Our World

We want to feed the world and save it at the same time.

Like most farmers, we love farming because we love being outdoors, we love the environment, nature and wildlife. We want future generations to be able to enjoy the beautiful world that we live in, just as we do everyday.

We are always looking for new ways to minimise the impact we have on the natural world. We are only a small business but we have big dreams when it comes to sustainability, so watch this space.

Here are some of the things we are currently doing:

• All tractors, diesel engine farm vehicles and refrigerated delivery vans run on vegetable oil instead of diesel, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% compared to standard diesel. For other road travel, we have a petrol hybrid electric car.

• For more targeted irrigation we have invested in sprinklers on certain crops to reduce the amount of water we use.

• We are reducing our field cultivations more and more every year and we have started in-depth trials looking at if and how we can adopt direct drilling.

• Instead of just spraying pesticides, we cover our vulnerable crops with nets to protect them from insect attack (no one wants to eat salad with holes in!).

• We don’t just use our experienced eye to monitor crops, we use data. We have a Davis weather station which measures everything from rainfall, to soil temperature to leaf moisture. This means every decision we make from watering our crops to protecting them against disease is well and truly justified.

• We grow varieties of salad that are bred to be resistant to a wide range of diseases. This means we don’t have to use certain fungicides on our crops. We also choose varieties that grow quickly and will out-compete weeds.

• We employ a large team of ‘hand weeders’. They literally go around the field pulling out any weeds they see in the crop. This reduces the need for herbicides or field cultivations that use a lot of fuel, and disturb the soil and anything living in it.

• We also do all we can to encourage and support ‘beneficial insects’. These are the insects that eat crop pests and include ladybirds and greenflies. The farm has row upon row of hedges, wildflower meadows, woodland and grass verges to give bees, birds, beetles and insects somewhere safe to live and an abundant food source. These are all managed by our landlord who shares the same environmental ethos as us.

• Lockwood Salads is proud to be LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) and Red Tractor accredited. We also take part in other environmental and consumer facing events where possible including the Farmland Bird Count, virtual Open Farm Sunday and Farm24. The farm is abundant with well managed footpaths for everyone to enjoy our little haven.

• Our staff are our biggest asset and we work hard to make sure every member of our team is looked after and their career development is supported. We are GRASP certified and Sedex registered.