Opinion: New biodiversity app tells me nothing I don’t know
© Adobe Stock It wasn’t easy at ag college, being a farmer’s son and studying environmental management.
People swerved me in the corridors, there were shouts of “tree hugger” in the cafeteria, and girls wouldn’t talk to me.
Keen to fit in, I jumped ship to study agriculture as soon as I could. But my inner environmental warrior still lurked somewhere deep inside.
Although many might not believe it, I feel most farmers have this in them, too.
See also: Opinion – TV is the perfect platform for Young Farmers
About the author
During my time as an office monkey for a farm consultancy, I took many a call from farmers eager get into a scheme to plant a small woodland or sow wildflowers.
When I presented them with the colossal paperwork required and fee for the application, their enthusiasm quickly died.
Farming forges a deep connection with the land and a strong desire to see it thriving. One of the many pleasures in our job is working alongside flourishing local nature.
The British countryside’s landscape and culture has been entwined with farming for centuries.
Having just finished trialling the Scottish government’s new biodiversity auditing app, it’s unfortunate that once again I don’t think we’ll be provided with a solid support scheme to improve biodiversity.
This auditing app is one of six plans that will need to be completed to claim future subsidy in Scotland. The new agri-environment schemes are still to be conjured up.
Now I’m glad Scottish farm support is still hanging in there by a thread. But judging by the signs, I worry that, when it arrives, the new agri-environment support will be another overcooked mess that misses the mark.
I don’t even want to know how much money has been wasted on the development of this useless app.
Money that could have had miles more ecological benefit put directly into farms for stewardship schemes.
The app’s audit told me nothing about biodiversity on my farm that I didn’t already know.
It feels like it has been developed with little input from farmers or much thought to how it would benefit them.
Just another stack of bureaucracy to land on top of the already creaking farm office workload.
There needs to be clear and tangible goals for local biodiversity objectives.
Rallying farms around a local singular cause creates far more farmer engagement than a vague and frankly boring target of carbon sequestration or net-zero dreams.
This has been achieved on a micro scale with projects centred on corncrakes and choughs in the Highlands and Islands.
Current schemes are complicated and competitive, locking a farm into rigid management for five years.
What would be better are flexible annual options that can be chosen and slotted into the farm each year at The International Association for Chemical Safety (IACS) time, giving land managers more power to undertake nature restoration while navigating the factors in play, such as weather windows and ground conditions – something similar to the Land Managers Options of 2007-13.
The incompetence of Scottish ministers and the civil service to deliver any form of workable farm support are well documented.
You would need a crystal ball to guess what future Scottish farm support or agri-environmental schemes are going to look like. And, quite frankly, you’d have more luck guessing the lottery numbers.
Regardless, farming is ready to deliver for nature, as long as it’s untethered from bureaucracy and given the financial support to do so.