Today, we welcomed the Rt Hon Mark Spencer MP, Minister of State responsible for Food, Farming and Fisheries, to Epping Forest. The Minister is also responsible for the UK Government’s Rural Payments Agency, which provides grants for organisations like Epping Forest which provide Countryside Stewardship. We were also delighted to welcome back the Member of Parliament for Chingford and Woodford Green, Rt Hon Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP.
The purpose of the visit was to look at the innovative ways in which we carry out conservation activities at Epping Forest, with the help of our four-legged friends, our much-loved Longhorn cattle. The Minister was particularly interested in the practical use of our NoFence technology, which allows us to move our cattle across Epping Forest and track issues via GPS collars, feeding real-time data back to a mobile phone app. Epping Forest was the first site of many in the UK adopting this technology to deliver efficiencies, whilst also making improvements in animal welfare.
The Minister qualified from agricultural college before joining his family’s dairy farm. Since then his family business has diversified into growing potatoes and vegetables and producing free-range eggs, beef and lamb. He is also the MP for Sherwood Forest, so has a deep operational understanding of what it takes to maintain the UK’s farmlands and related green spaces, like Epping Forest.
Part of my role as Chairman of Epping Forest is ensure we have a regular flow of our stakeholders visiting the open spaces which the City of London owns and conserves to benefit communities across the UK. There is an almost unanimous response when we start to talk through the work we conduct at these sites – that is “I had no idea how much is taking place here” and “I’m shocked at the scale”.
I’m keen to ensure Epping Forest remains well-connected to the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and that we continue to work to bring the City of London’s commercial skills, experience and investment capability to pilot and roll-out a range of innovative environmental research, operating practices and technological advancements in the years to come.
