The Reform of Support Mechanisms for Upland Farming: Paying for Public Goods in the Severely Disadvantaged Areas of England

The incomes of hill‐farmers in ‘Less Favoured Areas’ of the UK have traditionally been supported by payments related to their production levels. Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and changes in policy objectives within the UK imply a need to change this basis of support. We investigate the option of paying for public goods produced, focusing on landscape features and habitats. A choice experiment study is used to estimate willingness to pay for different landscape features in four Severely Disadvantaged Areas of England. We find significant differences in the value of landscape features, both within and across regions, and parallel differences in the aggregate value of different policy options for upland areas. We discuss briefly how this information could be included in a spatially differentiated payments scheme.     

Multifunctional peri-urban agriculture—A review of societal demands and the provision of goods and services by farming

Peri-urban areas around urban agglomerations in Europe and elsewhere have been subject to agricultural and land use research for the past three decades. The manner in which farming responds to urban pressures, socio-economic changes and development opportunities has been the main focus of examination, with urban demand for rural goods and services representing a driving factor to adapt farming activities in a multifunctional way. Working within the peri-urban framework, this review pays particular attention to the relevance of multifunctional agriculture. Academic discourses and empirical insights related to farm structure and practices beyond conventional agriculture are analysed. Diversification, recreational and environmental farming, landscape management and specialisation, as well as direct marketing are all taken into consideration and discussed within the context of landscape functions. The provision of rural goods and services is contrasted with societal demands on peri-urban agriculture. This review finds that multifunctional agriculture has been commonly recognised in peri-urban areas – a phenomenon that includes a large variety of activities and diversification approaches within the context of environmental, social and economic functions of agriculture. In response to the post-productive, consumption-oriented requirements of the urban society, peri-urban farmers have intensified their uptake of multifunctional activities. Nevertheless, not all multifunctional opportunities are being fully developed when one considers the large and growing urban demand for goods and services provided by agriculture carried out near the city. This paper discusses policy and planning approaches to support multifunctional agriculture in peri-urban areas.     

The EEC less favoured areas directive: Implementation and impact on upland land use in the UK

This article contains an analysis of the implementation of the Less Favoured Areas Directive in the UK. The LFA policy of the EEC provides for the support of agriculture in designated areas, in order to sustain rural populations and to protect the countryside. In the UK, the directive has simply been absorbed into existing policy for upland areas. This policy seeks to maximize the production of sheepmeat and store cattle through agricultural intensification. Grants and subsidies have led to considerable deterioration of the upland landscape and wildlife resources of the uplands, with little discernable impact on maintaining rural populations.     

Environmental grants and regulations in strategic farm business decision-making: A case study of attitudinal behaviour in Scotland

This paper addresses the question of farmer responses to agri-environmental programming in light of the Single Farm Payment, focusing on the role of environmental regulations and grant schemes in strategic farm decision-making. Utilising Ajzen's theory of planned behaviour in a qualitative case study of farmers in Upper Deeside, Scotland, it was found that farmer respondents actively consider environmental regulations and grant opportunities as part of their decision rationale in making investments in farm development, such as agro-industrial building construction or securing additional land. Fulfilling agri-environmental regulations is constructed by respondents as being part of ensuring farm viability, while eligibility for agri-environmental schemes is impacting on how tenanted land is valued. The author identifies three mechanisms facilitating farmer up-take of environmental schemes, and makes a case for consideration of farmers as experts in producing environmental outcomes while maintaining economic sustainability of farming operations.     

Rural development and the role of game farming in the Eastern Cape,South Africa

The analysis of game farming is set in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Game farming reorders the use, meaning and value of land and animal species. However, what it means for rural development processes in the immediate region and beyond is not well accounted for. We perceive game farming as an assemblage that brings together new actors, new forms of land use and new discourses. We argue that although game farming has generated new opportunities and new forms of added value to the available resources (e.g. eco-tourism, trophy hunting, game-meat production), situated in the history and contemporary context of the Eastern Cape, it is a contested, and from a development point of view, problematic land-use practice. We argue that game farming constrains land and agrarian reforms: the distribution of land and income remains skewed; ‘poaching’ occurs and game farms do not, or only minimally, generate new and badly needed employment opportunities. The game farm has emerged as an exclusive, globally well-connected space. The nature of the relationships this space maintains with the surrounding communities is, however, such that the overall contribution to rural development in South Africa is questionable.     

Is Oregon's land use planning program conserving forest and farm land? A review of the evidence

Planners have long been interested in understanding ways in which land use planning approaches play out on the ground and planning scholars have approached the task of evaluating such effects using a variety of methods. Oregon, in particular, has been the focus of numerous studies owing to its early-adopted and widely recognized statewide approach to farm and forest land protection and recent experiment with relaxation of that approach in 2004 with the passage of ballot Measure 37. In this paper we review research-based evidence regarding the forest and farm land conservation effects of Oregon land use planning. We document the evolution of methods used in evaluating state land use planning program performance, including trend analysis, indicator analysis, empirical models, and analysis of indirect effects on the economic viability of forestry and farming. We also draw on data documenting Measure 37 claims to consider the degree to which Measure 37 might have altered land use and development trends had its impacts not been tempered by a subsequent ballot measure – Measure 49. Finally, we provide a synthesis of the current state of knowledge and suggest opportunities for future research. Common to nearly all of the studies we reviewed was an acknowledgement of the difficulty in establishing causal relationships between land use planning and land use change given the many exogenous and endogenous factors involved. Despite these difficulties, we conclude that sufficient evidence does exist to suggest that Oregon's land use planning program is contributing a measurable degree of protection to forest and farm land in the state.     

Institutional innovation and policy support to facilitate small‐scale farming transformation in China

While the Asian food economy has been experiencing significant transitions, it is widely believed that little transformation has occurred in farm land operation. However, the recent rapid emergence of middle and large‐size farms in many regions of China is striking, as is the increase in size of operational units. The overall goal of this article is to understand small‐scale farm transformation in China based on a unique dataset surveyed in Northeast and North China. The results show that the institutional innovation through establishing land transfer service centers to promote land rental markets and reduce transaction costs, policy support to speed up land consolidation, and farm mechanization services are major driving forces in the recent evolution of China's farm operations. The article concludes with policy implications on small‐scale farming transformation in China and the rest of world and identifies research issues for further study.     

Endogenizing the Planning Horizon in Urban fringe agriculture

To evaluate the nature of farm operation longevity in urban fringe agriculture, this paper develops a model that endogenizes planning horizon and estimates an empirical model whereby anticipated longevity in farming is regressed against farm, farmer, regulatory and land market related variables. The results suggest that the length of the planning horizon is directly related to farm profitability and confirm the impermanence syndrome hypothesis that land values are inversely related to the planning horizon. Contrary to farmers’ claims that periodic land disposal provides an internal source of credit to support long-term viability, the disposition of portions of the farmland is found to shorten the planning horizon. Innovative farmers are found to have longer planning horizons while experiences with Right-to-Farm conflicts are found to result in decreased planning horizon. Given the expected continual increase in land values and the growing physical closeness of farmers to their non-farm neighbors, significant concerns remain about the long-term survivability of urban fringe farmers. This study suggests the importance of considering farmers’ planning horizon as a key component in farmland retention programs.     

Land tenure systems and agricultural innovation: The case of alley farming in Nigeria

Alley farming is an agroforestry technology which requires access to land and the rights to plant, own and utilize trees. This paper considers the implications of land tenure systems in south-west and south-east Nigeria for the acceptability and viability of alley farming. Considerable variation in the rules governing the use and control of land is seen to exist within and between the two regions, and any one tenure system may include a number of categories of land to which different patterns of use and tenure apply. Broadly speaking, tenants in parts of south-west Nigeria may be disadvantaged as their rights over hired land do not necessarily include the right to plant trees. In the south-east, the existence of communal systems of landownership and management on some categories of land undermines the ability to plant trees and the incentive to invest labour in the maintenance of soil fertility.     

Is Passive Farming A Problem for Agriculture in the EU?

We address a new agricultural policy concern following the decoupling of CAP direct payments in 2005: passive farming, whereby landowners maintain their agricultural area to collect payments without producing commodities. It is claimed that passive farming is hindering agricultural development by ‘blocking’ access to farmland for expanding farmers. We evaluate the links between the EU's Single Payment Scheme (SPS), passive farming, land use and agricultural development. Following identification of the rational landowners’ optimal land‐use choice, we evaluate the effects of the SPS using a spatial, agent‐based model that simulates farmers’ competition for land in a case‐study region of Sweden. We show that passive farming does not constrain land from being used in production; on the contrary more land is used than would be the case without the SPS. We conclude that passive farming is not a problem for agriculture, but provides public goods that would otherwise be under provided: preservation of marginal farmland and future food security. However SPS payments on highly productive land inflate land values (capitalisation) and slow structural change, which hinder agricultural development. Consequently CAP goals could be better served by targeting payments on marginal land and phasing out payments to highly productive land.     

The influence of diversification on long-term viability of the agricultural sector

We estimate the impact of diversification on the performance of farm businesses using measures of economic viability among farms in Scotland and Sweden. We derive indicators of viability using national level accounting surveys for the period 2000–2012 and account for short-term and long-term effects within our estimates of viability.A higher proportion of Scottish farms emerge as being more short-term and long-term viable than Swedish farms. This could, we propose, be due to emphasis on enhancing farm viability within Scottish planning for rural development, compared to Sweden which emphasized productivity and environmental enhancement. Moreover, for both countries the trend in viability is relatively stable until 2007, when both panels begin to display the impact of policy and market change.Findings based on a multinomial logistic regression indicate that farms which run additional ventures outside traditional agriculture, and are diversified in the sense that they obtain revenue from two or more agricultural enterprises, are more viable compared to specialized agricultural units. Other factors which affect viability were found to be structural, biophysical and institutional, specifically the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2003. However the significance and magnitude of these effects differ across the two countries. Consequently, these results seem to imply the importance of emphasizing non-specialized agricultural activities within rural development policy and, moreover, informs the rationale behind proposed redistributions of CAP payments.     

Professional urban agriculture and its characteristic business models in Metropolis Ruhr,Germany

‘Low-cost specialization’, ‘differentiation’, and ‘diversification’ are three overarching business models of professional urban agriculture in developed countries. Manifold city-adjusted farm activities belong to these business models resulting in the characteristic farm heterogeneity of urban areas. This paper makes use of the business models as tool for a geo-statistical analysis to spatially investigate farming patterns in reference region Metropolis Ruhr, Germany. Additional farm interviews substantiate findings of the geo-statistical analysis by focusing on horticulture as a common farm activity towards ‘low-cost specialization’, direct marketing and participatory farming belonging to ‘differentiation’, and equestrian services as a representative of the ‘diversification’ business model. These farm activities and underlying business models concentrate and tend to spatially cluster in the metropolitan’s center where population density is highest and farmland proportion is lowest. Agriculture plays a significant role in Metropolis Ruhr cultivating about one-third of the metropolitan area, but on-going loss of farmland and short-term lease of land affect farms considerably by complicating access to land. Most differentiated and diversified farms require certain amount of farmland to be successful, which is threatened by further farmland losses along with increased competition for the remaining farmland. Long-term planning security is crucial for farms focusing on high added value crops and organic farming. Progressively emerging participatory farming activities demonstrate urban farms’ abilities to innovatively adapt to societal demands. Better knowledge on professional urban agriculture’s farm activities and business models is of importance for farms and their related advisory services to address the urban context in farm development strategies more accurately, but also for public authorities’ planning and policies in land-related decision making. Economic viability of professional urban agriculture is the key requirement for additional social, environmental, and landscape functions within urban areas.     

Farm-level adaptation to climate change in Western Bangladesh: An analysis of adaptation dynamics,profitability and risks

Using long-term district-level climate data and a case study from a drought-prone village in western Bangladesh, this research explored trends in climate change, and analysed farmers’ adaptation dynamics, profitability and risks. This is the first study of its kind for drought-prone areas in Bangladesh.Farmers perceived climate changes included increases in temperature and decreases in rainfall which were as consistent with the trends of Chuadanga climate records. Farmers’ adaptation measures included changes in cropping systems, cropping calendars, crop varieties, agronomic practices, crop diversification and improved animal husbandry. Reducing environmental stress, ensuring self-sufficiency in staple crops (mainly rice) and other crop production practices, and enhancing economic viability of farm enterprises have underpinned these adaptations. Off-farm and non-farm wage employment, temporary migration, self-employment and educating children, constituted the core non-farm adaptation strategies.Emerging cropping systems like maize/cucumber and maize/stem amaranth/rice were economically more viable than the traditional rice/rice and rice/maize systems. Despite some uncertainties, farming was preferred to off-farm work, generating higher returns to labour for all cropping systems. Limited access to stress-tolerant varieties, extension services and affordable agricultural credit, combined with high production costs, variability in crop yields and output prices, are the main barriers to adaptation. Stronger agricultural research and support services, affordable credit, community-focussed farming education and training are critically important for effective adaptation to climate change.     

土地托管、总收益与种粮意愿——兼业农户粮食增效与务工增收视角

目前兼业种粮户仍是我国重要的粮食种植主体。比较效益低是兼业农户选择"粗放种粮、少种粮、抛荒不种粮"的直接诱因。土地托管服务可以帮助兼业农户种粮,在提高兼业户种粮净收益的同时,更为农户腾出时间务工增加收入,"种粮+务工"的总收益增加,兼业农户在务工的同时会选择请人继续种粮、种好粮。为提高土地托管服务能力,必须坚持农民土地承包权、使用权、收益权等权能不变;必须处理好各方利益关系,让利于民;必须选好龙头企业;加大政府扶持。     

Reasons for adoption of sustainable land management practices in a changing context: A mixed approach in Thailand

A farmer’s decision to adopt sustainable land management practices often takes place in a changing context. In the Northeast Region of Thailand, rural areas face a deagrarianization process and the dominant farming system – small-scale rice farming under rainfed conditions – is losing its role as the main provider of household income. The study applies a mixed approach to investigate the reasons why farmers adopt sustainable land management practices in this region. This approach involved a quantitative assessment of factors that influence adoption and a qualitative analysis of local actors’ opinions regarding these reasons. Two major reasons were identified: the engagement in diversifying production and the willingness to reduce the amount of time household members spend farming. These two reasons relate to two strategies farmers use to adapt to ongoing changes: getting involved in changing the farm or maintaining it while limiting the effort they spend running the farm. Initiatives to enhance the uptake of sustainable land management practices in the Northeast Region of Thailand would benefit from structuring the support provided taking these two strategies into account.     

我国家庭农场发展的现状、问题及培育建议——基于农业部专项调查343万个样本数据

[目的]家庭农场作为一种新型农业经营主体,近年来受到国家的大力支持。对其发展情况进行调查分析有助于发现其存在问题,尽早提出解决措施,优化家庭农场的发展和培育。[方法]文章以农业部家庭农场专项调查数据为基础,从经营数量、经营规模、经营类型、经营效益4个方面,对家庭农场的发展现状进行了分析。[结果]家庭农场发展迅速,且增长速度逐年加快;目前已基本实现规模经营,其中70%的土地来自土地流转;农场数量和规模南北差异较大;经营类型以种植业为主,占六成以上;家庭农场的年销售产值高,但净利润低。除此之外,由于处在探索发展阶段,我国家庭农场在发展过程中面临着生产成本过高、质量认证缺乏和资金支持少等问题。[结论]最后针对这些问题,从加大政策扶持力度、加快农产品品牌建设和加强金融支持3方面提出对策建议,以期为未来家庭农场的培育提供参考价值。     

Protecting farm land near cities : Trade-offs with affordable housing in Hawaii

In protecting farm land near cities, policy makers must balance the interests of farmers against affordable housing demands of the urban population. This article examines land use competition between agriculture and housing on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Land suitability ratings for farming and urban development are compared, and future urban expansion onto agricultural land is simulated under different land use policies. Results indicate severe tradeoffs for affordable housing if all high quality farm lands are strictly preserved. Achieving farmland protection goals will require further policy support to transform the local farm structure from plantation to diversified agriculture.     

The role of family life-cycle events on persistent and transient inefficiencies in less favoured areas

Family farms dominate less favoured areas (LFAs) within Europe, and family life-cycle conditions, such as succession and retirement, affects how these farms adapt to changing circumstances. Past studies of on-farm technical efficiency have not directly addressed these conditions, but they may explain why some farms are more efficient than others, especially as the farm family model dominates most farming systems. Motivated by the UK's withdrawal from the EU and the debate around establishing replacement support policies, we apply a multi-step model to measure both transient and persistent inefficiencies using a panel of LFA cattle and sheep farms in Scotland over the period 2003–2020. We find a greater prevalence of persistent compared to transient inefficiency, which suggests that structural problems still exist. Farms with planned succession are found to have higher persistent efficiencies, whereas farmers nearing retirement have lower levels. Other factors, such as dependence on subsidy, off-farm activity and classification as severely disadvantaged tend to compound these lower efficiencies. We argue that life-cycle conditions should not be ignored in studies of farm technical efficiency. Within the scope of framing a new agricultural policy for UK administrations, these results inform the debate on support for LFAs, as well as the promotion of support towards generational renewal to ease transition across farm family life-cycle events.     

The effect of decoupling on marginal agricultural systems: Implications for farm incomes,land use and upland ecology

In many parts of Europe, decades of production subsidies led to the steady intensification of agriculture in marginal areas. The recent decoupling of subsidies from production decisions means that the future of farming in these areas is uncertain. For example, in the uplands of the United Kingdom, an area important both for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service provision, hill farmers steadily increased stocking densities in response to headage payments but must now reconfigure farm businesses to account for the shift to the Single Farm Payment scheme. We examined hill farming in the Peak District National Park as a case study into the future of marginal agriculture after decoupling. We surveyed 44 farm businesses and from this identified six representative farm types based on enterprise mix and land holdings. We developed linear programming models of production decisions for each farm type to examine the impacts of policy changes, comparing the effects of decoupling with and without agri-environment and hill farm support, and evaluating the effects of removal of the Single Farm Payment. The main effects of decoupling are to reduce stocking rates, and to change the mix of livestock activities. Agri-environmental schemes mediate the income losses from decoupling, and farmers are predicted to maximise take up of new Environmental Stewardship programmes, which have both positive and negative feedback effects on livestock numbers. Finally, removal of the Single Farm Payment leads to negative net farm incomes, and some land abandonment. These changes have important implications for ongoing debates about how ecological service flows can be maintained from upland areas, and how marginal upland farming communities can be sustained.     

Is there a future for small farms in developed countries? Evidence from the French case

This research aims to identify the specific characteristics of small farms in developed countries and the factors that influence their survival and growth. Using the case of France, we employ statistical and econometric analysis of data from the Farm Structure Survey (N = 70,000) for the period 2000–2007. The principal findings suggest that small farms are no more likely than other farms to employ “alternative” strategies to the predominant model of increasing farm size, nor are they more likely to diversify on‐farm activities or operate under quality‐labeled production systems, with the notable exception of organic agriculture. However, where small farms do adopt or practice these activities, they are seen to have a favorable effect in ensuring their survival and growth. In contrast, we are unable to conclude that pluriactivity of farm households has a positive impact on the survival of small enterprises. The effect of geographical location on small farms is largely expressed in their concentration in mountainous or disadvantaged regions. Overall, the trajectory of small farms is marked by farm exit, principally as the result of farmers retiring at the end of their careers. The small farm sector is also revitalized by both larger farms declining and thus being reclassified as small farms, as well as the progressive entry into agriculture of small farm holders whose income was previously derived largely off‐farm.