In the Cornwall National Landscape, a Farming in Protected Landscapes (FiPL) grant of over £60,000 has allowed the team at Leyonne Farm to transform a historically intensive commercial dairy holding into a landscape with increased tree canopy cover, greater biodiversity, enhanced carbon sequestration, and passive cooling for the cows being put out to pasture in increasingly exhausting summer temperatures.
Leyonne is an example of a greatly successful landscape-scale project delivering a number of management interventions that deliver nature-based solutions whilst strengthening commercial viability and resilience long into the future.
The cows at Leyonne, benefitting from new ways of farming
Over a period of three years, the project has demonstrated that interventions intended to reduce environmental impacts can and do provide multiple benefits while remaining commercially productive agricultural systems. In particular, the transformation of intensively managed pasture into a ‘parkland-style’ landscape ensures dairy producing cows have greater access to passive cooling throughout the summer. The use of ‘silvopasture’ planting similarly provides shade whilst providing additional browsing benefits for cattle as farmers struggle with the impacts of persistent drought on grass growth. With this summer seeing temperatures upwards of 38C, 40 days of temperatures above 30C, and persistent heatwaves, the value of both these measures is made clear.
Research has shown that heat stress has a quantifiable impact on the dairy industry. A 2025 paper published by researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found three new insights into these impacts:
Small herds and cows in the most productive phase of their lactation cycle are the most vulnerable to extreme heat
An average of 1% of annual yield was lost to heat stress from 2012-2016
Damages are expected to increase by about 30% by 2050 compared to 2016
Similar publications by the Department of Agriculture, Environment, and Rural Affairs in Norther Ireland found that ‘High-yielding dairy cows… can begin to experience heat stress at temperatures as low as 18-20°C’ with impacts going beyond milk quality and yield to include impacting the fertility of cows.
The Whell family who have spearheaded this new approach to dairy farming
Ensuring cows have regular access to sufficient shade is a vital adaptation method to provide cooling that not only improves quality of life for cattle but ensures productivity and viability for farmers going forward.
The use of FiPL funding to deliver such adaptation is a great example of where environmental and commercial co-benefits can be recognised and realised. This project aims to provide as a case study to demonstrate the viability of similar schemes and encourage other farms to adopt similar win-win projects. One key area of learning is how difficult it can be to establish in-field trees during prolonged drought and deer pressures. The trees have been replaced, and this experience has provided valuable practical insights for both the team at Cornwall National Landscape and Leyonne Farm. It is hoped that the education and knowledge sharing opportunities will leave a strong legacy of learning for future projects across the Fowey Valley and beyond.
