Agricultural Land Drainage and Ditch Infilling

Agricultural Land Drainage and Ditch Infilling

Farm Manager Dan Matthews has his work cut out to keep on top of the 7,000 acres of land he is responsible for on the edge of the Fens near Kings Lynn. The progressive farming business he is responsible for is farming a traditional mix of wheat, oilseed rape, beans and sugar beet and unsurprisingly, the workload is fairly pressurised at certain times of year...

Certain areas of the farm were underperforming, largely due to small field sizes with irregular shapes which were not suited to modern day farming practices.  However, although the farm is of a large scale, Dan was anxious not to completely alter the fenland environment which co-exists alongside the arable fields. Clearly there were environmental obligations that had to be met and all aspects of the work needed to be carefully considered so that drainage related issues and other matters were managed responsibly.  A number of meetings took place between William Morfoot Ltd and the farm as well as with other Environmental & Drainage board advisers to consider the planned work and a strategy was developed as to how the work could unfold.

Dan comments: “Infilling the ditches made complete sense because it was a convenient and extremely cost effective way for us to source further land, while allowing us to make our small fields a more efficient size for our machinery. However, we recognise we are in a position of responsibility with regard to being custodians of the countryside and we were keen to make some positive environmental additions to the farm elsewhere.  We have looked to balance out the old ditchlines we have taken away by creating new habitats elsewhere on the farm including a new woodland area which is due to be planted over the winter”.

As part of the ditch infilling work, provisions needed to be made to manage incoming land drains that flowed into the ditch.  In some places, the new drains needed to cross existing gas mains and permission had to be sought from the Local Internal Drainage Board enabling us to enter their ditch systems.  All of this was sorted by William Morfoot Ltd with the ditch infilling works being completed as and when fields became clear following harvest.

Elsewhere, comprehensive land drainage schemes were installed across several fields to improve field performance in wet weather as well as long-term yield potential.  Along with this, around 10 miles of routine ditch maintenance work was completed, helping to manage the huge volumes of water that drain from the land during the wet winter months.

The Result
All of the fields where the ditches were infilled are now planted with autumn crops.  Dan said: “William Morfoot Ltd have done work for us for a number of years and are consistently good at meeting the timescales they subscribe to at the outset, as well as completing all of the work to a very professional standard.  We’ve been exceptionally busy with our harvest and autumn cultivations while they have been working for us and it’s good to know we don’t have to worry about managing the work they do as they have consistently demonstrated that they operate to the same high standard that we do.  We completed everything we set out to do and we now have a number of old ditchlines which are now in production and growing us a new crop.”