English biodiversity is in extremely poor condition, with measures of biodiversity intactness amongst the lowest in the world. To address this and meet international biodiversity commitments, England now has legally binding targets for nature conservation.
Meeting these targets will depend on widespread use of wildlife-friendly farming approaches, promoted through agri-environmental schemes (AES) which pay farmers for adopting specific management options. The options impose different costs on farmers and so are supported by different payment levels.
Unfortunately, the overall success and efficiency of AES are low, partly because farmers rarely choose the most effective options, suggesting payment levels do not effectively compensate farmers.
This project will map the potential of different AES options to contribute towards meeting biodiversity targets against the amount of money farmers say they would need to adopt an option. This will allow us to identify “low-hanging fruit” – options that provide relatively high biodiversity benefits for their cost.
Our results can then be directly used by Defra to design specific policy mechanisms to encourage farmers to adopt these options, or to increase the acceptability of unpopular options.
The project has potential for direct economic and societal impact by improving the cost-effectiveness of a programme which costs >£350m annually.
This project is funded by the 2024–2025 Research England Policy Support Fund.