Integrating strategies for wildlife management into agri-environment payment schemes : A decision support approach

The Entry Level Stewardship scheme gives farmers in England access to payments for managing their farms for the benefit of wildlife. Points are awarded for adopting a number of management practices from a list of options, and when a threshold value has been reached payments are calculated on an area basis. However, if biodiversity is to benefit as much as possible for a given expenditure of time and effort on the part of the farmer, and money on the part of the government, then careful selection of options is imperative. Farmers cannot be expected to have a detailed knowledge of the ecological requirements of different species; therefore, options are likely to be chosen that meet the scheme’s points requirements for the minimum of cost and effort. This paper describes one approach taken that addresses this problem.Non peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

EIP-AGRI Focus Group Benefits of landscape features for arable crop production

This report is the result of the work of the EIP AGRI Focus Group (FG) on Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) and more specifically on how landscape features (LFs) contribute to the profitability of arable crop production. The scientific literature shows that LFs provide habitats for beneficial insects and other arthropods, birds, plants etc. When appropriately designed and targeted, they also prove to be effective in controlling erosion, wind, and nutrient loss and providing landscape amenities. In this report, we focus on: i) ‘field margins’, the spontaneously established strips of herbaceous plants at the edge of fields; ii) ‘hedgerows’, composed of one or two rows of planted or naturally established shrubs and/or trees, and; iii) ‘grassy or flower strips’, intentionally sown, the former mostly with grasses and the latter with flowering plants. The central scope was to examine if and how landscape features could contribute to the profitability of arable crop production. Other direct economic effects for the farmers include the production of wood, fruits, grass for horses, etc. We also included the benefits of landscape features to the society (aesthetics, social value, ecosystem services towards society) that the markets mostly fail to provide. A farm and the embedding landscape are systems that should be approached in a holistic way