Sustainable Rural Systems

Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Communities

Guy Robinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754647157
• eBook ISBN: 9781317047674
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

In a neo-liberal era where society in the Developed World is reliant on mass-produced cheap foods, and living standards are based on high consumption of non-renewable energy and materials, this book investigates the growing significance of sustainable systems in rural areas. Drawing on a wide range of topical case studies, primarily in the UK, it provides an in-depth analysis of the progress made towards sustainability within rural systems, focusing specifically upon sustainable agriculture and sustainable rural communities. The authors provide an overview of the various systems of sustainability currently being applied in the Developed World. They highlight key environmental, economic and social issues, including post-productivism, 'alternative' food networks, organic farming, GM foods, conservation, rural development programmes, sustainable tourism, local training schemes and community participation. The various studies provide important lessons in the ongoing search for greater sustainability and suggest positive directions for future policy practice.

PART 1
Introduction

Chapter 1
Sustainable Rural Systems: An Introduction

Guy M. Robinson

Introduction

Since it was popularised by the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), generally known as the Brundtland Report, the term ‘sustainable development’ has become one of the most widely used by governments and international organisations. The WCED referred to sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (WCED, 1987). However, both this definition and the very concept itself have been much criticised (Carley and Christie, 2000; Sachs, 1999). At the heart of the critique are the inherent contradictions between ‘sustainable’ and ‘development’: can conservationist ideals contained within environmental notions of ‘sustainable’ be married to conceptions of development and economic growth? In some circles this has led to greater emphasis upon the notion of ‘sustainability’, divorcing it from the more problematic ‘development’ (Callicott and Mumford, 1997).

Post-1987, definitions of sustainable development in terms of moral obligations to guarantee the quality of life for future generations have clarified the meaning of the term “to encompass the full array of social, economic and environmental relations” (Bowler et al., 2002: 5). However, the relative priorities assigned to each of these three intersecting domains have been strongly contested (Adams, 1995). Moreover, the term has been widely used in cavalier fashion to justify actions that stray far from the original sentiments of the WCED. Most notably governments and some nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have used it to refer to long-term maintenance of economic growth rather than to environmental or social dimensions of sustainable development, thereby severely devaluing the term’s currency (Trzyna, 1995). Thus, “sustainability is used at once to legitimate calls for unbridled economic growth, industrial expansion, globalisation, the protection of biodiversity, maintenance of ecosystems, social justice, peace and the elimination of poverty” (Bowler et al., 2002: 5). At the very least this suggests a paradox in that sustainable development is deemed to support both the maintenance of the status quo and radical change. In part, this contradiction is linked to the many and different strands of philosophical thinking on society-nature relations (Robinson, 2002a). When moving from general sentiments to a specific context, more exacting questions must be answered: “what exactly is being sustained, at what scale, by and for whom, and using what institutional mechanisms?” (Sneddon, 2000: 525).

Nevertheless the term continues to be applied in various contexts as a multidimensional one encompassing multi-faceted challenges. These were addressed on a global stage in the United Nations World Sustainable Development Summit held in Johannesburg in 2002. Here it was acknowledged that: “Sustainable development calls for improving the quality of life for all of the world’s people without increasing the use of our natural resources beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity. It may require different actions in every region of the world, but the efforts to build a truly sustainable way of life require the integration of action in three key areas” (UN, 2002: 6).

These areas were identified as:

• Economic growth and equity. Global systems demand an integrated approach to foster responsible long-term growth while leaving no-one behind;

• Conserving natural resources and the environment. There is a need to introduce economically viable solutions to reduce resource consumption, stop pollution and conserve natural habitats;

• Social development. There needs to be respect for the rich fabric of cultural and social diversity and the rights of workers. All members of society must be empowered to play a role in determining their fortunes.

The debates at the Summit built on related deliberations of world leaders at the United Nations Millennium Summit of 2000 and the previous Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to develop concrete proposals for countries to re-examine their consumption and production patterns, commit to responsible, environmentally sound economic growth, and work together purposively to expand cross-border cooperation and share expertise, technology and resources. However, whilst it is possible to identify ‘advances’ in implementing legislation that fosters environmental (as opposed to economic) sustainability, the world’s growing demand for food, water, shelter, sanitation, energy, health services and economic security have widened global inequalities and thereby restricted any concerted moves towards greater sustainability. This can certainly be seen with respect to agriculture where industrial-style production is dominant, especially in the Developed World, and attempts to promote sustainable agriculture have not been implemented widely (Robinson, 2002b). Similarly, with respect to human settlements, attempts to foster reduced resource consumption and the creation of ‘sustainable lifestyles’ have generally foundered despite the emergence of various international agreements to deliver environmental benefits, perhaps most notably the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The 160+ countries that have ratified this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases.

Geographers, with their concerns for both the physical resource-base and human dimensions of sustainability, have played a significant role in academic discourse on sustainable development. This can be seen throughout the 1990s in various conferences in which themes relating to sustainable development were a frequent occurrence. Within Geography’s principal worldwide organisation, the International Geographical Union (IGU), one illustration of this growing engagement with debates on sustainable development can be seen in the establishment of the Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems (CO4.33) as a Study Group in 1993. The Commission subsequently developed a programme of annual international and regional conferences, primarily involving researchers from rural geography, but also attracting academics and practitioners from planning, resource management, politics and information technology. At the IGU’s 30th Congress, held in Glasgow in 2004, the Commission’s sessions included a range of papers relating to sustainable agriculture and sustainable rural communities. Given the location of the Congress, it is not surprising that these papers had a bias towards issues pertinent to the United Kingdom (UK) and with a dominant representation from UK-based geographers. This book brings together some of these papers from the Commission’s sessions in Glasgow, re-creating the key themes covered and the debates on sustainable rural systems, with a particular British dimension.

The starting point, by Mark Tilzey and Clive Potter (Chapter 2), is an analysis of the background macro-scale processes of socio-economic and political change in which are embedded the specific studies represented by the book’s individual chapters. They outline key features in the agri-food system as discussed in current analyses of the sustainability of agriculture in the Developed World. Hence they refer to the transitions from productivist to post-productivist agriculture, from Fordism to post-Fordism, neo-liberal economic management, and both systemic and non-systemic moves towards greater sustainability. This broad and rapidly changing tapestry is given more concrete expression by specific focus on how post-productivism (essentially representing moves away from an overwhelming commitment to increased farm output) is manifest in the European Union (EU), the United States and Australia.

They describe post-productivism in the EU as conforming to an ‘embedded neo-liberal’ mode of governance. Essentially this means that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been partially reformed to inject environmental and rural development objectives within ongoing modifications to the previously strongly protectionist approach to European farming. So the CAP is becoming progressively more market oriented through reductions in price support and direct payments to farmers. This can be seen in the Rural Development Regulation in which there are priorities for assisting adaptation to more market-oriented agriculture and dealing with risk in competitive markets. There are distinctive regional consequences to these reforms, with strong contrasts emerging between those areas dominated by productivist industrial-style farming, such as East Anglia, the Paris Basin, the Low Countries and the Po Valley, and marginal and upland zones where farmers are more likely to be focused on the production of environmental goods and supplying niche markets. Various environmental payments are unlikely to compensate for the declining incomes of the largely small and medium-sized farmers in these marginal/ upland areas and so their continuing demise seems likely. Clearly this is not a socially or economically sustainable situation and there must also be question-marks over the long-term environmental benefits that can be realised without a vibrant farming community. Tilzey and Potter conclude that different types of policy intervention will be required to move towards greater sustainability, but that these “are considered increasingly illegitimate under neo-liberal norms”.

An even greater adherence to neo-liberalism is reported for Australia, with the overwhelming dominance of productivism orientated towards exports and externalisation of environmental and social costs. Output-based supports and protectionist policies have been abandoned from the 1970s, with a Rural Adjustment Scheme (RAS) from 1977–88 helping farmers adjust to free-market determined prices. Neo-liberalism as applied to the Australian economy since 1983 (Robinson et al., 2000: 242–5) has encouraged increased farm output, but at the expense of environmental quality in many cases. Indeed, the long-term ability of the extensive rangelands to support livestock production has been questioned (Hamilton, 2001). However, mitigating measures have been quite restricted. The introduction of the Landcare scheme in 1989 attracted international attention and has emphasised the need for local communities to identify key environmental problems and to derive solutions drawing largely on local resources (Lockie, 1998). However, Tilzey and Potter argue that core problems of land degradation are not being addressed.

They view the United States as representing a hybrid between the EU and Australia, sharing with the former a strong differentiation between the lobbies representing small/ medium-sized farmers and larger operators, but with an overwhelming dominance of productivism. Its agricultural policies have consistently endeavoured to maintain family farming to produce food for the domestic market whilst allowing market forces to develop scale economies and production for export. Family-based enterprises still dominate production and represent a powerful lobby that government cannot ignore. This has helped to retain certain forms of protectionism and few attempts to reign in the productivist system. For example, federal policy has largely ignored calls to maintain biodiversity and landscape quality in conjunction with agricultural activity as these are deemed to exist outside or in opposition to agricultural practice. The dominant form of expenditure on farm-related environmental programmes has been in the form of promoting the retirement of land from farming or, under the 1996 and 2002 Farm Bills, mitigating the impacts of pollution from productivist agriculture.

Nevertheless, the Conservation Security Program (CSP), introduced in the 2002 Farm Bill, may be significant as it links conservation directly to on-farm production in a similar fashion to agri-environment policy in the EU. In support of this policy there has emerged a sustainable Agriculture Coalition, prominent outside what Tilzey and Potter term “the zones of mass (productivist) food commodity production”, notably in New England where there is some intersection between post-productivist farming and consumers concerned with food quality. At present the CSP has a strict budgetary cap, which has restricted its potential to counter continued reliance on conventional productivist farm support on the small and medium-size farms where production of environmental goods might be most attractive. Its current relatively marginal status within the overall ongoing support for productivist agriculture is a reflection of the continuing dominance of neo-liberalism in the US. This dominance can be seen in continuing support for measures designed to increase world market access for US produce. However, this is contradicted in some continuing domestic market distortion through interventions designed to support certain groups of producers experiencing problems associated with declining global agricultural commodity prices.

Tilzey and Potter conclude that in the EU, Australia and the United States productivism remains dominant. There may be pockets of post-productivism, but attempts to engender greater sustainability and post-productivism have been subordinate to, or defined by, more dominant concerns that prevent synergies from developing between the economic, social and environmental elements ofsustainability. Significantly, they also conclude that post-productivism therefore cannot be conflated with post-Fordism. The latter represents new forms of regulation, a new techno-economic paradigm and new forms of production. Some of these changes may have permitted or encouraged the emergence of post-productivist agriculture, but not at the expense of destroying the dominance of productivism. Therefore to understand the emergence of (minority) discourses privileging sustainability and policies promoting on-farm environmental actions, the particular contexts and political circumstances in which these occur need to be analysed. In effect, the succeeding chapters of this book provide such analysis, drawing upon particular geographical contexts to analyse specific developments within post-productivism and the emergence of more sustainable agricultural and rural systems.

Sustainable Agriculture

Despite the promotion of more extensive forms of farming in some parts of the Developed World, the production of ‘environmental goods’ by farmers and a greater concern over the quality of food being produced, Bowler (2002b: 180) contends that “even taken together, the emergent features… do not constitute the basis for sustainable farming systems.” He contends that a truly sustainable agriculture must represent a clear alternative to the industrial model as part of a transformation of both the farm economy and the society in which it is embedded. However, there are many different models that have been proposed as representing an ‘alternative’, embracing a range of philosophies on sustainable farming, including organic, ecological, biodynamic, low-input, perma-culture, biological, resource-conserving and regenerative systems. Determining which of these is sustainable and how they differ from other alternatives depends on exactly how ‘sustainable agriculture’ itself is conceptualised.

With respect to agriculture in the Developed World, it has been the industrial agri-food system that has been dominant post-1945. This system is efficient and effective in economic terms, but in social and ecological terms it is not sustainable (Troughton, 2002). Any analysis of the system highlights various negative feedbacks that are inimical to environmental and social dimensions of sustainability and hence various ‘alternative’ systems, such as organic farming, are proposed to overcome the unsustainable nature of ‘conventional’ food production and consumption systems. ‘Unsustainability’ has been associated with the key elements of the industrial or productivist agricultural system: intensification, concentration and specialisation (Bowler, 2002a), all of which can be linked to some degree to national and supra-national agricultural policies. These have subsidised intensification, encouraged investment in new technology, funded advisory services which have promoted diffusion of new farming technology and developed the production of this new technology.

There has been substantial research on the limits to the sustainable development of productivist agriculture. This has recorded a range of environmental disbenefits, including diminished biodiversity, removal of natural and semi-natural habitats, rising soil erosion and salinity, reduced water tables, pollution of water courses and growing reliance on an excessively narrow range of crops and livestock. The threats posed to the environment vary in magnitude and type between productivist farming systems. Similarly, there has been great variability in the extent to which the industrial productivist model has delivered economic sustainability. Indeed, despite the substantial support mechanisms directed towards farmers and the farming sector in North America, the EU and Japan, profit margins have been squeezed. This has been most apparent in the livestock sector and on small and medium-sized family-run holdings, where the movement of people off the land has been substantial for at least four decades. The gap between farm and non-farm incomes has risen as profits in the agri-food sector have been concentrated increasingly in the upstream (farm supply industry) and downstream (wholesale and retail) sectors.

The flight from the land has accompanied other trends fostering rural depopulation and so reducing the social sustainability of both farming and rural communities. Therefore it is possible to identify a number of negative feedback loops within the productivist system that have contributed to reduced agricultural (and rural community) sustainability. Policy-makers and farmers alike have responded to this by addressing various ‘negativities’, generally though focusing upon particular components of unsustainability rather than offering holistic solutions. Examples include attempts to inject environmentally beneficial methods of farming, the promotion of farm diversification, a growing concern for food quality and ‘technical fix’ methods to raise output. Clearly some of these reinforce the productivist model whilst others offer some form of ‘alternative’ that has been viewed in some circles as the emergent features of sustainable agriculture.

A general conclusion is that moves towards sustainable agriculture need to develop a focus beyond a disintegrated framework of local developments (Bowler, 2002b). This may entail new forms of social contract between food producers, food retailers, food consumers and the state. Necessarily, at the heart of this ‘contract’ is a reconnection of consumers to the sources of their food supply after the dislocation associated with the productivist agri-food system. However, only with strong regulation will sustainable agriculture emerge except on a highly adventitious and spatially fragmented basis. This notion of the importance of regulation is part of recent attempts to enhance sustainability through ‘ecological modernisation’, in which environmental regulation and economic growth are regarded as mutually beneficial if the demands of each are carefully balanced (Giddens, 1998). It is not clear, though, how maintenance of the primacy of productivist imperatives can be balanced successfully with concerns about public health, the environment and farm welfare (in the process of ecological modernisation) to deliver sustainable agriculture.

Of c...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Part 1 Introduction
• Part 2 Sustainable Agriculture
• Part 3 Sustainable Rural Communities
• Index