Research team

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Partners

Aims

• To understand key opportunities for and barriers to nature-friendly farming
• To collect baseline data for testing the potential added value of strategic conservation planning compared with farmer-led approaches
• To explore financial and legal mechanisms to deliver collaborative management across farm holdings at landscape scales.

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Approach

Farmers manage millions of hectares of land across the UK, and the way they use their land has a major impact on biodiversity. This means they have a vital role to play in renewing biodiversity.

The main aim of this project was to systematically map and assess the opportunities for implementing management practices to enhance biodiversity. Working with farmers and farm advisors in two distinct farm clusters, we wanted to explore what opportunities were available for farmers – and to explore collaborative financing mechanisms to help put these proposals into practice.

We conducted in-person interviews with farmers to gain insights into existing opportunities relating to biodiversity management. These interviews aimed to reveal current practices, challenges, and potential areas for improvement, using a computational model that aims to capture key ecological processes, we forecast how changes in land use could affect different groups of species inhabiting farmed landscapes across the cluster areas. This analysis aimed to inform decision-making, allowing farmers to adopt land management strategies with an awareness of the ecological consequences of their choices. It also aimed to identify additional opportunities to enhance biodiversity further.

Across the two clusters opportunities were identified for 125 hectares of woodland creation, 237 hectares of arable reversion to species-rich grassland, 100 hectares of natural flood management, and more than 11km of hedgerow planting. The ecological benefits of this management were predicted to be substantial, with a 12% increase in small farmland bird abundance and a 29% increase in woodland specialist bird abundance. Notable gains were also forecast for ground-nesting bumblebees.

Impact and benefits delivered

• Development of new approaches for targeting nature recovery
• Knowledge and data on opportunities on farms gained through one-to-one discussions and group forums
• Insights into funding mechanisms (BNG, ELMs) and the perspectives of farmers on these schemes.

Insight and analysis from this project will lay the groundwork to help farmers make informed decisions, working collaboratively at landscape-scale in ways that promote sustainable practices.

What’s next

We have consulted with several farm advisors as well as ecological consultants from Mott MacDonald to explore biodiversity net gain as a potential funding mechanism to implement some of the changes identified. We are exploring grants for capital works, which could include funding for further modelling by the RENEW team.

Many of the farmers were interested in the outputs from our models. They also told us it would be more useful if these could be linked to economic information, to explore options and outcomes in real time. We are now working to incorporate this into the next stage of the work.