The Environmental Farming Scheme (EFS) is a voluntary
agri-environment scheme that supports farmers and land managers to carry out
environmentally beneficial farming practices on agricultural land.
The aims of
the scheme are to:
restore,
preserve and enhance biodiversity;
improve
water management and water quality;
reduce
soil erosion and improve soil management;
foster
carbon conservation and sequestration in agriculture; and
reduce
greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions from agriculture.
EFS is made
up of three levels - Wider, Higher and Group:
EFS
Wider level aims to deliver benefits across the countryside outside
environmentally designated sites.
EFS
Higher level provides site specific plans for strategically important
designated sites and for priority habitats and species.
EFS
Group level provides support for co-operative work in specific areas for
farmers in EFS Wider or Higher.
This service shows
an up-to-date view of the EFS Higher and Wider levels.
Scheme
polygons are derived from DAERA’s EFS Field Classification layer (FCAT) and
dissolved on the Scheme attribute for land within the Higher or Wider levels.
The FCAT is derived from the DAERA Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS)
each year. Permission was received from the Land and Property Service Derived
Data Review Group for release of this data set.
An accompanying EFS Agreement data layer shows point of EFS
options in each field. This information is extracted from the current accepted
agreements updated on a nightly basis. Note that there are a small number
of EFS areas that are not included in this dataset as their options are not map
based (they only have the Irish Moiled cattle option).
A full list of EFS options and NPIs can be found in the Guide to EFS on the DAERA agri-environment webpage.