THE FUTURE OF FARMING

THE NEW COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY AIMS TO ENHANCE THE ECOLOGICAL QUALITY OF 400,000HA OF FARMLAND. BY DR JAMES MORAN

THE OF FutureFarming

20,000 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 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

for a range of important habitats and species, funded under the EU LIFE programme and CAP European Innovation Partnership projects. These local partnerships have fostered a farmercentred approach to the design of solutions and are focused on delivery of tangible results. This is done through the development of bespoke payments and farmers are provided with administrative, advisory and research supports. What has emerged is a common framework for the design and implementation of payments for ecosystem services. A range of supporting actions are incorporated into the projects aimed at improving habitat quality and ecological restoration. What started with approximately 150 farmers in the Burren in 2010 grew to over 2,000 farmers across diverse landscapes in various projects by 2020.

The new CAP 2023-2027 aims to secure the future of agriculture and forestry and is being formulated in challenging times with Brexit, the global Covid-19 pandemic and the need to contribute to the objectives of the European Green Deal. How to upscale this successful, locally-adapted, results-based approach has been a key challenge over the last two years of negotiation on the design of Ireland’s CAP Strategic Plan. It was recognised that a national generic approach to agri-environmental management was not appropriate and an alternative approach was needed in order to ensure “the right measure in the right place”. The result is that Ireland’s draft CAP Strategic Plan has adopted two broad streams to its design of

LEFT: High nature value farmland in Co. Galway

INSET: Agri-environment ‘Co-operation Project

Areas’, from Dept. of Agriculture, Food and the

Marine

agri-environmental climate measures. Firstly, the “Agri-environment Climate Measure (AECM)-General” is a national approach to improve environmental performance outside identified high priority geographical areas. Secondly, the “AECM Co-operation Project” approach sees the addition of bespoke farm and landscape/catchment level measures targeted at high priority geographical areas identified as HNV farmland and highstatus water bodies. These high priority geographical areas identified as some of the “most sensitive and challenging lands” in the country have been divided into eight cooperation projects. These eight areas extend across the west coast from Donegal to Cork and include eastern upland areas from Waterford to Louth.

Over the next six months we will see extensive work on the recruitment of specialist local support teams, drafting of local areas plans and the detail of the design of bespoke farm and landscape actions with co-benefits for nature, climate and water for the eight cooperation project areas. This is all in preparation for the commencement of farmer contracts for the delivery of environmental services in early 2023. We have learnt over 10 years of testing and trialling that the system in 2023 must appeal to farmers’ head (understandable and practical), heart (farmer proud of and respected for what they achieve) and pocket (contributes to viable farming business) in order to shape a new narrative around farming for nature in Ireland.

We must be under no illusions that scaling up successful local initiatives to this level will be challenging. However, we must also acknowledge that there are over 1.5 million hectares of potential HNV farmland in the country and in this context the target of 400,000 hectares for targeted action in the CAP strategic plan is modest. This new initiative must be welcomed and supported. We must build towards larger transformation of our food and wider land use systems post-2027. Eight years remain of this crucial UN decade of restoration when we must see significant progress on preventing, halting and reversing the degradation of ecosystems in Ireland and worldwide.