The Pearl Mussel Project (PMP) paid out a total of €1 million in payments to farmers as it came to an end in 2023.
The five-year scheme, which had a €10 million budget, was established in 2018 under the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) scheme.
The results-based project focused on eight river catchments and the surrounding 40,000ha of farmland in Kerry, Galway, Mayo and Donegal.
The freshwater pearl mussel is an exceptionally long-lived and slow-growing species that is only found in extremely clean water.
The record for the longest-living pearl mussel is around 140 years; the species commonly reaches over 100-years-of-age, making it Ireland’s longest-living animal.
Payments
Dr. Patrick Crushell, PMP manager, told Agriland that 470 farmers were still participating in the programme towards the end of 2023.
Around 370 of the farmers joined the results-based Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), meaning they did not receive the usual payment from the PMP.
The remaining farmers who did not join ACRES received the full results-based payment from the PMP.
“Overall, we’re paying out over €1 million this year on farmer payments.
“The farmers who are in ACRES still get their participation payment for facilitating us getting out on their farm, admin work and attending training. So they’re getting €800 each just for participating.
“Then we’ve got the 110 farmers, they’re receiving quite good payments from us. They’re averaging out at about €8,000 this year.
“So payment rates increased a lot last year, that’s probably the effectiveness of it and also the larger farmers that were doing well out of the freshwater pearl mussel all along decided to stay in thinking that they’d probably be financially better off as well,” Crushell said.
Pearl Mussel Project
The locally led approach taken on EIPs such as the Pearl Mussel Project has been incorporated into the new ACRES Co-Operation (CP) scheme approach.
Local teams are available to farmers in ACRES CP to support and advise them on environmental matters which can often be technical in nature.
“They distill that information for the famers to make it easier to understand and give them the rationale on how to do the work and why the work is being done to benefit the environment,” Crushell said.
“Farmers love that local engagement and local contacts, rather than getting the advice in the post or by meeting once a year. I think it’s a very positive thing.
“The other important feature of the Pearl Mussel Project was that it was very targeted. We were doing particular measures that were suitable to the landscape that these farmers were farming in and the type of farming they were practising.
“This is the other aspect that has come through to the ACRES Co-operation that it is the right measure in the right place, it makes sense,” he added.
Now that the Pearl Mussel Project has come to an end, Crushell hopes that farmers who participated in the programme will continue the work they have done over the past five years under ACRES.
He said that water quality levels have improved on the PMP farms which shows that biodiversity has improved at farm-level.
Due to the longevity and life cycle of the pearl mussel, it may take up to 15 years to determine if the project has been successful in helping to conserve the species.
“These creatures live for over 120 years. The juveniles don’t mature until about 12 years. So that’s a long time before you would be able to see any significant improvements,” Crushell said.
He added that the work of the PMP, along with efforts from groups such as the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO), has created an awareness around protecting water quality among farmers that was not there before.
ACRES
Dr. Crushell and his team have been appointed to oversee the ACRES CP project in the west Connacht region which includes around 5,000 farmers.
“We’ve had great engagements with farmers over the year, we’ve probably met with 80% of them face to face.
“It’s been a huge amount of work and to some degree I can understand why there’s delays to payments, there’s such complexity to it.
“You’re trying to upscale something from 400 or 500 farms with the pearl mussel to something that has 20,000 farmers nationally. It’s a very big undertaking, so that’s a big challenge,” he said.
“Even for our own team, it’s been a hell of a busy year, trying to keep up with the workload involved. If you consider we’ve ten times more farmers to be dealing with than we would have had in the Pearl Mussel Project.
“It all takes time to bed in, but it’s all going good and we’d hope that it would continue and that the farmers that aren’t in the scheme will hopefully get accepted in tranche 2,” Crushell added.