Suchergebnisse

AbstractContrary to a scholarly debate that anticipated a trend towards the marginalisation of agriculture in many rural areas of Europe, farmers have continued to utilise agro‐economically marginal land, especially in a variety of areas in Europe's northwest. We explore why and how farmers secure the development of their farms while cultivating crops on the margins, based on qualitative empirical research in Brandenburg, Germany. By bringing together farmers' motivations and convictions with their agricultural and agronomical practices, the study identifies three farming strategies for managing farms on marginal land, focused on independence, balancing multiple aims, or optimising land productivity. We develop a concept of farming strategy as an expression of personal motivations and convictions in a coherent, targeted, long‐term plan for farming. We discuss the implications of such an understanding for system‐oriented, micro‐sociological research and for the perpetuation of agriculture in marginalised rural areas.

International audience ; AbstractSustainable development of agriculture is at the core of agricultural policy debates in Europe. There is a consensus that diversification of cropping would support sustainable development. However, a reduction in legume cultivation has been observed in the EU during the last decades. This decline has induced, in turn, a deficit of proteins and a reduction of ecosystem services provided by legumes. Therefore, we analysed the mechanisms that shape agricultural systems to identify leverage points for reviving European legume production. Specifically, we reviewed the factors that affect the market and non-market value of legumes and the relevant agricultural policies. We characterized the decline in legume cropping as an outcome of the dominance of economic forces that favour specialization of production systems over diversification. We found that the value of market outputs of legumes per unit area is relatively low and volatile, with a 25–78 % variation in pea gross margins, which reduces market competitiveness. We observed that the value of system-internal outputs of legumes such as the nitrogen fixed, of 130 to 153 kg N ha−1; crop protection services that reduce agrochemical costs, by 20–25 % in cereals; and yield enhancements of subsequent crops, of 0.2 to 1.6 t ha−1 in cereals, are often underestimated. In addition, markets fail to translate external effects of legumes such as biodiversity enhancement, reduction in emissions, of up to 50 % in N2O, and soil improvements into economic benefits. Current policies support legumes through selected mechanisms such as ecological focus areas, agri-environmental programmes and sparse coupled support measures. Domestic cultivation of legumes could be supported through trade policies such as import restrictions on genetically modified soybean or new mechanisms to appreciate non-market outputs including payments for ecosystem services and carbon markets. In addition, development of new value chains, niche markets, scaling-up of plant ...