Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Half of the eligible expenditure for the AEPs was
to come from the EU budget, and the Regulation
was open to interpretation by individual states. In
the UK, for example, the 1993 package included
more ESAs, access to ESAs and set-aside land, new
nitrate measures, an organic farming scheme, a
moorland scheme, and a habitat improvement
scheme through long-term set-aside (Potter 1993).
The principle of compensating farmers for their
projected loss of income suggests that 'AEPs have
amounted to little more than a continuation and
extension of existing programmes such as ESAs'
(Winter 1996: p. 255).
There has been limited research on the applied
and geographical consequences of AEPs in Europe
(Whitby 1996; Evans and Morris 1997).
International comparisons are difficult, because
different schemes exist in different countries. Even
within one scheme, such as ESAs in the United
Kingdom, prescriptions vary between designated
areas. The focus of research, therefore, has been on
uptake rates of specific schemes in particular
regions or countries. For example, Wilson (1995;
1996; 1997) examined uptake and farmers'
attitudes towards the MEKA programme in
Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and the ESA
scheme in Wales. Similarly, Wilson et al . (1996) and
Curry and Stucki (1997) analysed AEPs in
Switzerland (see Box 19.1). However, the real
environmental benefits of AEPs are far from clear.
Many farmers are 'passive' adopters who enter the
schemes for financial rather than environmental
reasons; as Morris and Potter (1995) suggest, there
is a need to examine the longer-term impact of
AEPs, well after the schemes have finished.
Indeed, academic research has pointed to a
number of weaknesses of AEPs, including:
1
They are effectively 'bolted on' to a
productivist-oriented agricultural policy.
Because of a lack of cross compliance, where
farmers receive economic payments (e.g.
subsidies or income aid) only if they satisfy
environmental prescriptions, AEPs do not
automatically lead to the production of
environmental goods.
2
Most AEPs focus on inputs, such as
application rates of inorganic fertilisers, rather
than outputs. Thus farmers get paid for
satisfying certain conditions rather than for
results achieved (in terms of environmental
conservation).
Box 19.1 Agri-environmental programmes (AEPs) in Switzerland
Since the mid-1980s, Swiss agricultural policy has shifted
away from price supports and towards both direct
payments to farmers and specific objectives for the
environment, ecology and welfare of rural communities
(Curry and Stucki 1997). Unlike the CAP reforms of 1992,
changes to the Swiss Federal Agricultural Law in 1992
involved a full reappraisal of agricultural policy. This
covers all agricultural land and is invoked through cross-
compliance. Two elements now dominate agricultural
policy: first, the decoupling of farm incomes from price
supports; and second, direct payments to farmers. Under
the first element, farmers receive baseline payments
(price and marketing safeguards) for the production of
local and high-quality food products that are associated
with environmentally sustainable farming methods.
Under the second element, three types of payment are
available. The first is compensation for reduced
subsidies, but farmers receive these only if they satisfy
the management practices of environmental sensitivity
and animal welfare. Second, social payments are
available to small family farms to help to retain people in
rural areas; and third, farmers receive payments for
entering voluntary AEPs.
Under the voluntary AEPs, the amount of income aid
available to farmers varies according to different 'levels'
of ecological farming. Thus the smallest payments are
made for biological diversity (extensive grassland
cultivation) and the highest for organic farming. The
different schemes are administered by the twenty-six
cantons, which have some flexibility to vary the
prescriptions of AEPs according to local conditions
(Wilson et al . 1996). After one year, 20 per cent of the
75,000 Swiss holdings had been accepted into an AEP,
and by 1995 40 per cent of the entered agricultural area
was involved in 'integrated production' or 'organic'
farming.
In Switzerland, therefore, ecological farming has
been proposed as the dominant farming system; it is a
single scheme for the whole country, with real cross-
compliance, and is not 'bolted on' to an essentially
economically driven policy that is designed to maintain
farm subsidies.
 
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