A fine guide to farming and nature

ON a recent visit to the west I was given a copy of a remarkable book called The Living Farmland — A Guide To Farming With Nature In Clare.

It’s a book that will be interesting and useful to a wide range of people, but its principal aim is to help farmers conserve the natural and built heritage of the countryside and minimise the environmental impact of their activities.

Because most of our countryside is owned by farmers this is obviously a very worthy aim. But it does sounds as though it might be rather boring, particularly in a book that runs to 228 large format pages. The book avoids this by being extremely well written — by somebody called Keville & O Sullivan Associates Ltd, plus a long list of contributing experts. It’s also beautifully illustrated with colour photographs and superbly designed by the Optic Nerve Design Group in Limerick. The design is important because there’s a mass of information, and the clever use of colour coding and cross referencing makes it relatively easy to access. I’ve already found myself using some of the appendices for reference. Nowhere have I come across things like the Irish species protected by EU Directives or waste legislation set out more clearly.

The main text is divided into three sections. The first is an introduction to Co Clare, including a fascinating essay on historic and prehistoric land use in the county. Much of this is, of course, relevant to the rest of the country as well.

If you sometimes mix up a rath and a crannog this can be quickly cured by consulting the section where all the major types of archaeological monument in the country are illustrated and described simply and clearly. There’s also information on what period of history or prehistory they belong to and what to do if you happen to have one on your land.

Section two is called ‘Farming the Living Farmland’, and includes chapters on waste management and protecting water quality. You’re not quite sure what Cross Compliance is? You’ll find the answer here, along with a straightforward guide to changing over to organic food production with an evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.

There’s also an excellent section on the opportunities for farmers offered by bio-fuels and other forms of renewable energy.

The third section is called ‘Enhancing the Living Farmland’ and focuses on nature conservation, wildlife corridors and the management of a wide variety of different habitats. The text is broken up into digestible form by real life farmer profiles, little documentaries that introduce us in words and pictures to a farm family, their farm and the wild creatures that live on it.

The book manages to be an excellent natural history guide with illustrated profiles of many key species of plant, animal and bird. The standard of the photographs is consistently high.

This is probably not a book that you will read from cover to cover, but will keep coming back to. As it states early on: ‘Farmers and nature have lived closely with each other for a very long time. There is a great deal of pride in how the land has been taken care of and passed down through the generations. As the signposts point to a future of farming in greater harmony with nature, much can be learned from the farmers of Clare.’ The book is published by Clare County Council and Rural Resource Development Ltd in Shannon in association with Clare IFA and Teagascm with a remarkable recommended retail price of €5. Well done to all concerned, I say. See: www.rrd.ie.

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