Environment-friendly farming

The environmental "Green Network" is a voluntary, regional collaboration working towards sustainability, involving authorities, private companies and farmers. The network has developed a large number of tools for creating an overview of environmental and natural conditions at individual farms, in order to implement environmental control with a view to achieving ongoing improvements, as well as the protection and improvement of the nature in and around the farm. The nature conservation and environmental work at individual farms is described and documented in the 'farming environmental statement report' which is approved individually by the network and involves biannual renewal of the report. The report includes a requirement that the farmer outlines whether the goals for the preceding period have been met.

In order to develop, adapt and improve the tools and concept of the 'farming environmental statement report', a new development project has been carried out over the past three years. It has involved selected farmers, the local agricultural society and the environmental authority.

The result of the development project is a simple environmental control tool which will quickly show where more active efforts for the protection, conservation work and re-establishment of nature can be made on the farmer's property. In addition, the information gathered can be reused for the environmental casework which the authority has to undertake. The 'environment statement report' also fulfils the legislative requirement of 'green accounts' for certain farms. The report itself provides the farmer with an overview of the farm's consumption of resources in relation to yield. The report also provides an overview of the property's natural and culture-historical assets. This gives the farmer a tool for optimising the use of the area by, for instance, turning overgrown meadow and common land into range land. The initiatives for a farmer who wants to establish, change or expand his livestock production may meet the criteria set out in the environmental authority's environmental impact assessment by laying out borders along watercourses and lakes, preventing the erosion of sloping areas, protecting ammonia sensitive areas, etc.

The report can also be used directly for the authority's case processing, as it constitutes an environmental description of the current production.