Document Actions
Published: 30 Jun 2010
Intensive farming has
long been a major cause of biodiversity
decline in Europe. The European Environment
Agency's (EEA) new short assessment examines
Europe's efforts to strike a balance between
producing sufficient food and maintaining
agro-ecosystems that are rich in biodiversity
above and below ground.
Land use Europe's Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) plays a key role in halting biodiversity
loss by preventing land abandonment and
intensification, while accommodating the
wider socio-economic and climatic trends
that affect Europe's rural areas. Seventh
in the series of '10 messages for 2010',
the EEA's new assessment on agricultural
ecosystems recommends that policy promote
creating and maintaining more diverse agricultural
landscapes. After all, healthy agro-ecosystems
are a necessity for high and sustained productivity.
Until the latest reforms,
the CAP's primary focus was on the quantity
of food produced. This accelerated the spread
of intensive farming practices in more productive
land and the abandonment of the less productive
areas. Both of these trends have adversely
affected biodiversity and have not yet been
reversed despite the introduction of agri-environment
measures.
Although intensively
farmed land supports a certain level of
biodiversity, it generally lacks significant
areas of 'High Nature Value', which are
essential for preserving biodiversity. Europe's
more traditional, low-intensity farming
systems with high nature value are gradually
disappearing. Even when abandoned, agricultural
land is often replaced by less diverse vegetation
or forest.
Key trends and policy
suggestions
Biodiversity underpins processes and ecosystem
services essential for agriculture, such
as soil formation, pest control, maintaining
soil fertility and regulating the water
cycle.
Pressures on soil biodiversity
are increasing. Soil erosion is exacerbated
by human activities such as overexploitation
of agricultural land.
From 1980 to the mid-11000s,
common farmland bird populations fell by
almost 50 %. Since then their populations
seem to have levelled off. Grassland butterfly
populations have decreased by 60 % since
11000 and the decline is continuing.
Mechanisation, drainage
and introduction of irrigation crops have
simplified the agricultural landscape and
cleared small woodlands, ponds and hedges
to allow heavy machinery to move. Re-introducing
such buffering elements into intensely farmed
systems would create a more diverse landscape,
providing a mosaic of habitats and thereby
boosting biodiversity.
Intensive farming has
also favoured genetically uniform crops
and livestock breeds vulnerable to pests
and diseases. Long and diverse crop rotations,
diverse regional distribution of crops and
selecting crops better matched to the natural
fertility of the soil could all contribute
to fostering biodiversity, while maintaining
a high level of productivity.
The upcoming CAP reform
offers a good opportunity to address existing
shortcomings and integrate biodiversity
issues more effectively.
