Arable Stewardship Scheme
Arable Stewardship was a Defra pilot scheme which offered payments to arable farmers to manage their land in ways which encourage wildlife. The two pilot areas were East Anglia and the West Midlands. The Scheme was open from 1998 to 2000 and is now closed to new applications.
Changes in arable farming over the last few decades have contributed to a loss of wildlife habitats and the decline in the population of a number of species of birds, insects, mammals and plants. Defra wants to help farmers recreate and enhance wildlife habitats in arable areas. Arable Stewardship was set up to test whether certain arable farming methods could help to do this. The scheme was designed to achieve these benefits whilst recognising the practicalities of commercial arable farming.
The pilot was run as part of Countryside Stewardship which is a Defra grant scheme offering payments to farmers for conservation of the English countryside. New arable stewardship options![[Click to download Adobe Acrobat Reader]](/graphics/buttons/pdf.gif){kind=small}
are now available under the Countryside Stewardship Scheme.
Information about the scheme is available here in Portable Document Format. To read them you will require a copy of the "Acrobat Reader" software. Click here to download a copy.
Arable Stewardship: Year Five Evaluation of the effects of the Pilot Stewardship Scheme on Winter Birds and Breeding Birds[670KB]- Impact of the pilot scheme on
the brown hare and grey partridge after five years[77KB]
- Summary of options and payments
- Area map for West Midlands pilot area
- Area map for East Anglia pilot area
- Arable Stewardship forms
- Ecological Evaluation Report
- Technical Annex I - Higher Plants
- Technical Annex II - Bumble Bees
- Technical Annex III - True Bugs
- Techinical Annex IV - Ground Beetles
- Technical Annex V - Sawflies
- Technical Annex VI - Birds (Breeding Birds, Wintering Birds and Grey Partridges)
- Technical Annex VII - Brown Hares
- Technical Annex VII - Models To Predict Species Distributions At A Landscape Scale
In The East Anglia Arable Stewardship Pilot Area
- See also Forms and regulations
Page last modified:
19 May, 2005
Page published: 10 December, 2002