Farm woodland policy: an assessment of the response to the farm woodland scheme in Northern Ireland

Factors influencing Irish farmers' afforestation intention

“…This finding is underpinned by the fact that private forests in Ireland are mainly growing on land considered marginal for agriculture such as peat (30%), poorly drained gley soils (30%) or podzols (10%) (Farrelly, 2006). Similar findings were made in England, Spain, Finland, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where farmers were also more willing to afforest marginal land such as fallows, unimproved bog or rough grazing ground (Clark and Johnson, 1993;Edwards and Guyer, 1992;Marey-Perez and Rodriguez-Vicente, 2009;Selby and Petäjistö, 1995;Watkins et al, 1996). Furthermore, the majority of farmers afforesting in the UK indicated to have multiple reasons for afforesting, the most important of which was to enhance the landscape, while timber production only ranked sixth (Nijnik and Mather, 2008).…”

Assessing policy tools for encouraging farm afforestation in Ireland

“…After an initial high level of interest, planting rates also dropped in these countries (Mather, 1998;Selby and Petäjistö, 1995). In England and Northern Ireland, participation in afforestation schemes did not meet expectations from the outset (Burton, 1998;Edwards and Guyer, 1992;Ilbery and Kidd, 1992;van Gossum et al, 2008). In the Belgium region of Flanders, despite the implementation of afforestation incentives and restriction on deforestation, forest cover declined before slightly increasing again (van Gossum et al, 2008).…”

Towards a research agenda for woodland expansion in Scotland

“…However, they are more likely to sell their land for woodland planting as they approach retirement (Lawrence and Edwards, 2013). While there is some evidence that those with heirs are more favourable towards woodland (Scambler, 1989;Wicker, 2002), woodland can also be perceived as constricting the next generation (Edwards and Guyer, 1992).…”