Farm Payments for Ecology and Agricultural Transitions

Are you farming in one of our project areas and interested in joining FarmPEAT to get paid for biodiversity on your land?

Farming with nature in the midland raised bog landscape.

The FarmPEAT (Farm Payments for Ecological and Agricultural Transitions) Project is developing a locally-led, innovative, results-based farm scheme for farmers who manage lands that surround some of Ireland's finest remaining raised bogs.

Raised bogs represent one of the most valuable natural ecosystems in Ireland and the transition to agricultural lands that surround them can play an important role in maintaining and enhancing their long term conservation value.

Working with local farmers, the project will design and trial a programme especially adapted to the local landscape that will incentivise the delivery of enhanced environmental outcomes. The programme will reward farmers for improved management of habitats on peat soils along with other important landscape features such as eskers, field boundaries and watercourses. The programme will be results-based in that farmers will get paid depending on the scores they achieve, with higher scores, indicating higher environmental quality, getting higher payments.

It is hoped that this programme will form a basis for future agri-environmental schemes in these areas. As such it presents an opportunity for farmers to be involved in developing policy that could provide long term environmental and economic benefits to their communities into the future.

The FarmPEAT Project is operating at up to eight candidate study sites centered on raised bogs or former raised bog areas. These sites are located in the Irish midland counties of Roscommon, Offaly, Kildare and Westmeath. Check out our Project Sites Pages to find out more about these sites and for maps of each site.

Coupled with the development of the results-based agri-environmental model, the FarmPEAT Project will assist farmers and the broader community to transition towards a more sustainable use of the peatland resource in the area through a range of educational tools and peer mentoring.

You can view our scorecards and supporting actions here.

Help us tell the story of Ireland’s peat landscape. Join the Love Your Wellies Competition 2024 and book a school workshop or field trip!

Project Partners

The FarmPEAT project is an EIP (European Innovation Partnership) project being administered by Nature Based Agri Solutions Ltd. The Project is funded by the EU Recovery Instrument Funding under the Rural Development Programme 2014-2022.

 
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