valuing farmland biodiversity
BUSINESS
Sometimes money
does grow on trees...
Land-based Agrifood businesses
generate their value from the health
of their environments or agroecosystems.
Valuing-in farmland biodiversity can
help protect businesses while opening
up new market opportunities rewarding
sustainable products and societal goods.
biodiversity benefits business.
farmland biodiversity brings benefits...
Fighting
Olive grove
Desertification
Cristóbal Reina,
Framework Farmer Cluster Spain,
Sociedad de Cazadores President
Things have changed since my father's time! Today, we see thousands of hectares becoming desert, the seed bank
and soil health is gone.
Reintroducing vegetation to olive groves that was previously viewed only as competition for the olives helps conserve water, prevent erosion and support sustainable farming into the future.
As well as a farmer, I'm president of the regional hunting association and it brings us great sadness as we watch our countryside empty out! Plant biodiversity increases other biodiversity, providing habitat and food for bird life as well as important game species.
Farmers of my generation are having difficult conversations together and trying to find ways for life to flourish in the future...
biodiversity benefits people.
PEOPLE
We don't live
in a vacuum...
People and profit rely on
valuing environmental health.
But the benefits don't stop there!
Whether it's farmers or local people,
when we value farmland biodiversity
better it unlocks a whole range of improvements in peoples' lives...
Fighting
blame culture
in agriculture
Farming today is changing, I grew up on my family farm and I know how farmers feel when people don't value their work.
Communities are ready to work with farmers and farm businesses of all types to carry out volunteer biodiversity monitoring and much more. Farming is a tough job with a focus on the bottom line and sometimes we ignore bad mental health.
Communities and farmers working together and connecting as locals helps bring farmers in from the cold, while offering the community a peak behind the curtain at productive agrifood businesses and the nature surrounding them.
Too many farmers today associate public and community perceptions of agriculture with morale-leaching negativity. But working with Farmer Clusters has shown me communities and the public can be very supportive!
Jess Brooks,
Farmer & Farmer Cluster Advisor,
The Game & Wildlife Trust, UK
SOCIETY
We're looking
at a different future...
Our agrifood system is considering
how to deliver food security sustainably,
raising important questions for the
future of land-based agriculture.
Historic divisions between approaches are blurring as markets,
regulators and individuals look to transition...
biodiversity benefits society.
