Connemara hill farming scheme a 'blueprint for the future'

The locally-led approach to farm schemes has been praised after the conclusion of the North Connemara Locally Led Agri-Environmental Scheme.

The European Innovation Partnership (EIP) project had an overall budget of €1.4m and was in action between 2019 and 2023.

The project area covered two special areas of conservation (SAC), the Twelve Bens and Maum Turk mountain ranges, with the scheme integrating local farmers with individuals from the agricultural industry, to tackle the decline of the economic and social viability of farming.

Speaking on the Teagasc Signpost webinar project manager Sinéad Grimes said the nature of the EIP allowed the project to change to overcome problems.

“When you’re running as a pilot, there’s flexibility to test out the waters and see if something works. If you get funding in other areas, it’s more strict; you can’t go outside of that.

“I think that’s an important finding of these EIPs, you see what works and what doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work, it’s not a failure. The locally-led aspect of these is what really works.”

Actions

The scheme recruited 115 farmers from the local area to take part in a range of actions and studies to understand the biodiversity and tackle plant infestations.

Farmers were tasked with documenting the growth and rarity of different plant species on their farmland as part of a habitat survey and they were incentivised to improve the infrastructure on their land to keep livestock away from biodiverse areas.

Some 93% of the participants in the scheme were hill farmers while 88% were sheep farmers so initiatives like using wool for bog restoration and using rushes for biochar were later implemented, on the back of advice from farmers.

Benefits

As part of the scheme, farmers were given a maximum payment of €2,400 over four years for improving infrastructure and monitoring plant life.

Those who implemented these improvements on commonage land were also paid 1.5 times more than actions on privately-owned farms.

In addition, farmers were offered a range of training courses on topics such as sheep shearing and pesticide use as well as the use of technology including GPS shepherding.

To help control rhododendron in the area, a taskforce of 20 paid workers attended 16 farms over 16 weeks to tackle infestations.

Challenges

Some difficulties arose in the early development of the project.

Due to the low income from hill farming, 68% of the farmers involved in the scheme had a second job and were low on time to implement requirements and there was also an absence of information on the local habitats prior to their surveys beginning.

Another major challenge was that 75% of the farmers involved were operating on commonage land which made it harder for them to conduct infrastructure improvements.

“Completing any action on commonage land can be challenging due to the multiple stakeholders,” Grimes said.

“We treated every farmer as an individual and allowed them to choose what they wanted to implement, where they had the necessary permission. It would be unfair to penalise a farmer because we told them to do something and they couldn’t because of a lack of agreement.”

Community involvement

As part of the locally-led approach, community involvement was a major part of the initiative.

The project worked with the local schools and Tidy Towns committees to promote ecology and agricultural heritage. Meetings and gatherings were held to discuss topics of interest to farmers and encourage social interactions.

Grimes also mentioned the importance of remembering traditional field and place names with the help of the local community.

“A farmer was worried that when his dad passes on, the knowledge that he had, like the name of a valley or a hill, would go with him. When you lose an elder you lose a library.

“We decided that this was something we really wanted to concentrate on, we did a series of heritage gathering.”

Going forward

Although the scheme concluded in March 2023, Grimes believes this project can be a blueprint for future locally-led initiatives.

The plant infestation taskforce managed to treat 320ha of land for rhododendron over two years, however, the team’s surveys suggest 1,500ha still need for be treated against invasive plants.

“There’s still a lot of work to do. It is needed to continue at a larger scale and I’m glad to say I’m working at the minute with the 20 operatives,” Grimes added.