N.E. Ellis et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 76 1999 121–134 129
Fig. 5. Mean species richness per 4 m
2
field quadrat for various field uses and each farm group:
d
non-pluriactive farms, H farms with off-farm work only, 1 farms with on-farm pluriactivity only,
h
farms with both off-farm and on-farm pluriactivities. Bars indicate standard error about the mean. p 0.05, p 0.01 level of significance between the non-pluriactive farm group and the pluriactive group using
a one-way analysis of variance. The main point of this figure is to indicate the consistent pattern of lower species richness values on the farms that are non-pluriactive and in the On-farm group rather than the actual species richness values.
cristatus , Holcus lanatus, Poa pratensis and Cerastium
fontanum .
4. Discussion
4.1. Pluriactivity and socio-economics; their influences on the farming regime
It was not possible to obtain adequate data on the land management andor ecological characteristics of
farms before the household became pluriactive El- lis, 1994 which would have allowed an examination
in the sequence of any alterations in management di- rectly due to pluriactivity. Further, with the mean age
of non-pluriactive households being greater than those of pluriactive farms, the effect of education and peer
opinions on farming cannot be teased apart from the influence of pluriactivity. The differentiation in age
between non-pluriactive and pluriactive farm house- holds agrees with research in other areas of Britain
e.g. Nalson, 1968; Gasson, 1988. Non-pluriactive farms were also, on average, larger farms with more
labourers agreeing with Gasson, 1988; Shucksmith et al., 1988; Bateman and Ray, 1994. The stability of
a larger capital base of such farms also economically separates such farms from their younger counterparts.
Therefore, the possibility exists that the land use and management characteristics of the farm may have al-
ready existed before involvement in pluriactivity. For example, farms with off-farm work may have already
been managing less intensively than other farms be- fore gaining off-farm employment because of a low
income to the farm. Of course, time spent away from the land as a result of off-farm work may enhance the
effect of a less intensive management regime.
4.2. Botanical differences As there were apparently small variations in land
management between the farm groups suggests that
130 N.E. Ellis et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 76 1999 121–134
Fig. 6. The Redundancy Analysis RDA between the socio-economic and pluriactivity variables with plant species data, for all farms. a The strength of each variable is positively related to the length of the arrow. The abbreviations are defined in Table 2. b The positioning
of each species in relation to the variables in a. See the appendix for full specie names.
differences in the botanical composition of the swards may have resulted from a cumulative effect of the
small variations in the various facets of management. Collected management data may also have been too
coarse to detect differences in the individual manage- ment facets and, further, not all management variables
were collected e.g. stocking rate. Non-pluriactive farms maintained swards almost purely consisting of
N.E. Ellis et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 76 1999 121–134 131
Fig. 7. The Redundancy Analysis RDA between the land management variables with plant species data, for all farms. a The strength of each variable is positively related to the length of the arrow. The abbreviations are defined in Table 2. b The positioning of each species
in relation to the variables in a. See the appendix for full specie names.
sown species whereas pluriactive farms contained fur- ther species, farms with off-farm work associated with
the most. When it is considered that the sown grasses P. pratense
and Dactylis glomerata were more often found on the non-pluriactive farms the younger pluri-
active farmers relying more on particular variants of L. perenne
and Trifolium spp. bred for the purpose of the field, the differences in the number of non-sown
132 N.E. Ellis et al. Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 76 1999 121–134
species per quadrat between non-pluriactive and pluri- active farms is greater than at first appears.
4.3. Grassland context In contrast to other beef-producing areas of Britain,
Grampian is very intensive. In relation to other British grasslands, these swards were young more than half
were under 4 years but were in receipt of average lev- els of N Hopkins et al., 1988. With the 4 m
2
quadrats containing between 4–11 species, no sward can be de-
scribed as ‘species-rich’, a term which has been ap- plied to grasslands containing at least 20 species per
1 m
2
e.g. Grime, 1973. Mesotrophic grasslands used for hay production in northern England have recorded
between 15 and 22 species per 0.0625 m
2
Smith and Rushton, 1994. The reason for the low botanical di-
versity is, in part, a result of the historical management of the land as Scottish farmers were known to reseed
their pastures before 1940 Stamp, 1946 in contrast to the English who only began to reseed their pastures
after the plough-up grant had been introduced in 1939 Stapledon, 1939. Such reseeding and long-term agri-
cultural improvement impoverishes the soil of seeds of semi-natural species e.g. Bekker et al., 1997. Also
fewer species occur in the northern reaches of the British Isles than in the south Perring and Walters,
1982 and few non-agricultural habitats which har- bour potential grassland colonisers are found within
Grampian farmland Ellis, 1994. Therefore the dif- ferences in species richness between non-pluriactive
farms and pluriactive groups may be more exagger- ated elsewhere in the UK and Europe.
5. Conclusions
