Research - Alternative business models - wetter farming and land management on and around protected lowland raised bogs

Alternative business models - wetter farming and land management on and around protected lowland raised bogs

Abstract

The principal aim of this project is to provide a number of farm-by-farm (or land holdings) economic assessments of how land management that favours the restoration of lowland raised bogs and functionally linked land (likely involving a period of ecohydrological restoration - SSSIs), could be undertaken in an economically viable way, using any available means of funding and income generation.

Description

This project will focus on lowland pastoral farming systems in Cumbria that are to some extent reliant on land containing peaty soils at the edges of protected (SSSI) lowland raised bogs (land parcels that would have historically been part of the ecohydrological unit of a peat bog). It will establish an understanding of existing farm business economics, then consider commercially and socially viable alternate business models that also enable the peatland to be restored to bog and lagg fen (or a wetter alternative to the existing management) by rewetting measures (ditch blocking, cell bunding etc).