How to include farmland habitats in sustainability assessments? John Finn, Soils, Environment and Land Use Dept. CELUP, Teagasc

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1 How to include farmland habitats in sustainability assessments? John Finn, Soils, Environment and Land Use Dept. CELUP, Teagasc

2 2 Teagasc Presentation Footer

3 Aims Biodiversity needs to be included in sustainability assessments Bottom-up: farm habitat plans Top-down: estimating the national distribution of High Nature Value farmland 3 Teagasc Presentation Footer

4 4 Agri-Environment Conference April 2017

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6 Why care about farmland wildlife? Heritage, tradition and pride of place Policy objectives (Agri-food, IE, EU) On average, Irish farmland has higher levels of farmland habitats (13%) Key component of sustainability Industry demand for biodiversity to be included in sustainability benchmark 6 Teagasc Presentation Footer

7 Sustainability without biodiversity is incomplete and may fail to address trade-offs among environmental dimensions Biodiversity? Gaseous emissions Water

8 Q. Where is the farmland wildlife? Difficult to know- no systematic and repeatable national-scale monitoring that can track change over time Two recent projects: 1. IDEAL-HNV national-scale 2. Farmland habitats: farm-scale

9 Identifying the Distribution and Extent of Agricultural Land of High Nature Value Ideal-HNV John Finn, Stuart Green, Daire O húallacháin, David Meredith, Shafique Matin, Brian Clifford, Caroline Sullivan, James Moran

Ideal-HNV: High Nature Value farming: CAP and RDP - identify areas with HNV

farming through Rural Development Programmes (by 2008), and; monitor changes

Daire O húallacháin, David Meredith, Shafique Matin, Brian Clifford, Caroline

10 Ideal-HNV: High Nature Value farming: CAP and RDP - identify areas with HNV farming practices in each Member State (by 2006); - support and maintain HNV farming through Rural Development Programmes (by 2008), and; monitor changes to the HNV area over time Irish Biodiversity Plan John Finn, Stuart Green, Daire O húallacháin, David Meredith, Shafique Matin, Brian Clifford, Caroline Sullivan, James Moran 10 Teagasc Presentation Footer

11 5 simple indicators can effectively predict HNV Semi-natural land cover classes from Corine (40%) Stocking density (30%) % hedgerow cover Length of river/stream Soil diversity OPEN ACCESS

12 National-scale distribution of vascular plants in NBDC is very uneven (map). Difficult to find nationalscale coverage of farmland wildlife species/ habitats (Birds, N2K, individual projects over limited space and time) Walsh et al J. for Nature Conservation 12 Teagasc Presentation Footer

13 Expected impacts Prediction of HNV likelihood at ED scale (not farm-scale) Better evaluation of targeting of support Inclusion of farmland biodiversity in national-scale models: - land use change - climate change - alternative scenarios for the agricultural sector.

14 Strong industry pressure to incorporate biodiversity into sustainability assessments

15 Goal: produce a cost-effective habitat map and management plan PILOT PROJECT (Jan May 2017) - Beyond field-by-field visits - Can we use aerial imagery+ ICT to produce habitat maps? - ~200 Irish farms (dairy, beef, arable) - John Finn, Stuart Green (Teagasc) Pat Moran (FERS) Padraig Brennan, Eamon Joyce (Bord Bia) Tim Mackey (CodePLUS)

16 How to go from this

17 to this Total semi-natural habitat: 10% Field boundaries: 5% Woodland and wetland: 5%

18 LPIS info Aerial imagery Ground photos Ecologist survey

19 Pilot project What would a habitat map and management plan look like?

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Pilot project: developing tool to give credit to farmers for farmland wildlife habitats. 4.

28 Looking to the future 1. Sustainability without biodiversity metrics is not sustainability 2. Very strong pressure from industry to implement biodiversity assessments. 3. Pilot project: developing tool to give credit to farmers for farmland wildlife habitats. 4. IDEAL-HNV map: better incorporate farmland habitats in national assessments of sustainability 5. Reputation and credibility very sensitive to wildlife issues

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30 Poor national coverage of plant data from volunteers but sufficient to show important trends

31 Key principle Include the effect of off-farm feed production and impacts Biodiv. impact * m / kg FPCM Land use ( m ) / kg FPCM 2.0 Pasture On-farm feed crops Off-farm feed crops Conventional Organic Conventional Organic

32 % land use impact occurring off-farm Key principle: Include the effect of off-farm feed production (inputs) and impacts 0-5% of the biodiversity impact of milk produced in this pixel is from off-farm land use

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