By taking care of nature's diversity, the farmer improves the living conditions of animals and plants. At the same time, the work preserves Finnish cultural traditions, such as traditional rural landscapes and domestic native breeds. For the farmers, this work is compensated by steady and good harvests, animal welfare and the company's resilience against various crisis situations. Caring for nature means improving the farm's profitability and at the same time developing the image of both your own farm and the countryside as a whole (Finnish Food Authority, 2024)
Environmental supports 2023:
Environmental compensation (use google to translate)
Agricultural nature and landscape management contract (use google to translate)
Ecosystem support (2023) (use google to translate)
Agreement on the breeding of native breeds (use google to translate)
Subsidies for non-productive investments (use google to translate)
Compensation for organic production (use google to translate)
The conditions of the environmental commitment include the preparation of a farm-specific climate and environmental plan. The plan must be prepared in the second or third year of the commitment. The climate and environmental plan is a general requirement of the environmental commitment, so it is mandatory for all farms that have made the environmental commitment. The plan must be prepared for the basic field plots under the management of the farm.
The climate and environmental plan maps the environmental challenges and development opportunities of the farm. The challenges and opportunities may be related to agricultural water protection, improving soil growth conditions, climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, air protection, energy and maintaining and promoting agricultural biodiversity. (Finnish Food Authority, 2025)
The aim of the Nature Restoration Regulation is to improve the state of nature in different environments in a broad way, so that, for example, nature's ability to withstand increasingly common weather extremes is strengthened.
According to the Regulation, each Member State may choose the two most suitable from three optional indicators describing the biodiversity of agricultural environments and determine a target level for them, towards which it is obliged to move. The optional indicators are
The butterfly index of agricultural environments
The carbon content of mineral soil fields
Landscape features important for biodiversity (trees, shrubs, fallow lands).
The indicators selected in Finland will be the butterfly index and the landscape features important for biodiversity. In addition, Finland must improve the state of field birds.
Measures to improve the state of nature include, for example, blocking mire ditches, restoring river and stream beds to their natural state, restoring grazing to areas that were traditionally used for grazing, and removing spruce trees from broad leaf groves. Finland has until August 2026 time to prepare its own restoration plan that will be submitted to the EU Commission.
European Commission (n.d.). Environment. Nature Restoration Regulation
Finnish Food Authority (n.d.). Nature Diversity at farms. (Google translate)