SHARING OPTIONS:
Gavin Lynch with some of his Shorthorn herd, combines dairy and sheep farming with hazel growing in this agroforestry section of Hells Kettle Organic Farm, Donard, Co Wicklow.
Forestry is identified as one of the land uses that has “high-level targets for 2030” in the recently launched draft agri-food strategy 2030. The strategy contains a number of positive objectives for forestry to “increase afforestation and double the sustainable production of biomass from forests by 2035”.
Other goals emphasise the role of forestry in enhancing biodiversity and developing “diverse multipurpose forests”.
It also calls for a new forestry strategy, which “will be critical if the sector is to maximise its potential contribution to the economy and to rural communities”.
Upper Ballinderry River. Image source: DAERA
Northern Ireland has failed to make any significant progress towards its river basin water quality targets over the last six years, a new draft plan to manage the region’s river basins has revealed.
The draft third-cycle River Basin Management Plan published today (April 19) explained the status of the region’s water bodies has remained virtually unchanged since the last plan was published in 2015.
The management plan covers
all of the region’s water bodies, including rivers, lakes, coastal and groundwater, and will cover a six-year period from the start of 2022 to the end of 2027.
Farmers are to be offered grants to plant trees along rivers and watercourses to act as a ‘carbon sink’, under plans to be drawn up by Government.
The Green Party idea was approved in principle at a Cabinet sub-committee meeting at the end of last week, and is also focused on preventing pollutant fertilisers entering river and streams.
No precise figures on the size of the grants have been discussed, but it could run into the thousands of euro for a number of trees that a farmer might plant as a new cash crop.
Most farmers rely on artificial fertilisers and pesticides to drive productivity, said junior agriculture minister Pippa Hackett of the Greens.
December 15, 2020 9:54 am
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published the Water Quality Indicators Report 2019 which provides an assessment on Ireland’s surface water and groundwater quality.
Published today (Tuesday, December 15), the report highlights that the main threat to water quality is the presence of too much nutrients, such as phosphorus and nitrogen, which come primarily from agriculture and waste water.
Over one third of rivers, and a quarter of lakes are failing to meet their environmental quality standards for nutrients.
Over one fifth of our groundwater, estuarine and coastal water bodies have high nitrogen concentrations, the document says.
Just over half of rivers and lakes are in high or good biological quality. The rivers surveyed in 2019 have shown more improvements than declines overall, which is welcome; however, further action is needed to return waters to a satisfactory condition, the report says.
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