Norwegian farmers´ perspectives on agriculture and agricultural payments

• Autores: Valborg Kvakkestad, Per Kristian Rørstad, Arild Vatn
• Localización: Land use policy: The International Journal Covering All Aspects of Land Use, ISSN 0264-8377, ISSN-e 1873-5754, Nº. 42, 2015, págs. 83-92
• Idioma: inglés
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• Dialnet Métricas: 4 Citas
• Resumen

  • In this paper, we analyse Norwegian farmers� perspectives on the meaning of working in agriculture, their attitudes towards various aspects of multifunctional agriculture (MFA) and land use, and their evaluation of different forms of agricultural payments. The paper presents two linked studies, one Likert scale survey and one sub-sample Q-study. The Likert scale survey results show that the respondents identify themselves as producing not only high-quality food, but also public goods such as cultural landscapes and cultural heritage. Income maximisation is less important with respect to the self-identity for the respondents. The sub-sample Q-study identified two distinct perspectives of interest to the discussion about MFA policy. Perspective 1 farmers attach priority to fair income, food production and payment for food production as opposed to payments for public goods and income support. Perspective 2 farmers emphasise the importance of producing cultural landscapes, but have no strong preferences regarding the form of payments. The latter view is predominantly held by part-time farmers. The quality of the local landscape as valued by the local community had no effect on the perspectives farmers held. Our study reveals that fully replacing commodity price support with payments for public good production, or income support, is problematic for a substantial group of farmers, who would find farming to be less meaningful for them.