Farmers help create exhibition about countryside

The Centre for Landscape Regeneration, looks into wildlife and regenerative farming

Farmers have collaborated with a city museum to create an exhibition championing nature-friendly initiatives taking place in the countryside in England.

Ely Museum is in the Cambridgeshire Fens, which was drained centuries ago to produce extremely fertile soil for agriculture.

The exhibition will showcase some of the conservation initiatives developed by a group of 16 farmers who are part of the Ely Nature Friendly Farming Zone.

Curator Rosie Amos said it was amazing to see how they balanced food production with creating a habitat for pollinators and endangered farmland species.

The group of nature friendly farmers collaborate on ways to boost numbers of pollinators on their land as well as creating space for endangered farmland species

Conservation organisations such as the RSPB and the National Trust at nearby Wicken Fen also contributed to the exhibition.

Ms Amos, the museum's senior project officer, said: "It's basically looking at the environmental initiatives happening in our backyard and really championing them, because there is so much going on to protect our environment right here in East Anglia."

The Ely Nature Friendly Farming Zone was set up about six years ago, supported by the RSPB, to show how modern farming and wildlife can work side by side across the 8,700 hectares (22,000 acres) they farmed.

It is home to nationally important populations of corn buntings and black-tailed godwits, as well as other threatened farmland birds including grey partridges, turtle doves and lapwings.

Ms Amos said it was "a delightful surprise" to find out how the farmers "are working to protect the pollinators, provide habitats for wildlife and and they're learning from each other".

The Fens support an incredible range of wildlife including specialist species that are found nowhere else in the UK

The exhibition will "do a bit of a comparison" with farming techniques deployed in the Fens in the past, drawing upon its collection of historical farm equipment.

"Nature-friendly farming is actually using some of the same kind of values and some of the same techniques as would have been used historically," said Ms Amos.

At the same time, it is deploying modern methods, such as tractor robots, while Wicken Fen is using drones to map the peat levels, she added.

The Back to Nature exhibition begins at Ely Museum on 20 July.

The exhibition will draw on the museum's collections as well as looking to the future, said Ms Amos