civil servants. The effort was, I'm sorry to say, too great and the idea of having a flood initiative based on grassland spiking never bore fruit.

There's more information on http://www.farmideas.co.uk/newsdetailed.php?id=45

What a pity the old news is as relevant today as it was then. It would surely be in everyone's interests for the job to be commonplace, and maybe part funded by some public slush fund which helps the environment, or farming, or both - which of course this work does so well.