In the midlands, 50 farmers with land adjacent to bogs have been part of the FarmPEAT European Innovation Partnerships (EIP) project which rewards them for environmental actions, including rewetting.
The project, which got underway in April 2021, 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.
Of all 50 farmers participating in the project, seven farmers have already, or plan to rewet either part of their land or the bog with the first dams recently installed, project manager, Caroline Lalor said.
The project, which will continue until the end of 2023, uses a results-based approach rewarding farmers based on three factors: Climate, biodiversity, and water quality.
“It is very clear to farmers what they are getting paid for and what the targets are and how they can improve them,” the project manager told Agriland.
“We have had one farmer who has a plot on a bog and he undertook some rewetting work on the bog. Two other farmers have completed rewetting actions on their farm.
“Four other farmers are currently waiting for permission from the [Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM)] so they can rewet drains in agricultural land,” she said.
The project is funded by the DAFM which is also the competent authority for FarmPEAT. All project sites are in or adjacent to Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), Lalor explained.
FarmPEAT
In terms of how farmers’ land is scored, Lalor said it is not about measuring the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions coming from peatlands, but using indicators to assess the state of the bog.
By looking at the water level in the drains it can be assessed how wet the soil is, as well as wetland plants and species which also give an indication of how wet the bog is, she said.
Using a list of positive and negative indicators for biodiversity, team members are able to decide a farmer’s score based on the number and percentage cover of plant species present.
While positive biodiversity indicators increase a farmer’s score for results-based payments, negative indicators like ryegrass, nettles, and thistles lower the score, Lalor said.
Famers’ performance on water quality is assessed based on threats to water quality, for example if stock are accessing a watercourse for drinking which, she said, is a “big risk factor”.
The total amount paid out to farmers since the project began in April 2021 is €251,681 for the results-based payments and supporting actions mainly, according to Lalor.
While all rewetting actions are fully funded through the project, a fund is in place for supporting actions farmers might want to undertake to improve their environmental score, she said.
Rewetting
Hydrologists guide the entire design of rewetting undertaken as part of the project, and would alert FarmPEAT members if there were are any potential impacts on neighbouring landowners.
Lalor said that in the case of any potential impacts on neighbouring landowners, they would be approached and informed on the proposal and asked whether they are happy with that.
“If not, we redesign our proposal so it is not going to impact [landowners with land neighbouring the bog] in any way that they don’t want it to impact them,” she told Agriland.
Stating that rewetting is something that farmers “wouldn’t undertake lightly”, Lalor said that they consider it a “huge positive” that seven farmers have or are to carry out rewetting.
To a large extent the farmers who were happy to rewet, the FarmPEAT project manager said, they were rewetting land that was not very intensively managed.
“We are obviously not incentivising the farmers who are intensively managing their peat soils. If that is what the [DAFM] wants, we don’t have an answer for that.
“We would need more time to adjust our approach, maybe amend our payments,” she said.
Peatland project
Lalor said she thinks it is too early to roll out the FarmPEAT project nationally, as the there hasn’t been enough time to fully conclude on the impacts of the actions undertaken.
“We can’t physically assess the impact of those dams and drains because it is a two-year project, [or] fully say for sure how they are going to perform and farmers’ attitudes to them over time.
“One of the things that the farmers have said to us is that our approach is flexible, it’s voluntary, it’s about incentivising and not penalising.
“And that is something that they feel should be kept in programmes rolled out after us,” Lalor, who stressed that the FarmPEAT project would benefit from more time, said.