Suchergebnisse

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 ; Agricultural landscapes are dynamic environments which change in response to cropping and trade opportunities, available technologies and climatic conditions. In this article, we investigate farmers' vulnerability to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility in rural Navarre, Spain. Specifically, we analyse the extent to which livelihood differences and vulnerability can be partly explained by the development of a large-scale irrigation project promoted by the Spanish and regional governments. Grounded on qualitative and quantitative data gathered across 22 villages, we demonstrate that small-scale diversified farmers appear the most vulnerable and least able to adapt to climate-related stressors and crop price volatility. In contrast, more market-driven, large-scale intensive farmers, who participate in the irrigation project, are the least vulnerable to these stressors. We argue that the irrigation project has increased the short-term adaptive capacity of irrigation adopters while establishing the institutional conditions for the displacement of small-scale farming. Therefore, we suggest that farmers' vulnerability in Navarre can be explained by maladaptive irrigation policies designed to favour large-scale and market-driven agriculture.

The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has failed to achieve its aim of preserving European farmland biodiversity, despite massive investment in subsidies to incentivise environmentally-beneficial farming practices. This failure calls into question the design of the subsidy schemes, which are intended to either function as a safety net and make farming profitable or compensate farmers for costs and loss of income while undertaking environmental management. In this study, we assess whether the design of environmental payments in the CAP reflects current knowledge about farmers' decision-making as found in the research literature. We do so on the basis of a comprehensive literature review on farmers' uptake of agri-environmental management practices over the past 10 years and interviews specifically focused on Ecological Focus Areas with policy-makers, advisors and farmers in seven European countries. We find that economic and structural factors are the most commonly-identified determinants of farmers' adoption of environmental management practices in the literature and in interviews. However, the literature suggests that these are complemented by – and partially dependent on – a broad range of social, attitudinal and other contextual factors that are not recognised in interview responses or, potentially, in policy design. The relatively simplistic conceptualisation of farmer behaviour that underlies some aspects of policy design may hamper the effectiveness of environmental payments in the CAP by over-emphasising economic considerations, potentially corroding farmer attitudes to policy and environmental objectives. We conclude that an urgent redesign of agricultural subsidies is needed to better align them with the economic, social and environmental factors affecting farmer decision-making in a complex production climate, and therefore to maximise potential environmental benefits.

Recent scientific research highlights the urgent need to protect Europe's remaining – and rapidly declining – biological diversity. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the major tools with which policymakers in the European Union (EU) can achieve this aim. However, so far, the CAP has proved largely ineffective – or even detrimental – to this goal. With relatively localised exceptions, the Policy's notable success in ensuring supplies of food and fiber by supporting Europe's farmers has been at the expense of environmental objectives. This report presents the findings of an Expert Working Group (EWG) convened to explore the ways in which the Common Agricultural Policy could be made more effective in protecting biodiversity and delivering associated ecosystem services, particularly through the implementation of effective biodiversity measures by Europe's farmers.