Despite the claims often made by its representative organisations, it is undeniable that agriculture has had negative effects on most of the UK’s rivers.

The  Foundation's farm work is focussed on reducing these impacts. The solution for many of the wider environmental problems society faces are to be found here too – mitigating climate change, reducing flooding and improving nutrition for example.

From the point of view of the Wye and Usk and their wildlife and fish, there are four main adverse impacts arising from poor agricultural practice:

Too much phosphate entering our rivers

Episodic pollutions

Too much spoil washing off fields and degraded river banks

Extreme flows, high and low


You can read about what we are doing to tackle these issues here.