Simplistic understandings of farmer motivations could undermine the environmental potential of the common agricultural policy

• Brown, Calum ^[1] ; Kovács, Eszter ^[2] ; Herzon, Irina ^[3] ; Villamayor-Tomas, Sergio ^[4] ; Albizua, Amaia ^[7] ; Galanaki, Antonia ^[5] ; Grammatikopoulou, Ioanna ^[8] ; McCracken, Davy ^[9] ; Olsson, Johanna Alkan ^[6] ; Zinngrebe, Yves ^[10]
  1. [1] Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

     Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

     Stadtkreis Karlsruhe, Alemania

     
  2. [2] University College London

     University College London

     Reino Unido

     
  3. [3] University of Helsinki

     University of Helsinki

     Helsinki, Finlandia

     
  4. [4] Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

     Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

     Barcelona, España

     
  5. [5] Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

     Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

     Dimos Thessaloniki, Grecia

     
  6. [6] Lund University

     Lund University

     Suecia

     
  7. [7] Basque Center for Climate Change (BC3), Edificio Sede 1, 1º Planta 1, Parque Científico de UPV/EHU, 48940 Leioa, Bizkaia, Spain
  8. [8] Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czechia
  9. [9] Hill & Mountain Research Centre, Scotland’s Rural College, Kirkton Farm, Crianlarich FK20 8RU, United Kingdom
  10. [10] Department for Conservation Biology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Permoserstr. 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany

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• Localización: Land use policy: The International Journal Covering All Aspects of Land Use, ISSN 0264-8377, ISSN-e 1873-5754, Nº. 101, 2021
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Dialnet Métricas: 4 Citas
• Resumen

  • The European Union Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has failed to achieve its aim of preserving European farmland biodiversity, despite massive investment in subsidies to incentivise environmentally-beneficial farming practices. This failure calls into question the design of the subsidy schemes, which are intended to either function as a safety net and make farming profitable or compensate farmers for costs and loss of income while undertaking environmental management. In this study, we assess whether the design of environmental payments in the CAP reflects current knowledge about farmers’ decision-making as found in the research literature. We do so on the basis of a comprehensive literature review on farmers’ uptake of agri-environmental management practices over the past 10 years and interviews specifically focused on Ecological Focus Areas with policy-makers, advisors and farmers in seven European countries. We find that economic and structural factors are the most commonly-identified determinants of farmers’ adoption of environmental management practices in the literature and in interviews. However, the literature suggests that these are complemented by – and partially dependent on – a broad range of social, attitudinal and other contextual factors that are not recognised in interview responses or, potentially, in policy design. The relatively simplistic conceptualisation of farmer behaviour that underlies some aspects of policy design may hamper the effectiveness of environmental payments in the CAP by over-emphasising economic considerations, potentially corroding farmer attitudes to policy and environmental objectives. We conclude that an urgent redesign of agricultural subsidies is needed to better align them with the economic, social and environmental factors affecting farmer decision-making in a complex production climate, and therefore to maximise potential environmental benefits.