Introduction
Download in PDF format
Environmental Stewardship is a new initiative introduced by DEFRA to encourage landowners
and farmers to manage their land in an effective way. The aim is to create and maintain habitats
for a wide range of birds and animals.
This involves developing previously farmed or unused land in order to create these
habitats. In return, DEFRA will pay the landowner a certain amount depending on
the way in which the land is managed e.g. organically, and the amount of land being
managed.
There are 3 types of Environmental Stewardship scheme which increase in complexity
but also in the benefits they provide to the owner:
-
Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) -
Open to all farmers and landowners.
Simple and effective land management.
Areas of land which can be managed are split into entitlements. These can be bought/sold
or leased, and provide the owner of the entitlement with the same responsibilities
and benefits of Environmental Stewardship as if they had originally owned the land.
This allows the original landowner to make and income from the land without requiring
any development from them. Owning an entitlement allows a person to purchase a small
piece of land – which would not normally be available for purchase – develop it
and make money form it. This means you do not have to be a major landowner to take
part in the Environmental Stewardship scheme.
Focus for Project
The site may potentially be used by a wide variety of users as there are not really
any constraints on
who may be interested in Environmental Stewardship. However, it would be fair to
assume that a large proportion of users will be farmers and therefore of an older
age. This could mean they have limited computer experience, but is not necessarily
the case.
However, it is not just farmers who may apply for the Environmental Stewardship
schemes - any organisation or individual with enough land
can apply. As such, the site may be visited by users from schools or village associations.
There may also be users who do not own their own land, and are looking to buy/lease
an entitlement from Forrest Hills and as such, their ages and abilities may differ.
In conclusion, it is impossible to predict the types of users that will visit the
site. Therefore, the sitewill need to be simple enough for novice users, but should provide extra functionality
for those users who can take advantage of it.
Website
The idea of the “Environmental Stewardship @ Forrest Hills” website is:
-
to firstly provide general information on Environmental Stewardship.
-
to allow potential buyers to search and purchase the entitlements available at Forrest
Hills.
-
to provide an administrative back-end to the system, to allow easy updating of products.
There are currently only a small number of sites selling entitlements as the scheme
is relatively new, and the main purpose of these sites is the buying/selling of
milk quotas from dairy farms. Of these, only one site
seems to offer a search facility, while the others simply provide a static list
of entitlements available with contact details, and some do not provide a list of
entitlements but just request that you contact them.