Assessment of semi-natural habitats and landscape features on Irish farmland: New insights to inform EU Common Agricultural Policy implementation.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Rotches-Ribalta R
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7782645 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Agricultural intensification and associated loss of high-quality habitats are key drivers of insect pollinator declines. With the aim of decreasing the environmental impact of agriculture, the 2014 EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) defined a set of habitat and landscape features (Ecological Focus Areas: EFAs) farmers could select from as a requirement to receive basic farm payments. To inform the post-2020 CAP, we performed a European-scale evaluation to determine how different EFA options vary in their potential to support insect pollinators under standard and pollinator-friendly management, as well as the extent of farmer uptake.A structured Delphi elicitation process engaged 22 experts from 18 European countries to evaluate EFAs options. By considering life cycle requirements of key pollinating taxa (i.e. bumble bees, solitary bees and hoverflies), each option was evaluated for its potential to provide forage, bee nesting sites and hoverfly larval resources.EFA options varied substantially in the resources they were perceived to provide and their effectiveness varied geographically and temporally. For example, field margins provide relatively good forage throughout the season in Southern and Eastern Europe but lacked early-season forage in Northern and Western Europe. Under standard management, no single EFA option achieved high scores across resource categories and a scarcity of late season forage was perceived.Experts identified substantial opportunities to improve habitat quality by adopting pollinator-friendly management. Improving management alone was, however, unlikely to ensure that all pollinator resource requirements were met. Our analyses suggest that a combination of poor management, differences in the inherent pollinator habitat quality and uptake bias towards catch crops and nitrogen-fixing crops severely limit the potential of EFAs to support pollinators in European agricultural landscapes. Policy Implications. To conserve pollinators and help protect pollination services, our expert elicitation highlights the need to create a variety of interconnected, well-managed habitats that complement each other in the resources they offer. To achieve this the Common Agricultural Policy post-2020 should take a holistic view to implementation that integrates the different delivery vehicles aimed at protecting biodiversity (e.g. enhanced conditionality, eco-schemes and agri-environment and climate measures). To improve habitat quality we recommend an effective monitoring framework with target-orientated indicators and to facilitate the spatial targeting of options collaboration between land managers should be incentivised.
| S-EPMC7188321 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Unhealthy foods and tobacco remain the leading causes of non-communicable disease (NCDs). These are key agricultural commodities for many countries, and NCD prevention policy needs to consider how to influence production towards healthier options. There has been little scholarship to bridge the agriculture with the public health literature that seeks to address the supply of healthy commodities. This scoping review synthesizes the literature on government agricultural policy and production in order to 1) present a typology of policies used to influence agricultural production, 2) to provide a preliminary overview of the ways that impact is assessed in this literature, and 3) to bring this literature into conversation with the literature on food and tobacco supply.This review analyzes the literature on government agricultural policy and production. Articles written in English and published between January 1997 and April 2018 (20-year range) were included. Only quantitative evaluations were included. Studies that collected qualitative data to supplement the quantitative analysis were also included. One hundred and three articles were included for data extraction. The following information was extracted: article details (e.g., author, title, journal), policy details (e.g., policy tools, goals, context), methods used to evaluate the policy (e.g., outcomes evaluated, sample size, limitations), and study findings. Fifty four studies examined the impact of policy on agricultural production. The remaining articles assessed land allocation (n?=?25) (e.g., crop diversification, acreage expansion), efficiency (n?=?23), rates of employment including on- and off-farm employment (n?=?18), and farm income (n?=?17) among others. Input supports, output supports and technical support had an impact on production, income and other outcomes. Although there were important exceptions, largely attributed to farm level allocation of labour or resources. Financial supports were most commonly evaluated including cash subsidies, credit, and tax benefits. This type of support resulted in an equal number of studies reporting increased production as those with no effects.This review provides initial extrapolative insights from the general literature on the impact of government policies on agricultural production. This review can inform dialogue between the health and agricultural sector and evaluative research on policy for alternatives to tobacco production and unhealthy food supply.
| S-EPMC6971899 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Making agriculture sustainable is a global challenge. In the European Union (EU), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is failing with respect to biodiversity, climate, soil, land degradation as well as socio-economic challenges.The European Commission's proposal for a CAP post-2020 provides a scope for enhanced sustainability. However, it also allows Member States to choose low-ambition implementation pathways. It therefore remains essential to address citizens' demands for sustainable agriculture and rectify systemic weaknesses in the CAP, using the full breadth of available scientific evidence and knowledge.Concerned about current attempts to dilute the environmental ambition of the future CAP, and the lack of concrete proposals for improving the CAP in the draft of the European Green Deal, we call on the European Parliament, Council and Commission to adopt 10 urgent action points for delivering sustainable food production, biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation.Knowledge is available to help moving towards evidence-based, sustainable European agriculture that can benefit people, nature and their joint futures.The statements made in this article have the broad support of the scientific community, as expressed by above 3,600 signatories to the preprint version of this manuscript. The list can be found here (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3685632).
| S-EPMC7334041 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Agricultural farmland samples Raw sequence reads
| PRJNA700129 | ENA
Project description:1. Bats are important components of agricultural ecosystems. However, little is known about the extent to which bats use linear features when foraging and commuting in agricultural settings, when compared to the interior of fields. 2. As part of a large-scale citizen science project, bat detectors were placed in the centre of agricultural fields (arable and pasture) and along linear features (intensively managed hedgerows, sympathetically managed hedgerows and treelines). 3. Our results show that all 10 of the bat species groups identified were found both along linear features and in the middle of agricultural fields. Of the five species groups analysed further, all had significantly more bat activity along linear features compared to the middle of fields, except for Nyctalus noctula. However, our results showed that 29% of calls from Rhinolophus ferrumequinum were recorded in the middle of agricultural fields, compared to only 10% for Pipistrellus pipistrellus. Bat activity was more likely to be associated with treelines compared to other linear feature types. 4. Our results highlight the importance of linear feature management to bat conservation, but also the need to consider field centres during survey design and Environmental Impact Assessments.
| S-EPMC7650766 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Understanding how anthropogenic landscape alteration affects populations of ecologically- and economically-important insect pollinators has never been more pressing. In this context, the assessment of landscape quality typically relies on spatial distribution studies, but, whether habitat-restoration techniques actually improve the health of targeted pollinator populations remains obscure. This gap could be filled by a comprehensive understanding of how gradients of landscape quality influence pollinator physiology. We therefore used this approach for honey bees (Apis mellifera) to test whether landscape patterns can shape bee health. We focused on the pre-wintering period since abnormally high winter colony losses have often been observed. By exposing colonies to different landscapes, enriched in melliferous catch crops and surrounded by semi-natural habitats, we found that bee physiology (i.e. fat body mass and level of vitellogenin) was significantly improved by the presence of flowering catch crops. Catch crop presence was associated with a significant increase in pollen diet diversity. The influence of semi-natural habitats on bee health was even stronger. Vitellogenin level was in turn significantly linked to higher overwintering survival. Therefore, our experimental study, combining landscape ecology and bee physiology, offers an exciting proof-of-concept for directly identifying stressful or suitable landscapes and promoting efficient pollinator conservation.
| S-EPMC5234012 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSyphilis is a major public health problem in many regions of China, with increases in congenital syphilis (CS) cases causing concern. The Chinese Ministry of Health recently announced a comprehensive 10-y national syphilis control plan focusing on averting CS. The decision analytic model presented here quantifies the impact of the planned strategies to determine whether they are likely to meet the goals laid out in the control plan.Methods and findingsOur model incorporated data on age-stratified fertility, female adult syphilis cases, and empirical syphilis transmission rates to estimate the number of CS cases associated with prenatal syphilis infection on a yearly basis. Guangdong Province was the focus of this analysis because of the availability of high-quality demographic and public health data. Each model outcome was simulated 1,000 times to incorporate uncertainty in model inputs. The model was validated using data from a CS intervention program among 477,656 women in China. Sensitivity analyses were performed to identify which variables are likely to be most influential in achieving Chinese and international policy goals. Increasing prenatal screening coverage was the single most effective strategy for reducing CS cases. An incremental increase in prenatal screening from the base case of 57% coverage to 95% coverage was associated with 106 (95% CI: 101, 111) CS cases averted per 100,000 live births (58% decrease). The policy strategies laid out in the national plan led to an outcome that fell short of the target, while a four-pronged comprehensive syphilis control strategy consisting of increased prenatal screening coverage, increased treatment completion, earlier prenatal screening, and improved syphilis test characteristics was associated with 157 (95% CI: 154, 160) CS cases averted per 100,000 live births (85% decrease).ConclusionsThe Chinese national plan provides a strong foundation for syphilis control, but more comprehensive measures that include earlier and more extensive screening are necessary for reaching policy goals.
| S-EPMC3551934 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Compensation payments to farmers for the provision of agri-environmental services are a well-established policy scheme under the EU Common Agricultural Policy. However, in spite of the success in most EU countries in the uptake of the programme by farmers, the impact of the scheme on the long term commitment of farmers to change their practices remains poorly documented. To explore this issue, this paper presents the results of structured field interviews and a quantitative survey in the Walloon Region of Belgium. The main finding of this study is that farmers who have periodic contacts with network bridging organisations that foster cooperation and social learning in the agri-environmental landscapes show a higher commitment to change. This effect is observed both for farmers with high and low concern for biodiversity depletion. Support for network bridging organisations is foreseen under the EU Leader programme and the EU regulation 1306/2013, which could open-up interesting opportunities for enhancing the effectiveness of the current payment scheme for agri-environmental services.
| S-EPMC5268349 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The dispersal of propagules, such as fungal spores or seeds by actively moving animals, connects and shapes communities. The dispersal of plant pathogens by arthropods might be a crucial mechanism in the spread of several crop diseases. Ground-dwelling arthropods are potential linkers between fungal communities in semi-natural and agricultural habitats by transporting propagules of Fusarium fungi. We compared the Fusarium communities on the body surface of ground-dwelling arthropods with litter in semi-natural and soil in agricultural habitats with a focus on the Fusarium community. We found three relatively distinct Fusarium communities with moderate overlap. We detected a higher richness of Fusarium species on the body surface of arthropods compared to litter and soil communities. The results suggest that the Fusarium community on the body surface of arthropods relates to the composition observed in litter and soil with limited filtering mechanisms between communities. Ground-dwelling arthropods are relevant agents for the distribution of Fusarium and therefore link fungal communities in adjacent habitats.
| S-EPMC8879785 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Information on the biology and ecology of Beauveria bassiana in different habitats could provide essential knowledge in their development as biocontrol agents of insect pests. In this study, phylogenetic and genotypic information was used to evaluate the genetic diversity of B. bassiana within semi natural and agricultural habitats in Karnataka State of South India and assessed their extracellular chitinase activity and pathogenicity against cowpea aphid, Aphis craccivora. Multilocus phylogeny and microsatellite genotyping of B. bassiana conjointly resolved three phylogenetic species, Bb_1, Bb_2, and Bb_3, in semi natural and agricultural habitats. None of the three phylogenetic species of B. bassiana were associated with crop plants in agroecosystem or insect hosts in semi natural habitat. All the three phylogenetic species were detected with four genotypes each. All isolates of B. bassiana were pathogenic to A. craccivora in greenhouse bioassays. Isolate GKVK 01_13 caused a significantly high mortality of aphids and detected with an increased level of chitinase activity. The study results suggest that application of indigenous virulent strain of B. bassiana could provide effective control of native insect pest A. craccivora.
| S-EPMC6863276 | biostudies-literature