Results-Based Approach
The FarmPEAT Project is a results-based agri-environmental programme. This means that payments to participating farmers are linked to habitat and environmental quality (the result). Farms with higher nature quality will receive a higher payment than a farm with a lower nature quality.
How Do I Apply?
Are you farming in one of our project areas and interested in joining FarmPEAT to get paid for biodiversity on your land?
FarmPEAT Programme
The FarmPEAT Programme is a locally-led, innovative, results-based pilot programme for farmers who manage lands that surround some of Ireland's finest remaining raised bogs in the midlands of Ireland. Working with local farmers, the project will design and trial a scheme especially adapted to the local landscape that will incentivise the delivery of enhanced environmental outcomes.
The programme will reward farmers for improved management of habitats on peat soils along with other important landscape features such as eskers, field boundaries and watercourses. The programme will be results-based whereby farmers will get paid depending on the scores they achieve, with higher scores, indicating higher environmental quality, getting higher payments.
It is hoped that this programme will form a basis for future agri-environmental schemes in these areas. As such it presents an opportunity for farmers to be involved in developing policy that could provide long term environmental and economic benefits to their communities into the future.
The FarmPEAT Project is funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The programme is being run by the Project Team which is based in Moate, Co. Westmeath.
If you wish to keep up to date with the progress of the FarmPEAT Project please contact us.
Project Information
On joining the programme, a participating farm is scored (using our scoring system) and the farmer gets paid a corresponding payment based on that score. The following year, if the score increases (indicating that the habitat and environmental quality has increased), then a higher payment is issued.
If, following the scoring of the farm, a farmer wishes to undertake measures to improve the farm score, the FarmPEAT Project Team will be on hand to advise and provide guidance on appropriate measures that will help improve the score. In addition, the Project Team will offer financial assistance to complete these actions in the form of a Supporting Actions Payment.
FarmPEAT Programme Terms and Conditions 2024
Supporting Actions Specification
Supporting actions are voluntary measures that a farmer may choose to undertake with the aim of improving their habitat quality or whole-farm score. This document sets out the typical supporting actions that are available to farmers within the Programme. The rate of funding varies from 25% to 100% depending on the environmental benefit of the action.
Each participant is provided with an annual works plan which details the proposed supporting actions to be completed during the following year.
Payments are linked to the nature quality of your farm. Higher Nature Quality = Higher Payment Level. Each plot (Field) is scored out of 10 using a scorecard that captures high and low quality which reflect past and current management.
Scorecards
Woodland Scorecard
Boundary Scorecard
Whole Farm Scorecard
Peatland Scorecard
Wet Grassland Scorecard
Dry Grassland Scorecard
The FarmPEAT Project is an EIP (European Innovation Partnership) Locally Led Scheme being administered by Nature Based Agri Solutions Ltd. The Project is funded by the Dept. of Agriculture, Food and the Marine as part of Ireland's Rural Development Programme 2014-2020.