Quantifying land fragmentation in Northern Ireland Cattle Enterprises

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dc.contributor.authorMilne, Margaret Georgina
dc.contributor.authorByrne, Andrew William
dc.contributor.authorCampbell, Emma
dc.contributor.authorGraham, Jordan
dc.contributor.authorMcGrath, John
dc.contributor.authorKirke, Raymond
dc.contributor.authorMcMaster, Wilma
dc.contributor.authorZimmermann, Jesko
dc.contributor.authorAdenuga, Adewale
dc.date.accessioned2022-06-06T15:27:26Z
dc.date.available2022-06-06T15:27:26Z
dc.date.issued2022-03-06
dc.descriptionPublication history: Accepted - 2 March 2022; Published online - 9 March 2022en_US
dc.description.abstractFarmland fragmentation is considered to be a defining feature of Northern Ireland’s (NI) agricultural landscape, influencing agricultural efficiency, productivity, and the spread of livestock diseases. Despite this, the full extent of farmland fragmentation in cattle farms in NI is not well understood, and little is known of how farmland fragmentation either influences, or is influenced by, different animal production types. Here, we describe and quantify farmland fragmentation in cattle farms for all of NI, using GIS processing of land parcel data to associate individual parcels with data on the cattle business associated with the land. We found that 35% of farms consisted of five or more fragments, with dairy farms associated with greater levels of farmland fragmentation, fragment dispersal and contact with contiguous neighbours compared to other production types. The elevated levels of farmland fragmentation in dairy production compared to non-dairy, may be associated with the recent expansion of dairy farms by land acquisition, following the abolition of the milk quota system in 2015. The comparatively high levels of farmland fragmentation observed in NI cattle farms may also have important implications for agricultural productivity and epidemiology alike. Whilst highly connected pastures could facilitate the dissemination of disease, highly fragmented land could also hamper productivity via diseconomies of scale, such as preventing the increase of herd sizes or additionally, adding to farm costs by increasing the complexity of herd management.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work was supported by the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), and was fully funded under grant 18/3/02 (48258)-FaRTHEr: Fragmentation As a Risk factor for TB in cattle Herds: impacts on Eradication.en_US
dc.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12518/451
dc.identifier.citationMilne, G., Byrne, A.W., Campbell, E., Graham, J., McGrath, J., Kirke, R., McMaster, W., Zimmermann, J. and Adenuga, A.H. (2022) ‘Quantifying Land Fragmentation in Northern Irish Cattle Enterprises’, Land. MDPI AG. doi:10.3390/land11030402.en_US
dc.identifier.issn2073-445X
dc.identifier.urihttps://doi.org/10.3390/land11030402
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherMDPIen_US
dc.rightsCopyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).en_US
dc.subjectfarmland fragmentationen_US
dc.subjectfarm fragmentationen_US
dc.subjectdairyen_US
dc.subjectcattle farmingen_US
dc.subjectagricultural productivityen_US
dc.subjectNorthern Irelanden_US
dc.titleQuantifying land fragmentation in Northern Ireland Cattle Enterprisesen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US
dcterms.dateAccepted2022-03-02
dcterms.dateSubmitted2022-01-07

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