Midlands farmers are paid to restore farmed peatlands

A pilot project paying farmers to protect and restore farmed peatlands in the midlands could provide a glimpse into future agri-environmental schemes.

CAP negotiations will kick off next year with the debate around future schemes to be held against the backdrop of EU Nature Restoration Law targets and a continued focus on results-based payments.

The FarmPEAT project was launched in 2021 and 53 farmers have participated since, representing an area of 1,341ha bordering on eight separate bogs. Scorecards are used to determine the level of results-based payment for each participating farmer, with scoring divided into three elements: plant type, water levels and damaging activity.

Damaging activities like patches of bare soil, erosion and turf cutting will reduce payment levels, while higher water tables in drains and the presence of plant species in high quality peat grassland habitats will increase payment.

Low scoring parcels receive payments of up to €75/ha, rising to €150 to €250/ha for moderate scores, with the highest results-based payment limit set at €450/ha.

There is an average farm payment of just over €2,400/year over the course of the scheme.

These payment rates are then adjusted by a whole farm multiplier that take account of “serious damaging activities on the wider farm”.

This multiplier could reduce the results-based element of a farmer’s payment by up to 40% if farm practices are found to be particularly damaging to the environment, but where practice is deemed to be exceptional, payments receive a 20% boost.

Further funding is available through action-based payments, with over half of all actions approved for payment in the project being watercourse protection measures, like the fencing-off of livestock from streams.

Another quarter are actions aimed at improving habitat quality, 19% for peat restoration and 4% for controlling invasive species.

The level of grant aid for carrying out supporting actions varies between 25% and 100%, depending on the environmental benefit expected from each investment.

Actions boost scores

These actions are intended to improve following a years’ field scores and some see funding cover more than just the cost of getting the work done, such as the installation of dams to raise water levels in drains, project manager Caroline Lalor said at a recent FarmPEAT conference.

Lalor stated that FarmPEAT found that not all drains act the same when partially blocked with some water levels remaining around the target height of 30-50cm below the ground surface, but with others on land with better drainage seeing levels fluctuate more.

“The way we approached it is that it is up to individual farmers to decide what actions they want to take and where we see there are potential impacts on neighbouring farmers, we speak with them and we don’t do anything if they are not comfortable,” she said.

“As soon as you put a dam into a drain, the water level is rising in the drain so you are going to see an increase in your results-based payment and you will also have a peat restoration training payment,” she said. “But payment is also based on the area that is predicted to be impacted by the rewetting actions.”

Lalor provided figures on the funding paid out for land affected by raising the water level of one of the project’s drains that borders land owned by three different participating farmers. This example saw an estimated 1.2ha, 0.24ha and 0.21ha impacted by drain works receive respective payment boosts of €900, €400 and €400 respectively on top of results-based payments and funding to foot the works’ bill.

Derogation dairy farmer Ferghal O’Sullivan from Raheenmore, Co Offaly, said that many farmers like him on the more intensive side of farming have concerns on the future of their grassland on peat soils.

“If we took that part of the land out of the system it could amount to €50,000 per year in lost earnings. We have to keep it in the system,” the farmer commented.

But many farmers like O’Sullivan would be willing to take on environmental measures like drain blocking on peat soils on more marginal parcels of land when payments are provided, he continued.

“The good would be gone out of the peat part of the farm a lot earlier in the year. It would never be grazed as intensively as the other land. I learned a lot from the FarmPEAT project as to how we could incorporate the environment into intensive dairy farming.

“It’s always a smallish part of any farm that is peat for us to put one of the dams in or raise the water table, I don’t think it would affect much of my land,” he maintained.

Reassurances needed

Farmer Ray Brennan from Kilclonfert in Co Offaly joined FarmPEAT when he heard that a participation payment would issue to all who attended the project’s training event.

Since then, Brennan has gone as far as installing dams in drains and he reports that the work “is working well so far”.

“At the start, I was like most farmers, sceptical of dams and the word rewetting if it came up as well,” Brennan said.

“If I did put in dams, how much of my fields were going to be flooded when water levels came up,” he told the conference.

“Talking to the project team there was the reassurance that there would be a notch in the dam so if it didn’t work out, you could lower the drain levels.

“At the moment I think there is more grass growth in it this year than there was last year when the dams weren’t there and that plays into some of the science as well.

“Anything I can get is important because I am financing the farming enterprise from my job.”

Another participating farmer Brian Sheridan from Clara, Co Offaly, said that more farmers would be prepared to take action on the environment if they were provided with the same level of consultation given in FarmPEAT.

“I am the same as every farmer, looking for help and finding it very hard to get some from sources.

“We hear so many conflicting things - every time you read the paper there is some problem with farming,” he stated.

“Farmers are the most co-operative people you can get if you talk to them first.

“We don’t like people coming and telling us what we must do and not getting any reward for doing it.

“That’s the secret of FarmPEAT, the team talks first and action is taken after talking with the farmer,” he said.

Dams of peat or plastic can be used to partially block drains to raise water levels in the drain and subsequently in adjoining lands.

The FarmPEAT project put an emphasis on collaboration when farmers are assessing whether to implement voluntary rewetting and hydrologists were brought in to determine the expected extent to which lands would be impacted.

Figures presented by project officer Laura Daly at the conference put the cost of raising the water table for one farmer in Clara, Co Offaly at €13,350 – equal to €2,300 per 100m length of drain or €3,500 per hectare rewet.

Another project farmer located in Clonboley bog, Co Roscommon, had a smaller parcel of land rewet for under half that price at €1,679/ha or €680 per 100m of drain.

“Why these costs vary is that every farm is different, every drain is different, every 100m is different. It is not easy to give one standard cost but a huge contribution to the cost is that if they are plastic dams, they are considerably more expensive,” Daly explained. “Where possible, we want to use peat dams but it isn’t always possible, it depends on the site suitability whether there is enough peat there to borrow for the dams and the quality of that peat is important as well.”

Over four in every five farmers participating in FarmPEAT agreed that farming could not continue on peat soils if drains were blocked as the project was kicking off in 2021, but this came back to fewer than three in every five participants when they were surveyed again in 2024.

Assets ‘wasting away’

Catchment scientist Donal Daly also spoke at the conference and said that while he understood farmers’ motivations for draining peat soils in previous decades, the implications of drainage on the soil may not be understood at farm-level.

“Essentially farmers’ asset, your asset if you have farmed peaty soils, is wasting away. It is a wasting asset, disappearing up in the air and off in the water,” Daly said.

He recalled his father’s drainage of soils which has resulted in his brother having to stop cutting silage, as the drainage had exposed ancient tree stumps that have left the ground unusable for silage.

“That is an indication of what’s happening and what will happen eventually, depending on the depth of peat and the depth of the water table, in some instances, it might waste completely down to the grey clay.

“But if it is thicker peat, it will just subside down to the regional water table and not be productive for the farmer after it is left unusable. Another option is rewetting – bringing the water table to the surface, like Bord na Móna is doing.

“But the third option is to manage the water table with dams in the drains to say within 40cm of within the surface to reduce and slow down the wastage of the peat while allowing farming to continue.”