A New Approach to Farm Biodiversity Assessment

Abstract

A reduction in biodiversity due to farming operations has been broadly reported. As a solution, policy makers in the European Union have introduced several programs in recent years to enhance biodiversity on farms but these have met with only limited success. One of the main reasons for this lack of success is that the experience, knowledge and attitudes of farmers are not taken into account when biodiversity conservation programs are formulated. Farmers’ opinions must be taken into consideration in the creation of future programs, which should also include an assessment by the farmers of the value of the nature of their farms. In this study, farmers were asked to express their opinion on the attractiveness of their farm in relation to pollinators, game, birds, amphibians, reptiles, rodents and non-crop (wild) plants. Data were then analysed using a novel method in which each farm was assigned to one of four categories. High nature-value farms contained more natural features in the landscape, such as individual trees or ponds. Socio-economic factors, such as gender, also influenced the farm assessments; female farmers were more critical compared to their male counterparts. The establishment of field margins or watercourse by the farmers significantly increased the possibility that the farm would be classified as attractive.

Towards Sustainable Agriculture: A Critical Analysis of Agrobiodiversity Assessment Methods and Recommendations for Effective Implementation

“…Suppose that it is not possible to identify theoretical recommended values. In that case, the lower and upper thresholds can be defined according to the minimums and maximums (min-max) of a set of agents, such as countries, regions, projects, or farms, among others [7,30,31,35,36]. This method does not consider the discrepancy between the actual value of an indicator and the desired value.…”

“…Switek, Sawinska, and Głowicka-Wołoszyn [30] used the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and the generalized distance measure (GDM) to assess farm biodiversity according to the farmer's perspective. The elaboration of the synthetic indicator using the TOPSIS method requires the calculation of the distance of each object (farm) from the adopted best and worst condition, obtained through the GDM.…”

“…According to the index values, the farms were classified into four classes, namely, green farms (high nature value), yellow farms (medium-to-high nature value), grey farms (medium-to-low nature value), and black farms (low nature value). This classification permitted the use of the generalized logit model of ordered categories to identify the socioeconomic characteristics associated with a higher assessment of the natural attractiveness of farms, such as the gender and age of the farmer, and the size of the farm [30]. The study of Switek, Sawinska, and Głowicka-Wołoszyn [30] also included farmers' opinions about the natural value of their farms, specifically regarding the importance of pollinators, the conditionings of game species, and the implications of the species richness of bird, amphibian, reptile, and rodent populations, as well as the species richness of non-crop (wild) plants.…”

“…1) are not strictly related to agrobiodiversity assessment. The study performed by Switek, Sawinska, and Głowicka-Wołoszyn [30] identified socio-economic factors, such as gender and age of the farmer, and the size of the farm, which are associated with higher scores in terms of the natural attractiveness of farms. Additionally, the agrobiodiversity index proposed by Henke and Vaquero-Piñeiro [31] can be used to evaluate farmers' involvement in activities that enhance biodiversity and verify if one mechanism, captured by a specific dimension of the index, is more relevant than others.…”

Evaluación de sustentabilidad de una finca productiva del Chaco Húmedo, Paraguay: experiencia metodológica

“…Sin embargo, se han verificado falencias en la gestión de la biodiversidad. Esta podría ser potenciada mediante un enfoque colaborativo y estratégico que otorgue al productor los medios suficientes para entender y evaluar la biodiversidad (Laino et al, 2017;Gabel et al, 2018;Switek et al, 2019).…”