Foot and Mouth Research

Options for change

The aftermath of foot and mouth has possibly opened opportunities to change certain aspects of rural land use and these need to be discussed. One of the options highlighted is the improvement of agri-environmental initiatives to help agricultural land managers to enhance the tourism generating capabilities of the landscape. In order to inform planning for this possibility, we have made tools available that provide objective assessment of landscape attractiveness (see below). Decision making about these and other changes may be assisted by models and data generated in the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute.

Land Use Options - What are the Factors?

The options open to any individual agriculturalist are limited by environmental factors concerning the type of land and microclimate experienced, financial factors such as the market for products and support regime and the availability of equipment, knowledge and materials. From these, we need to generalise, to aggregate across farms to produce generalised constraint boundaries that can define the scope of predicted changes in farming practice.

"We have tools that can assist the stakeholders to look at a range of options and assess their impacts in a way which allows outcomes to be negotiated." - Alan Sibbald, Macaulay Land Use Research Institute.

Two broad categories of land are treated separately: the hill land with livestock farms is assessed by the decision support program HillPlan, whilst lowland agriculture enterprises can be comprehensively analysed using the system called LADSS.

Encouraging tourism

One of the important factors for encouraging tourism into an area is its visual attractiveness. A technique to measure the effect of different land management practices on visual attractiveness has been developed at the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute. An example is given below, in which you are invited to asses the appearance of different landscapes that result from taking various different options in land management.

To read more about the technique and what lies behind this, click here.

The LADSS decision support tool can be used to create alternative land management plans for farm enterprises and these can then be assessed for financial return, environmental/ecological impact and visual appeal. If a change in farming practice leads to a significant increase in "scenic beauty", this can be used to build tourism-related multipliers in the local rural economy.