Cereal and convenience snack brand Kellogg’s has announced a three-year sustainable agriculture project to boost the UK’s yellowhammer population.
The initiative will see the FMCG giant working alongside its wheat farmers as part of its ‘Origins’ programme, which currently has 40 active projects looking to improve the environment and positively impact farmers involved.
For this project, Kellogg’s is hoping to see a 20-30% rise in the yellowhammer population across its trialed farms.
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In order to achieve this, it will be placing winter bird food mixers around 150 hectares of its farmers wheat fields as the bird is typically found in agricultural surroundings.
For birds breeding late, farmers have also been asked to cut their hedges later than usual to avoid any disturbance from August to September and due to the thick hedges yellowhammers nest in.
The initiative comes as the National Geographic describes this bird as a ‘red list species‘, a cause for concern for many conservationists. It’s numbers have declined more than 50% over the last 25 years, according to The Conservation Volunteers.
”The hard reality is that yellowhammer numbers are at crisis point,” Kellogg’s agricultural lead, Kate Prince told The Grocer.
“So, this project is about exploring the practical steps we can achieve together with farmers to encourage this native bird back to our countryside. If successful, we will be able to roll this out across a number of UK farms.”
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