Biodiversity - above and below the ground - is a key element of climate change. This Exchange will be led by farmers and biodiversity specialists who have integrated positive biodiversity approaches on working farms. These approaches can be low-cost systems that work with nature and integrates with a farming system. Depending on the management approaches, and soil health, these approaches can seamlessly work on a commercial farming system. This Exchange will attempt to impart the knowledge and understanding to the participants that biodiversity does not have to be something in the corner of a field that has to be managed for biodiversity's sake. But more so, that an integration of a farming system in a proper management can increase biodiversity, above and below the ground, on the entire farm.

Expert

Sean O'Farrell & Pádraic Fogarty 
Artist: Deirdre O'Mahony

Sean O'Farrell
Sean manages a 60-acre certified organic Cloncannon farm on the western slopes of the Devil’s bit Mountains, near Moneygall in North Tipperary. Sean has been farming since he took over from his father 15 years ago and now keeps a 20 cow suckler herd, as well as pigs, poultry and goats.
A University graduate with a Master’s degree in Biodiversity and Conservation, Sean is a heritage enthusiast, continuously planting native trees, putting in ponds for wildlife and pollinator strips for his beehives and birdlife. He does this to encourage biodiversity but also for his personal fulfilment and satisfaction ‘for when he has aged 30 or 40 years from now’. He says that this is part of ‘my 5 year plan, my 50 year plan, my 500 year plan’ and feels that farmers should think long-term like the native Americans, ‘seven generations from now’
Sean feels he is on a journey of learning and he is particularly passionate about the importance of soil and making sure it is properly nurtured to ensure good crop health - ‘the microbes and the fungi – so minute yet so powerful, they drive the whole system’. Sean runs numerous education programmes for primary and secondary schools, hosts events for Biodiversity and Heritage Week and opens the farm as an eco-tourist visitor site.

Pádraic Fogarty Irish Wildlife Trust