How Europe's agriculture can boost biodiversity, European Environment Agency
Release Date: 2010-06-30
Intensive farming has long been a major cause of biodiversity decline in Europe. The European Environment Agency's (EEA) new short assessment examines Europe's efforts to strike a balance between producing sufficient food and maintaining agro-ecosystems that are rich in biodiversity above and below ground.Europe's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) plays a key role in halting biodiversity loss by preventing land abandonment and intensification, while accommodating the wider socio-economic and climatic trends that affect Europe's rural areas. Seventh in the series of '10 messages for 2010', the EEA's new assessment on agricultural ecosystems recommends that policy promote creating and maintaining more diverse agricultural landscapes. After all, healthy agro-ecosystems are a necessity for high and sustained productivity.
Until the latest reforms, the CAP's primary focus was on the quantity of food produced. This accelerated the spread of intensive farming practices in more productive land and the abandonment of the less productive areas. Both of these trends have adversely affected biodiversity and have not yet been reversed despite the introduction of agri-environment measures.
Although intensively farmed land supports a certain level of biodiversity, it generally lacks significant areas of 'High Nature Value', which are essential for preserving biodiversity. Europe's more traditional, low-intensity farming systems with high nature value are gradually disappearing. Even when abandoned, agricultural land is often replaced by less diverse vegetation or forest.
| Type: | NORMAL |
| Company: | European Environment Agency |
| Country: | Denmark |