Reshaping agri-environmental subsidies: From marginal farming to large-scale rewilding
By T. Merckx, Henrique M. Pereira. 2015
127 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract Despite continued discussion about market distortions and environmental impacts, agricultural subsidies continue to be a key component of European Union policy. About 10% of the agro-forestry subsidies are targeted at supporting agri-environment schemes, and at supporting farming in Less Favoured Areas (LFA) such as mountain regions. One of the main justifications for these agri-environmental subsidies towards marginally productive land is that they promote the conservation of biodiversity by maintaining low-intensity farming practices. Here, we critically examine this assumption and argue instead for a two-tier approach to Europe's agri-environmental policy based on inherent land fertility and spatial scale: (i) at a local, single-farm scale, fertile agricultural land should preferentially be intensively but sustainably farmed with a focus on high yields, (ii) while simultaneously and at larger, regional scales, less-productive land, and especially protected areas, may be ecologically restored into ‘wild’ and resiliently functioning ecosystems. As such, agri-environmental subsidies towards fertile land should support the implementation of measures that benefit biodiversity while allowing, and even helping, the achievement of high agricultural yields. In contrast, agri-environmental and LFA subsidies towards marginal land and protected areas should also promote rewilding and the management of natural succession. In order for this approach to be successful, a higher proportion of the Common Agricultural Policy subsidies would need to be allocated to environmental goals.
Subfields: Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0788a4a9140badc046d2e4b1b8af14a2f48bafeb
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In Global and Planetary Change
In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Citations in the corpus
- Rewilding: Science, Practice, and Politics (2015, background): “They can distort land prices and lock land managers into unproductive, uneconomic, and ecologically destructive practices (145).”