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Northern Ireland
The fact that there are around 27,000 farms in Northern Ireland, covering one million hectares of farmland, highlights the importance of agriculture to the rural community.
The intensification of grassland management for dairy farming has transformed the landscape over the last 30 years, with a decline in mixed and arable cropping. County Down is now the last bastion of cereal production, and even here, changes to farm practices have been immense.
As elsewhere in Europe, agricultural policy has driven this process – and with devastating effect. The loss of farmed habitats has pushed seed-eating birds such as yellowhammers and wetland-loving wading birds such as lapwings into steep decline.
Grey partridges are now extinct, and others, like the iconic corncrake and the chough, teeter on the brink. With the industry also now in dire straits, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has proved unsustainable for farmers and farmland wildlife alike.
The RSPB in Northern Ireland is working for:
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A more equitable CAP that pays farmers for the delivery of public goods backed up by a strong legislative baseline and the polluter pays principle
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An adequately funded Rural Development Plan that helps meet the new challenges of Biodiversity Decline, improved water quality and climate change mitigation/adaptation
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Targeted delivery of the Countryside Management Scheme ensuring the right options in the right places, particularly for priority species
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Farm agreements that secure additional environmental benefits by meeting the year-round requirements of farmland birds
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Agri-environment to play a major role in any new CAP scenario
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Continued pressure on government to implement reform of the LFA scheme so that it delivers meaningful environmental public goods.
Last modified: 16 March 2011