The European policy commitments to High Nature Value farming
The EU and all its Member States have committed themselves to three distinct actions concerning HNV farming:
- Identifying HNV farming.
- Supporting and maintaining HNV farming, especially through Rural Development Programmes (RDPs).
- Monitoring changes to the area1 of land covered by HNV farming, and to the nature values associated with HNV farming, as part of their monitoring of RDPs.
HNV farming commitments were established first in the 1998 EU Biodiversity Strategy2, which includes the explicit objective “to promote and support low-intensity farming systems ...”. More recently, the EAFRD3 regulation Strategic Guidelines3 on rural development established HNV farming as one of three priorities for Axis 2 of Rural Development Programmes (RDPs), as follows:
„To protect and enhance the EU’s natural resources and landscapes in rural areas, the resources devoted to Axis 2 should contribute to three EU-level priority areas: biodiversity and the preservation and development of high nature value farming and forestry systems and traditional agricultural landscapes [...]”
1 Some confusion has arisen in connection with the use of the term “area”, which has two meanings in English: a) a delineated area b) superficial extent. The HNV indicator for Rural Development Programmes is concerned with the superficial extent of HNV farmland or land under HNV farming systems. This can only be measured against a comparable baseline, so that the translation of ‘area’ as ‘zone’ for the base indicator in some versions of Reg. 1974/2006 is unfortunate.
2 COM(1998) 42 final Communication of the European Comisión to the Council and to the Parliament on a European Community Biodiversity Strategy
3 Regulation 1698/2005 establishing EAFRD
