Douglas Bardsley Geography, Environment & Population University of Adelaide adelaide.edu.au

Transcription

1 Douglas Bardsley Geography, Environment & Population University of Adelaide adelaide.edu.au

2 Reforms to European Agricultural Policy (Bardsley & Thomas 2004, Bardsley & Pech 2012) Since early 1990s, the European Union has been moving away from high levels of open ended, commodity based price support leading to an increasing de-coupling of support from production. Switzerland is not in the EU, and has some of the highest levels of state agricultural support, but since 1998 Law on Agriculture farmers are also increasingly compensated through direct support payments.

3 Eg. Swiss farms The total number of Swiss farms has fallen from 92,815 farms in 1990 to 44,992 in 2009, or close to a 50% decline in nearly 20 years. (Bundesamt für Landwirtschaft,

4 Argument Remove agriculture and you lose: Food security Diversity Aesthetic value Identity Tourism Farmer s rights Eg. French lobby group Coordination Rurale Tuer les paysans, c est tuer la France

5 Regional classifications incorporate two major goals: to survive or to thrive As EU/national price support has withdrawn, targeted regional support has become more important: Protecting what exists, including maintaining agroecosystems, protecting market share, local livelihoods and a sense of identity = responding to threats to survive Exploiting opportunities to develop market share or support regional development = benefiting from authenticity to thrive

6 Place embeddedness of alternative systems to avoid Conventionalisation of alternatives (Lockie & Halpin 2005; Fort et al. 2007; Harris 2008) Cannot be replicated elsewhere Values of product-place Values of process-place Values of place beyond agricultural systems: Localism Aesthetic & recreational values Identity Community/friends/relatives

7 Swiss Agricultural Zones (Bundesamt für Landwirtschaft,

8 Sites of Swiss Research in Graubünden

9 Gennossenschaft Gran Alpin (N=33/79) Seed supply Marketing Lobby group Cooperation, sharing, identity & fun Agrotourism Risk management

10 Working with cooperative supermarkets: COOP & MIGROS

11 Surviving & Thriving with Gran Alpin Farmer from Mustair: Cereal production is an activity close to my heart and in the organic marketplace one can achieve some very reasonable prices. This was due to Gran Alpin being able to establish a market which can provide a relative degree of certainty. Farmer from Alvaneu Dorf: Gran Alpin supports local production of cereals which achieve good sales and prices. It promotes a diverse agricultural sector and the production of natural foods. Gran Alpin strengthens cultural values to maintain identity.

12 The Gran Alpin regional cooperative provides both implicit & explicit risk reduction Producer 31: In the case of a missed harvest, at least the cost of seed, and in some cases even more, can be covered by Gran Alpin s Risk Fund. Producer 32: We get paid SFR1.08/kg, while others get SFR1.20/kg because we are lower down the valley, and the farmers higher up get more. Successfully lobbying for direct payment support for mountain cereal cultivation

13 French rural land use classifications (Bardsley and Pech 2012) Increasingly widespread utilisation of multifunctional land use classifications. Global: World Heritage, Man and Biosphere European Union: Natura2000, Appellations (Protected Geographical Indication, Protected Designation of Origin) French: Trame verte et bleue; National park; Natural regional park; Protection Planning against Risks; Sensitive Natural Spaces

14 French Natural Regional Parks Roussillon IUCN reserve category 5: receive protection because of their recognised natural, ecological and/or cultural values

15 French Natural Regional Parks Facilitate local development by recognising and supporting multifunctional landscape use: agriculture, environmental management, tourism, natural and heritage protection. Implicit risk management: provides an alternative and reliable income source less dependent upon farm productivity and more closely aligned with sustainable agroecosystem management. Target assistance for explicit risk management Criticism: focuses on areas where (small-scale) farming plays a key role in maintaining employment and dispersed settlement patterns in (mountainous) areas with unfavourable production conditions (Renting et al. 2009: S120)

16 Risks of regional classifications (Bowen and De Master 2011) The process of codification could threaten the diversity and specificity of the place and products Static notions of places and cultures may develop As production relations shift from local to extra-local markets the nature of traditional production systems are altered. What is authentic about a place or system may be lost by the classification and conventionalisation of the governance process

17 Producer 18: Crop production at 1470m above sea level is not economically viable. Without further support, crop production will end, even with the better price offered by Gran Alpin.

18 Vital rural land uses adjacent to the city of Adelaide (SA Government 2009) The inherent optimism of the dominant, neo-liberal environmental modernisation approach, which assumes that risks can be bounded and contained by improving systems of management, will be challenged by the level of future risk (Bardsley & Sweeney 2010)

19 References Bardsley D. (2003) Risk alleviation via in situ agrobiodiversity conservation: drawing from experiences in Switzerland, Turkey and Nepal. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 99: Bardsley D.K. and Pech P. (2012) Defining spaces of resilience within the neoliberal paradigm: Could French land use classifications guide support for risk management within an Australian regional context? Human Ecology 40: Bardsley D.K. and Sweeney S.M. (2010) Guiding climate change adaptation within vulnerable natural resource management systems. Environmental Management. 45: Bardsley D. and Thomas I. (2004) In situ agrobiodiversity conservation in the Swiss inner alpine zone. GeoJournal 60: Bardsley D.K. and Thomas I. (2006) In situ agrobiodiversity conservation: examples from Nepal, Turkey and Switzerland in the first decade of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 49: Bowen S. and De Master K. (2011) New rural livelihoods or museums of production? Quality food initiatives in practice. Journal of Rural Studies 27: Fort F., Petroux C. & Temri L. (2007) Mode de gouvernance des signes de qualité et comportements d innovation: une étude dans la région Landguedoc-Roussillon. Economie Rurale 302: Harris E. (2008) Neoliberal subjectivities or a politics of the possible? Reading for difference in alternative food networks. Area 41: Lockie S. and Halpin D. (2005) The Conventionalisation Thesis Reconsidered: Structural and Ideological Transformation of Australian Organic Agriculture. Sociologia Rurialis, 45: Renting, H., Rossing, W. A. H., Groot, J. C. J., Van der Ploeg, J. D., Laurent, C., Perraud, D., Stobbelaar, D. J., and Van Ittersum, M. K. (2009). Exploring multifunctional agriculture. A review of conceptual approaches and prospects for an integrative transitional framework. Journal of Environmental Management 90: S112 S123. SA (South Australia) Government (2009) Planning the Adelaide we all want: progressing the 30-year Plan for Greater Adelaide. SA Government, Adelaide