FRONT LINE
THE NEW COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY AIMS TO ENHANCE THE ECOLOGICAL QUALITY OF 400,000HA OF FARMLAND. BY DR JAMES MORAN
THE
Future OF Farming
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0,000 farmers in Ireland will be part of an exciting new approach to the management of High Nature Value (HNV) farmland in Ireland. The government has recently submitted its draft Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan to the EU Commission which details a planned investment of €750 million in agri-environment-climate measures targeted at HNV farmland for the period 2023-2027. It comes at a time when innovative approaches within our food production systems are urgently needed to improve the environment in response to the declared biodiversity and climate emergency. The landscape of Ireland has been shaped by millennia of agricultural activity and today food and fibre production accounts 30
for over 75% of the land use of the Republic of Ireland. The intensity of production is not uniform across the country and we see a gradient in production intensity from intensive agricultural systems in the east and south-east being replaced by extensive production as we move towards the west and north-west. The extensive production systems are characterised by a high proportion of semi-natural vegetation including semi-natural grasslands, wetlands, heathlands/peatlands, scrub and woodland. These areas have been described as HNV farmland since the early nineties. HNV farmland areas cover approximately one third of the agricultural area of Ireland with 50% of this recognised as some of the most important nature conservation areas in the EU. These areas are associated with species and habitats of international
importance, are important cultural landscapes and can provide a range of ecosystem services including space for nature, carbon storage, flood alleviation, water quality maintenance and extensive food production. To-date, lack of a coherent policy framework and poor targeting of policy to the unique characteristics of these areas has seen continued decline in environmental quality as illustrated in national and EU environmental monitoring programmes. Given the diverse nature of the agricultural landscape of Ireland it is clear that a one size fits all agriculture policy is not appropriate. Policy objectives across different land types need to be locally adapted to the natural land use potential of the area. Over the last 10 years Ireland has made significant strides with local pilot projects
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