A group of more than 100 farmers with a new vision for the future of British agriculture is launching the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) on Friday January 5 at the Real Farming Conference in Oxford.

The independent organisation is calling on the UK and devolved governments to create a post-Brexit framework that will help farmers restore British wildlife, reverse declines in soil quality and help manage the impacts of climate change, as well as growing affordable, healthy food.

Leaving the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) necessitates a new approach to British farming policy. The NFFN believes the UK should use this opportunity to help farmers across the UK transition towards a nature friendly future.

Thousands of British farmers already use nature friendly farming practices, but NFFN says that the scale of the decline in wildlife and soil quality and the challenges presented by climate change mean that this work needs to be scaled up rapidly with strong policy support.

The NFFN considers that agricultural policies after Brexit need to help all British farmers to produce high quality food at the same time as helping our soil, landscapes and wildlife recover and flourish. The network wants farming payments to be continued and redirected towards mainstreaming nature friendly farming across the UK.

Jon Andrews from Langdon Barton Farm near Plymouth runs a family 300-acre mixed livestock and arable farm, farming organic grassland and conventional arable. He wants to halt decline in bird species and has started on a stewardship programme to conserve the rare local cirl bunting.

Mr Andrews works hard to maintain habitats and has six metre margins around the arable fields which are maintained when grass as well as a wealth of hedges. He has found that by leaving margins for natural regeneration, he noticed a proliferation of moths and butterflies after only 24 months. In these areas, plants are able to go to seed and fulfill their natural cycle, providing food for wildlife. Now there are several breeding pairs of cirl bunting and their numbers have been maintained.

Mr Andrews said: “We still need to provide food for the country but there is a better way to do it. If we want to maintain the countryside we need nature friendly farming. We need to see conservation in terms of public good. After we leave the European Union, farming will be will be competing for funding with health and education, so we have to provide clear benefits to the public.

“The biggest threat to British farmers post Brexit is an unsupported countryside. We’ve not had that since the end of World War Two. If the £3 billion of annual subsidy was removed, you would see farmers disappear.

“The Common Agricultural Policy has been hugely important for UK farming. Ecology, conservation and Higher-Level Stewardship have come through the EU. Now we have to do it in our own way. It is extremely important to bringing farmers together, have that conversation, and ultimately make sure we get the right support for nature friendly farming. We have to get it right. I don’t want my kids to say, ‘Dad, did you know there used to be cirl buntings here, but now they’re gone?’ That would be a tragic failure.”