What are British farmers doing to remediate flooding in their fields?

Question

What are British farmers doing to remediate flooding in their fields?

Answer 1

not a lot till the flood subsides

Answer 2

They certainly do not keep ditches open and land drains clear as they are supposed to.

Answer 3

One word .............. Nothing !!!!

They'll probable moan and claim back lost earnings from the government

Answer 4

Planting rice.

Answer 5

FISH FARMS SOME ARE UNDER WATER DIVING LESSONS

Answer 6

They don't seem to be but they should be:  planting more mixed native trees, re-planting native hedges, leaving more 'edges' around the fields and keyline plowing.

If you think of a small mixed woodland of native trees as a small lake you will not go far wrong. Many farms could have wooded corridors around and through them without diminishing yield. The trees act as natural water storage, keeping the ground around them wet and helps soil associates. They provide habitat for wildlife, aerosol for saplings, sequester carbon and help prevent fields flooding.  

Mono crops is another issue, but I wont rant tonight.

Answer 7

I'm not British but I want to know if you are the REAL Curious Orange.  If you are you must get enough great material off of Yahoo Answers to keep you going for months.  I've seen several of your skits on You Tube. They are great.  Good luck with your flood, can't help you there.

Answer 8

Difficult one - what are we supposed to do? Farmers are supposed to keep dykes and land drains clear. We do and all the other farmers around here do. We can be prosecuted if we don't and all farms are regularly checked as part of government inspections required. My husband and I regularly clear out the ditches and drains on our land that are filled with porno mags, fast food containers and food wrappers that people so kindly throw out of their car windows whilst driving past. Ordinarily any excess water will drain off the land and into the dykes and flow away as it is supposed to, but the dykes are already overflowing with excess water as it is, the rivers are also full therefore it has nowhere to go. We could drain it manually with the slurry tanker but the problem here is at the moment getting a tractor accross the field is almost impossible as it just sinks and once we have sucked up the water, there is nowhere to empty it. Can't pump it up into the slurry tower as it is almost overflowing already as we can't empty it as usual because the tractor and tanker would just sink in the land, if that happens we then get prosecuted by the Government for having huge ruts in the field as they make the countryside undesirable and we are obviously not looking after our land and do not deserve it. Our farm yard has regularly been flooded recently. This did not happen before because all the water would go into the drain on the side of the road. Unfortunately when they dug up the road last year putting a drain back in was too expensive so they didn't bother and because we live in a big dip in the road all the water has nowhere to go, hence the road has been closed several times due to severe flooding and our farm has become a swimming pool. We are in a no win situation, we survive on handouts from the Government but restrictions mean that if we want to receive this money we can barely touch our land without filling in 10 forms and even if we thought up a good way of solving the flooding problem we wouldn't be allowed to do anything about it anyway.

Just to add, it is a condition as part of our entitlement to the Single Farm Payment and Hedges Grant that we plant a certain number of trees a year in designated areas and not cut back hedges. Our fields as are many others in the area suurounded by over growing hedges to encourage wildlife and hundreds of trees. Despite this, a very good point brought up below, this is not helping, our fields are still flooded.

Answer 9

Nothing.

They are just throwing wet t-shirts contests.

Answer 10

From the pictures I have seen they only thing they can do is wait for water levels to fall.