CHARTER COMMITMENT
Cumbria Hill Farms Charter - Committed to Farming in the Fells
The Cumbria Hill Farms Charter is a response to 21st century challenges by practicing hill farmers.
The challenges are shared by all hill farmers:
- Decreasing levels of support and a Single Farm Payment that may disappear by 2012
- Continuing low returns for hill farming products
- A lack of support for the benefits and value of hill farming
In Cumbria the Lake District National Park’ s ambition to achieve World Heritage Site status highlights these challenges and draws into public awareness the challenge that has been gathering force for over two centuries.
Cumbria Hill Farmers share an aim and a commitment to work with the whole community to produce and sustain a working landscape.
Farmers in this project
- Commit to farming in the fells including the grazing of hill, moorland and common land by heafed native breeds and their crosses
- Conserve the land to protect natural resources and biodiversity
- Collaborate with other hill farms and relevant agencies
- Communicate actively with local communities and visitors to increase public understanding of the countryside (through shows, shepherds’ meets, guided walks, farm open days)
- Maintain the landscape the landscape through enhancing historic countryside features such as vernacular buildings, drystone walls, and sheepfold
- Produce quality local food and tradeable goods actively marketed
The Cumbria Hill Farms Charter is a two-way bridge between hill farms and the wider community.
The Cumbria Fells and Dales Leader + programme is based at Voluntary Action Cumbria and is part-financed by the European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund of the European Union and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs. This project is part of a trans-national project with Gévaudan Leader + Programme, Lozère, France.