The influence of farming styles on the management of the Iveragh uplands, southwest Ireland

The links between farming practices and biodiversity is well established. This paper develops a farm typology based on eighty hill sheep farmers on the biodiversity rich uplands of the Iveragh peninsula, SW Ireland. Despite outward appearances considerable diversity was found to exist within their livelihood strategies and farming styles. Using a combination of a detailed farm management survey and grazing state evaluation, the farms were classified into four distinct types – environmental stewards, support optimisers, traditionalists and production maximisers. Our results suggest that knowledge of the different farming styles is critical for more effective biodiversity conservation and for the design of more targeted agricultural and agri-environment policies. We suggest the need to move away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach, which on the Iveragh currently rewards the most overgrazed farms with the highest agri-environment payments.

► Considerable diversity exists within livelihood strategies and farming styles on farms within the same geographical area and under similar production conditions.
► The construction of farm typologies is an important step towards a more targeted approach to agri-environment and rural development policies.
► Upland biodiversity is critically linked with the maintenance of high nature value (HNV) farming systems.
► Labour is a decisive factor in land use management in marginal upland areas.
► There is a trend towards lowland intensification and upland marginalisation on the Iveragh uplands of SW Ireland.
► Upland grazing controls should be locally specific and a habitat specific stocking rate is more useful than applying blanket average stocking densities.