What Do Five Years of Farmer Clusters Reveal About Landscape-Scale Biodiversity?

Project releases policy brief demonstrating that coordinated, landscape-scale action delivers measurable ecological benefits whilst strengthening rural communities across Europe

FRAMEwork has published a policy brief documenting five years of evidence from eleven Farmer Clusters across nine European countries. The research demonstrates that coordinated, landscape-scale action delivers measurable ecological benefits whilst strengthening rural communities. Farmer Clusters represent an innovative approach to landscape-scale biodiversity management. By bringing neighbouring farmers together as a collective force, these groups coordinate conservation efforts across fragmented land holdings. Farmland biodiversity faces mounting pressure from land consolidation, intensive production and climate change. Individual farm actions, whilst valuable, cannot achieve the landscape-scale results necessary for ecosystem recovery and resilience.

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Critical Success Factors for Meaningful Recovery

Eleven Farmer Clusters introduced practical landscape-level changes such as cover cropping, wildflower margins, nest boxes for birds and bats, complementary biodiversity monitoring and hedgerow restoration. Rigorous ecological analysis revealed that coordinated management delivers valuable insights for shaping biodiversity strategies suited to regional conditions and local farming systems. Recovery demands time, continuity and skilled facilitation. Facilitators must be funded and supported over multi-year periods to build trust and coordinate complex landscape-level activities across multiple farms.

Farmers need tailored advice, training and monitoring tools, supported by open-access platforms enabling knowledge exchange and collaborative learning. Incentive schemes should reward voluntary, group-based actions, recognising farmer expertise and autonomy. Flexible, result-oriented payments should integrate into national and EU schemes, enabling implementation of measures such as biodiversity corridors and agroforestry systems at scale.

Embedding Clusters into Agricultural Policy

To realise lasting impact, policies must embed facilitation as a core element of agri-environmental programmes. Policies should simplify approval processes for collective actions and facilitate co-design of biodiversity strategies suited to local conditions and farmer circumstances. Public engagement matters equally, with citizen science events and outreach campaigns raising awareness and fostering stronger connections between rural and urban communities.

The Farmer Cluster model offers a practical, scalable pathway to meet Nature Restoration Regulation objectives and support the Common Agricultural Policy 2023-2027. The brief was specifically prepared for policy makers at national and European Commission levels, with findings formally submitted to key policy makers in each country and disseminated at both national and European policy forums.

Access this policy brief at https://zenodo.org/records/17898860. Explore all project publications at https://www.framework-biodiversity.eu/publications.