Almost 60 farmland owners in the hamlet of Angofa near Sighisoara and in the village of Viscri in Brasov are participating in the Life TransilvaCOOPERATION pilot project, financed by the LIFE Programme of the European Union and implemented by the ADEPT Transilvania Foundation, which aims to preserve grasslands rich in biodiversity, through traditional agricultural practices that generate consistent income for farmers from superior quality products.
The vice-president of ADEPT Transylvania Foundation, Razvan Popa, says that the TransilvaCOOPERATION project implemented in Angofa and Viscri comes exactly on the environmental side and is based on three European strategies, such as biodiversity strategy, green deal and farm-to-fork strategy.
"Our goals are to develop certain systems where farmers collaborate to implement certain environmental measures and not only, including extensive agricultural practices that do not have an impact on flora or fauna. It could be seen that more and more farmers give up grasslands and plow for large crops or for oil crops, where the profit is much higher. That's why we try to develop certain transdisciplinary models where we look at the marketing side, the social side, the environmental side and the agricultural side and we want to try certain models and then transfer them on to farmers," Popa says.
In Angofa there are large farms of over 100 hectares - in total 800 ha are included in the programme -, while in the Viscri area there is an association of small farmers, which manages 1,000 hectares, so the ADEPT Foundation decided to develop a farm-model where farmers can learn a series of good practices.
"We also have concrete activities in which we even intervene with innovative equipment, where we remove brushwood or make certain mowing systems or certain grazing systems. We will then pass on all this knowledge through the two regions where the farmers will visit, those from Angofa will go to Viscri, those from Viscri will come here and will be able to see these extensive systems," said the representative of the ADEPT Foundation.
The farm in Angofa was taken over by the ADEPT Foundation in 2017 and, although the hamlet is no longer inhabited, all the meadows were destroyed in terms of vegetation, being excessively grazed by a large number of sheep.
Since 2017, action has been taken, including now, through the new TransilvaCOOPERATION project, for the improvement of biodiversity and the development of ecotourism in the Angofa area.
The value of the Life TransilvaCOOPERATION project is 596,275 euros and runs until 2023.
Among the objectives of the project is the mapping of habitats, species and land use in the Angofa and Viscri areas, including specific landscape elements, such as wetlands or ponds, forest curtains, isolated trees, extremely important elements for wild flora and fauna, but also from an aesthetic point of view, at landscape level.
In addition to the development of two maps, for the two areas, Angofa and Viscri, which will represent the habitats, species and land use, the project organizes concrete actions to restore the habitats on an area of at least 240 hectares of meadows provided for by the EU Habitats Directive to improve their conservation status, from unsatisfactory to favorable.
For this reason, British experts, such as Freddie Harvey Williams, whom I found on the spot, are constantly performing analyzes and taking soil samples, in order to determine how the soil evolves in the area of influence of the project and which is the growth rate of habitats and different species.
The initiators of the project intend to develop an innovative software that will allow the generation of maps based on the management practices adopted, a fact that will allow farmers to visualize how landscapes and ecosystem services are transformed as a result of their decisions.
Farmers will also benefit from a free application, which will provide them with relevant information about land management and animal husbandry, as well as solutions for increasing household income, by diversifying activities.AGERPRES
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