The Burren, in Co Clare, is renowned internationally for its landscape and flora, but as any farmer will tell you, scenery doesn’t put food on the table. An innovative conservation programme is using that flora to help to feed farm families, metaphorically at least. It all started in the late 1990s when local farmers and Teagasc commissioned research on the impact of farming practices on the Burren, following claims farming was destroying the area. PhD student Brendan Dunford conducted the research and concluded that while certain practices were damaging, a bigger story wasn’t being told.
“I found that a lot of ancient farming practices were integral to the future health of the Burren – to the wildlife, the archaeology, the landscape itself,” he says. “And if you took farming out of the picture in the Burren, you’d have a much poorer place.”
Changing practices meant farming was becoming more intensive in the lowland green areas, while the less accessible upland areas were being neglected. “Some people might think it would be good to stop farming upland areas, but in the past we had fairly high levels of upland grazing at certain times of the year and it actually increased the biodiversity of the area instead of reducing it.”
As animals left the uplands, the scrub land took over and began pushing out the flowers. Certain plant species became dominant and others were shut out. The area was designated as a special area of conservation by the EU, but Dunford says this was too generic for the Burren’s unique needs. So farmers, the National Parks and Wildlife Service and Teagasc set up the Burren Life Project, backed by €2 million in EU funding, to understand how best to farm the Burren while protecting the environment.
Twenty farmers were involved in that pilot project, and the group then secured €1 million per year from the Department of Agriculture to roll it out across the Burren. The Burren Farming for Conservation Programme was born and is now in its fourth year, led by Dunford.
Some 400 farmers applied to join the programme, and 160 were selected. Each year they draw up a one-page plan, outlining work they would like to do to enhance their farms in an environmental way. The programme co-funds the approved work, whether it is repairing a stone wall, cutting an area of scrub land or restoring damaged habitats.
The programme also inspects farms and assesses their environmental health, looking at telltale signs such as grazing, water sources and soil condition. Each field gets a score out of 10 and that determines the payment the farmer gets for that field. On average, farmers receive €7,500 per year, but some receive as little as €2,000 while others could earn €15,000.
Dunford hopes the plan will be expanded across the Burren when the next tranche of funding is agreed under the Common Agricultural Policy’s rural development programme.
“It’s a very simple model that could apply in any field, in any farm, anywhere in the world. It puts farmers in pole position about decisions that have to be made and rewards them on their environmental performance.” Dunford says he’s inundated with calls from groups of farmers around the country who would like to see a similar project in their areas.
Suckler farmer Michael Davern is one of the 160 farmers in the scheme. “I’m back farming like I farmed in the 1970s and the 1960s,” he says. “But instead of going with a donkey and cart, we are now going with a tractor or a jeep up the mountain to feed the cattle.We are back again cutting scrub and reclaiming land.”He says his source of income has changed from farming to flora. “In the past the flora arrived by accident as farmers farmed the best way they knew how. Now we are being paid for it.” He says it will succeed because it makes sense. “It’s what every farmer wants: to continue farming and make their own decisions about the land they know better than anyone else.”
