At the end of June, the UK Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF) announced a new Arable Incentive Scheme, which is to be piloted in East Anglia and the West Midlands. The idea is to use the Agri-Environment measures of CAP to promote biodiversity in arable farming-the specific measures encouraged by the scheme are:
leaving overwintered stubbles on cropped
arable fields to provide winter food for birds and spring nesting sites;
undersowing spring cereal crops-to
provide habitat for beneficial insects and food for bird chicks;
introducing insecticide-free conservation
headlands to promote insect-rich headlands and a refuge for less competitive
arable plants;
promoting field margins and beetle banks
to provide nesting habitats for birds and overwintering sites for predatory
insects;
wildflower cover crops to encourage birds
by providing insect food in summer and seed in winter.
The intention is to reduce pesticide use and
to address the loss of wildlife species that depend on cereal crops. Farmers
will be offered £494/ha (£200/acre) to manage land within the scheme in an
environmentally-friendly manner.
The scheme follows closely proposals made jointly by English
Nature, The Game Conservancy Trust and the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds (RSPB)(1) earlier this year. It recognises that arable biodiversity has
declined because of the move away from mixed farming, the switch from spring to
autumn drilling and the increased use of pesticides and fertilisers. Arable land
makes up 35% of the total land area in England and 10% in Wales and the target
is to apply the scheme to 5-10% of arable land.
Work by the three NGOs has identified a number of species at
risk(2):
arable farming practices have reduced the
food supply of a number of mammals, including the brown hare and the
pipistrelle bat;
many bird species characteristic of
arable land are in dramatic decline, as indicated in the recent RSPB
report(3) including skylarks, stone curlew and grey partridge;
the Game Conservancy has shown arthropod
species linked with arable land declined by an average of 4.2% pa between
1972 and 1990, and many beneficial groups show greater decline. Species of
bees, moths and ground beetles are also threatened;
many formerly common arable flowering
plants have declined, including the corn buttercup.
1. Crops and Biodiversity. A proposal for an arable incentive scheme. English Nature, Game Conservancy Trust and RSPB, available from RSPB, The Lodge, Sandy, Beds, SG19 2DL, February 1997, 27pp.
2. UK Biodiversity Action Plan Steering Group report, 1997.
3. The Indirect Effects of Pesticides on Birds, RSPB, June 1997 (see also PN36 p3).
[This
article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 37,
September 1997, page 18]