Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
19
The de-intensification of European
agriculture
Brian Ilbery
stimulated farmers to maximise production,
irrespective of market demand. As a consequence,
agricultural systems became more intensive and
specialised, and farming became more spatially
concentrated in 'core' farming regions such as the
Po valley, Paris basin and East Anglia (Bowler
1985a and b).
Each of the three dimensions of productivist
agriculture—intensification, specialisation and
concentration—was accompanied by what Bowler
(1985a) described as secondary consequences (Table
19.1). For example, rising indebtedness and
declining farm incomes occurred as farmers
became trapped on a 'technological treadmill'
(Ward 1993). Second, overproduction of many
agricultural products increased as both efficient and
inefficient farmers were encouraged to intensify
production. Third, farmers took an exploitative
rather than conserving attitude towards their
natural resource base, creating a number of
environmental disbenefits. These included the
pollution of air, soil and water courses, the removal
of hedgerows and woodlands, the drainage of
wetlands, and the ploughing of moorland and herb-
rich permanent grasslands. Finally, productivist
agriculture polarised farm-size structures and
further exaggerated spatial inequalities in farm types
and farm incomes. Regions became overspecialised
on particular crops or livestock, as for example in
the production of table wine in the Languedoc
region of Mediterranean France, where attempts to
de-specialise and diversify agriculture were only
partially successful (Jones 1989).
CONTEXTUAL SETTING
European agriculture has undergone substantial
restructuring in the post-war period and, while
both Western and Eastern Europe experienced
forms of agricultural intensification between 1950
and the 1980s, the direction of change has since
been quite different. In Eastern Europe, this has
been based on a return to private farming. The
transition has not been easy, and many structural
problems still confront the agricultural sector, not
least the re-creation of landed property rights and
the development of an efficient market system of
agricultural production (Repassy and Symes 1993;
Ilbery 1998). Controlling agricultural output has
thus not been a priority, which is in contrast to
Western Europe, where the emphasis since the mid-
1980s has been on a post-productivist farming
system. The objective has been to de-intensify
agricultural production through extensification,
diversification and farming in more
environmentally beneficial ways (Ilbery 1992;
Battershill and Gilg 1996; Evans and Morris 1997).
This chapter therefore focuses on the applied
characteristics of, and problems associated with, the
de-intensification of agriculture inWestern Europe.
Government policy, enacted through the
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has been the
main catalyst of change in European agriculture.
Prior to the mid-1980s, a
productivist
ethos based
on the principles of efficiency and rationality was
engendered through high levels of government
support for farming. A system of guaranteed prices
