With the help of Asda and Molson Coors, LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) has created a free booklet as a tool to help readers manage water quality and usage.
Following five years of extreme weather patterns in the UK, combined with a rapidly expanding world population, it is now recognised that farmers have a role to play in managing water resources more sustainably.
At the beginning of this year, LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), Asda, and Molson Coors Brewing Company, came together to launch the Simply Sustainable Water booklet. The booklet comes following several years of work on the initiative, which aims to help farmers manage water quality and use on their land.
Our work with both Asda and Molson Coors goes back a few years. The Simply Sustainable Water booklet came together following work on the Simply Sustainable Soils booklet with Asda and our Water Management Tool with Molson Coors. We wanted to develop both of these areas of work further and it came together in the form of the Simply Sustainable Water booklet.
The booklet aims to be both technically useful to farmers but equally easy to follow and understand. We know that farmers are always busy and short on time, so condensing the whole process into six simple steps was the logical approach. We had also approached the soil management guide the same way and found that it worked well.
We felt it was important for the booklet to feature case studies of best practice to show how some of the ideas and principles translate to practice on farm, particularly around the importance of more sustainable farming practices through the uptake of Integrated Farm Management. We took this a step further too and filmed a case study with one of the farms from our LEAF Demonstration Farm network, who are all about sharing best practice and new innovations, to really illustrate the principles of the booklet. You can watch the video below.
The booklet is now being distributed amongst LEAF members, Asda suppliers, and Molson Coors Growers Group who will be following up on progress throughout meetings later in the year. More information is available from LEAF’s website here, where you can also download the booklet free of charge!
Let us know what you think of the booklet's contents and if it's helpful to you in the comments below.