Implications for food production, land use and rural development of the European Union's Single Farm Payment: Indications from a survey of farmers' intentions in Germany, Portugal and the UK

The 2003 reform of the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy introduced a decoupled income support for farmers called the Single Farm Payment (SFP). Concerns were raised about possible future land use and production changes and their impact on rural communities. Here, such concerns are considered against the workings of the SFP in three EU Member States. Various quantitative studies that have determined the likely impact of the SFP within the EU and the study countries are reviewed. We present the results of a farm survey conducted in the study countries in which farmers' responses to a decoupling scenario similar to the SFP were sought. We found that little short-term change was proposed in the three, rather different, study countries with only 30% of the farmers stating that they would alter their mix of farm activities. Furthermore, less than 30% of all respondents in each country would idle any land under decoupling. Of those who would adopt a new activity, the most popular choices were forestry, woodland and non-food crops. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Quantifying the impact of land-use change on European farmland bird populations

The EU has adopted the European Farmland Bird Index (EFBI) as a Structural and Sustainable Development Indicator and a proxy for wider biodiversity health on farmland. Changes in the EFBI over coming years are likely to reflect how well agri-environment schemes (AES), funded under Pillar 2 (Axis 2) of the Common Agricultural Policy, have been able to offset the detrimental impacts of past agricultural changes and deliver appropriate hazard prevention or risk mitigation strategies alongside current and future agricultural change. The delivery of a stable or positive trend in the EFBI will depend on the provision of sufficient funding to appropriately designed and implemented AES. We present a trait-based framework which can be used to quantify the detrimental impact of land-use change on farmland bird populations across Europe. We use the framework to show that changes in resource availability within the cropped area of agricultural landscapes have been the key driver of current declines in farmland bird populations. We assess the relative contribution of each Member State to the level of the EFBI and explore the relationship between risk contribution and Axis 2 funding allocation. Our results suggest that agricultural changes in each Member State do not have an equal impact on the EFBI, with land-use and management change in Spain having a particularly large influence on its level, and that funding is poorly targeted with respect to biodiversity conservation needs. We also use the framework to predict the EFBI in 2020 for a number of land-use change scenarios. This approach can be used to guide both the development and implementation of targeted AES and the objective distribution of Pillar 2 funds between and within Member States. We hope that this will contribute to the cost-effective and efficient delivery of Rural Development strategy and biodiversity conservation targets.

Predicting the impact of the EU common agricultural policy reform in England: micro and macroeconomic aspects

In this article we investigate the effects of the European CAP reform on a selection of arable crops in England, both at a regional and national level. The results show that the CAP reform will push farmers to adjust to the new market conditions, which will cause a further restructuring of the English agricultural business sector. Our results show that, under the new market conditions, economically-small farms will increase their output by allocating more land to cereals, whereas economically-large farms will need to decrease land allocated to cereals to reduce production costs and achieve better returns.

Community based ecotourism as a panacea for protected areas: the use of common property theory in its analysis and development

Tourism is the worlds largest employer, accounting for 10% of jobs worldwide (WTO, 1999). There are over 30,000 protected areas around the world, covering about 10% of the land surface(IUCN, 2002). Protected area management is moving towards a more integrated form of management, which recognises the social and economic needs of the worlds finest areas and seeks to provide long term income streams and support social cohesion through active but sustainable use of resources. Ecotourism - 'responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well- being of local people' (The Ecotourism Society, 1991) - is often cited as a panacea for incorporating the principles of sustainable development in protected area management. However, few examples exist worldwide to substantiate this claim. In reality, ecotourism struggles to provide social and economic empowerment locally and fails to secure proper protection of the local and global environment. Current analysis of ecotourism provides a useful checklist of interconnected principles for more successful initiatives, but no overall framework of analysis or theory. This paper argues that applying common property theory to the application of ecotourism can help to establish more rigorous, multi-layered analysis that identifies the institutional demands of community based ecotourism (CBE). The paper draws on existing literature on ecotourism and several new case studies from developed and developing countries around the world. It focuses on the governance of CBE initiatives, particularly the interaction between local stakeholders and government and the role that third party non-governmental organisations can play in brokering appropriate institutional arrangements. The paper concludes by offering future research directions."

Recreational access to private land in England and Wales: public good; private interest

Since the Eighteenth Century the protection of public recreational access to private land has been maintained by the state through a mixture of legal rights of passage and the safeguarding of certain de facto access rights. While this situation has been modified in the last fifty years to facilitate some formalisation of access arrangements and landowner compensation in areas of high recreational pressure and low legal accessibility, recent policies indicate that a shift from public to private rights is underway. At the core of this paradigm shift are the new access payment schemes introduced as part of the restructuring of the European Common Agricultural Policy. Under these schemes landowners are now paid for 'supplying' recreational access, with the state, as the former upholder of citizen rights, now assuming the duplicitous position of further underwriting private property ownership through the effective commodification of access, while simultaneously proclaiming significant improvements in citizens' access rights.

The market in freehold land, 1300-1509: the evidence of feet of fines

This article provides time series data on the medieval market in freehold land, including the changing social composition of freeholders, level of market activity, size and complexity of landholdings, and shifts in the market value of land. These are subjects hitherto largely ignored due, in part, to the disparate nature of the evidence. It argues that feet of fines, despite archival limitations, if employed with care and an understanding of the underlying changes in the common law of real property, are capable of providing quantifiable evidence spanning hundreds of years and comparable across large areas of England.

Fenced in: Common property struggles in the management of communal rangelands in central Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

This paper takes as its starting point the assertion that current rangeland management in the central Eastern Cape Province (former Ciskei) of South Africa, is characterised primarily by an ‘open access’ approach. Empirical material drawn from three case-study communities in the region is used to examine the main barriers to management of rangeland as a ‘commons’. The general inability to define and enforce rights to particular grazing resourses in the face of competing claims from ‘outsiders’, as well as inadequate local institutions responsible for rangeland management are highlighted as being of key importance. These are often exacerbated by lack of available grazing land, diffuse user groups and local political and ethnic divisions. Many of these problems have a strong legacy in historical apartheid policies such as forced resettlement and betterment planning. On this basis it is argued that policy should focus on facilitating the emergence of effective, local institutions for rangeland management. Given the limited grazing available to many communities in the region, a critical aspect of this will be finding ways to legitimise current patterns of extensive resource use, which traverse existing ‘community’ boundaries. However, this runs counter to recent legislation, which strongly links community management with legal ownership of land within strict boundaries often defined through fencing. Finding ways to overcome this apparent disjuncture between theory and policy will be vital for the effective management of common pool grazing resources in the region.

Back to the margins in search of the core: "Foreign Land"'s geography of exclusion

The crisis of the national project in the early 1990s, caused by a short-lived but disastrous government, led Brazilian art cinema, for the first time, to look at itself as periphery and re-approach the old colonial center, Portugal. Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Brazil/Portugal, 1995), a film about Brazilian exiles in Portugal, is the best illustration of this perspective shift which provides a new sense of Brazil’s scale and position within a global context. Shot mainly on location in São Paulo, Lisbon and Cape Verde, it promotes the encounter of Lusophone peoples who find a common ground in their marginal situation. Rather than as a former empire, Portugal is defined by its situation at the edge of Europe and by beliefs such as Sebastianism, whose origins go back to the time when the country was dominated by Spain. As a result, notions of “core” or “center” are devolved to the realm of myth. The film’s carefully crafted dialogue combines Brazilian, Portuguese and Creole linguistic peculiarities into a common dialect of exclusion, while language puns trigger visual rhymes which refer back to the Cinema Novo (the Brazilian New Wave) repertoire and restage the imaginary of the discovery turned into unfulfilled utopia. The main characters also acquire historical resonances, as they are depicted as descendants of Iberian conquistadors turned into smugglers of precious stones in the present. Their activities define a circuit of international exchange which resonates with that of globalized cinema, a realm in which Foreign Land, made up of citations and homage to other cinemas, tries to retrieve a sense of belonging.

Back to the margins in search of the core: foreign land's geography of exclusion

The crisis of the national project in the early 1990s, caused by a short-lived but disastrous government, led Brazilian art cinema, for the first time, to look at itself as periphery and re-approach the old colonial centre, Portugal. Terra estrangeira/Foreign Land (Walter Salles & Daniela Thomas, Brazil/Portugal, 1995), a film about Brazilian exiles in Portugal, is the best illustration of this perspective shift aimed at providing a new sense of Brazil’s scale and position within a global context. Shot mainly on location in São Paulo, Lisbon and Cape Verde, it promotes the encounter of Lusophone peoples who find a common ground in their marginal situation. Even Portugal is defined by its location at the edge of Europe and by beliefs such as Sebastianism, whose origins go back to the time when the country was dominated by Spain. As a result, notions of ‘core’ or ‘centre’ are devolved to the realm of myth. The film’s carefully crafted dialogues combine Brazilian, Portuguese and Creole linguistic peculiarities into a common dialect of exclusion, while language puns trigger visual rhymes which refer back to the Cinema Novo (the Brazilian New Wave) repertoire and restage the imaginary of the discovery turned into unfulfilled utopia. The main characters also acquire historical resonances, as they are depicted as descendants of Iberian conquistadors turned into smugglers of precious stones in the present. Their activities define a circuit of international exchange which resonates with that of globalized cinema, a realm in which Foreign Land, made up of citations and homage to other cinemas, tries to retrieve a sense of belonging.

Pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture and land use in the Bolivian Amazon

We present an integrated palaeoecological and archaeobotanical study of pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture in the Llanos de Moxos, a vast seasonally inundated forest–savanna mosaic in the Bolivian Amazon. Phytoliths from excavated raised-field soil units, together with pollen and charcoal in sediment cores from two oxbow lakes, were analysed to provide a history of land use and agriculture at the El Cerro raised-field site. The construction of raised fields involved the removal of savanna trees, and gallery forest was cleared from the area by AD 310. Despite the low fertility of Llanos de Moxos soils, we determined that pre-Columbian raised-field agriculture sufficiently improved soil conditions for maize cultivation. Fire was used as a common management practice until AD 1300, at which point, the land-use strategy shifted towards less frequent burning of savannas and raised fields. Alongside a reduction in the use of fire, sweet potato cultivation and the exploitation of Inga fruits formed part of a mixed resource strategy from AD 1300 to 1450. The pre-Columbian impact on the landscape began to lessen around AD 1450, as shown by an increase in savanna trees and gallery forest. Although agriculture at the site began to decline prior to European arrival, the abandonment of raised fields was protracted, with evidence of sweet potato cultivation occurring as late as AD 1800.

Drivers of change in mountain farming in Slovakia: from socialist collectivisation to the Common Agricultural Policy

The transformations in Slovak agriculture from the 1950s to the present day, considering both the generic (National and EU) and site-specific (local) drivers of landscape change, were analysed in five mountain study areas in the country. An interdisciplinary approach included analysis of population trends, evaluation of land use and landscape change combined with exploration of the perceptions of local stakeholders and results of previous biodiversity studies. The generic processes active from the 1950s to 1970s were critical for all study areas with impacts lasting right up until the present day. Agricultural collectivisation, agricultural intensification and land abandonment had negative effects in all study areas. However, the precise impacts on the landscape were different in the different study areas due to site-specific attributes (e.g. population trends, geographic localisation and local attitudes and opportunities), and these played a decisive role in determining the trajectory of change. Regional contrasts in rural development between these territories have increased in the last two decades, also due to the imperfect preconditions of governmental support. The recent Common Agricultural Policy developments are focused on maintenance of intensive large-scale farming rather than direct enhancement of agro-biodiversity and rural development at the local scale. In this context, local, site-specific attributes can and must form an essential part of rural development plans, to meet the demands for management of the diversity of agricultural mountain landscapes and facilitate the multifunctional role of agriculture.

Datasets related to in-land water for limnology and remote sensing applications: distance-to-land, distance-to-water, water-body identifier and lake-centre co-ordinates

Datasets containing information to locate and identify water bodies have been generated from data locating static-water-bodies with resolution of about 300 m (1/360 deg) recently released by the Land Cover Climate Change Initiative (LC CCI) of the European Space Agency. The LC CCI water-bodies dataset has been obtained from multi-temporal metrics based on time series of the backscattered intensity recorded by ASAR on Envisat between 2005 and 2010. The new derived datasets provide coherently: distance to land, distance to water, water-body identifiers and lake-centre locations. The water-body identifier dataset locates the water bodies assigning the identifiers of the Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD), and lake centres are defined for in-land waters for which GLWD IDs were determined. The new datasets therefore link recent lake/reservoir/wetlands extent to the GLWD, together with a set of coordinates which locates unambiguously the water bodies in the database. Information on distance-to-land for each water cell and the distance-to-water for each land cell has many potential applications in remote sensing, where the applicability of geophysical retrieval algorithms may be affected by the presence of water or land within a satellite field of view (image pixel). During the generation and validation of the datasets some limitations of the GLWD database and of the LC CCI water-bodies mask have been found. Some examples of the inaccuracies/limitations are presented and discussed. Temporal change in water-body extent is common. Future versions of the LC CCI dataset are planned to represent temporal variation, and this will permit these derived datasets to be updated.

Cloud streets and land-water interactions in the Amazon

Cloud streets are common feature in the Amazon Basin. They form from the combination of the vertical trade wind stress and moist convection. Here, satellite imagery, data collected during the COBRA-PARA (Caxiuan Observations in the Biosphere, River and Atmosphere of Para) field campaign, and high resolution modeling are used to understand the streets` formation and behavior. The observations show that the streets have an aspect ratio of about 3.5 and they reach their maximum activity around 15:00 UTC when the wind shear is weaker, and the convective boundary layer reaches its maximum height. The simulations reveal that the cloud streets onset is caused by the local circulations and convection produced at the interfaces between forest and rivers of the Amazon. The satellite data and modeling show that the large rivers anchor the cloud streets producing a quasi-stationary horizontal pattern. The streets are associated with horizontal roll vortices parallel to the mean flow that organizes the turbulence causing advection of latent heat flux towards the upward branches. The streets have multiple warm plumes that promote a connection between the rolls. These spatial patterns allow fundamental insights on the interpretation of the Amazon exchanges between surface and atmosphere with important consequences for the climate change understanding.

Land Use and Transfer Plans in the U.S. Great Plains

In the next decades, aging farmers in the United States will make decisions that affect almost 1 billion acres of land. The future of this land will become more uncertain as farm transfer becomes more difficult, potentially changing the structure of agriculture through farm consolidation, changes in farm ownership and management, or taking land out of production. The Great Plains Population and Environment Project interviewed farmers and their spouses between 1997 and 1999. Farm Family Survey participants were ambiguous about their plans to leave farming, transfer land to others, and even long-term land use, largely due to concerns about the continued economic viability of farming. Participants living far from metropolitan areas expected to sell or rent to other farmers, while those near residential real-estate markets expected to sell to developers. Delays in planning for retirement and succession were common, further threatening the success of intergenerational transitions.

Three new Brazilian species of the land planarian Choeradoplana (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Geoplaninae), and an emendation of the genus

Three new Brazilian species of the neotropical land planarian genus Choeradoplana (Platyhelminthes: Tricladida: Continenticola: Geoplaninae) are described, making a total of nine species within the genus. All the new species share unique derived characters typical of the genus. Two of the new species exhibit important features representing morphological variations that were previously unknown for the genus: the dorsal cutaneous longitudinal muscle layer, as well as the ventral one, partially sunken into the parenchyma in one species, and the common ovovitelline duct approaching the copulatory apparatus ventrally in the other. As a consequence of these morphological variations, an emendation of the genus is proposed.