Arable land is defined as all land on which crops are grown along with bare fallow land. The UK total for this type of land is estimated at 4,565,500 ha. The South West total is about 446,670 ha or 10% of the UK total area. Within the region, 67% is used for growing cereals such as barley and wheat, 14% for fodder crops (ie food, such as maize, for feeding livestock) and 2% under horticulture (eg tomatoes).

In recent decades, farmers have tended to specialise more on grassland production with the proportion of arable declining in many counties within the region, except perhaps in Wiltshire. Alongside this, farming has become much more intensive with increasing amounts of pesticides and fertilisers being used on the land to produce greater quantities of food. However, the region has in places retained a tradition of less intensive mixed farming, where the crop production exists side by side with grasslands for livestock.

Practices thought to be beneficial to wildlife, such as spring sowing of cereals, are more common in the South West than elsewhere in England. In such areas arable land supports important populations of animals and plants, several of which occur nowhere else in the UK, with one plant species, purple ramping fumitory, found nowhere else in the world.

Increasing intensification and specialisation of arable production has led to declines in a number of farmland species in the South West as well as elsewhere in the UK.

The following are examples of species that depend on arable farmland, some of which are of conservation concern:

Problems

There is much evidence of massive declines in plant species indicative of biodiversity-rich arable communities and of widespread declines in populations of farmland birds.

The key cause of these declines many conservationists attribute to the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which subsidises farmers across Europe to produce food. These payments support and encourage intensive and more specialised farming practices often at the expense of biodiversity.

Essentially there are two key areas of concern:

The use of chemicals, ie pesticides and fertilisers, reduce the diversity of life on arable land to allow the production of one or two crops

The switch from spring-sown to autumn-sown cereals, is more subtle in its effect, but this may prove to be the key reason for the dramatic declines in our farmland birds. Put simply, sowing crops in autumn does not allow land to be left fallow over winter. These winter stubbles, packed with seeds left over from the crop and produced abundantly by arable weeds, were vital feeding grounds for birds such as linnets, corn buntings and the, now-scarce, cirl bunting.

 

While payments are available for work that encourages wildlife, these are a fraction what is paid to support the production and often overproduction of food. Schemes that were designed to reduce the problems of overproduction of food ie `set aside’, where farmers are paid not to use land, have been very beneficial to wildlife.

Beyond set aside, farmers in some key areas have been able to receive payments under the Countryside Stewardship scheme to include wildlife in their farm planning. Examples are the cirl bunting Countryside Stewardship agreements in south Devon, arable weed Countryside Stewardship agreements on National Trust land at West Pentire. However, in many areas incentive schemes have offered little for arable conservation.

Restore 1,500ha by 2010.