Factors including drought, soil erosion, salinity and climate change all contribute to food scarcity, but a report by the UK government’s Foresight thinktank (The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and choices for global sustainability) suggests another important cause may be insufficient agricultural research. In most countries, research into agriculture and fisheries remains a low priority and two decades of this lack of interest has caused a slow-down in productivity gains. The report emphasises the need for a significant increase in new agricultural research to support a radical change to the food system in order to meet the urgency of food scarcity. Investment in research is one of the report’s ‘key priorities’ and it suggests new models of research funding are needed in which public, private and third sector funders coordinate their efforts and incentives are provided for research into solutions to benefit low-income countries.

Four out of five adults believe that farmers have a responsibility to look after the landscape and wildlife for future generations, according to a new survey commissioned by the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE). Fewer than a fifth of British adults would accept a more industrialised farming sector and an overwhelming 78 per cent of people want farmers to get more support to carry out environmentally sustainable farming practices.

The CPRE published an accompanying report describing their farming vision where farmers who adopt new environmental sustainability standards benefit from a price premium that recognises the additional environmental measures they are taking. For example, replanting of the countryside’s diminishing numbers of hedgerows.

Increasing global population and a changing climate have increased the pressures on food production. Agricultural intensification across Europe, particularly in the West, has simplified landscapes leading to a loss in biodiversity. However, Ian Woodhurst, senior farming campaigner for CPRE, believes that the public are aware of and understand the challenges of producing affordable food for a growing population and says “It’s great to see that people clearly want the environmental sustainable future for farming set out in our vision. There are huge challenges, including growing populations, increasing demand for land and natural resources, and pressures due to climate change. But we must find ways to cope with these challenges if we are to secure a living, thriving rural landscape”.

Source: Flohre, A., Fischer, C., Aavik, T. et al. (2011) Agricultural intensification and biodiversity partitioning in European landscapes comparing plants, carabids, and birds. Ecological Applications. 21: 1772-1781.

A call for specific biodiversity goals to be integrated into the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was abandoned at the insistence of Germany during a meeting of environment ministers in Brussels today (19 December).

In its proposal for a biodiversity strategy to 2020, the European Commission had listed several types of biodiversity concerns that should be dealt with under the CAP. But several member states objected to this, saying it prejudged the outcome of ongoing talks among agriculture ministers to reform the CAP.

The Polish presidency of the Council of Ministers put forward a proposal changing the list to theoretical “examples,” but this was still not acceptable to Germany. After several hours of discussion, Germany succeeded in having the entire paragraph on biodiversity objectives for the CAP deleted in the final version approved by ministers. Germany’s environment ministry was under strict orders from its agriculture ministry not to accept any list of possible biodiversity requirements for CAP, according to a source involved in the discussions.

Campaign group BirdLife Europe said the deletion was symptomatic of an overall fear by environment ministers of clashing with ongoing discussions in other Council meetings. The UK was able to water down language on funding for the environmental funding programme Life, saying it prejudges ongoing discussions over the multiannual financial framework. Language on fisheries was also made vaguer.

Ariel Brunner, head of European policy at BirdLife, said the decision was a worrying sign that environmental goals would not be taken seriously in upcoming discussions on agriculture, fisheries and budget reform. “Looking at environment ministers compromising for hours on the protection of what should be the core of their political mandate – biodiversity – is a dangerous preview of the fate of biodiversity left completely in the hands of agriculture ministers,” she said.

Janez Potočnik, the European commissioner for the environment, issued a statement condemning the deletion of the list, adding that the Commission would continue to push for biodiversity objectives to be made part of the CAP during the reform discussions.

Original text from: http://www.europeanvoice.com/article/2011/december/reference-to-cap-in-biodiversity-conclusions-deleted-/73015.aspx

Professor Charles Godfray, immediate past President of the BES, is to give evidence to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday 14th December as part of the Committee’s inquiry into ‘Greening the Common Agricultural Policy‘.

Professor Godfray will give evidence at 16.00 and the session will be available to watch live on Parliament TV.

Intensive farming methods have simplified landscapes across Europe, leading to a loss of biodiversity. A recent study has investigated the effects of intensive farming on plants, beetles and birds in Western European regions and found that plants and birds are particularly affected.

In recent decades, changes in agricultural practices have transformed the structure of landscapes across Europe, particularly in the West. Intensification of agriculture has simplified a previously complex landscape, which has been accompanied by a loss of biodiversity in European farmlands. Agricultural intensification (AI) affects biodiversity at all levels of the landscape, from field and farm levels, through to the regional scale.

In this study, the diversity of plants, ground beetles (carabids) and breeding birds was measured at local and regional levels in cereal crop fields in eight European countries: Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden. The total diversity of species at field, farm and regional scales was estimated from the average diversity within communities and from the average diversity between different communities at all three scales.

AI was estimated from fertiliser and pesticide inputs, tillage operations and mechanical weed control used by farmers in the study areas. Based on this information, AI was divided into low, medium and high levels in each region and the impact of AI on biodiversity in the landscape was assessed.

For all regions studied at all three scales (field, farm and regional), AI was linked to reduced diversity of plants and birds, but not ground beetles. This suggests the impact of AI on biodiversity is not uniform and some groups of species are more affected than others. In addition, how mobile the different groups of species are, plays an important role in the pattern of diversity found across the landscape.

• High levels of AI affected plants at all scales: plants are not mobile and the more simplified the landscape became (with associated loss of diverse habitats), the greater the loss of plant diversity.
• High levels of AI especially affected birds at the farm and region scale. However, with low levels of AI, the diversity of birds was increased. Less intensive agricultural management of fields (e.g. less weed control), maintaining a diversity of field margins (such as hedgerows and woodland) and providing semi-natural habitats in arable landscapes are all important for bird diversity.
• Ground beetle diversity found within fields probably benefitted from having various types of field margins and near-by semi-natural areas, which would supply habitats for new recruits of beetles to the fields.

Although the level of intensive agriculture practised locally by farmers affected species diversity at the field scale, biodiversity (especially of birds and ground beetles) found among different communities at the farm scale was more important in terms of regional biodiversity. Therefore, different local farming practices significantly affect the pattern of the landscape structure and the biodiversity found in agricultural landscapes.

Understanding the detailed impacts of AI on different groups of species at field, farm and regional scales is important for the development of effective agri-environmental schemes. Resources can be targeted at areas where high levels of diversity occur and would be affected by a further simplification of the landscape structure through high intensity farming methods.

Source: Flohre, A., Fischer, C., Aavik, T. et al. (2011) Agricultural intensification and biodiversity partitioning in European landscapes comparing plants, carabids, and birds. Ecological Applications. 21: 1772-1781.

[Taken from Science for Environment Policy]

On 12th October, the European Commission has presented a draft reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period after 2013. This draft aims to strengthen the competitiveness, sustainability and permanence of agriculture throughout the EU in order to secure for European citizens a healthy and high-quality source of food, preserve the environment and develop rural areas.

‘The European Commission is proposing a new partnership between Europe and its farmers in order to meet the challenges of food security, sustainable use of natural resources and growth. The next decades will be crucial for laying the foundations of a strong agricultural sector that can cope with climate change and international competition while meeting the expectations of the citizen. Europe needs its farmers. Farmers need Europe’s support. The Common Agricultural Policy is what feeds us, it’s the future of more than half of our territory’, said Dacian Cioloş, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

The reformed CAP will make it possible to promote innovation, strengthen both the economic and ecological competitiveness of the agricultural sector, combat climate change, and sustain employment and growth. It will thus make a decisive contribution to the Europe 2020 strategy.

[Credit: Society of Biology 'Science Policy News']

Professor Jules Pretty gave a fascinating and wide-ranging insight into the sustainable intensification of agriculture on Tuesday afternoon at the BES Annual Meeting; this year’s BES Lecture. Prof. Pretty suggested that there was an ‘emerging consensus’ around the necessity of improving agricultural productivity whilst minimising harm to the environment – as testified by recent reports from the Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures programme, the Royal Society and others.

By 2050, the Foresight report has concluded, a 50-100% increase in food production will be needed worldwide to feed a growing human population. The precise figure will depend on how fast and far the population grows and on the consumption patterns which emerge. Food choices are currently converging. Where these were previously divergent, driven by choices and norms informed by differences in culture, now a Western ideal of consumption dominates, informing a greater consumption of meat in China, for example. Food price spikes in recent years have also adversely and disproportionately affected the poor and the hungry. Such trends will only continue unless radical reform is made to the systems by which we currently produce food, which involve intensive application of fertilisers, an increased use of machinery and a huge growth in livestock for meat and dairy which themselves eat grain which could be used to feed the hungry.

Read the full report at the BES Annual Meeting blog.

A study conducted by academics from Oxford University and Earthwatch UK has challenged the long standing assumption that farmland facilitates the movement of pollinating insects between habitat fragments.

The findings of the paper show that farmland corridors intended to help connect up areas of natural habitat, instead do the opposite and waylay non-specialist feeders, hindering pollinator movement through the corridors.

In terms of animal behaviour this makes sense- with pollinating insects concentrating their foraging efforts on resource rich farmland areas where they are most likely to be successful at finding food, rather than moving onto new habitats as the corridors intend.

Researchers are now concerned that this behaviour could impact native plant species which could fail to be pollinated as a result. The study has been published in the Journal of Current Biology and could have policy implications regarding the way habitat networks are designed and managed.

Last week the European Commission announced their plans for the new EU budget. The new budget, known as the Multi Annual Financial Framework (MFF) sets how much will be spent over the years 2014 to 2020, and how this money will be allocated.

Overall few changes have been made to the size of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget however there have been significant changes in the way in which this money will be allocated. Of the overall €372 billion budget around two thirds will be allocated to Pillar 1 which makes direct payments to farmers. 30% of direct payments from the CAP will be used to encourage environmentally sound practices, as part of a greening of the CAP. €4.5 billion will be spent on research into food security.

The Pillar 2 budget, which is used to fund agri-environment schemes, will be cut over the period by about 7%, leading some organisations such as WWF to doubt the ability of the new budget to deliver the ambitious environmental goals set out in Europe 2020. Sacrifices in this part of the budget have been made to avoid cutting direct payments to farmers. Another key concern is the new freedom that member states will have to move funding around between pillars 1 and 2 which many anticipate will further reduce the amount spent on environmental projects.

The budget for LIFE+, the EU scheme to fund nature and biodiversity projects has only been increased by a small fraction leading many organisations to doubt the ability of the new budget to maintain the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. National financing plans for Natura 2000 may be the only hope to protect our natural capital

The external budget, which funds initiatives such as the Global Climate and Biodiversity Fund and the European Development Fund, has been increased but it remains unclear how much funding will go specifically to projects to protect biodiversity and ecosystem services. Whether this money will be used in a way that contributes towards the millennium development goals whilst simultaneously delivering solutions for biodiversity remains to be seen, although the budget does state that the European Parliament are committed to contributing financially to help meet commitments on biodiversity and climate change.

Funding for research will focus on projects that cannot be achieved by countries acting alone. The budget states that Horizon 2020, the new framework for research funding, will focus on key sectoral policy priorities such as climate change, food security and unsustainable resource use.

England’s Biodiversity Strategy is due to be released this month, outlining how England will meet its international environmental commitments. It is expected to detail future plans for the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) across the country in order to meet agreed biodiversity targets.

The new Biodiversity Strategy follows the 2010 Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting held in Nagoya, Japan. At which, the parties agreed on a new international framework – the Strategic Plan, to protect and enhance biodiversity and ecosystems, with deals labeled ‘historic’ by the Natural Environment White Paper.

Japans negotiations also unveiled a new global vision; that ‘by 2050, biodiversity will be valued, conserved, restored and widely used maintaining ecosystem service, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people’. The conference set an additional short term mission target; to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2020. In order to achieve this, parties agreed on 20 ambitious but realistic targets, and 5 strategic goals. These included the sustainable management of all future fish stocks, ensuring biodiversity conservation on land managed for forestry and agriculture, and commitments to restore 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020.

The Strategic Plan emphasized the need for urgent and appropriate action, effective policy and evidence based decision making, requesting that all member states develop a strategy in line with the plans targets in order to proceed. England’s Biodiversity Strategy is expected this month, followed shortly by those submitted by the devolved administrations.