A new farming on peat competition invites students and young people working in agriculture to expand their knowledge of the farmed peat landscape.
The competition is run by the FarmPEAT European Innovation Partnership (EIP) project which rewards farmers for environmental actions, including rewetting.
In the midlands, 49 farmers – predominantly beef and sheep farmers – with land adjacent to bogs are currently part of FarmPEAT which will run until the end of 2024.
The competition presents a case study of a FarmPEAT project farm and asks entrants to compile environmental recommendations based on the farm’s scorecard.
Anyone aged 25 years or younger who is working in the agricultural sector or studying agriculture or other relevant degree subjects can participate in the competition.
Competition
The case study is a suckler farm on 10ha near Clara Bog, Special Area of Conservation (SAC), Co. Offaly, which includes four habitat plots and three linear features.
A herd of cattle grazes plots one and two, while plots three and four are not currently utilised for agriculture. All plots have heavy peat soils which are naturally slow draining.
On the grassland, drains were installed in the past and cleaned out every other year. Slurry is spread during the spring and chemical fertiliser through the summer until early autumn.
Entrants are asked to use the scorecard results provided to give recommendations on how the farmer could improve their score in the future to increase the total payment.
The full details on the case study on which recommendations must be based, photos of the plots, as well as the submission form are available on the FarmPEAT website.
Participants can win cash prizes of €1,000 for first place, €600 for second place, and €400 for third place. Free support to entrants, including webinars and field trips are offered.
Entries can be submitted by individuals or in groups with a maximum of four members. The deadline for entries is Friday, August 16, 2024.
The winners will be announced in early September and will be invited to share their work at the FarmPEAT end-of-project conference in October 2024.
The farming on peat competition is part of the FarmPEAT community outreach programme, “Love Your Wellies”.
FarmPEAT
The project is specific to eight peatland sites in the midlands: Ballynamona Bog; Clara Bog; Clonboley Bog; Cloncrow Bog; Daingean Bog; Ferbane Bog; Raheenmore; and Umeras Bog.
The idea of the FarmPEAT project is that rewetted fields aren’t taken out of agricultural production, but that grazing can still continue on that land, according to FarmPEAT.
Rewetting actions refer to the blocking of drains to raise the water table to within 30cm of the bank surface, which is the top score achievable for the results-based payments.
FarmPEAT also rewards farmers for other supporting environmental actions, for example the installation of food bridges to reduce cattle access to the water course.