Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
experience a relative decrease between 2000 and 2004 in the way these subsidies
share their farm income, because of cross-effects with outputs, and mostly inputs
and intermediate consumptions.
Conclusions
Although the concepts associated with the multifunctionality of agriculture are far
from being consensual (see Cairol et al.
2006
for a description of the main concepts),
we focussed in this chapter on one concept only, the joint supply of commodity and
non-commodity outputs by farms. This is the definition of multifunctionality generally
espoused by the EU; many other definitions of multifunctionality are self evident
to some degree.
Based on this jointness definition, our novel assessment of indicators of
multifunctionality relied on three sequential stages: identification of jointness,
qualitative assessment of jointness, quantitative assessment of jointness.
Identification of jointness was carried out at the level of the farm gate for both an
EU sample and using a regional case study of Auvergne, France. FADN data for
the EU sample covered only values for commodity outputs and their drivers and
thus enabled only a rough comparison of the evolution of the production structure
of the farms including insights on how they combine their different activities. By
comparison, using FADN data for the regional case study permitted the assessment
of which functions different farms fulfil using De Groot's
(2006)
classification of
functions fulfilled by natural and semi-natural ecosystems. Qualitative assessment
of jointness examined the relationship between farm income and nitrogen leaching
for a subset of farms in four regions but problems with data availability make it
difficult to authoritatively comment on the degree of jointness. However, for the
Auvergne case-study it was possible to show how the marginal effect of environ-
mental subsidies on farm income is not constant over time. Moving to assessing
the final stage in our framework, quantitative assessment of jointness extended the
approach used to identify jointness at the farm gate level for an EU sample, con-
strained by problems of data availability already noted with this sample. However,
under the assumption that environmental subsidies are an estimator for the value
of subsidised non-commodity outputs it was possible to show that regions that
receive relatively high environmental subsidies on a per hectare basis experience
a relative decrease between 2000 and 2004 in the way these subsidies share their
farm income, because of cross-effects with outputs, and mostly inputs and inter-
mediate consumptions.
Although the results outlined in this chapter serve to illustrate that multifunc-
tionality of agriculture is far from being negligible, a comprehensive assessment of
this phenomenon in terms of both functions and spatial scales covered by such an
analysis is still beyond the bounds of possibility because of problems with data
availability and model capabilities. Given the prominence placed on the multifunc-
tionality concept by the European Commission, it is imperative that this situation
improves in order to more fully and robustly assess this concept. Nevertheless, and
