Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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188. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the way and the locations in which his Department intends to meet the target contained in the draft CAP Strategic Plan for water table management of at least 40,000 hectares of drained, agricultural, managed, carbon-rich soils under the Agri-Environment Climate Measure. [26623/22]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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As part of my Department's commitment to offering farmers new opportunities to participate in key environmental actions within the new Cap Strategic Plan, it is anticipated that the target for the reduced management of organic soils under agricultural management will be met through two primary pathways.

Firstly, my Department has identified eight key Cooperation Project Zones, where farmers can come together to develop bespoke Non-Productive Investments and Landscape actions that will assess water table management in appropriate drained carbon-rich soils under agricultural management. Drain blocking would be an example of one of these Non-Productive Investments. 

Secondly, and in recognition of the important role that specific results-based actions can play in achieving key environmental targets, included within the AECM general entry scheme is a Low Input Peat Grassland (LIPG) option, which will reward farmers for raising the water levels in grassland fields on peat soils that are adjacent to or located near to Raised bogs.

The grassland on peat scorecard has been developed to incentivise farmers with land in these transitional zones to help restore important ecosystems and the beneficial environmental services they provide. The scorecard is a series of questions which are answered by the surveyor for each field being scored. The result is a rating for the field on a scale of 1 (poor) to 10 (excellent) with the overall score achieved determining the rate of payment issued to the group or individual farmer.

In addition, the Department has invested significantly in a range of research and demonstration activities in recent years including funding for initiatives such as the establishment of the National Agricultural Soil Carbon Observatory (NASCO), the Pilot Soil Sampling Programme and the Farm Environmental Scheme along with the RePeat mapping study of organic soils and investment in European Innovation Partnership (EIP) research projects such as Farm PEAT & FarmCarbon, which are investigating how to encourage farmers to take actions to reduce emissions from carbon rich soils.