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Q: If a farmer renewing his ELS agreement has a shortfall of 7 points per hectare due to the loss of management plans, how can he do the farmland bird package?
A: The farmland bird package costs between 9 and 18 points per hectare, depending on the options chosen. Points lost through the removal of management plans provide an opportunity to include measures within the farmland bird package, but this is not the only opportunity. When renewing, the farmer has the chance to review what he has done over the last five years, and drop or enhance some of the existing measures in favour of higher quality options for the environmental objectives of the Campaign.
For example, many farmers have struggled with the hedgerow management options in terms of flailing two or three years growth. This tends to work better on some hedge types than others. The five-year renewal is an opportunity to take out the less suitable hedges from these options, or move them from the enhanced (3-year rotation) to the standard hedgerow management option (2-year rotation).
The full farmland bird package takes the minimum amount of land out of production in order to deliver effective farmland bird conservation. All three elements of the package (seed food, insect food and in-field nesting habitat) are essential as they enable overwinter survival, chick survival and nesting opportunities respectively.
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