Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Considering multifunctionality as a paradigm for rural development, which emphasises
the increasing importance of multifunctional enterprises that link the rural with the
urban (OECD
2006)
, goes beyond the objective of the SEAMLESS project.
There are many definitions of MFA in circulation. The original definition, which
was espoused by the advocate countries mentioned above, refers to the joint produc-
tion of commodity and non-commodity outputs (Sakuyama
2005)
: agriculture, beyond
the production of food and fibre (i.e. commodities), provides important social, envi-
ronmental and economic functions to society. But these functions manifest themselves
in products and services that are usually not marketable (i.e. non-commodities)
because most often, they exhibit public good or quasi-public good characteristics
whereby no individual or organisation can easily control the use of or access to these
products and services (Stapleton et al.
2004)
. However, as pointed out by Vatn
(2002)
,
it does not mean that the notion of multifunctionality only includes a mix of private
goods and various public
goods
. Strictly speaking, it also comprises public
bads
:
effects that may have negative consequences for welfare. Furthermore, and most
importantly, the production of commodity and non-commodity outputs are mutually
dependent to some degree so that the provision of the latter cannot be decoupled or
considered in isolation from the former without risking sub-optimal provision.
Most of the multifunctionality literature is theoretical rather than empirical;
refer for example to the articles provided in Brouwer
(2004)
as well as Van
Huylenbroeck and Durand
(2003)
. The lack of empirical evidence that supports
the theoretical ideas and insights has already been clearly stated by the OECD
(2001a, 2003)
. Nevertheless, there are, of course, exceptions. Quantitative work
on multifunctionality which has focused on the issue of joint production of com-
modity and non-commodity outputs can be found in Belletti et al.
(2003)
, Bontems
et al.
(2005a, b)
, OECD
(2001b)
and Wiggering et al.
(2006)
. Quantitative work
on multifunctionality has also focused, for example, on how tourists value the
contribution to landscape made by farmers (Vanslembrouck and van Huylenbroeck
2003)
and analysis of Dutch farmers' motivation for multifunctionality (Jongeneel
and Slangen 2004). Moreover, Van der Heide et al.
(2007)
use a land use change
model - with field survey data as an input - to simulate multifunctional land use by
applying it to a case-study area in the Netherlands. But most of the time, the quantita-
tive work focuses on the assessment of several “functions” from farming activities
(see Waarts
2005
for recent examples).
In this chapter, we propose an alternative approach: instead of assessing environ-
mental or social “functions” from the farming activities, we assume that agriculture
provides non-commodity outputs and we aim at designing indicators that measure
the degree of multifunctionality involved in the co-production of commodity and
non-commodity outputs by farms. It is important that decision makers can measure
the sustainable development implications of a given policy intervention in terms of
how this affects the multifunctional attributes of a given area. Policy formulation
that aims at supplying commodity and non-commodity outputs separately will lead
to higher implementation costs than when the policy considers multifunctionality
and encourages farmers to supply these outputs jointly (Brunstad et al.
2005
; OECD
2001a)
. More specifically, measuring the degree of jointness will provide insights
