Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture

Case Studies from Europe

Lee-Ann Sutherland, Ika Darnhofer, Geoff Wilson, Lukas Zagata, Lee-Ann Sutherland, Ika Darnhofer, Geoff Wilson, Lukas Zagata

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781789244649
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book focuses on understanding farming transition pathways towards sustainability, using case studies from Europe. It assesses the utility of the multi-level perspective in transition theory for addressing contemporary issues and identifies future research needs, making it an essential read for researchers of rural or agricultural change.

Chapter 1

Introduction

L-A. Sutherland1, G.A. Wilson2, L. Zagata3

1James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen ([email protected]); 2Plymouth University; 3Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague

What this book is about

Over the past decade the transition towards sustainable agriculture has been a central theme in the work of governments, NGOs and research institutions. Multiple publications, including the European Commission White Paper on Adapting to Climate Change (2009) and various academic publications (e.g. Wilson, 2007; Brouwer and van der Heide, 2009), identify the importance of increasing sustainability of agriculture in order to meet future challenges. However, despite the adoption of the notion of sustainable development of agriculture as a basic EC policy principle (see Council Regulation (EC) No1257/1999), it is becoming clear that changes are needed to ensure that agriculture in the EU can meet the increasing range of public goods and functions desired by citizens. For example:

• Natural resource use (land, water) is increasingly contested by non-agricultural uses (e.g. fibre and energy) (EEA, 2006a, 2006b, 2006c). Farming itself is highly dependent on non-renewable energy resources (Heinberg and Bomford, 2009).

• Decreasing support for farm production and encouragement of commercial competitiveness coincide with increased national and EU public regulatory intervention in farming (Robinson, 2008).

• Production and marketing chains are becoming more concentrated, both upstream (input provision) and downstream (e.g. output distribution, high level of concentration in the food retail market) (Campbell, 2005; Potter and Tilzey, 2005, 2007). At the same time, there is a growing range of ‘alternative’ products, production and retail options, challenging these globalizing tendencies (van der Ploeg, 2007).

• Consumers and citizens are demanding higher standards of food safety and quality control. Concerns exist surrounding the nutritional value of highly processed food and the social and ecological impacts of purchasing decisions (e.g. Fair Trade, food miles) (Lang and Heasman, 2004).

• A sharp rise in food prices from 2007 to 2008 is challenging two decades of ‘non-productivist compromise’ in agricultural policy in Europe, with food security reentering the political agenda (Wilson, 2007; Marsden, 2013).

• Of particular concern has been the potential impact of climate change, especially with regard to water availability (mainly in southern Europe, but also in northern and Eastern Europe) and shifting agricultural zones northwards, leading to increased environmental uncertainty for rural stakeholders (Cline, 2007; Mestre-Sanchis and Feijoo-Bello, 2009) and potential impacts on production (Wilson, 2007).

In the European context, issues linked to rural development (e.g. depopulation and ageing in rural areas, preservation of cultural landscapes, demand for recreation spaces close to urban areas) also play an important role in the search for a more sustainable agri-food system (Robinson, 2008). There is also concern about the lack of young people in agriculture. Some European countries suffer from a shortage of young people taking up farming as a profession, caused by inadequate generational turnover and leading to ageing populations and greying communities (Eurostat, 2011).

These challenges demonstrate both the need and opportunity for transition in European agriculture. In this book we assess transition processes: fundamental changes that incorporate processes of societal, ecological, economic, cultural, technological and institutional co-evolution (Loorbach and Frantzeskaki, 2009). Transitions involve several sectors or sub-sectors as well as a range of societal actors at multiple scales. Through the interdependency and co-evolution of these, society or an important societal subsystem, fundamentally changes. A transition is thus qualitatively different from an incremental change that is limited in scope (e.g. does not affect a whole sector of the economy), in time (is only a fad and does not stabilize) or in space (only takes place in some regions). For a transition to occur, different developments and actors at regional and national levels have to come together, engendering a development pathway based on new practices, technologies, knowledge, institutions, social organization, guiding principles and values.

The aim of this book is to improve our understanding of transition processes in European agriculture. We focus on ‘emerging transitions’ – how new organizational forms and technologies change, and are changed by, mainstream actors and practices in the agricultural sector. This is achieved through an integration of recent academic theory on transition and change in agricultural systems and assessing its utility for empirical research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) on system transition (Geels et al., 2004; Geels and Schot, 2010) is applied to clusters of case studies, which focus on different types and aspects of transition processes within agriculture. Our purpose in studying transition in agriculture is not only to understand how change has occurred, but to assess how intervention can successfully be made to facilitate sustainability transitions. Most of the cases studied in this book have had active policy intervention, although some demonstrate that transition processes can occur endogenously without such assistance. In this chapter we delve further into the definitions of sustainability and transition, key challenges to achieving sustainability transitions, and conclude with brief insights into the content of subsequent chapters.

Sustainability in agriculture

Sustainability challenges in European agriculture: recession, outmigration, global competition

The definition of sustainable agriculture – and indeed whether this is a meaningful goal – is highly contested in the literature on agriculture and rural development (Robinson, 2008). However, it is widely agreed that increasing the sustainability of agricultural systems is a necessary and important objective (Pretty, 2002). Increasing the sustainability of agriculture and agricultural systems is a long standing goal of European agricultural policy (Marsden, 2003; Wilson, 2007; Robinson, 2008). The sustainability of European agriculture can be broadly conceptualized along three main processes: economic, environmental and social. These three processes provide an important conceptual basis for the framing of the arguments developed in this book.

At a time of global recession, issues surrounding the economic sustainability of European agriculture have yet again come to the fore. The post-2007 recession has exacerbated economic problems faced by almost all European countries, in particular by amplifying the widening income gap between rural and urban areas, by further marginalizing non-globalized farming areas in uplands or ‘remote’ parts of Europe, and by reducing opportunities for on-farm multifunctional activities such as farm tourism or specialist food sales (Wilson, 2010). With its rapid onset and resulting impact on the availability of funds provided by banks and lending institutions, the economic recession can be conceptualized as a sudden shock, in that it has catapulted many agricultural systems towards lower sustainability in a relatively short time span. However, the most important aspects of the recession have been the ripple effects caused by sudden changes in the economic climate. In the context of our European case studies, these have included, in particular, reduced demand for agricultural products and services (i.e. the sale of high-end organic and/or locality-specific food products), reduced borrowing opportunities for upgrading or purchasing farm equipment and buildings and, most importantly, reduced available funds for young farmers wishing to take up farming (e.g. mortgages, finance for land purchase). The impact of the recession on tourism in European rural areas has been particularly pronounced, although early evidence suggests a geographically varied picture. While some regions have reported falling tourist numbers and reduced income for rural stakeholders, other areas appear to have benefitted from the fact that tighter household budgets have meant fewer trips abroad, with a concurrent increase in domestic tourism. In the United Kingdom (UK), areas such as the south-west or Scotland, for example, appear to have weathered the recession relatively well with regard to tourism figures. Overall, the recession has increased uncertainty surrounding the day-to-day planning of farm activities, has reduced incentives for multifunctional endeavours that tend to raise sustainability of farming systems, and has severely affected rural communities that were already in the process of ‘losing touch’ with their agricultural stakeholders. While many of these processes will not be evident for several years, our case studies will show that many of the warning signs associated with declining socio-economic capital are already becoming visible.

The post-2007 global recession has also exacerbated trends towards rural outmigration, land abandonment (especially in southern Europe, but also in remote upland areas), decreasing family farm succession, and a relative loss of the former hegemonic position of agriculture in European societies. Land abandonment, in particular, has led to substantial environmental challenges where insufficient labour remains to maintain fragile and work-intensive structures such as dry stone terraces, complex irrigation systems or farm woodlands. The relative economic marginalization of agriculture in Europe (accounting for only 3 to 6% of GDP on average, excluding food processing) has been paralleled by an increasing urban bias, with a tendency for funds, planning effort and stakeholder support to be focused on improving livelihoods for urban rather than rural populations (Woods, 2005).

In parallel, increased competition related to globalization processes, the gradual embeddedness of even the remotest European agricultural areas into global markets (including new Eastern European EU member states) and the associated loss of localized and often sustainable food production systems, have further affected the economic viability of many rural areas. While pro-globalization commentators have suggested that increasing globalization can lead to major economic advantages for rural areas (e.g. improved access to funds and knowledge), anti-globalization proponents have highlighted how global embeddedness often weakens local economic capital by crowding out small locally-based producers, by creating vertical economic ties that weaken horizontal (within and between communities) embeddedness, and by devaluing local production and quality (Gray, 2002; Stiglitz, 2002; Woods, 2005). Transitions engendered by globalization often lead to an increasing divide between wealthy and poor stakeholders in village communities, whereby the ‘winners’ of globalization (i.e. those who are better vertically networked) are often able to accumulate wealth that rarely trickles down to those who are less well networked (Woods, 2005; Wilson, 2012). Globalization also leads to substantial changes in economic activities in rural areas, most frequently away from low-input agricultural production towards profit-driven services. This, in turn, often leads to further outmigration or to a situation where potential farm successors must seek off-farm employment in the local area.

Globalization has also often been reported to change the socio-psychological setup of rural areas. Indeed, formerly close-knit communities focused almost entirely on agricultural production (that often required strong networks of trust and assistance) have now increasingly become ‘hybrid’ communities with multiple economic pathways, of which agriculture is only one of many. The outcome has often been a feeling of disassociation between residents and communities, loss of community cohesion, and ultimately, loss of community resilience (Wilson, 2010, 2012). Globalization – and associated policies linked to the World Trade Organization – has increasingly allowed global competition to affect what were traditionally local agricultural markets. Thus, today’s rural areas in Europe not only have to face strong internal competition but are also increasingly exposed to global market forces, reduction or abolition of previously protected agricultural markets, and lower prices for agricultural goods which can be produced more cheaply in export-oriented non-EU countries. As Potter and Tilzey (2005) argued, this has in many ways highlighted the weaknesses of the ‘European model’ of agriculture based on highly subsidized, but internationally uncompetitive, family farms. With the planned demise of direct agri-environmental payments to European farmers, and the increasing pressure exerted by global agricultural exporters such as the USA on European agricultural markets, for many European farming regions it is only a question of time as to when farming will become unprofitable – leading to a downward spiral of further farm abandonment and outmigration. The case studies in this book have been selected specifically to include more, and less, globalized areas of Europe and a key question will be to what extent the global connectedness of these areas has affected sustainability transitions on the ground.

The acceleration of outmigration from rural areas, linked to globalization, addresses issues of social sustainability. In both the agricultural literature and the general discourse on sustainable development, the social pillar of sustainability is conceptualized flexibly. Boström argues that the meaning of the term ‘social sustainability’ is not clear and that “there exists uncertainty about how it relates to both the other dimensions and wider policy issues” (Boström, 2012:7). Authors reviewing research literature and strategic policy documents show a myriad of themes covered by the social sustainability concept, spanning equity, poverty and social inclusion, health and education, population dynamics and governance (Murphy, 2012). A similar range of topics can be seen in discussions focused specifically on sustainability of agriculture. European visions in this area emphasize a balance between economic, environmental and social dimensions, and demonstrate the scale of the issue of social sustainability within agriculture, such as production of high quality food, adequate income for farms, quality life in rural areas, or balanced territorial development (European Commission, 2012). Above all, social sustainability of agriculture can be monitored across different spatial dimensions (regional or national) and at various temporal scales (long- or short-term).

Outmigration has been one of the key factors reducing the sustainability of rural systems ever since mass migration to rapidly growing urban centres began in the UK in the late 18th century. However, evidence throughout Europe shows that rural outmigration has accelerated substantially and that rural migration patterns are temporally and spatially complex. In many areas, especially in the peri-urban fringe or near key transport nodes, populations have substantially increased due to processes of counter-urbanization and have also begun to affect rural areas in post-communist Eastern Europe (especially in the past 10 years). In countries such as the UK where counter-urbanization became dominant from the 1970s onwards, house price inflation in rural areas has begun to prompt movement back from the countryside towards urban areas (Woods, 2005). However, although helping to maintain populations and, to some extent, local services, counter-urbanized communities have contributed further towards transitions away from agriculture, as traditional agricultural stakeholder groups have often been replaced by middle class urban migrants with little or no connection to the land.

In many European rural areas, outmigration is nonetheless still a real threat, severely affecting the sustainability and viability of rural communities (Wilson, 2010). Again, processes are complex and often region-specific, but overall there has been a tendency for young people to leave their villages, leading to ‘greying’ communities marred by loss of services, lack of labour to tend agricultural land, and leading to substantial problems of recruiting farm successors. As highlighted above, the loss of people to help with family farming businesses often leads to loss of natural capital, especially in labour-intensive agricultural systems that rely on the maintenance of landesque capital (irrigation channels, terraces, etc.). Indeed, land abandonment has become an unfortunate feature of European rural communities, with associated transition of former agricultural landscapes into forest, shrubland or, most worryingly, desertified areas in which soil productivity is rapidly lost (Imeson, 2012).

Our conceptual foundation of the social sustainability of agriculture emphasizes the role and importance of young people with regard to their potential to contribute to transition processes towards a more sustainable m...