Forming and managing a Farmer Cluster for improved farmland biodiversity in Europe

Abstract ‘Farmer Clusters’ are an English movement where groups of neighbouring farmers have identified and instigated their own conservation initiatives as a collective, providing a ‘bottom‐up’ alternative to the ‘top‐down’, government‐initiated agri‐environment schemes. Although cross‐farm cooperation can be found in mainland Europe, this specific Farmer Cluster approach had not yet been tested before 2020. FRAMEwork (Farmer clusters for Realising Agrobiodiversity Management across Ecosystems), an EU Horizon 2020 project, aims to identify whether Farmer Clusters could be established in other European countries and improve farmland biodiversity at the landscape scale. FRAMEwork established 11 Farmer Clusters across nine European countries. The aim of this paper was to describe the different strategies used, the challenges faced and the potential solutions identified to provide future practitioners with guidance. Forming the Farmer Clusters required a wide range of approaches, from contacting previously known farmers to using advertising campaigns. An integral part of the Farmer Cluster approach is the presence of a ‘facilitator’, someone with farming and environmental knowledge, who can support the group and assist them in their biodiversity‐friendly actions. Management of the Farmer Clusters required various strategies, and the facilitators were provided with training through the FRAMEwork project. These strategies were applied to unite the farmers within each Farmer Cluster, encouraging them to collaborate and identify their own biodiversity targets. Expanding the scope of Farmer Cluster activities to enable farmers and local communities and volunteers to observe and monitor biodiversity themselves requires additional effort. However, it provides learning opportunities and capacity development in Farmer Clusters to enhance local collection of information and improved knowledge of local actions and outcomes. Practical Implication . Farmer Clusters provide a strategy to tackle biodiversity restoration across European farmland at the landscape scale. They also offer tailored and targeted advice from expert facilitators, alleviating the constraints of the current ‘top‐down’ process, allowing farmers more flexibility and ownership of their biodiversity goals. We encourage European policymakers to take up the Farmer Cluster model and provide a facilitation fund similar to that found in England to better aid farmland biodiversity recovery at the landscape scale.