Methodology for environmental assessment of agri-environment schemes: the Agri Environmental Footprint Index

End of project reportAgri-environment schemes pay farmers for the provision of environmental services. Such schemes tend to have multiple measures that deliver multiple environmental objectives, and there is a lack of consistent methodology with which to measure the environmental benefits of such schemes. Funded by EU FP6, the Agri-Environment Footprint project (www.footprint.rdg.ac.uk) aimed to address this challenge, and this report provides results from selected components of the project.European Unio

Would Functional Agricultural Foods Improve Human Health?

Concern over diet-health relationships has moved to the forefront of public health concerns in the UK and much of the developed world. It has been estimated, for example, that obesity costs the UK National Health Service up to £6b per year (Rayner and Scarborough, 2005), but if all consumers were to follow recommended healthy eating guidelines there would be major implications for food consumption, land use and international trade (Srinivasan et al, 2006). This is unlikely to happen, at least in the short term, but it is realistic to anticipate some dietary adjustment toward the recommendations, resulting in an improvement in diet quality (Mazzocchi et al, 2007). Although consumers are reluctant to make major changes to their diets, they may be prepared to substitute existing foods for healthier alternatives. Three of the most prominent nutritional recommendations are to consume more fruit and vegetables, which contain phytochemicals beneficial to health, reduce consumption of saturated fatty acids (SFA) and increase intake of long-chain n-3 fatty acids (FA). In the first case, consumption of fruit and vegetables has been stable at around three 80 g portions per person per day according to the Health Survey for England. It is estimated that 42,200 deaths per year could be avoided in England and 411,000 Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) could be saved if fruit and vegetable consumption were increased to the recommended 5 portions per day (Ofcom 2006). As well as continuing to encourage people to eat more, it could be desirable to ‘intensify’ the beneficial phytochemical content of existing fruit and vegetables.Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Farm Management, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Industrial Organization,

The EU societal awareness of landscape indicator: a review of its meaning, utility and performance across different scales

There is increasing recognition that agricultural landscapes meet multiple societal needs and demands beyond provision of economic and environmental goods and services. Accordingly, there have been significant calls for the inclusion of societal, amenity and cultural values in agri-environmental landscape indicators to assist policy makers in monitoring the wider impacts of land-based policies. However, capturing the amenity and cultural values that rural agrarian areas provide, by use of such indicators, presents significant challenges. The EU social awareness of landscape indicator represents a new class of generalized social indicator using a top-down methodology to capture the social dimensions of landscape without reference to the specific structural and cultural characteristics of individual landscapes. This paper reviews this indicator in the context of existing agri-environmental indicators and their differing design concepts. Using a stakeholder consultation approach in five case study regions, the potential and limitations of the indicator are evaluated, with a particular focus on its perceived meaning, utility and performance in the context of different user groups and at different geographical scales. This analysis supplements previous EU-wide assessments, through regional scale assessment of the limitations and potentialities of the indicator and the need for further data collection. The evaluation finds that the perceived meaning of the indicator does not vary with scale, but in common with all mapped indicators, the usefulness of the indicator, to different user groups, does change with scale of presentation. This indicator is viewed as most useful when presented at the scale of governance at which end users operate. The relevance of the different sub-components of the indicator are also found to vary across regions

The control of population size of sparse perennials in chalk grassland

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:D063678 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Limiting factors in the restoration of UK grassland beetle assemblages

Grasslands restoration is a key management tool contributing to the long-term maintenance of insect populations, providing functional connectivity and mitigating against extinction debt across landscapes. As knowledge of grassland insect communities is limited, the lag between the initiation of restoration and the ability of these new habitats to contribute to such processes is unclear. Using ten data sets, ranging from 3 to 14 years, we investigate the lag between restoration and the establishment of phytophagous beetleassemblages typical of species rich grasslands. We used traits and ecological characteristics to determine factorslimitingbeetle colonisation, and also considered how food-web structure changed during restoration. For sites where seed addition of host-plants occurred the success in replicating beetleassemblages increased over time following a negative exponential function. Extrapolation beyond the existing data set tentatively suggested that success would plateau after 20 years, representing a c. 60% increase in assemblage similarity to target grasslands. In the absence of seed addition, similarity to the target grasslands showed no increase over time. Where seed addition was used the connectance of plant–herbivore food webs decreased over time, approaching values typical of species rich grasslands after c. 7 years. This trend was, however, dependent on the inclusion of a single site containing data in excess of 6 years of restoration management. Beetles not capable of flight, those showing high degrees of host-plant specialisation and species feeding on nationally rare host plants take between 1 and 3 years longer to colonise. Successful grasslandrestoration is underpinned by the establishment of host-plants, although individual species traits compound the effects of poor host-plant establishment to slow colonisation. The use of pro-active grasslandrestoration to mitigate against future environmental change should account for lag periods in excess of 10 years if the value of these habitats is to be fully realised

PR - Measuring Environmental Performance And Value Added Using The Agri-environmental Footprint Index

The Agri-Environmental Footprint project has developed a common methodology for assessing the environmental impact of European agri-environment schemes. The Agri-Environmental Footprint Index (AFI) has been constructed as a customisable approach. It is a farm-level index that aggregates the measurement of agri-environmental indicators. Farm-level impact scores can be aggregated at a regional level to track temporal change and/or to provide comparisons of the success (or otherwise) of an agri-environment scheme. European Union Member States are obliged to monitor and evaluate the environmental, agricultural and socio-economic impacts of their agri-environmental programmes. The evaluation process aims to determine the extent to which policy objectives are being fulfilled, and to identify any changes necessary to bridge the gap between policy aims and outcomes. However, there is little consensus on how to monitor and validate the benefits of agri-environmental schemes (AESs) successfully. Critically, there are no agreed methodologies for tracking the environmental consequences of changing agricultural practices, or the benefits of particular agri-environmental policy measures. This research has lead to the conceptual and practical development of a harmonised assessment system with which to assess the environmental performance of Europe’s AESs. The approach is a common, quantifiable, index-based method that will facilitate a direct measurement of the environmental impact of AE policy over time and provide a framework for the assessment of potential outcomes of AES proposals. We have developed an Agri-Environmental Footprint Index (AFI) that is based on multi-criteria analysis methods. It has a universal core index structure and methodology, but is potentially customisable to any agri-environmental context within the EU25. The AFI can be used to measure the change in the environmental performance attributable to an agri-environment scheme by calculating an average AFI score for farms participating in the scheme (AES) and an average AFI score for non-participating farms (non–AES) within the same farming type and geographic area. The comparison of these scores can allow the differentiation between enhancement effects, protection effects or a combination of both environmental protection and enhancement. Here, data is presented based on the application of the AFI in the Chilterns Hills in the UK. The case study involved the collection and analysis of environmentally related data on 20 farms, a number of stakeholder workshops and the calculation of the AFI in each area. Results indicate that the method is capable of measuring environmental performance attributable to agri-environment schemes at farm-level. Conclusions are drawn about the practicalities of applying the index in the UK and the potential for the customisation of the index for use in any agri-environmental context within the EU25

Intellectual differences between schizophrenic patients and normal controls across the adult lifespan

A debate persists about whether IQ declines during the duration of schizophrenia or whether an early deficit remains static across the lifespan. To examine this, we measured estimated current IQ (Quick Test Revised: QTR) and estimated premorbid IQ (National Adult Reading Test: NART) in schizophrenic patients (n = 110) and matched healthy controls (n = 71) across a wide age range (20-88). Age correlated negatively with NARTand QTR IQ for schizophrenic patients, but not for controls. A subset of 23 schizophrenic patients was also retested on the NART after 4 years to determine NART stability and they showed no significant change. We propose that the lower NART IQ in older patients reflects a lower 'starting point' and that this may be related to lower educational opportunities in older patients