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Allan Buckwell says British farmers are not ‘subsidised’, Jane Mardell and Richard Middleton fear that only the rich will be able to buy British-grown food, and Vanessa Griffiths and Kate Ashbrook see hope in public access to land

Please don’t use the word “subsidy” for payments to farmers who manage land for biodiversity and the ecosystem services it provides (Report, 3 January). A subsidy is generally considered a temporary assistance and often comes with an undertone that is negative and undeserved. There is now a large body of analysis and evidence to support paying for services that the market cannot supply. We don’t talk about subsidising nurses for health services, or teachers for educational services. So let’s pay for environmental services on a similar basis.

It is good that Michael Gove is supportive of this approach, but there is no need to leave the EU to do it. With strong UK leadership, the common agricultural policy has been adapted for over 20 years to enable governments to pay farmers for environmental services, and to do this under their own locally devised schemes. The resources allocated for this purpose have been decided domestically, and we could have done much more of this had we chosen. Let’s hope Mr Gove now delivers on his rhetoric.
Allan Buckwell
Professor emeritus of agricultural policy, Imperial College, London

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A blackbird would stand beside it, taking the worms and insects dislodged, recalls Sallie Bedford

We had a mole a few years ago that made 17 molehills on our back lawn in as many days (Country diary, 4 January). I watched from the kitchen window each morning as the new hill was being excavated, the earth moving with clumps falling away. A blackbird would stand beside it, watching carefully and taking the worms and insects dislodged – fascinating! This was another wild creature to add to our garden list of frogs, grass snakes, lizards, slowworms and so on and we loved having it, though I must confess to trying to catch it by standing over it when the earth was moving one day and grabbing at the soil, without success. How did it move so quickly? Instead of collecting the soil we raked it back into the grass and eventually the mole departed (to the flower beds) and the area returned to its meadow-like state.
Sallie Bedford
Henfield, West Sussex

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Most modern offices contain a surprising amount of harsh chemicals. If you're heading back to work, check out our list of the best plants to clean the air (and reduce stress). Danica-Lea Larcombe, PhD Candidate in Biodiversity and Human Health, Edith Cowan University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.

Plan to plant 50m trees along 120-mile stretch of land next to M62 to provide new habitat for wildlife as well as manage flood risk

The government has pledged £5.7m to kickstart the creation of a new northern forest which would stretch from Liverpool to Hull.

The plans, which are being led by the Woodland Trust, include the planting of 50m new trees along a 120-mile stretch of land running next to the M62. The project is expected to cost £500m over 25 years, with the remaining money being raised by charity.

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'Ribbon of woodland' will be planted, but critics say other projects are destroying ancient forests.

Vast amounts are paid into Britain’s pensions schemes and, sadly, much of it still goes into supporting fossil fuels

I have great hopes for earth defending activism this year. And one of the most exciting opportunities involves pensions. Huh? OK, pension schemes and auto enrolment do not immediately shout “riveting”, but it is time to follow the money.

The lion’s share of that giant pot flows in the direction of oil and gas companies

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US astronaut John Young, who flew to the moon twice and commanded the first ever space shuttle mission, has died aged 87, Nasa said.

Consultation by the government shows huge public support for ending all sales

Environmental campaigners believe that public pressure is finally about to force the environment secretary, Michael Gove, to introduce a blanket ban on the commercial trade in ivory in the UK.

A consultation on what form a proposed ban should take has just closed, and the government says it will give its response soon. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is overseeing the consultation, said there had been “a massive public response to the government’s proposed ban on ivory sales”. More than 60,000 responses were received, half of them coming in the week running up to Christmas, making it one of the biggest consultations in Defra’s history. Of the responses analysed so far, the overwhelming majority support a ban.

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There are villains out there, trying to make the most of the rarity of Australia's species by tracking down their locations for the purposes of poaching.

He was the only person to have flown missions on the Gemini, Apollo and space shuttle programmes.

The UK has been slow to embrace agroforestry, fearing trees compete for valuable space and water. In fact they can increase crop diversity as well as profits, as two pioneering Cambridgeshire farmers have found

“Most people round here think it’s pretty normal for the earth to just blow away,” says Lynn Briggs. “They seem to think it’s what happens and you just have to live with it. It’s even got a name – they call it fen blow.”

But when Lynn and her husband Stephen moved on to their Cambridgeshire farm in 2012 they had some radical farming notions. Against all precedent, the Briggs planted rows of fruit trees at 21-metre gaps in their cereal fields to provide both windbreaks and alternate crops. “Our neighbours thought we were absolutely crazy,” says Stephen. His soil, however, began to stay put.

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Morfa Bychan, Gwynedd A distant, writhing, black line resolves itself into a low-flying flock of scoter ducks

At the western end of Black Rock Sands, the beach where Roman Polanski filmed the battle scenes in his powerfully unsettling 1971 version of Macbeth, is a dark crag of ancient rock, trap-dyked, quartz-seamed, dripping. In it are the sea-caves that Robert Graves inhabited with the “Things never seen or heard or written about” of his poem Welsh Incident (1929). A dull winter’s afternoon intensified their gloom. The bright orange flash of a kingfisher whirred around sombre overhangs until it found shelter among deep shadow. I turned to face seawards.

Related: Climate change is radically reshuffling UK bird species, report finds

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The fates of the black rat and the phasmid are as intertwined as the air roots of a banyan tree. The survival of one is linked to the extermination of the other, and the battle is on. {For RN Summer we're playing the best programs of the year, and this one first aired in June, 2017}

Last year the ABC launched its War on Waste series. It was a campaign to make us stop and think about how we live, look at how we could re-use and recycle items in our homes, and cut down on unnecessary waste. In today's episode we head to Sydney Markets, Australia's largest fruit and vegetable market, where they take recycling very seriously.

Jenny Jones says the UK must respond proactively to news that China has banned imports of millions of tons of plastic waste

This could be the year we start burning more of our waste than recycling it (China’s plastic waste ban ‘creates a crisis for UK local authorities’, 3 January). There are already three English regions where incineration (energy from waste) has become the most likely way for councils to dispose of our waste and the amount that we recycle has flatlined in all but one area of the UK. The exception to this is Wales, partly because they use the incineration ash to make concrete and count this as recycling. We need to urgently cut down on how much we use and build the recycling infrastructure to deal with the waste ourselves. We need regulation to ensure that what we use contains a minimum percentage of recycled materials, so that we can build up the market for such products. Most urgent of all is a charge on incineration to remove the perverse incentive for councils to burn, rather than recycle.
Jenny Jones
Green party, House of Lords

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A year of unusually dry weather means parts of England are facing summer drought with groundwater and some reservoirs well below normal

A year of dry weather, only slightly alleviated by recent storms, has left much of south-east England facing drought this summer.

Groundwater and some reservoir levels are well below normal and only above-average rainfall in the next three months will refill them, officials warned on Friday. One water company, Southern Water, has applied for a drought permit to allow them to take more water than normally allowed from the River Medway in Kent, to try to avoid water restrictions for households in the summer.

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The Oxford Farming Conference and its upstart sibling, the Oxford Real Farming Conference, seem poles apart. But faced with big changes, from Brexit to the future of meat itself, a united front may be the best option

It’s a brisk five minute stroll up the high street to get from the Oxford Farming Conference to its upstart younger sibling the Oxford Real Farming Conference – but a much longer mental leap.

Stately, careful and well-connected, the OFC has been going for 80 years. Sponsored by Big Agriculture businesses such as chemistry multinational BASF and farm machinery specialists Massey Ferguson, the cloakroom creaks with waxed cotton and quilted Barbours, while the audience is overwhelmingly male, white and upwards of 40. The great and good – royalty, government ministers, international politicians – come to speak to a polite, attentive audience; this is the thoughtful end of commercial British farming, brought together over bacon baps and craft beer.

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The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

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Although the contamination rate has fallen from a half since a partial EU ban the insecticides remain in the farmed environment posing a serious risk to bees

Almost a quarter of British honey samples remain contaminated after a partial ban on neonicotinoid pesticides, new research has revealed.

The contamination rate has fallen – it was more than half before the ban – but the study shows that the potent insecticides remain prevalent in the farmed environment and still pose a serious risk to bees and other vital pollinators.

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They're not dead, just chilling in cool temperatures in the US.