Farmers efforts to protect water bodies, enhance habitats and reduce agricultural emissions, have been hailed by the Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue.

Acknowledging the efforts being made by farmers, Minister McConalogue said the work carried out by farmers as part of the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) will have “long-term benefits for all of us”.

“As well as taking actions to protect water courses, for example, landowners have also committed to planting more than 2,000km of hedgerows and approximately 580,000 native trees. This illustrates some of the hugely positive contributions being made by farmers to the country’s environmental sustainability,” Minister McConalogue said.

“We should not underestimate the value farmers are adding to our landscape and our lives, and how important the work that they do is,” he pointed out.

Quality food production

“It goes beyond the tangible benefits of quality food production. As part of ACRES, farmers are helping to conserve breeding waders such as curlews and snipes; maintaining and developing coastal habitats such as dunes and saltmarshes; supporting rough grazing to benefit hen harriers, barn owls and small birds and mammals and maintaining semi-natural grassland habitats for pollinators,” the Minister added.

As well as planting hedgerows and native tree species, under ACRES, farmers are also maintaining more than 10,000km of traditional dry stonewalls, installing tens of thousands of owl, bird and bat boxes, and are rejuvenating more than 1,400km of hedges.

Extensive work is also being carried out by farmers in management and protection of approximately 560,000ha of upland peatland, Minister McConalogue said.

The minister explained that farmers were active in controlling invasive species, and had also adopted improved grazing practices, delayed mowing and grazing to protect ground-nesting birds and changed vegetation on land in order to help support and grow numbers.

54,000 participants

“I want to thank the more than 54,000 ACRES participants for their commitment to putting the environment at the core of Irish farming,” Minister McConalogue said.

“It is particularly encouraging to see strong interest in taking further environmental actions which complement these already extensive efforts, including further tree planting and establishment of additional hedges through the scheme’s Non-Productive Investments programme,” he added.

“I acknowledge there have been challenges associated with the scale and administration of some elements of the scheme, but I do not want to lose sight of the enormous amount of work already completed and in progress and the positive impact this will have,” he insisted.

“My Department is working to ensure that remaining issues are resolved early in the new year,” Minister McConalogue said.