A suboptimal array of options erodes the value of CAP ecological focus areas

Nilsson, Lovisa; Clough, Yann; Smith, Henrik G.; Olsson, Johanna Alkan; Brady, Mark; Hristov, Jordan; Olsson, Peter; Skantze, Karin; Ståhlberg, David; Dänhardt, Juliana

doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.04.005

Cited by 26 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…For example, eco‐schemes and AECM could be regionally targeted to complement habitats delivered under conditionality, thus fulfilling shortfalls in resources. A more joined‐up approach to the implementation of the post‐2020 CAP will not only benefit pollinators but also wider biodiversity (Nilsson et al, ; Pe’er et al, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland

Cole

Kleijn

Dicks

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high‐quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post‐2020 CAP, we performed a European‐scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator‐friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake. A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources. EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early‐season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived. Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator‐friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen‐fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes. Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well‐managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post‐2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco‐schemes and agri‐environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target‐orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland

Cole

Kleijn

Dicks

et al. 2020

Journal of Applied Ecology

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“…As one out of three "greening measures" (the others being crop diversification and maintaining permanent grassland at a national level), EFAs were supposed to be simple, generalized, non-contractual, and annual, and can consist of areas such as nitrogen fixing crops and uncropped field margins (EU, 2013). EFAs in the form of uncropped field margins has been criticized as inefficient (Nilsson et al, 2019), but also created a window of opportunity for annual flower strips and are encouraged to be used for such (e.g., by the Swedish Board of Agriculture). The question is what kind of effects that can be expected on farmland biodiversity from these annual strips.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the lack of scientific foundation on the use of annual flower strips on EFAs to benefit functional biodiversity, we in this study aimed to evaluate if they benefited natural enemies and pollinators in the surrounding landscape. Given that EFAs are mandatory mostly in intensively farmed landscapes, and that benefit of functional biodiversity for cash crops is most relevant in these landscapes (Nilsson et al, 2019), we evaluated the effect using experimental implementation of annual flower strips in existing EFAs in replicated simple landscapes. However, to determine if the amount of permanent structures in these landscapes modify responses to annual flower strips, we also analyzed effects of limited variation in the proportion of arable fields in these landscapes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Flower-Enriched Ecological Focus Areas on Functional Diversity Across Scales

2021

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Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) to benefit biodiversity became mandatory in intensively farmed landscapes after the reform of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2013. The implementation of EFAs as uncropped field margins has been criticized as ineffective but created a window of opportunity to test if augmenting them with annual flower strips can benefit biodiversity. In this study, we investigated if annual flower strips on EFAs benefited functional biodiversity in intensively farmed landscapes. To this end we established eleven annual flower strips with a seed mixture targeted for both natural enemies and pollinators, on areas were farmers had planned for EFAs. We determined effects on aphids and their natural enemies in cereal fields close to six of the flower strips, and for solitary bees and wasp close to and in the surroundings of all eleven flower strips. We found that annual flower strips benefited the abundance of hoverfly larvae and possibly also that of solitary bees. However, there were neither any significant effects on natural enemies (other than hoverfly larvae), nor any difference in natural pest control as shown by lack of differences in aphid numbers and parazitation rates. Abundances of solitary bees and wasps in the surrounding landscapes were unaffected, although there was a tendency for more solitary bee cells closer to the strips. We suggest that the critical issue leading to the mostly negative results is the lack of permanent structures to sustain populations of arthropods that in turn can benefit from annual flower strips. Hence, future agri-environmental policies need to carefully consider if and how annual agri-environmental measures should be implemented in intensively managed agricultural landscapes, e.g., by combining them with more permanent structures.

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“…Consequently, although such combinations may appear to be ideal from a conservation perspective, such disjointed practices are often detrimental to farmers' interests (eg delaying cereal harvesting to protect the nests of groundnesting birds in a system where early harvest to produce silage is required). There is evidence to suggest that farmers engaging in agri-environment schemes are more likely to adopt familiar practices that cause lower levels of disruption to their normal agricultural activities than complex management requirements (Van Herzele et al 2013;Lastra-Bravo et al 2015;Nilsson et al 2019). Therefore, an approach based on allowing farmers to choose from the set of existing FS with better BES performance would likely be more readily acceptable to farmers than imposition of requirements to adopt ad hoc sets of practices.…”

Section: Aspect 1: Management Coherencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…2015; Nilsson et al . 2019). Therefore, an approach based on allowing farmers to choose from the set of existing FS with better BES performance would likely be more readily acceptable to farmers than imposition of requirements to adopt ad hoc sets of practices.…”

Section: Fs As a Tool To Link Policies To Environmental Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A farming systems approach to linking agricultural policies with biodiversity and ecosystem services

Santos

Moreira

Ribeiro

et al. 2020

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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Many countries are reshaping their agricultural policies to better enhance biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES) in farmlands, but measuring the effectiveness of policy instruments in BES delivery is challenging. Using the European Agricultural Policy as an example, we propose the application of a farming systems (FS) approach as a cost‐effective tool for linking policy design and expected BES outcomes. On the basis of available data from subsidy payment agencies, such an approach can identify groups of farms that share similar management practices as well as the associations between FS and corresponding BES potential, and improve modeled outputs of farm management responses to policies and other drivers of change. We describe how this relatively unexplored source of information can help to support applied ecological research and relevant policy, and call for these data to be made available across Europe and elsewhere.

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A suboptimal array of options erodes the value of CAP ecological focus areas

Cited by 26 publications

References 57 publications

A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland

A critical analysis of the potential for EU Common Agricultural Policy measures to support wild pollinators on farmland

Effects of Flower-Enriched Ecological Focus Areas on Functional Diversity Across Scales

A farming systems approach to linking agricultural policies with biodiversity and ecosystem services

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