EU Biodiversity strategy 2030

[Deleted User]

TheBoyConor wrote: »

But if land is to be taken out of agriculture and left to rewild, is it really that much of a loss to the farmer? As in they will be compensated by numerous grants like greening for maintaining the re-wilded lands as such etc in lieu of having to actively farm it on an agricultural basis. And realistically, all this land is marginal and poor quality in terms of agricultural value anyway.
Would it no benefit farmers in these regions as they a) get grants for it and b) are no longer obliged to work the land like before.

Money solves money problems. Money doesn't solve having a dictation foisted upon you that you don't want.

Water John

Rewilding is not of any great benefit. There is a recent US study which shows that even if all the cows in the country were culled it would have little benefit in terms of GHS.
The correct use of grazing animals is the optimum use of fertile land. The hedgerows can contribute in a big way to biodiversity, also interspersing the planting of trees in the grassland. All this maximises the fertility of the soil and can be used to sequester carbon.

[Deleted User]

Water John wrote: »

Didn't a Canadian co buy the seaweed rights on part of the coastline?

Arcadian Seaplants, not sure what the story is with the rights. Have seaweed worth several K.

HillFarmer

Water John wrote: »

Rewilding is not of any great benefit. There is a recent US study which shows that even if all the cows in the country were culled it would have little benefit in terms of GHS.
The correct use of grazing animals is the optimum use of fertile land. The hedgerows can contribute in a big way to biodiversity, also interspersing the planting of trees in the grassland. All this maximises the fertility of the soil and can be used to sequester carbon.

Problem is we are not seeing the correct use of grazing animals.
Most farmers Farm mainly profit, hence hardly any ditches left, and all Ryegrass.
Constant fertilizing.

I for one would be glad to see some rewilding, more hedge planting etc.
Our birds , insects and mammals are in a bad way.

In comparison to other Countries we don't have a whole lot left.

Castlekeeper

HillFarmer wrote: »

Problem is we are not seeing the correct use of grazing animals.
Most farmers Farm mainly profit, hence hardly any ditches left, and all Ryegrass.
Constant fertilizing.

I for one would be glad to see some rewilding, more hedge planting etc.
Our birds , insects and mammals are in a bad way.

In comparison to other Countries we don't have a whole lot left.

While in the main I'd agree with your points on the current state of our biodiversity, I wonder about which other countries you're referring to?
Apart from uninhabitable areas or some of less exploited rainforest, I can't think of any. In fact I would say mist western countries are considerably more exploited, an hour on Google maps would show that.
Also I think rewilding comes from the same school of thought that has gotten us into this situation, a disconnect and separation from nature rather than respecting and being part of natural systems and relearning how to farm with it.
The other half of rewilding is business as usual for the current industrial capitalist agricultural systems on warp speed, on our more productive lands, as if that will end well!

HillFarmer

Castlekeeper wrote: »

While in the main I'd agree with your points on the current state of our biodiversity, I wonder about which other countries you're referring to?
Apart from uninhabitable areas or some of less exploited rainforest, I can't think of any. In fact I would say mist western countries are considerably more exploited, an hour on Google maps would show that.
Also I think rewilding comes from the same school of thought that has gotten us into this situation, a disconnect and separation from nature rather than respecting and being part of natural systems and relearning how to farm with it.
The other half of rewilding is business as usual for the current industrial capitalist agricultural systems on warp speed, on our more productive lands, as if that will end well!

I suppose to begin with, we didn't have as much flora and fauna as other Countries, mostly related to the last ice age.

A blessing we do have is our ditches and hedges, if people would only wake up to the fact that we shouldn't cut hedges down to the bone.

I'm no expert, but Countries I've travelled to around the world seem to have a lot more bio diversity / native tree cover than Ireland. Even looking at Urban areas of Cities and towns in Ireland, tree cover is limited.

In the Countryside I'd love to see more native trees planted.
We all need to make money to live but with the Dairy expansion the last few years, All I'm seeing around me is constant slurry , Fertilizer and green Field of Ryegrass.


Bit of a rant, but something def needs to change and as farmers if we do even a little bit, it'll make a huge difference.

TheBoyConor

HillFarmer wrote: »

Problem is we are not seeing the correct use of grazing animals.
Most farmers Farm mainly profit, hence hardly any ditches left, and all Ryegrass.
Constant fertilizing.

I for one would be glad to see some rewilding, more hedge planting etc.
Our birds , insects and mammals are in a bad way.

In comparison to other Countries we don't have a whole lot left.

100%
I see fellas knocking ditches the odd time, but more usually it is a case of once the 1st of September comes, there seems to be a rush to raze half the ditches of the country down into box hedges, leaving little or nothing for nature the following spring. There is a failure to realise, or a failure to give a chit, that neat looking boxed off hedges are of little to no ecological value than something that is allowed to grow and develop. I have no issue with cutting back hedges which would impede farming or be a danger, but there is no need to cut a hedge down top and sides into a 6'x6' square.

Another culprit is the bigshot stud farms of the likes of Ballydoyle and Coolmore. Their favourite type of land "management" is to mostly erase the natural landscape, razing hedges down into "neat" boxes, chop all the tress, and then surround everything with post and rail fencing. Again, i don't think it's ignorance here, just not giving a chit and giving the 2 fingers to nature.

Very little wildlife can thrive in the type of landscape that intensive farmers tend to favour. Then they wonder why crops and animals are infested by pests - because there are no birds left to pick them from the ground because their habitats have been erased.

I do not buy the argument that farmers are the best custodians of the landscape. They are the ones who have done most of the damage!!

And, I say all this as the son of a farmer. I am due to inherit a quantity of land at some point and it is my intention, to the shock of most farmers I'm sure, to plant the majority of that with native woodland species under the afforestation scheme. For land in the Golden Vale, I'm sure neighbours and many on here will see that as a sort of vile heresy agin' the land, but to me a patch of native woodland with some sort of potential to be an island oasis nature some decades in the future, is 100 times more valuable than a green desert of grass monoculture identical to the field beside it, identical in turn to the one beside that, and so on.

I think what will become some sort of limited haven for wildlife over the next 20-30 years is the bits of "spare ground" that you see adjacent to motorway interchanges and the down the sides of cuts and embankments. Thankfully, many of these areas were planted with native species of trees and shrubs that will be of some benefit to birds especially. The fragmented and roadbound nature of a lot of those areas makes them of limited benefit to most larger ground dwelling animals.

Water John

There is a danger of a minority deciding to go a different route to the intensive farming. These then become the crutch the country will lean on to show what environmental 'improvements' they are achieving.
From my POV, we should aim for three things on the land, a decent return from produce, biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The farmer's income should be from all three.

NcdJd

Water John wrote: »

From my POV, we should aim for three things on the land, a decent return from produce, biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The farmer's income should be from all three.

Agree with all this John. I also worry about the people shouting loudest for "rewilding" from a wildlife and habitat point, have no comprehension that there are many species of red listed birds and mammals that require different habitats to thrive. Grasslands and arable land is also valuable for wildlife.

[Deleted User]

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I do not buy the argument that farmers are the best custodians of the landscape. They are the ones who have done most of the damage!!

Attacking the symptom, not addressing the root cause.

Water John wrote: »

From my POV, we should aim for three things on the land, a decent return from produce, biodiversity and carbon sequestration. The farmer's income should be from all three.

Nothing wrong with any of that, save in the context of this thread the landowner will be legally burdened by state/EU dictation. The state in regards of designations has demonstrated itself almost totally incompetent, and admitted so. If one believes or knows of another way to get to a destination, computer says no. As I've said, it was put to the three green ministers if farmers willingly signed up to the aspirations of the Biodiversity 2030 document, could the legal burdens be shelved, the answer, no.

That's being a subject, not a citizen or the nausea inducing term "stakeholder".

TheBoyConor

Would it not be more progressive to assign much greater financial reward farmer's biodiversity and carbon storage efforts, and reduce the subsidisation of producing intensively produced agricultural goods.

It is the drive to produce more from an acre that is the driver of intensive practices which all fly in the face of nature. To subsidise or reward intensive practices just runs contradictory to any environmental schemes.

With Irish famers seemingly falling over each other to ape the yanks with feedlots in the thousands, dairy herds growing to ridiculously unsustainable sizes, we are on a fast track to having a landscape similar to much of the USA too. Utterly barren and devoid of natural habitats.

Basically, could the policies be geared to incentivise farmers to be primarily biodiversity and environmental practitioners as the core business by making the rewards attractively high, with the agriculture activities deintensified to take a back seat by reducing the incentives or taxing or penalising intensive practices.

[Deleted User]

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Would it not be more progressive to assign much greater financial reward farmer's biodiversity and carbon storage efforts, and reduce the subsidisation of producing intensively produced agricultural goods.

It is the drive to produce more from an acre that is the driver of intensive practices which all fly in the face of nature. To subsidise or reward intensive practices just runs contradictory to any environmental schemes.

With Irish famers seemingly falling over each other to ape the yanks with feedlots in the thousands, dairy herds growing to ridiculously unsustainable sizes, we are on a fast track to having a landscape similar to much of the USA too. Utterly barren and devoid of natural habitats.

Basically, could the policies be geared to incentivise farmers to be primarily biodiversity and environmental practitioners as the core business by making the rewards attractively high, with the agriculture activities deintensified to take a back seat by reducing the incentives or taxing or penalising intensive practices.

Policies can be geared to whatever the policy makers decide. Not that it's as simple as that.

I keep going back to what was said at Biofarm 2020, something along the lines of nature being a byproduct of farming.

I'll repeat what I said in another thread, there isn't a thing wrong with intensive, it's how that is managed that makes intensive good, neutral, or bad.

Progressive is subjective depending on where you're looking in from.

Then, who decides what progress is or what the "right kind of result" looks like and we're back to computer says no.

TheBoyConor

The right result is to take all reasonable steps to prevent further deterioration of habitats and restore badly degraded habitats.

I oppose the view earlier on that grassland is a valuable habitat. It isn't. Grassland of that type is not a native to Ireland, open synthetic monoculture grassland is an alien landscape for which none of our native wildlife is adapted.

Well I do not think progressive means what it might have meant years ago - intensification, and doing things that degrade the value of the landscape.

NcdJd

TheBoyConor wrote: »

The right result is to take all reasonable steps to prevent further deterioration of habitats and restore badly degraded habitats.

I oppose the view earlier on that grassland is a valuable habitat. It isn't. Grassland of that type is not a native to Ireland, open synthetic monoculture grassland is an alien landscape for which none of our native wildlife is adapted.

Well I do not think progressive means what it might have meant years ago - intensification, and doing things that degrade the value of the landscape.

I was referring to native multispecies grassland.

Say my name

Perennial ryegrass, dairy and dungbeetle farmer here.

Dungbeetles have been in this country for thousands of years along with the cows.
Maybe not the certain bred ryegrasses but the beetles and worms don't seem to mind. All they want is good sh1t.
The dung beetle then feeds foxes, badgers, herons, egrets, rooks, crows, gulls, swallows, swifts, bats. All from the sh1t and ryegrass sward.

God help the poor ould farmer anyways..

NcdJd

Say my name wrote: »

Perennial ryegrass, dairy and dungbeetle farmer here.

Dungbeetles have been in this country for thousands of years along with the cows.
Maybe not the certain bred ryegrasses but the beetles and worms don't seem to mind. All they want is good sh1t.
The dung beetle then feeds foxes, badgers, herons, egrets, rooks, crows, gulls, swallows, swifts, bats. All from the sh1t and ryegrass sward.

God help the poor ould farmer anyways..

According to some commentators rural Ireland is a barren treeless desert. I must have torn all them fotos I put in the nature on your farm thread from national geographic when I was waiting in the dentist earlier in the year.

[Deleted User]

Say my name wrote: »

Perennial ryegrass, dairy and dungbeetle farmer here.

Dungbeetles have been in this country for thousands of years along with the cows.
Maybe not the certain bred ryegrasses but the beetles and worms don't seem to mind. All they want is good sh1t.
The dung beetle then feeds foxes, badgers, herons, egrets, rooks, crows, gulls, swallows, swifts, bats. All from the sh1t and ryegrass sward.

God help the poor ould farmer anyways..

All you need now is a feedlot

Say my name

NcdJd wrote: »

According to some commentators rural Ireland is a barren treeless desert. I must have torn all them fotos I put in the nature on your farm thread from national geographic when I was waiting in the dentist earlier in the year.

A few rhinoceroseses pictures sounds good.

And the grass feeds rabbit, hare, swan, goose, duck, deer.

I've a good one for you. A wildlife reserve was set up on a place called the north sloblands, reclaimed sealand just to the north of wexford town to protect wintering greenland white fronted geese. That time it was an intensive dairy farm with fields of ryegrass and winter crops.
The powers that be decided they knew better and ceased the dairy farm. Ploughed the ground to barley and beet. The beet was to feed the geese. People say the numbers of geese are way back on the days when it was a working farm and the geese were eating the grass.
That's life or that's people thinking they knew life.

TheBoyConor

I know the sloblands, yes? My question is why did they plant anything on it? Why the insistence on interference and intervention. Could they not have just declared it a wildlife refuge, close up the farm and closed the gate after them and let nature reclaim the land in a natural way.
(that is aside from the fact that the Sloblands shouldn't even exist. The mudflat habitat in that area was sacrificed for the sake of a few acres of grass monoculture and tillage). If the waters were left in again it would probably be a very rich habitat.

I don't believe in all this managing lark. Nature as we would recognise it existed perfectly well for 500 million years without any half baked management plans.

Nature knows best how to manage itself and find its own balance. I would be a proponent of closing the gate on these places and marginal or designated land and letting nature take its course. The only interventions I would be in favour of is 1) drainage reversals for rewetting, 2) reintroduction of native plants and animals and 3) combatting of invasive species.

Some parts of the country are overrun with invasive plants. Could some sort of reward scheme be introduced for tackling invasice species? Perhaps a payment or tax relief per sq.m of knotweed proven eradicated, or plant or sq.m of rhododendron mulched and sprayed off to eradication. Perhaps a scheme for rewarding trapping and euthanising of invasive grey squirrels and mink? Or payment per kg of zebra mussel destroyed. IF the rates offered are high enough, all of the above could be more profitable than conventional farming.

Birdnuts

Say my name wrote: »

A few rhinoceroseses pictures sounds good.

And the grass feeds rabbit, hare, swan, goose, duck, deer.

I've a good one for you. A wildlife reserve was set up on a place called the north sloblands, reclaimed sealand just to the north of wexford town to protect wintering greenland white fronted geese. That time it was an intensive dairy farm with fields of ryegrass and winter crops.
The powers that be decided they knew better and ceased the dairy farm. Ploughed the ground to barley and beet. The beet was to feed the geese. People say the numbers of geese are way back on the days when it was a working farm and the geese were eating the grass.
That's life or that's people thinking they knew life.

Thats why schemes like GLAS should have been tailored for the particular need in a particular region eg, restoring Corncrakes, Wild meadow species etc. in the West requires very different grassland management to what is done in the Wexford Sloblands

HillFarmer

Say my name wrote: »

Perennial ryegrass, dairy and dungbeetle farmer here.

Dungbeetles have been in this country for thousands of years along with the cows.
Maybe not the certain bred ryegrasses but the beetles and worms don't seem to mind. All they want is good sh1t.
The dung beetle then feeds foxes, badgers, herons, egrets, rooks, crows, gulls, swallows, swifts, bats. All from the sh1t and ryegrass sward.

God help the poor ould farmer anyways..

God help the poor insects and birds that are declining year on year in Ireland.
Great to hear about the Dung beetles but we farmers have our heads in the sand re the current crisis.

Do you think everything is currently ok?

I don't care what anyone states, intensively farmed land is not beneficial to nature. There needs to be a balance on every farm. The problem in my view is greatest in Dairy Country. Lads with 200 cows around here looking to get to 300.

HillFarmer

NcdJd wrote: »

According to some commentators rural Ireland is a barren treeless desert. I must have torn all them fotos I put in the nature on your farm thread from national geographic when I was waiting in the dentist earlier in the year.

Rural Ireland isn't far off.

If there was heavy rain years ago, the ditches would act as a buffer, slowly releasing water into streams and rivers.


In the last 50 years, dairy farms in particular have removed a large amount of ditches. The result is when there is heavy rain, the run off goes straight into our rivers and streams.

_Brian

HillFarmer wrote: »

Rural Ireland isn't far off.

If there was heavy rain years ago, the ditches would act as a buffer, slowly releasing water into streams and rivers.


In the last 50 years, dairy farms in particular have removed a large amount of ditches. The result is when there is heavy rain, the run off goes straight into our rivers and streams.

I suppose the biggest problem is the disparity of the distribution of cows now. Areas like our own here would likely have a lower density of cows now compared day to 1970’s. When every farm on our road we’re pushing on as many cows as they could sending milk.

Bit in more fertile areas the cow numbers and densities have exploded. Exploded to a level where to accommodate them farming practices not in accordance with biodiversity have to be used. Compounding that when you have a number of farms in the same area pushing these high densities it puts massive burden on river catchments.

Loosing quotas and allowing unregulated dairy expansion has been bad for biodiversity and nature.

Say my name

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I know the sloblands, yes? My question is why did they plant anything on it? Why the insistence on interference and intervention. Could they not have just declared it a wildlife refuge, close up the farm and closed the gate after them and let nature reclaim the land in a natural way.
(that is aside from the fact that the Sloblands shouldn't even exist. The mudflat habitat in that area was sacrificed for the sake of a few acres of grass monoculture and tillage). If the waters were left in again it would probably be a very rich habitat.

I don't believe in all this managing lark. Nature as we would recognise it existed perfectly well for 500 million years without any half baked management plans.

Nature knows best how to manage itself and find its own balance. I would be a proponent of closing the gate on these places and marginal or designated land and letting nature take its course. The only interventions I would be in favour of is 1) drainage reversals for rewetting, 2) reintroduction of native plants and animals and 3) combatting of invasive species.

Some parts of the country are overrun with invasive plants. Could some sort of reward scheme be introduced for tackling invasice species? Perhaps a payment or tax relief per sq.m of knotweed proven eradicated, or plant or sq.m of rhododendron mulched and sprayed off to eradication. Perhaps a scheme for rewarding trapping and euthanising of invasive grey squirrels and mink? Or payment per kg of zebra mussel destroyed. IF the rates offered are high enough, all of the above could be more profitable than conventional farming.

Very contradictory there. You're in favour of doing nothing and not doing nothing.
Fact is you've talked yourself into that land for nature should be managed by man.

Take the concrake. It's only here from farmers growing meadows up for forage for horses and cattle. If those farmers with the horses and cattle weren't there either would the corncrake. It's only with the mechanization of agriculture and speed and timing of harvest did the corncrake go.
Now we've schemes to bring back the corncrake. Turn back time perhaps to where it was. That's as artificial and man managed as you can get.

Were you yourself not on here cussing a rookery on deciduous trees and devising ways to eradicate the rookery?

And you've been shown how grassland feeds wildlife when you claimed it as barren.

Hard to figure..when you post you don't believe in this managing lark.

Castlekeeper

HillFarmer wrote: »

I suppose to begin with, we didn't have as much flora and fauna as other Countries, mostly related to the last ice age.

A blessing we do have is our ditches and hedges, if people would only wake up to the fact that we shouldn't cut hedges down to the bone.

I'm no expert, but Countries I've travelled to around the world seem to have a lot more bio diversity / native tree cover than Ireland. Even looking at Urban areas of Cities and towns in Ireland, tree cover is limited.

In the Countryside I'd love to see more native trees planted.
We all need to make money to live but with the Dairy expansion the last few years, All I'm seeing around me is constant slurry , Fertilizer and green Field of Ryegrass.


Bit of a rant, but something def needs to change and as farmers if we do even a little bit, it'll make a huge difference.

Not a rant at all, but I'm still curious, could you give any examples of these biodiverse agricultural landscapes in other countries?

I've only limited travel in western countries, but a bit all the same, the only exceptions I have seen is in un-farmable areas.

Castlekeeper

Say my name wrote: »

Perennial ryegrass, dairy and dungbeetle farmer here.

Dungbeetles have been in this country for thousands of years along with the cows.
Maybe not the certain bred ryegrasses but the beetles and worms don't seem to mind. All they want is good sh1t.
The dung beetle then feeds foxes, badgers, herons, egrets, rooks, crows, gulls, swallows, swifts, bats. All from the sh1t and ryegrass sward.

God help the poor ould farmer anyways..

A diversity of flowering plants, vegetation structure, and seeds are an essential part of a complex ecology.

endainoz

Say my name wrote: »

Very contradictory there. You're in favour of doing nothing and not doing nothing.
Fact is you've talked yourself into that land for nature should be managed by man.

Take the concrake. It's only here from farmers growing meadows up for forage for horses and cattle. If those farmers with the horses and cattle weren't there either would the corncrake. It's only with the mechanization of agriculture and speed and timing of harvest did the corncrake go.
Now we've schemes to bring back the corncrake. Turn back time perhaps to where it was. That's as artificial and man managed as you can get.

Were you yourself not on here cussing a rookery on deciduous trees and devising ways to eradicate the rookery?

And you've been shown how grassland feeds wildlife when you claimed it as barren.

Hard to figure..when you post you don't believe in this managing lark.

I'm all for having some designated areaa on farms that are left to rewild, like small wooded areas or whatever, as long as the farmer gets paid accordingly for it.

Conservationists and anti animal farming people alike never have any solution on how to fix degraded soils, their theory is "that it will fix itself over time".

But the only real way to do it is through planned grazing management, integration of animals to build up matter in the soil. As Alan Savoury said: It's the only way.

Say my name

Castlekeeper wrote: »

A diversity of flowering plants, vegetation structure, and seeds are an essential part of a complex ecology.

Limit the size of fields to eight acres regardless of enterprise.
Boundaries must be planted back with wildlife feeding and sheltering species.
Problem solved!

Castlekeeper

Say my name wrote: »

Limit the size of fields to eight acres regardless of enterprise.
Boundaries must be planted back with wildlife feeding and sheltering species.
Problem solved!

Easy to monitor with a satellite and some software would seem to be the main box ticked there. It doesn't sound very diverse does it?

BTW, as you probably well know, many species are not fans of the boundaries.

Castlekeeper

endainoz wrote: »

I'm all for having some designated areaa on farms that are left to rewild, like small wooded areas or whatever, as long as the farmer gets paid accordingly for it.

Conservationists and anti animal farming people alike never have any solution on how to fix degraded soils, their theory is "that it will fix itself over time".

But the only real way to do it is through planned grazing management, integration of animals to build up matter in the soil. As Alan Savoury said: It's the only way.

What are you basing this on? Personal experiences or youtube videos and webinars?
Alan Savory would mainly appear to me to be an egotistical colonialist specialist in bull****. It's basic ecology for dummies, and as for his contexts and strategies, you'd figure out more playing a game of chess with an 8 year old.