Webinar 7 – Maximising biodiversity in your Biomass crop plantation

Biomass crops and their surrounds are brimming with life – birds, bees, butterflies and predatory arthropods all live in, or on the edge and in the surrounds of these plantations.This webinar provides information on emerging research into understanding how to marry up yield productivity from these crops whilst incorporating simple measures (such as buffer strips and flower-rich grass margins) that increase the edge effect, promote pollinators and maximise biodiversity net gain. There will be some information on recent Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI) payment measures and what this means to growers of different biomass crops.Our Speakers are Dr. Rebecca Rowe, a terrestrial ecologist from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) and Ed Drewitt, a freelance naturalist.Rebecca covers topics such as the trends in biodiversity in UK farmland, how biomass crops might help and which crops are the best from a biodiversity point of view. She’ll also cover current research projects and the grants available to biomass crop growers for biodiversity enhancement.Ed takes a look at biomass plantations from the perspective of a naturalist, investigating how birds and other animals use them, how such plantations could be designed to increase biodiversity and how biomass plantations could contribute to protecting endangered species.