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Abandoned farmland: Past failures or future opportunities for Europe’s Green Deal? A Baltic case-study, Valujeva, Kristine ; Debernardini, Mariana ; Freed, Elizabeth K ; Nipers, Aleksejs ; Schulte, Rogier P.O; Environmental science & policy, 2022-02, Vol.128, p.175-184.
Abstract: Competing societal demands on land require careful land management. In the era of the European Green Deal, farmers are required to meet some of these competing demands, specifically around production, greenhouse gas emission reductions, and biodiversity conservation. At the same time, 15.1% of total EU land is abandoned or underutilised, which means that it contributes neither to food, nor to ecosystem services, to its full potential. Reintegrating abandoned agricultural land back into production is therefore one of the potential pathways to deliver on the aspirations of the Common Agriculture Policy post-2020. In this paper we assess the potential of managing and reintegrating abandoned agricultural land in Europe to simultaneously increase primary productivity, carbon regulation and habitat for biodiversity, using Latvia as a national case-study that is representative of this challenge in a Baltic context. Our results show that for some regions, reintegration of abandoned agricultural land can lead to “triple win” synergies. These opportunities can be further exploited by applying best management practices to these reintegrated lands. In other regions, where the area of abandoned agricultural land is limited because of favourable biophysical conditions for intensive agricultural production, such “triple-win” synergies are scarce. In such areas, abandoned land plays a role in maintaining ecosystem services at local and regional scales, and even small increases in primary productivity come at the expense of biodiversity. This calls for careful management that involves diverse actor groups, including land managers, in the decision-making process, and in priority setting in each of the regions.
Farm Animals Are Long Away from Natural Behavior: Open Questions and Operative Consequences on Animal Welfare, Alberto Cesarani; Giuseppe Pulina; Animals (Basel), 2021-03-06, Vol.11 (3), p.1-14.
From author’s abstract: Animal welfare is a very important issue. One of the tasks of researchers is to provide explanations and possible solutions to questions arising from non-experts. This work analyzes part of the extensive literature on relationships between selection and domestic, mainly farm, animals' behavior and deals with some very important themes, such as the role of regulations, domestication, and selection. The concept of welfare applied to farm animals has undergone a remarkable evolution. The growing awareness of citizens pushes farmers to guarantee the highest possible level of welfare to their animals. New perspectives could be opened for animal welfare reasoning around the concept of domestic, especially farm, animals as partial human artifacts. Therefore, it is important to understand how much a particular behavior of a farm animal is far from the natural one of its ancestors. This paper is a contribution to better understand the role of genetics of the farm animals on their behavior. This means that the naïve approach to animal welfare regarding returning animals to their natural state should be challenged and that welfare assessment should be considered.
Abstract: The UK exited the EU on 31 January 2020, with a transition period agreed as part of the Withdrawal Agreement. During this transition period the UK and the EU will decide on their future trading relationship. No matter what form this relationship takes, there will be disturbances to agri‐food markets. This study analyses four different scenarios with increasing barriers to trade, ranging from a very close relationship similar to the European Economic Area to a distant relationship in which the UK and EU trade on Most Favoured Nation terms, using the EU focused global agricultural sector model CAPRI. In the UK, food prices will increase in all scenarios, making consumers in the UK the biggest losers. Only in a free trade agreement scenario does the UK show an unambiguous positive net welfare gain in just the agri‐food sector. In the case of the European Economic Area scenario, which assumes continued access to the single market, the net welfare impact would depend on the size of the UK’s continued contribution to the EU. In the EU, declining food prices would benefit consumers but the sum of the loss in farmers’ incomes and the UK’s EU CAP contribution would be much greater than the consumer’s gain. These impacts in agricultural markets under different future trade arrangements will also be influenced by the UK’s agricultural policy changes in direct payments as well as by possible further UK trade liberalisation after the end of the transition period.
From the author’s abstract: The aim of the study was to examine similarities in notifications on main hazards within food reported in the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF) in 1979–2017. The main problems were mycotoxins in nuts, pathogenic microorganisms in poultry meat and fish, pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables, and heavy metals in fish. The increase in the number of notifications has been observed since 2002/2003. Products were notified mainly by Italy, Germany, and United Kingdom and originated from Asian and European Union countries. The notification basis was border control and official control, and the notification type was border rejections, information, and alerts. Notified products were not distributed and not placed on the market, distribution status could be also not specified, or distribution was possible, also to other countries. The risk decision on hazard was usually not made. Products were redispatched, withdrawn from the market, and destroyed, or import was not authorized. Remarks, which can be used to improve the RASFF database, were also presented. It was further pointed out that European law should significantly reduce the use of pesticides, drugs, and food additives, and European agriculture should be reoriented from an intensive farming to a more sustainable and ecological one.
From the author’s abstract: The next challenge of organic farming, according to many authors, is to overcome the horizon of a method of agricultural production towards a wider agroecological perspective whose main objective is to change the dominant agri-food system. In parallel with the discussion on the future of organic farming, in the European Union (EU), the more intensive systems of organic production in protected conditions have been the object of debate among the main actors of organic farming in the Member States (MS). The introduction of common measures for greenhouse production in the new European regulation on organic production represents the first important step in the implementation of more resilient cropping systems in protected conditions. This paper has the ambition of describing the evolution of the scientific and technical debate on organic greenhouse production in Europe over the last decade, and aims to show how the new regulation on organic farming has partially embedded some of the conclusions of the multi-actor discussion on the main production issues in protected conditions.
Publisher's note : The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to affect agricultural markets over the next decade. OECD analysis highlights how slower economic growth could affect food security, farm livelihoods, greenhouse gas emissions, and trade. The size of these impacts depends, among other things, on the severity of the drop in global GDP. Based on two scenarios for economic growth recovery, this brief describes how the economic shock from the pandemic could reverberate through the agriculture sector over the next decade.The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to affect agricultural markets over the next decade. OECD analysis highlights how slower economic growth could affect food security, farm livelihoods, greenhouse gas emissions, and trade. The size of these impacts depends, among other things, on the severity of the drop in global GDP. Based on two scenarios for economic growth recovery, this brief describes how the economic shock from the pandemic could reverberate through the agriculture sector over the next decade.
Publisher's note : Current conventional agriculture is considered unsustainable and inadequate to address great societal challenges such as climate change, environmental pollution, food security, dependence on fossil energy as well as the decline of natural resources and biodiversity. Many of these problems are related to agricultural specialization (i.e. monoculture) and the consequent simplification of the agroecosystem. In this respect, efforts aimed at improving individual agronomic techniques and at increasing the use-efficiency of external inputs (e.g. synthetic inputs, fossil fuels), without modifying the structure and functions of the whole system, appear to be insufficient to achieve sustainability in most conventional and intensive farming systems. Current organic farming systems adopting the so-called input substitution approach remain intensive and highly specialized and not necessarily able to significantly improve their sustainability. This would require system diversification and redesign of the agroecosystem to increase the spatial and temporal diversification of all its components and promote positive ecological relationships between them. Agroforestry is an agricultural approach based on the diversification of the agroecosystem production components (woody perennials, such as trees or shrubs, plus crops and/or livestock) and on the intensification of the agroecological relationships between these components. As such, it has transformative potential, providing an opportunity for increasing the sustainability of organic farming. In this article we review how the adoption of agroforestry practices could contribute to increasing sustainability in organic farming, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of this adoption.
Publisher's note : Parts of European rural development policies are meant to empower local decision makers. These policies are implemented in very different multilevel governance contexts in the member states. We question the extent to which the institutional differences at the different levels affect the implementation of LEADER (an approach for Community-led Local Development). This contributes to a better understanding of the causes and consequences of different types of LEADER implementation. The research is based on ten case studies in France, Germany and Italy. First, there is an examination of the three different administration systems and the variations of Rural Development Programmes. Based on analyses of documents and interviews with stakeholders, we analysed institutional differences in the LEADER implementation at local level.
From author’s abstract: Suppose we were in 2028: what would the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) look like then? Would it be significantly different from the policy we know today? How, and why? And to what extent would Brexit have catalyzed these changes? The CAP is one of the founding policies of the EU and a strategic lever to address critical 21st century challenges such as climate change and the rising demand for food at the global level. It also has an important role in Europe to address the growing urban-rural divide and its potentially destabilizing impact on European politics. In this article, we examine the impact of Brexit from a political-economic perspective emphasizing the multi-level context within which the CAP is embedded. As an EU member state, the UK found a way to partly accommodate the CAP to its needs even though this policy was a source of intense UK dissatisfaction with the EU. Post-Brexit, the budgetary and market implications of the UK's departure may favour positions that support a return to a more traditional policy of farm income support. On the other hand, more radical farm policies in England and Wales could partly offset these effects by setting the agenda for continued CAP reform, if they are seen to be successful.
From author’s abstract: The analysis of structure of agricultural sector shows a poor viability of small-scale farms in new EU member states despite support of the Common Agricultural Policy. Considering this problem, the aim of the article is to identify indicators that can be used to show changes in the viability of small farms in order to bring policy makers more attention to this very important group of farms in the context of the agricultural economy in Latvia and Lithuania. For this purpose, 4 economic indicators were selected, analyzed and their impact to the change in the level of viability of small farms during 2007-2016 was assessed. The research based on the data of Farm Accountancy Data Network and Farm Structure Survey, using statistical data comparison, systematic indicator selection and mathematical induction methods. The results shows that despite growing of the rate of subsidies on investment and improving income level in small farms over the observed period , the viability of small farms remains heterogeneous and insufficient to contribute in constructing more resilient and sustainable agricultural sector both in Lithuania and in Latvia. Thus, in the upcoming Rural Development Programming period, the priority should be given to small-scale farms since they play a significant role not only in development of viability of agriculture in general but also are important to agricultural sustainability.
From author’s abstract: The Paris Agreement established the 1.5 and 2 °C targets based on the recognition “that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”. We tested this assertion by comparing impacts at the regional scale between low-end (< 2 °C; RCP2.6) and high-end (> 4 °C; RCP8.5) climate change scenarios accounting for interactions across six sectors (agriculture, forestry, biodiversity, water, coasts and urban) using an integrated assessment model. Results show that there are only minor differences in most impact indicators for the 2020s time slice, but impacts are considerably greater under high-end than low-end climate change in the 2050s and 2080s. For example, for the 2080s, mitigation consistent with the Paris Agreement would reduce aggregate Europe-wide impacts on the area of intensive agriculture by 21% (on average across climate models), on the area of managed forests by 34%, on water stress by 14%, on people flooded by 10% and on biodiversity vulnerability by 16%. Including socio-economic scenarios (SSPs 1, 3, 4, 5) results in considerably greater variation in the magnitude, range and direction of change of the majority of impact indicators than climate change alone.
From the author’s abstract: The expansion of the bioeconomy sector will increase the competition for agricultural land regarding biomass production. Furthermore, the particular path of the expansion of the bioeconomy is associated with great uncertainty due to the early stage of technology development and its dependency on political framework conditions. Economic models are suitable tools to identify trade‐offs in agricultural production and address the high uncertainty of the bioeconomy expansion. We present results from the farm model Economic Farm Emission Model of four bioeconomy scenarios in order to evaluate impacts and trade‐offs of different potential bioeconomy developments and the corresponding uncertainty at regional and farm level in Baden‐Wuerttemberg, Germany. The demand‐side effects of the bioeconomy scenarios are based on downscaling European Union level results of a separate model linkage between an agricultural sector and an energy sector model. The general model results show that the expanded use of agricultural land for the bioeconomy sector, especially for the cultivation of perennial biomass crops (PBC), reduces biomass production for established value chains, especially for food and feed. The results also show differences between regions and farm types in Baden‐Wuerttemberg. Fertile arable regions and arable farms profit more from the expanded use of biomass in the bioeconomy than farms that focus on cattle farming. Latter farms use the arable land to produce feed for the cattle, whereas arable farms can expand feedstock production for new value chains. Additionally, less intensive production systems like extensive grassland suffer from economic losses, whereas the competition in fertile regions further increases. Hence, if the extensive production systems are to be preserved, appropriate subsidies must be provided. This emphasizes the relevance of downscaling aggregated model results to higher spatial resolution, even as far as to the decision maker (farm), to identify possible contradicting effects of the bioeconomy as well as policy implications.
Outlook on agriculture is a peer reviewed journal, published quarterly. Special attention is paid to strategic developments in food production, food security, agricultural systems, environmental impacts of agriculture, climate change, the role of agriculture in social and economic development, agricultural policy, international trade in the agricultural sector, and new agricultural technologies in developing countries.
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