Your Farm: the future is local for environmental schemes

For the first time the Teagasc National Agri-Environmental conference was held in the Burren. It took place in the Lady Gregory Hotel in Gort last Thursday and kicked off the Burren Winterage Weekend.

It was a fitting venue, given the vast strides that have taken place in the area to protect and improve habitats and also preserve farming families in the area. The main theme of the conference was the rise of the European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) initiative. These are locally led projects designed to deliver benefits for areas with assets that need protection. Just last week the Department of Agriculture announced nine new projects were given the go-ahead, which brings the total number of EIP projects to 23. These initiatives will no doubt become more common in the future. They offer a lot of benefits to farmers and are value for money for taxpayers but they come with challenges.

Projects

One project that has been 20 years in the making and has been a real success is the Burren Programme (BP). This locally led project has offered a way forward to tackle pressing issues in the area using the expertise of both local farmers and researchers. BP manager Dr Brendan Dunford explained it is not only about protecting the landscape from encroaching vegetation but also sustaining communities.

The beauty was farmers owned it, because they were involved in the creation of the programme, it wasn’t a case of us telling them what to do

“When I came to the Burren first my job was to listen and learn about farming in the Burren and in particular about the importance of winter grazing,” he said. “I carried out research on grazing the winterages and found that the ones managed well over the winter were the most abundant in terms of biodiversity during the summer, the ones not grazed were more likely to become overgrown with single dominant plant species. Local farmers would say I could have told you that but we needed to put the science behind it.”

Dunford said they set about re-framing the anti-farming narrative that had developed over the years with their publication Farming and the Burren. This publication led to the Burren LIFE project, which set about developing a model of stewardship for the area. Burren LIFE was a collaboration where researchers and farmers sat down together to come up with practical solutions to deal with scrub taking over the hills, feeding of silage on winterages and water provision etc. From 2010, funding was made available by the Department of Agriculture to participating Burren farmers to deliver the solutions.

“The beauty was farmers owned it, because they were involved in the creation of the programme, it wasn’t a case of us telling them what to do,” Dunford explained. Following on from the Burren LIFE project, the BP was introduced in 2016. Dunford said this is a very farmer centred approach. There are 330 participating farmers managing in excess of 22,000ha. “Farmers and the advisers sit down and draw up a one-page plan of what needs to be done,” Dunford said. He explained it is completely up to the farmer how much or how little he/she does but payment is results-based.

He said farmers can take on extra jobs on top of normal management like scrub clearance that are fully pre-costed and they are paid on the work they carry out. By the time this round of the BP has ended (2020) up to €18m will have been paid to Burren farmers since 2010, and that’s on top of REPS/GLAS.

Dunford said one of the main challenges is the amount of staff time spent on paperwork in anticipation of audits, which is limiting the time available to visit farms.

A similar initiative, called the AranLIFE project has been successful also. Project manager Dr Patrick McGurn said scrub encroachment was problematic on the Aran Islands also. However, a different strategy had to be developed for the island because it had its own unique challenges. There are numerous small paddocks fenced with stone walls that are rotationally grazed but some are difficult to access due to overgrown scrub. Sixty-seven farmers took part in the five-year project.

In that time, 131 new water features were installed, 107 existing rain catchers were repaired, 28km of boreens were cleared, 40 gates were installed and optimal grazing plans for 1,011ha were implemented. Like the Burren Project, both the farmer and the project team drew up the plan and the farmer is scored on the work carried out. Assessments of the habitats before and after were carried out by the project team so progress could be measured.

McGurn said farming is important for tourism on the island. With every €1 investment made in the scheme, it is calculated that there is a €7 return in terms of tourism activity. “They are not coming to see the briars,” McGurn added.

A number of challenges were highlighted at the conference for environmentally friendly farming and the creation of EIPs. Jack Nolan from the Department of Agriculture said he hopes farmers will have a good standard of living in the future. He said at the moment the statistics do not look good.

He pointed out that the ageing dynamic in farming continues to be a worrying trend, with just 7% of farmers under the age of 35. What’s more, farmers suffer poorer health than the average worker and farming is the most dangerous occupation when it comes to accidents and fatalities. According to Nolan, farmers’ incomes are less than half the average income earned across the economy as a whole. “Yet people expect more and more from farmers,” he said.

He asked if farmers do not have a good standard of living how will they be good custodians of the environment. Fergal Monaghan from the Hen Harrier project said they have the largest EIP in Europe, with a €25m budget to benefit hundreds of farmers over a five-year term. The challenges faced so far in the project include the availability of experts to help develop and roll out the programme. It also takes time to upskill people for the unique roles required. Developing fair payment levels for farmers is also challenging with these new schemes according to Monaghan.

All habitats have a biodiversity value and even in intensive farming areas there are hedgerows and watercourses that can be included

Donal Sheehan, a dairy farmer taking part in the Biodiversity, Regeneration in a Dairy Environment (BRIDE) project, explained there is a lot of work needed to change the mindset that’s out there. He said many intensive farmers think they cannot be involved in these projects because they are not in typical high-nature-value areas.

“All habitats have a biodiversity value and even in intensive farming areas there are hedgerows and watercourses that can be included,” Sheehan said. He said intensive farmers can make small changes by reducing hedge cutting, leaving field margins uncut for pollinators etc.

The challenge of maintaining and improving water quality was highlighted by Gerard Shortle from DG Environment. “Agriculture is viewed as the main pressure in European water catchments,” Shortle said.

He said under the new CAP, member states will have to adopt their own CAP strategic plan. The plan will have to include eco-schemes under Pillar 1A in addition to the traditional environmental payments under Pillar 2 with conditionality (all farmers’ income support and other area- and animal-based payments will be linked to the application of environment and climate friendly farming practices) replacing cross compliance and greening requirements.

Dr James Moran from GMIT said that with the planned changes to the CAP there will be further potential to develop more locally adapted and targeted policy that is results based.