Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
uncertainty) of rules for pesticide 'Maximum Residual Limits' affected their businesses.
The required shift from higher productivity to safe and quality products created the
'perfect' instrument for the operationalization of AGRO2. This standard had, as its primary
aim, an environmentally friendly way of farming. The first part of the standard necessitated
a series of procedures and monitoring which proved to be appropriate to achieve a tightly
controlled process. New technological developments, mainly in the field of spatially
explicit methodologies and environmentally friendly farming practices, have been trialled
through EU-supported research projects jointly run by local institutes, producer groups and
private consultants. Futhermore, organizational and management innovations, triggered by
the implementation of the AGRO2 standard, have been supported by the EU. As increasing
consumer awareness called for a continuous reduction of pesticide residues, the controlled
and documented production process made rapid adaptation to consumer demand possible.
Although its main aim was to enhance environmentally friendly practices in
agriculture, AGRO2 was initially used in order to address an important deficiency: the
failure by the market to ensure an acceptably low level of residues in final production.
Nevertheless, realization of the initiative's potential led to a re-orientation of producer
group goals when implementing Integrated Crop Management (ICM), in order to reduce
costs and improve quality. In the case of canned peaches, the whole ICM project can be
seen as a counter-oligopsony measure. Cooperatives/producer groups that have participated
in the niche have seen their negotiating power increase within the value chain; hence
private merchants have actually been following the market trends set by the cooperatives.
A distinction can be made between the anchoring process in Lannion Bay and that in
Imathia. In the first case, a bottom-up initiated niche expanded and strengthened, first
horizontally among 'peers' and, when momentum had been gained, recruited and
networked amongst other institutional strata. In the Imathia case, a hybrid actor enrolled the
leadership of groups such as producer groups, transforming networks and creating linkages
among collectives, networks and state agencies, and providing the space for negotiation. In
the Mangfall Valley case, the public principal agent clearly imposed and enforced rules
through formal individual contracts. All efforts to change this relationship seem to have
failed and even farmers' attempts to cooperate involved trying to counteract the negotiating
power of the SWM, rather than challenging the institutional setting.
Conclusion
Three interwoven regimes were observed in Lannion Bay: water resources, agri-food and
tourism. Although there were many interdependencies, the ones that were manifest were the
pressures exerted by agriculture and positive links between the three regimes have not yet
been established. The fact that controversy remains over the causes of green tides has
contributed to the debate on who should bear the cost of control measures. Simply focusing
on technological change in a restricted bilateral negotiation between farming leaders and
policy makers, and more or less disregarding the institutional setting, led to 10 years of
ineffective attempts to solve the problem. This blatant policy failure could also be attributed
to inherent limitations of agri-environmental measures which only covered income loss and
additional costs. The allowance for a small incentive was probably not enough to stimulate
the institutional change needed. Currently, a process of moving towards a collective
Search WWH ::
Custom Search