Over dinner last week in Manchester a group of us were discussing how well, or badly, agri-environment schemes work. There was an academic, someone from the political world, and people from industry (I won't be more specific because it was a private conversation).
Agri-environment schemes are voluntary schemes where farmers sign up to manage part of their farmland in prescribed ways to deliver wildlife - for example they sow nectar-rich plants on the edge of fields to increase the numbers of bees and other insects.
The RSPB is very keen on such schemes, and so are many farmers, but the schemes aren't perfect (alhough here in the UK they are generally better than in most EU countries, and, at least arguably, in England they are better than in other parts of the UK). We would like to see the schemes tweaked a bit, not hugely, to get them to deliver more for the taxpayer's money.
The issue that we discussed was whether one could pay by results, for outputs, rather than for what the farmer does whether or not it works. So in the example of nectar-rich margins one might pay per bee rather than for the farmer having the margin!
The idea is attractive in that in most financial transactions you want to pay for a product rather than an intention, but there are a couple of problems wih the idea.
The first problem is the cost of monitoring. How do you monitor those bees? Or, to use a bird example, if you pay by the breeding lapwing how do you count the nests? And how do you deal with the farmer who says that you should have come yesterday before a fox took the eggs?
A second problem is to do with the fact that if, perhaps initially, there aren't enough lapwings to go round then some farmers are going to strike lucky whereas others are doing all the right things but have been unlucky. You might say 'tough!' (I wouldn't!), but you can see how it might put off farmers joining the scheme. There are probably other problems too - but those two are quite significant.
In our discussion a potential solution emerged - and like all solutions it brings its own problems - but the idea hasn't gone from my mind so I thought I'd share it with you.
How about paying a percentage of the current payment to all farmers who are in the scheme and then top-ups depending on the regional change in lapwing numbers? This solves the monitoring issue because for all regions of the UK we have quite good monitoing data from the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey. So if the bonus were based on the trends of a basket of farmland birds (which would make a lot of sense) across several counties then monitoring becomes less of an issue - far less of an issue (for birds anyway - still a bit tricky for bees!).
And 'unlucky' farmers in the scheme would still benefit.
An additional gain would be that it would encourage farmers to use their ingenuity to seek other means to increase farmland bird numbers - for example taking advice from the RSPB, FWAG and others, or reading widely on the subject. Farmland birds would become a crop whose successful production would benefit the farmer.
One of my companions said that a similar system works for pea production - prices are paid to a whole range of farmers based on overall quality and yields rather than on a farm by farm assessment.
I'm still thinking about it - but the idea does have some attractions. What do you think?
No Mark no good at all,what has to be taken on board is the fact that in all probability farmers could make more money without the schemes if you took into account the hours of paper work involved.While you may measure Lapwings what about say one farm or area that didn't get any Lapwings say but did very well with say rare type of Mouse or some other species that wasn't counted or included.Use a carrot and get farmers interested and good chance of results but there are I believe more civil servants making farmers fill forms in than there are farmers,must be a bad balance.Make it simple and fair and I feel sure most farmers who obviously spend almost all their time close to nature and most do enjoy wildlife will respond in a positive way but obviously a small minority will let the side down and no amount of legislation can stop that.The people who come up with these schemes need to consult small working farmers before finalising them I quoted once before that on a stewardship scheme I could claim for a barbed wire fence round a pond with a certain amount of points towards the scheme which lets face it could kill a bird if it hit the fence(did once have a Kestrel killed on a barbed wire fence)but crazily I could not claim even one point for the pond.How crazy is that and raised it at a DEFRA meeting and got nowhere.What do you think of that?.
Well Mark you said anyone else out there,we know there is at least say 398 but perhaps need a stewardship scheme or similar incentive to blog so if we follow the plot in your blog perhaps you ought to offer say incentive of so much a word or perhaps if one area was really good everyone in that area got paid.I think it is brilliant how you seem to find so many things to blog on and do it so often and I get a funny feeling it is as good as having my own website and as I am a complete amateur on P C I think its fantastic but it would be really nice to have a few more regular contributors.When I read your blog I often think of your comment "you might not know all the answers but you know all the right questions".
For many prescriptions in the agri-environment schemes, there appears to be little good evidence that they work (we are generally lacking good quality scientific studies, a problem highlighted by the Centre for Evidence-based Conservation). So, a results-based system falls down immediately because, where the results aren't achieved then the participants can argue that it's because the prescriptions imposed on them are insufficient to deliver the conservation goods, at least in their locality. Of course, this is a major weakness of our agri-environment schemes, even if we don't pay on a results basis. The solution seems obvious.
Varanus - interesting name! Monitor lizard? I wouldn't agree that our agri-environment schemes are inadequately based on science. Research by organisations such as the BTO, the GWCT and the RSPB (and others!) have established that many of the options lead to increases in wildlife. Certainly skylark patches work - the problem is that too few farmers are implementing them. And conservation headlands work. And beetle banks work. And having decent hedges on your farm works too. The fact that at the RSPB's arable farm in Cambridgeshire farmland bird numbers have doubled overall in about 10 years is largely due to agri-environment options now open to most farmers.