Agri-environment schemes really do work

Have you ever wondered if agri-environment schemes bring any real benefit to the countryside? Some of the benefits are in fact very obvious, but you may not have realised that these are the result of work carried out by farmers under DARD’s two main agri-environment schemes – the Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) Scheme and the Countryside Management Scheme (CMS).

You may have noticed new hedges planted and older hedges restored through coppicing and laying. Or you might have spotted field corners planted in trees. You may even have seen an increase in some familiar wildflowers such as ox-eye daisy and corn marigold growing along the unsprayed margins of cereals.  You could have observed flocks of buntings and finches feeding on stubble left to lie over the winter, or in specially planted wild bird cover crops.  

There are many other, less visible changes occurring as a result of the schemes. A monitoring programme has been in operation since 1992 with the aim of independently assessing how well the schemes are meeting the objectives of maintaining and enhancing biodiversity, landscape and heritage features.  

Since then a small, dedicated team of biologists based at Queens University, Belfast has been surveying farms throughout Northern Ireland. The monitoring team look at a wide range of farm habitats from species-rich grasslands to woodlands. More recently the number and quality of landscape features, such as hedges and dry stonewalls, have also been assessed.

The team use a number of indicators to assess positive and negative changes to the environment that can result from over or under management. These indicators include a variety of plant species and invertebrates (such as beetles and spiders). Farms surveyed include farms under agreement and others not under agreement. Farms are re-surveyed after a number of years.

To date, monitoring has shown that managing farmland under agri-environment schemes has at the very least been maintaining the condition of farm habitats, preventing any decline in quality.  Some farm habitats have shown an improvement in biodiversity under scheme management. For example, heather cover has increased significantly on ESA Scheme sites while on non-participant sites, where grazing is often heavier, there have been increases in undesirable species such as mat grass. On some of these sites there have been losses of some typical heathland invertebrates.  

As agri-environment schemes have evolved, so too has the monitoring programme. Monitoring work has recently investigated the success of arable options such as conservation cereals, undersown cereals, retention of winter stubble and rough grass margins.  

There are currently over 10,000 farmers under agri-environment agreement in Northern Ireland. The work of the monitoring team provides quantifiable results that show the schemes are successfully improving biodiversity on our farmland.