"A biodiversity target can be achieved with every single area"

Jolanda Krummenacher is an environmental and agricultural scientist at ETH and has worked at Agrofutura AG for 16 years. She advises farmers on how to promote biodiversity on their farms. Together with FiBL and Agridea, she launched the biodiversity consulting course - the first training course for biodiversity consulting specialists in agriculture.

Every year, over CHF 400 million is spent in Switzerland on promoting agricultural biodiversity. The agricultural policy milestones for biodiversity contributions have been fully met or exceeded. In addition, 19 percent of agricultural land is now designated as biodiversity promotion areas (BPA). But has biodiversity in cultivated land been preserved as a result?

Diversity of habitats

The Red List of endangered habitats in Switzerland shows that 43 percent of meadow and pasture types and 64 percent of habitat types in agricultural crops are threatened. This means that around half of the habitat types in cultivated land are still endangered.

Diversity of species

Most endangered plant species grow in rare habitats such as bodies of water, bogs and dry meadows or used to occur in fields and vineyards that no longer provide them with a habitat. Their endangerment situation has deteriorated further in recent years. In contrast, plant and animal species that thrive in habitats that are common today have become more numerous. These include ryegrass, white clover, rooks and red kites.

It is the rare habitats that are home to many species -- the habitats that are common today tend to be species-poor. Overall biodiversity is, therefore, continuing to decline. As plant species disappear, animal species that need these plants also disappear. In Switzerland, 60 percent of insect species are endangered, especially in agricultural areas. As a result, many animals are losing their food source. The population of insectivorous birds in farmland has fallen by 60 percent in 30 years.

Genetic diversity

To prevent species from dying out, they must have sufficient genetic diversity, which can only be ensured in sufficiently large populations. Small habitats lead to small populations and thus increase the risk of species extinction, even with optimal management. Many plant species on the Red List are endangered for precisely this reason.

Many BPAs, decreasing biodiversity – why?

We have a relatively large proportion of BPAs today. Unfortunately, however, they are often in the wrong place, have little habitat or species diversity or are insufficiently interconnected, which means that many populations are too small.

Effectively promoting biodiversity

In order to preserve and promote biodiversity, it is important to increase habitat diversity in the regions and species richness on the land. Rare habitats and species must also be promoted in a targeted manner. The habitats must be large enough or well-connected. The OPAL report (OPAL = Operationalisation of the Agriculture-Related Environmental Objectives for ‘Species and Habitats’) prepared by Agroscope in 2013 on behalf of the federal government provides guidance on this. It defines scientifically sound objectives whose implementation is crucial for the conservation and promotion of biodiversity in agriculture - and which are far from being achieved today.

Biodiversity advice today is mostly of an administrative nature. With regard to land management, often only the requirements of the Ordinance on Direct Payments (ODP) are explained without defining objectives. However, it would be possible to effectively promote biodiversity in the existing agricultural policy system with biodiversity advice for the whole farm. This would require a specialist biodiversity advisor to look at all areas of the farm and be able to provide area-specific tips for promoting biodiversity. A biodiversity target can be set for each individual area with the appropriate management measures. In addition to sound agronomic and ecological knowledge, the advisor must take into account the scientific objectives of the OPAL report and have a high level of social competence to support and motivate the farms to achieve these objectives as well as possible. This approach demonstrably increases the quality and quantity of the BPAs and improves the impact of the biodiversity contributions.