Food production and farming practices can have both positive and negative impacts on biodiversity. The interactions between farming and biodiversity therefore play a critical role for the resilience of food production and sustainable resource management. This can be the case through supporting the pollination of crops and the control of pests and diseases, contributing to productive soils, nutrient and carbon cycles, and water quality, as well as improving the resilience of farming systems to climate change by helping to mitigate the effects of droughts and floods. However, biodiversity continues to decline, particularly on farmland.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the main source of funding to support the management and restoration of biodiversity in rural areas, and the CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs) are an important vehicle for achieving the requirements of the recently agreed Nature Restoration Law in Member States (legally binding requirement to restore at least 20% of the EU’s land by 2030 and all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050). However, although incentives have been in place for farmers to improve biodiversity on farmland for many decades, this has not been sufficient to achieve the scale of improvements required.

The second TG meeting was built on the priority topics discussed during the informal activities in October. Participants developed concrete recommendations on how to improve the design of CSP interventions and encourage their uptake to achieve improved biodiversity outcomes at scale

Aims of the second TG meeting: