FarmBioNet at the Farming for Nature Festival

This International Day of Biological Diversity, Meritxell Grau and Saorla Kavanagh would like to celebrate all the farmers protecting and enhancing biodiversity while producing food and many other important services for society.

Today, May 22, is International Day of Biological Diversity and a selection of farmers that are members of FarmBioNet’s Thematic Network of Farming and Biodiversity and the biodiversity-friendly farming practices that they use on their farms are presented. These farmers are also Farming for Nature ambassadors, some of whom will attend this year’s Farming for Nature Festival.

This June, the FarmBioNet team will be heading to Stradbally, Co. Laois, for the inaugural Farming for Nature Festival, a two-day celebration of farmer-led learning, local food, and practical knowledge-sharing taking place on 22^nd and 23^rd of June 2026 at Ballykilcavan Farm and Brewery.

The festival brings together farmers, agri-environmental organisations, food producers and rural communities to explore what is working on Irish farms today. This event will include farmer-led discussions on soil health, biodiversity, farm resilience and profit.

Farmer-led discussions is an ethos that sits close to the heart of the FarmBioNet project, which has been promoting knowledge exchange and peer-to-peer learning through its National Network (NN) of farmers across Ireland.

We are delighted to take this opportunity to spotlight several FarmBioNet National Network members who are also Farming for Nature Ambassadors. These farmers represent the full breadth of Irish agriculture and are testimony that biodiversity and productive farming go hand in hand.

• Andrew Bergin — a non-inversion arable farmer from Co. Kildare and active member of BASE Ireland, who has eliminated insecticide use, established wide flowering margins around field margins and planted trees in difficult-to-cultivate areas.
• Cheryl and Alan Poole — dairy farmers from Co. Wexford, who have planted native trees, erected bat and bird boxes, a sand martin bank, and share biodiversity knowledge with local schools.
• Colm Flynn — a 4^th generation arable farmer from Co. Kildare, rehabilitating his soils through biological farming, reducing chemical inputs, creating nesting sites for solitary bees (an expert on cavity bee nest boxes) and participating in the national Moth Monitoring Programme.
• Colm Gavin — an 8^th generation hill farmer from Co. Mayo running an extensive sheep enterprise on the Ben Gorm mountain, who actively manages invasive species and protects the pristine water quality of the Bundorragha River essential for the freshwater pearl mussel.
• Kim and Mireille McCall — mixed livestock farmers from Co. Kildare, among the founding Farming for Nature Ambassadors since 2018, who allow their hedgerows to grow tall and wide, dig ponds and practice successional tree planting.
• Nigel Gillis – an organic arable farmer from Co. Wicklow, practicing direct-drill, no-till conservation agriculture. A member of the DANú EIP, Nigel has reduced insecticide use by 100% and fungicides by around 80%, maintains multispecies cover crops and living roots year-round, and saves much of his own seed – demonstrating that low-input arable farming can deliver both environmental and commercial resilience.
• Rachel and James Creighton — dairy farmers from Co. Kildare who have made their farm a national model for nature-positive dairy production, recording the highest number of hoverfly species in the Pollinator EIP and welcoming back pine marten, curlew, snipe and woodpecker.
• Seánie O’Baoill — a 5^th generation farmer from Co. Donegal, managing 80 hectares of upland, coastal and island landscape, farming 150 Mayo and Connemara ewes and Black Galloway cattle while championing corncrake habitat and commonage management.
• Tom Tierney — a regenerative tillage farmer from Co. Kildare practicing no-till, cover cropping and crop rotation, with 30 acres of mixed forestry and a native hay meadow, and no insecticide used in over six years, reduced fungicide by one-third and reduced synthetic nitrogen on all cereal crops.
• Willie Mulhall — an organic beef farmer from Co. Kildare, running a closed-loop system with Speckle Park cattle and 30 hectares of mixed forestry, growing all feed on-farm through multispecies swards and combi crops, allowing hedgerows and their margins to flower.

These farmers are a powerful reminder of what is possible when knowledge, commitment and community come together. If you are attending the festival, look out for the FarmBioNet team and make sure to connect with the inspiring farmers who are part of these networks. Whether you are already farming with nature or just starting to explore the possibilities, this is a festival not to be missed.

All information on the festival is available at: farmingfornaturefestival.ie.

Article prepared by Meritxell Grau Butinyac, Saorla Kavanagh, and Lucy Bowler.

FarmBioNet is funded by European Union’s Horizon Europe Framework Programme and associated country partners are funded by SERI.