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The Agriculture in Czechia After EU Entry: Focus on Multifunctional Agriculture Based on Non-commodity Production
Abstract
The paper discuss the concepts of multifunctional agriculture, known for over three decades, especially from the Anglo-Saxon environment, and to analyse the development of Czech agriculture as well as application of multifunctional agriculture especially in the period after Czechia’s joining the European Union. There is a variety of approaches to multifunctional agriculture, acquiring their form depending on a specific conceptualisation. For the needs of this paper, multifunctional agriculture was conceptualised as non-commodity production. The paper discusses and subsequently evaluates these approaches to multifunctional agriculture in Czechia’s conditions by means of a quantitative assessment arising from statistically available indicators. Emphasis is also laid on regional differentiation of multifunctional agriculture indicators. With regard to the evaluated activities associated with multifunctional agriculture, there is an obvious link with the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU that has been implemented in Czechia since its joining the EU in 2004.
Over the last three decades, agriculture in Central and Eastern Europe has undergone very profound change. This first and foremost reflected the collapse of the communist system, as well as accession to the European Union in the case of most of the CEECs. The work detailed here has thus had as its cognitive goal the identification of trends regarding selected components of agriculture’s spatial structure which have included agrarian structure, agricultural land use, and the structure of agricultural production. Attention has also been paid to what conditioned the transformation, as well as the spatial differences that characterised it. With a view to these objectives being achieved, 11 current EU Member States in the region were analysed, above all by reference to source materials from EUROSTAT and the FAO.
This paper characterises the development of Czech agriculture in the 30 years since the change of political regime. It notes that, although ownership has changed, the structure of large farms has been maintained. There has been a reduction in livestock production in particular, which has disrupted the traditional relationship between the two principal agricultural activities. The number of workers in the primary sector has fallen very rapidly, to less than 6% now, even in rural areas. Therefore, the communities in the Czech countryside are no longer dependent on agriculture, whose role is increasingly shifting to landscape maintenance and non-productive activities. At present, subsidies under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy are the main driver in Czech agriculture. In the face of current challenges, attention needs to be paid to the environmental function of agriculture, while the impact of agricultural jobs on rural development is negligible.
The paper concentrates on analytical findings of the RIAE in the sphere of problems associated with the readiness of Czech agriculture for the EU accession. An analysis of the present situation of Czech agriculture is followed by an assessment of potential impacts of the EU conditions on the economic position of the main agricultural commodities. The predictions are conceived by variants, because the future parameters of the CAP are still under negotiations. The conclusions are oriented on the summary assessment of the readiness of Czech agriculture for the EU accession.
Czech and Slovak agricultural geographers pay the greatest attention to the issues
framed in the crucial temporal change of a society-wide nature (transformation of
agriculture, the impact of accession to the EU). However, these issues quickly become
outdated. The theoretical frameworks eliminating the disadvantage of being firmly
anchored in a specific time have been used only marginally (e.g. the concept of sustainability).
Therefore it seems that the Czech and Slovak agricultural geography is
searching for “inspiring and rewarding” approaches after more than 10 years of membership
in the EU. This article attempts to show that the theoretical discussion focused
on the conceptualizations of the multifunctional agriculture and agricultural multifunctionality
offers the principal idea, inspiration and application, which should be
useful for the analysis of changes in agriculture, or more precisely in the wider rural
area of the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic, and goes beyond the argument that
multifunctional agriculture is negatively associated with the Common Agriculture
Policy as a “defence of European agriculture”.
Czech agriculture entered a dynamic transformation period after 1990. Due to accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union and implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy, stabilization of the agricultural sector and its further development was expected. During this period, the output of the agricultural sector decreased, the number of bred farm animals was significantly reduced and the area of arable land was diminished. This paper focuses on the development of Czech agriculture in the period 2001-2008, paying attention to regional differentiation in the development of cattle, dairy cows and pig farming as significant agricultural characteristics in the Czech districts. Some specific problems of the Czech agricultural sector and its overall decline, despite Czech membership in the EU, are also highlighted.
The objective of this book is to analyze changes in the landscape of Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic since the first half of the 19th century. The text focuses not only on describing these considerable changes by means of statistical and spatial data, but also on explaining the processes, societal, economic, political and institutional forces that drive them. Drawing on more than two decades of experience with land use research, the authors have combined methods and approaches from the fields of human geography, cartography, landscape ecology, historical geography and environmental history. The authors understand land use research as a way of analyzing nature-society interactions, their development, spatial aspects, causes and impacts. Czechoslovakia / the Czech Republic serves as an example, combining general processes occurring in landscapes of developed countries with the results of regionally specific driving forces, most of them political (world wars, communism, return to market economy etc.). © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015. All rights reserved.
Although the agriculture/farmers cannot be seen as crucial sector/actors of rural development, their importance is not negligible. Currently, some popular concepts of the development of the transforming rural space – concept of the OECD (2006), bottom-up approach of community-led local development and implemented LEADER method - understand farmers as important factor of rural development and emphasize the need of connection of the key actors in the rural areas and the need of their own participation and initiation of the development of rural areas. The changing position of agriculture and the differentiated rural areas is also reflected in the theoretical approaches trying to explain this transformation with agriculture seen as one of the sectors and industries in the rural areas which can ensure the sustainability of rural households and the quality of life in rural areas through combination of agriculture and other activities (tourism or other services) in the frame of multifunctionality concept. Therefore the present paper opens the questions of how Czech farmers reflect their position in the rural areas (particularly in the context of multifunctionality) and whether they understand this issue only through the narrow sectoral focus (agricultural development) or whether they perceive it as a complex dimension connected to rural development. To answer these questions, the presented research was conducted in the autumn of 2013 among 73 farmers when 30% of participating farmers cultivated an area smaller than 50 ha, while only 21% of the respondents reported 80% of captured agricultural land. Based on the research findings, farmers are largely familiar with a comprehensive view of the Czech rural space in the context of multifunctionality in agriculture. They reflected position in the broader socio-economic and environmental context of the area where farms are localized. On the other hand, acceptance of their own agricultural activities in relation to the primary function of agriculture in connection with multifunctionality - the production of agricultural commodities, was identified as a very strong.
The delimitation of less-favoured areas (LFA) on the territorial and the farm level in the EU member states varies in many ways. The Commission emphasizes the unification of criteria on the territorial level. But the EU countries use very different criteria for the eligibility area definition and for the eligibility on farm level. This makes the comparison very difficult. The CR belongs to the countries with a lower level of differentiation of payments rates. The eligibility area is restricted to the grassland in the CR and degresivity of payments is not applied. In particular, collective farms as the owners' association play an important social role in the country of the Czech Republic and some other countries in the Central and Eastern Europe. It would be necessary to find such differentiation of payment system that would reflect these specific conditions. The holdings with different size and different form of farming as well as the effect of other subsidies to holdings should be taken into account. The support potential within the axis III of the Rural Development Program would be necessary strengthen to elimination of the adverse impact due to further lay-off of the employees in agriculture.
The article presents an impact analysis of the current agricultural policy on the economy of farms in the Czech less favoured areas (LFAs) and on environment and employment in these areas. A multi-criteria impact assessment shows that under the Czech conditions for supports in the LFAs the economic situation of larger extensive farms, measured by the farm net value added per one annual working unit, is very good even in comparison with farms in the regions with the best natural conditions and out of the LFAs. On the other hand, these farms - with an extensive cattle breeding as usually - operate with very low labour inputs and they realise inadequate rents. A decrease or elimination of the rents is possible by changes in conditions for LFA supports, for example by a degresivity of rates and/or by a capping of the supports, or by the distribution of the LFA payments on the whole area of eligible agricultural land.
There has been a strong discourse in public policy aimed at transforming rural places from venues of primary production into truly diverse socioeconomic landscapes. Yet conceptualisations of the rural as envisioned in the policy and politics of the ‘new economy’ often prove to be elusive on the ground. However, post-productive activity in rural areas has become a major focus for rural studies scholars. This paper investigates the ideas of post-productivism in the existing literature, and argues for a holistic understanding of post-productivism as an idea and political ambition rather than an imperative and irreversible change of rural economic activity. The purpose of the study is to make clear the division between post-productivism and the related concepts of post-production and post-productive activities in order to better understand processes of rural change in relation to different geographical contexts. It is argued that post-productivism as a concept stands apart from de facto post-production and alternative concepts such as multifunctionality and should be regarded as part of broader regional development discourses. The paper outlines several important fields in which post-productivism is a necessary component for rural transformation and development. While it is not always easily captured in indicators or empirical studies in rural locations, postproductivism exists at the level of discourse and planning and thus has real effects on the ground. The paper concludes by offering suggestions on how to apply the concepts of post-productivism, post-production and multifunctionality in future studies.
Grasslands received policy attention in the Czech Republic only just fifteen years ago, when they were threatened to be abandoned in the economic transition process. The supports to farming on grasslands have grown gradually, particularly after the EU accession. The policy followed the notion of jointness between grassland management and beef cattle raising and conditioned Agri-environmental (AE) and Less Favoured Areas (LFA) payments by a minimum livestock density. There are many reasons why the current policy will change in the new programme period. This paper attempts to assess the impact of the envisaged changes on grassland maintenance. It is showed that overall future supports to farming will be sufficient to keep positive profit on grassland farms, however the structure of supports might be less appropriate to the actual objectives of grassland protection and hence, there is a threat of policy failure in the end.
The article describes the layout of plant production and livestock rate in the the Czech Republic in 2003 according to a sample survey of the Czech Statistical Office. The orientation produce of agricultural enterprises is defined as a small amount of market production products, that represent the predominant part of revenues. Grain crops, porc meat, milk and non-food crops represent the orientation produce of Czech agriculture. These commodities represent more than 70% of total agricultural production in the Czech Republic. In this article, the authors have attempted to define a regional classification according to orientation produce of agricultural enterprises and intensity of agricultural production
Multifunctionality is today a keyword to understand rural areas in Europe. Depending on the context, it may refer to farm households, areas, or the agricultural sector. For farm households, it can be defined as their capacity to respond adequately to societal and consumer demands through the provisioning of a variety of goods, services, and non-market functions. These farm household practices are often categorized as ‘deepening’, ‘broadening’, or ‘regrounding’. In the article, the multifunctional practices of farm households in Greece are discussed within this conceptual framework with the presentation of specific examples that are derived from fieldwork. The case studies represent different spatial units and practices, covering deepening (organic farming, integrated management), broadening (agrotourism, short food supply chains), and regrounding (pluriactivity) practices of Greek farm households. The most important findings link multifunctionality mostly to pluriactivity, with complex and diverse strategies. Finally, some of the most important activities are not practised by farm households but by upstream actors.
European Union (EU) enlargement has seen 10 new member states (NMS) adopt the full range of EU policies. Within this, the rural development arm of the Common Agricultural Policy offers particular points of interest. Member states chose from an extensive list of policy measures developed within the EU15 and intended, in particular, to operationalise the concept of rural multifunctionality within the ongoing CAP reform process. This paper identifies the rural development policy choices made by the eight central and eastern European NMS and develops a taxonomy to ascertain the extent to which the NMS are directing public funds to promote multifunctionality. A number of factors are then identified as helping to influence the policy choices made across countries.
The extent to which the multifunctionality of agriculture can justify continuing domestic subsidies to farmers that may be trade distorting in their effects, has emerged as a key bone of contention in the current World Trade Organization (WTO) agriculture trade talks. Supporters of multifunctionality point to the contribution of agriculture in terms of food security, rural development and environmental protection. In this paper, we focus on the environmental component in order to examine three interconnected questions. First, how robust is multifunctionality as a policy concept? Second, if multifunctionality is a reality, how valid is the claim made by European negotiators that the liberalization of agricultural policy and the abolition of blue box subsidies threaten the joint production of food and environmental goods in rural space? Third, what are the precise implications of this analysis for agri-environmental policy design, and the likely compatibility of the European Union's favoured model with current and future WTO disciplines? We conclude that, while multifunctionality is a genuine, and in some respects, unique, feature of European agriculture, it is in relation to the perceived threat of extensive agricultural restructuring to biodiversity and landscape values in the European Union that the concept has been most fully realized. This has profound implications for policy design, suggesting a need to retain some element of income support in the policy mix in order to defend environmental assets against the extreme consequences of farm structural change. We conclude by exploring what these deductions might mean for the future course of the WTO talks and for the long-term design of agri-environmental policy in industrialized countries.
The liberalisation of agricultural markets is one of the most contested issues in international politics. Debates surrounding it counter-pose the moral imperative to dismantle protectionist agricultural subsidies in order to combat rural poverty in the South with fears for the livelihoods of marginal farmers and the environmental integrity of the countryside in the developed North. A largely European concern with defending the ‘multifunctionality’ of agriculture is dismissed by critics as a protectionist excuse for continued farm support. In this paper we seek to assess how far support for multifunctionality can be construed as a form of resistance to the neoliberal project for agriculture. The paper begins with an analysis of the European negotiating stance in the Doha round and the subsequent evolution of debates surrounding multifunctionality in an international setting. Having identified the European Union as one of the key sites of articulation concerning the implications of trade liberalisation for a multifunctional agriculture, the paper goes on to argue that multifunctionality within the framework of European rural policy emerges as a much more elusive and susceptible concept, informed by radically different interpretations of the vulnerability of family farmers to greater market exposure and the extent to which agricultural restructuring should be regarded as an issue of wider public concern. This maps onto a technically complex debate about how best to procure environmental public goods in a period of rapid agricultural change. The paper concludes that with these differences still very much in play, questions concerning the compatibility of multifunctionality with market liberalisation remain deeply unresolved at an important moment in the internationalisation of rural policy governance.
Post-productivism is a contested concept, and some argue that it should be abandoned. In this paper, a more focused definition for post-productivism is suggested. Evidence for change in forestry and agriculture that could be categorised as post-productivist is presented, in relation to both the narrower definition and to characterisations suggested by other authors. A reduced (relative) emphasis on material production, combined with an increased emphasis on the provision of environmental services, has characterised rural land use at the end of the 20th century in parts of the developed world. In this sense, post-productivism is a reality, and should not be abandoned. It may have utility in relation to our understanding of land-use change in developed countries, and in that respect to the generating of questions that would amount to a formidable research agenda.
This paper builds on the outcomes of a state-of-the-art review of research for the European research project MULTAGRI, with a particular focus on the conceptualisation of Multifunctional Agriculture (MFA) from a 'supply side' perspective. It argues that a consistent and satisfactory conceptual framework for studying the supply of MFA at farm and territorial level is still largely lacking and that, when consistently applied, the recognition of the multifunctionality of agriculture fundamentally challenges the ways in which agricultural activities are observed, analysed and their effects assessed. This is elaborated by discussing five 'critical questions' for studying the supply of MFA: (1) what are relevant functions of agriculture? (2) how to define agricultural activities? (3) how to identify relevant farm/firm categories? (4) how to study the role of changing rural identities? and (5) what is the role of new territorial and institutional arrangements?
Two main traits characterize the Czech agriculture after 1989: decrease of agricultural production connected with the fact that a half of active population has left agriculture and then transformation of holder relations with view to property restitution to persons that lost lands and property in the years of collectivization. The article deals with regional differences in the process of both phenomena and tries to explain them.
The main purpose of the article is to present a spatial and temporal assessment of selected broadening and deepening activities associated with multifunctional agriculture in post-socialist Czechia. Although a number of studies of multifunctionality have been published, geographical assessment of multifunctional activities has been quite limited. The authors used quantitative research methods based on different data sources (Farm Structure Survey data and individual databases) to capture the dynamic and spatial distribution of selected multifunctional activities, specifically organic farming, agricultural anaerobic digestion plants, agritourism, and eco-agritourism. The analysis focused on two geographical attributes that influence the farming sector: conditions of an area for agriculture, and the importance of rural space. The results show that the role of multifunctional agriculture was strengthened as an integrating element of rural development in the period 2003–2013. Spatially differentiated growth of a number of farms that were developing broadening and deepening activities was particularly localized in mountainous areas. The authors conclude that multifunctional agriculture plays an integrating role in rural development in such regions because conditions for agriculture are a more crucial geographical attribute in its localization than the importance of rural space.
The article deals with the transition and transformation of Czech agriculture. The character of post-1990 systemic changes is defined. Chief goals of the state agricultural policy are described as well as the impacts of radical economic reform on the agricultural production. The following processes are analysed: 1) Restitution - return of property to the original owners or to their heirs; 2) Transformation - property transfer from the cooperatives to private subjects (individuals and companies); 3) Privatization - denationalization and privatization of the former state farms. The last chapter focuses on the privatization of Zihle State Farm (West Bohemia) as a detailed case study.
The paper describes the Czech agriculture in the transformation period after 1990. It analyses the basic changes, which has occurred in Czechia since the end of the totalitarian period. Attention is also paid to the development of the system of subsidies, to the changes in the intensity of agricultural production, to the changes in alimentary consumption and especially to regional impacts of the transformation processes in the Czech agriculture. The SWOT analysis of the Czech agriculture is also discussed.
Basic political changes after 1990 year formed preconditions for the transition of Czech and Slovak societies. The processes of transformation have influenced also the state of Czech agriculture and the rural landscape, which will be analysed in the following contribution according to individual developmental stages. The change of political system at the beginning of the 1990s presented itself with particular processes that can be called overall the transformation of agriculture. In this period those were predominantly the change of the ownership of land and means of production. The process of giving land back to its initial owners - the process of restitution - began. The decrease of agricultural intensity has presented besides other also at the changes of structure of Czech landscape. The land use structure of agricultural land has been changed while occupying the same area in numerous regions.
In this article, we focused on the influence of two institutional factors - EU subsidies and supports, and system of ownership and lease of agricultural land - on the state and changes of agriculture and land use in Czechia after its accession to the EU in 2004. This assessment was based on a series of questionnaires and interviews with farmers and other actors involved, conducted recently in two model regions: Český Brod in the fertile lowland of Central Bohemia; and Sněžné in less favoured natural conditions of the Bohemian-Moravian Highland. Firstly, we concentrated on market conditions, economic viability and effects of and problems related to the system of supports and subsidies destined for the Czech agricultural sector after 2004. Special attention was devoted to grassing. Secondly, we discussed the contrast between ownership and use of land - the fact that most of the Czech agricultural land is currently leased. We tried to define negative effects of this fact, both for farming and for landscape - e.g. uncertainty about the future, unwillingness to invest into leased plots, or weak relationship of farmers to land.
During last two decades Czech agriculture has gone through significant changes: the transition of agriculture in the 1990s and the entrance of the Czech Republic into the EU and its commitment to the Common Agricultural Policy(CAP). Both of these changes contributed to the structural and regional differentiation of Czech agriculture and exposed it to competition with the whole of Europe. Furthermore, CAP exposed Czech agriculture to uneven conditions for farmers within the EU. The most significant results of these changes have been a decrease in the agricultural sector output, a reduction in farm animals bred, and shrinkage of arable land. On the other hand, many non-productive and non-agricultural activities in the rural areas are subsidised, which offers farmers new possibilities of development. The aim of this paper is to analyse the structural and spatial change in Czech agriculture between 2000 and 2010 on the basis of Agrocenzus data supplemented by opinions of farmers gained in a series of interviews.
Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 111(2):131–147, 2011
A critical review of the European Union (EU) environmental and rural policies suggests that in the case of environmental policy an almost complete segregation between nature and areas where human activity is acceptable seems to be the main rationale. However, when agricultural and rural development policy measures are examined the focus seems to be on the integration of environmental conservation efforts in all activities across space. At the same time the scope of this policy is gradually widening from a strictly sectorial (agricultural) to a policy for the management of rural space. The above and the gradual integration of spatial elements in policy making could explain the increasing emphasis on rural landscape issues. The paper focuses on three cases of public intervention in three areas of Greece: A) The Amfissa olive grove (Sterea Hellas), where support from the first pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and a local agri-environmental measure, complement the existing landscape protection regulations of archaeological and land planning legislation; B) the Anthili plain (Sterea Hellas) where a production support lead to an intensification process with negative impacts on the landscape, and finally C) Santorini (Cyclades), where the incentive based policies implemented, due to the absence of a robust land use regulatory framework, seem to have been ineffective.
In 2004 and 2007 12 new member states (NMS) joined the European Union, which has offered several possibilities and challenges to the newcomers. The aim of this article is to assess the impact of EU accession on new member states' agriculture as well as to identify those factors lying behind different country performance. Results suggest that EU accession has had a significant impact on NMS agriculture, although member states capitalised their opportunities in different ways, due to initial conditions and pre- and post-accession policies.
Part 1: Conceptualising Transition Theorising transition Transitions: Social and natural science debates Reconceptualising transition: The complexity of transitory systems Part 2: From Productivist to Post-Productivist - and back again? Productivist agriculture Post-productivist agriculture 'Post-productivism' or 'non-productivism'? Part 3: Conceptualising Multifunctional Agricultural Systems Contemporary conceptualisations of multifunctionality (Re)conceptualising multifunctionality Multifunctional agricultural transitions.
This paper explores the applicability of the concept of “multifunctionality” to the south Florida sugar-producing region. Multifunctionality is being promoted in the European Union in response to neoliberal trade pressures in agriculture. It is seen as a way to address social and ecological concerns such as farm abandonment and biodiversity loss through domestic agricultural policies that conform to the GATT/World Trade Organization. I have two objectives in this paper. First, I seek to investigate multifunctionality as one response to neoliberal pressures for agricultural reform. In doing this, I identify two types of multifunctionality, a “weak” and a “strong” version. Second, I want to explore the possibility for multifunctionality to serve as a vehicle for resistance to GATT/WTO in other regions. I do this through a study of arguably the most maligned agricultural zone in the world, the sugar-producing region of south Florida. The specific geographic focus is the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA), the federally designated, 700,000-acre zone south of Lake Okeechobee that is home to the Florida “Sugar Bowl.”
This paper has evolved out of a growing dissatisfaction with the relatively uncritical acceptance in contemporary debates that agriculture in advanced societies has moved from ‘productivism’ to ‘post-productivism’. A brief review of current conceptualizations of productivist and post-productivist agricultural regimes reveals inconsistencies in current understandings these dualistic terms. The problem has partly been that the conceptual literature on post-productivism has largely failed to take into account the wealth of actor-oriented and behaviourally grounded research. Productivist and post-productivist agricultural regimes have also been conceptualized from a UK-centric perspective that has largely failed to discuss whether the concept has wider applicability within Europe and beyond. The paper discusses the time-lag and spatial inconsistencies in the adoption of post-productivist action and thought, and emphasizes that different localities are positioned at different points in a temporal, spatial and conceptual transition from ‘pre-productivist’ to ‘post-productivist’ agricultural regimes. The notion of the ‘territorialization’ of productivist and post-productivist actor spaces highlights the wide-ranging diversity that exists within the productivist/post-productivist spectrum, and that productivist and post-productivist action and thought occurs in multidimensional coexistence leads one to question the implied directionality of the traditional productivist/post-productivist debate. It is suggested that the notion of a ‘multifunctional agricultural regime’ better encapsulates the diversity, non-linearity and spatial heterogeneity that can currently be observed in modern agriculture and rural society.
Based on reconceptualisations of multifunctional agriculture as a normative spectrum of decision-making (strong to weak multifunctionality) bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought [Hollander, G.M., 2004. Agricultural trade liberalization, multifunctionality, and sugar in the south Florida landscape. Geoforum 35, 299–312; Holmes, J., 2006. Impulses towards a multifunctional transition in rural Australia: gaps in the research agenda. Journal of Rural Studies 22, 142–160; Wilson, G.A., 2007. Multifunctional Agriculture: A Transition Theory Perspective. CAB International, Wallingford], this paper argues that there is currently insufficient research into the geography of multifunctionality. Building on current human geography debates about issues of scale, the paper suggests that we should conceive of multifunctionality as a spatially complex nested hierarchy comprising different interlinked ’layers’ of multifunctional decision-making ranging from the farm level to the national and global levels. It suggests that the notion of multifunctional agriculture only makes sense if it is applied at the farm level as the most important spatial scale for the implementation of multifunctional action ‘on the ground’. Multifunctionality can be interpreted as having ’direct’ expression only at the ’lower’ geographical scales (i.e. farm, community and regional levels in particular) while the regional, national and global levels show ’indirect’ expressions of multifunctionality that are mediated by local level actors in order to find tangible expression on the ground. The notion of global-level multifunctionality is the most challenging, as this level lacks political and ideological coherence about the required directions necessary for implementation of strong multifunctionality pathways. The paper concludes by arguing that much work still awaits those investigating the spatiality of multifunctionality, in particular with regard to the question whether global-level strong multifunctionality is possible, or whether strong multifunctionality in one territory is predicated on weak multifunctionality in others.
The adjustment of the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) initiated in the mid-1980s in response to its high cost and in-built tendency for overproduction set in train a series of measures that have been interpreted as reversing the former emphasis on agricultural production and diverting farmers towards alternative approaches to running their businesses. The policy reform measures have been characterised as contributing to a structural transition from a ‘productivist’ to ‘post-productivist’ era in agriculture, although empirical evidence for such reorientation at the farm level is less than conclusive. This paper reports on results from an analysis of large-scale commercial farmers in an area of relatively intensive arable and mixed livestock farming using documentary and survey sources to seek evidence of this transition over the long-term. Although these farmers have engaged with policy reform measures where these do not conflict with their primary objective, they continue to intensify and specialise their agricultural operations and to concentrate productive farm resources through accumulation and expansion.
Given that current European Union policy is to stimulate and facilitate multifunctional agriculture (European farm model), it would be useful to know why farmers decide to go multifunctional. This paper presents the results of research into the factors determining the adoption of multifunctional activities. It is based on a survey of 495 farms throughout the Netherlands. Binomial logit models were estimated for multifunctional activities in general and for four specific activities. It was found that trust in the government is an important explanatory factor for participation in nature conservation and tourism, but is less important for services and on-farm sales. Farm location is important for nature conservation, services, and tourism. But farmers see tourism as an invasion of ‘farmership’. Farmers who value land ownership highly are less likely to have nature conservation contracts, as then they lose property rights over their own land.
Macro-scale changes to Western agricultural regimes have led to recent debates on the theoretical conceptualisation of agricultural change, particularly regarding the appropriateness of the productivist/post-productivist/multifunctionality (P/PP/MF) model. Within these debates concern has recently arisen as to whether the contemporary perspective, which derives largely from macro-level structural analyses (such as political economy), is compatible with the grassroots ‘agency’ perspective—i.e. whether our conceptualisations of agricultural change follow the Giddensian notion of structure/agency consistency. In this paper we contribute to this debate by investigating the extent to which farmers’ self-concepts and attitudes towards post-productivist approaches are compatible with the current structural changes in agriculture. By introducing the notion from social psychology of a complex self-structure comprised of multiple and hierarchically organised identities, and by investigating the structure of these identities in farmers’ idealised P/PP/MF selves, the study questions the idea that any transformation from productivism to post-productivism/multifunctionality will be in the form of a simple linear transition. Results from a survey of farmers in Bedfordshire (UK) and evidence from other studies throughout Europe and Western agricultural regimes demonstrate that—despite much talk of an increasing ‘conservationist’ component to farming—farmers’ self-concepts are still dominated by production-oriented identities. The study concludes that there is a temporal discordance between the macro- and micro-structural elements of transition implied in the P/PP/MF model, and that we are witnessing at most a partial macro-structural driven transition towards a post-productivist agricultural regime.
The process of CAP reform has reorientated the development of agriculture, more towards the principles of rural development and agricultural multifunctionality. These transformations have been accompanied by a shift in the principles and tools used by policy-makers, necessary to implement these new orientations. The emergent contractual policies represent a renewal of public intervention in agriculture. This article explores the implementation of these policy instruments in two countries, France and the Netherlands. The content and implementation of these policies differs greatly between the two countries, reflecting their different conceptions of multifunctionality. The Netherlands limited the scope of the policy instrument to nature and landscape protection, while France adopted a wider definition of multifunctionality. These differences are partly explained by the particularities of the national context to which those policies have been applied. France is characterized by an institutionalized system of co-management, in which farmers' organizations work closely and have a privileged relationship with the state. Although this mode of governance is weakening and becoming vulnerable, it proved to be highly effective during the 1990s and contributed to the adoption of a broad vision of multifunctionality. By contrast, the selective definition of multifunctionality within Dutch policy is partly due to the co-evolution of strong environmentalist sympathies, together with a liberalization of agricultural management. These divergences are perceptible in the policies that were adopted as well as in the configurations of power that were at stake during the policy-making processes.
- OECD
Regionální diferenciace českého zemědělství v období začleňování České republiky do Evropské unie
- O Konečný
Situační a výhledová zpráva ovce a kozy
- Moa
Multifunctionality and rural development: A general framework
- G Durand
- G Van Huylenbroek
Regionální diferenciace environmentálních aspektů multifunkcionality zemědělství v Česku
- J Hrabák
Situační a výhledová zpráva Skot - hovězí maso
- Moa
Prague: Ministry of Agriculture
- Moa
The role of agri-environmental contracts in saving biodiversity in the post-socialist Czech Republic
- J Pražan
- I Theesfeld
Policy challenges and priorities for internalizing the externalities of modern agriculture
- J Pretty
- C Brett
- D Gee
- R Hine
- C H Mason
- J Morison
Changes of spatial differentiation in livestock breeding in the Czech Republic after 1990
- S Martinát
- P Klapka
- E Nováková
Vliv politických a institucionálních faktorů na české zemědělství a krajinu
- J Kabrda
- V Jančák
Farm structure survey - Regions
- Cso