As the Inishowen Uplands European Innovation Partnership (EIP) project comes to an end, a final conference will highlight a range of findings to support biodiversity.
The project was originally set up in 2019 by a local group of farmers and advisors who wanted to improve farming profitability in a way that benefited the environment.
Measures used across 25 farms in the area included: upland cattle grazing; agro-forestry; diverse sward; red clover and farm ponds.
The event which will take place on Tuesday, April 2 in the Ballyliffin Hotel, Co. Donegal, will look back over the success of the five-year project.
Project organisers are due to address how the environment and finance were impacted, and Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue will also attend.
EIP project manager, John Doherty said that the project “proved that a circular farming approach can be done, with less inputs needed”.
Findings
There were over 150 cattle grazing across 10 different farms throughout the summer months in Inishowen.
Doherty said that the land has shown “increased benefits” for habitats and there has also been positive gains for cattle”.
With higher rainfall in the upland areas, it was not possible before for diverse swards or red clover to grow in certain areas, however after some time of cattle grazing diverse swards were “showing persistence”, according to Doherty.
He said the red clover could grow on a lot of farms and could be used as “a high protein feed”.
It also has a deep root, which would help soil structure and reduces costs, as it can only grow off slurry, with no fertiliser requirements.
Throughout the project, there were also 8,000 trees planted in the area using different measures.
The complete benefits of the different measures used cannot be fully identified yet, as the trees have not fully developed.
The trees were planted to act as riparian zones and some more trees to act as “shelterbelts”, where trees protect certain areas from wind.
There were also 27 farm ponds put in place across Inishowen as a result of the project.
Farming in Inishowen
Doherty said that farming in Inishowen now takes a “circular farming approach”.
He added that after cows calve, they go up the hill when the grass is most nutritious.
Cows are kept there until October, when they are then fed on the red clover silage.
Doherty added that the next year, after weaning, the calf weanling can be grazed on diverse swards, which reduces worm burdens.
“A lot of the measures we used have been brought into department of agriculture led schemes, but we definitely feel there’s more development needed to do more research,” Doherty said.
At the final conference, project coordinators will also be releasing Inishowen Uplands Farmers Handbook, which will provide detail of all of the measures used in the project and how they performed.