Countryside is for the public benefit
The European countryside offers an enormous diversity of culture, nature, scenery, food and other products and services. To protect and enhance this we need to shift in attitude towards the by-products of agriculture and nature and land management and come to an evaluation of the public benefits Europe’s rural areas can deliver.
On 25 and 26 October the Rural European Platform (REP) met in the somewhat festive atmosphere of the circus festival Circo Circolo in Liempde, Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. In a circus tent about fifty farmers, private land owners, nature conservationists, policy makers and scientists from all over Europe talked about new ways of promoting and funding the rural development in Europe, while in the background music played and people cheered the acrobats and clowns. Farmers and nature managers presented their practices in coping with the changing countryside while representatives of farmer’s unions and associations of land owners explained their views on how the management of the rural areas can be financed in the future.
There are several reasons to talk about the future of Europe’s rural areas, proved Julian Hosking of Natural England, who presented the conclusion of a two day long conference of economists before the REP conference. One of the main reasons is that the countryside has a rich diversity of culture, nature, scenery, food and other products and services for the public benefit, and that this diversity is largely a result of century’s long management by man. Hosking presented a long list of public benefits from rural areas, from cultural heritage to flood management, rural employment and all kinds of environmental services, besides the production of regional food for the metropoles and cities.
Six recommendations for working towards a new approach to promoting and funding European rural development:
- All CAP direct aid payments need to shift from agriculture to a wider range of rural public benefit services and the policy emphasis needs to shift from agriculture to environment and rural development.
- Adopt a multi-functional and cross-sectoral approach to land management and the provision of public goods and services.
- Find new instruments for funding rural areas and organising land management and public involvement.
- Assess the value of public-private partnerships, seek a good blend of public and private involvement and encourage private enterprises to invest in rural areas.
- Dissolve the boundaries between the economic, ecological and community sectors.
- Achieve necessary change through graduated measures.
In spite of this abundance of rural products and services the European policy mainly focuses on the agriculture. But changes will come, Hosking explains, because the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union will be reviewed by a so-called Health Check. This is part of the overall EU budget review, which will result in a totally new expenditure in 2013. Now almost half of the EU budget is spent on agriculture, partly direct support for food production, partly indirect support for environmental services like nature and land management. It is uncertain how this will change.
There are three aspects that will influence the EU budget review, Hosking says. The negotiations within the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will play a significant role, because countries from other parts of the world argue for the complete abolition of the support of the European farmers in the spirit of the free market. Then there is the problem that now 20% of the farmers receive 80% of the payments. Finally the new members of the EU will also want to organise the EU funding in a way that suites their best interests.
In this mind-boggling array of policy changes and internal and external influences the EU will have to come to a conclusion. And that is not all, stresses Hosking, because new social, economic and environmental trends arise that offer new threats and opportunities for the Europe’s rural areas. There is the changing climate, challenging people into dealing with the mitigation of greenhouse gasses while working on flood management and environmental resilience at the same time. There are concerns about food, water and energy security and the sustainability of development, about the animal health and welfare and the targets of renewable energy. Besides that there is a rising recognition that we have to work on reconnecting city people tot the countryside and integrate the urban and rural communities with their environment.
Hosking ended his presentation with six recommendations (see text box), which actually formed an outline of much of the presentations and discussions earlier that day. It was clear for all participants that the future of Europe’s rural areas depends on realising new ways to deliver the public benefits of those areas to urban and rural communities. And it is not all about EU funding, stresses consultant Paul Silcock of Cumulus Consultants in the final discussion. ’It is not only about public funds and rural areas. It is about a new rationale of the expenditure of EU funds in rural areas which has a regional element, with urban rural connections and public private partnerships.’ ’And a cross-sectoral approach’, added economist Leonardo Costa of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto.
This also means that traditional roles will shift. ’We are not stake holders’, said Mark Tomasin-Foster, chairman of the European Landowners Association and new member of the advisory board of the REP, ’but resource holders’. That goes for farmers too. Antoon Vermeer, chairman of the Dutch farmers association ZLTO, stated in his key note speech that ‘farmers and growers play an essential role in economic, social, ecological and landscape development of the different regions in Europe’. And he stated that a healthy agricultural sector which is competitive in the EU-market gives us the possibility to make new coalitions in our society and the rural area. The CAP after 2013 will be a big challenge for these new coalitions.
But what is the role of the REP in this? For Olga Zhovtonog of the Institute of Hydraulic Engineering and Land Reclamation of the Ukrainian Academy of Agrarian Science REP can act as a catalyst. In her presentation Zhovtonog urged the participants to work together on the problematic Ukraine rural areas, where the water system and soil fertility deteriorate and there is need for pilots with integrated participatory planning to realise sustainable water and land use for nature and agriculture. This in turn will be a good practice with new knowledge and inspiration for new financial and policy instruments. ’It is time to act’, says Zhovtonog.
Those good practices actually are the key value of the REP, says Neil Hill of the South Downs Joint Committee. ’The value of the REP is that lots of ideas come from real projects.’ Rob Maessen, project leader of the European Lifescape project, thinks that these projects form the real basis for the changing EU policy. ’The policy should follow the good practices we encounter in the region.’
In those good practices lots of the recommendations Hosking proposed are already been brought into practice. Farmer Liesbeth Hermanussen of the Barendonk Estate in Beers, Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands, showed how her dairy farm could evolve into a rural enterprise with log cabins, educational projects and tourism activities, just because of two EU funded projects. Because of those projects Hermanussen now has a restored Flemish barn, a foot path and a promotional film with which she can steer her enterprise into a new future beyond the common food production.
Other examples that underline the recommendations of Hosking were the successful South Downs Lamb Company, a marketing scheme for the lamb and mutton of the sheep that graze the chalky grasslands of the South Downs in England, the mountain farmers in the Valdres Region in Norway who own the brand Valdreskwalitet with which they promote lamb, beef, reindeer meat and other products which come from extensive farming of the mountain meadows, and the marketing scheme in the Pedera Gerês National Park in Portugal, where rural tourism is combined with regional products and nature management. And money is not everything. ’It is not about the price but the quality’, stated Chris Clark of the South Downs Lamb Company.
So we need to valuate and evaluate the public benefits of agriculture and nature and land management. ’We need to shift in attitude towards the by-products of the agriculture, like cultural heritage, wildlife, clear water and thriving communities’, says Melinda Appleby, board member of Natural England. The REP can play a role in this by acting as a catalyst and an organic social network of farmers, land owners, nature conservationists, policy makers, scientists and all other stake and resource holders involved in the future of Europe’s rural areas. ’We need institutions that people trust’, says Maessen. ’The REP is a growing institution with personal links and bonds you can trust.’
Appleby more or less summed it up at the end of the day: ’The REP is a network of local projects across Europe, where people work in public private partnerships funding real change in rural development. The network benefits are sharing experiences, learning from each other and coming up with ideas how we can change things. We have to take this message beyond the REP.’ That is why the fifty participants agreed on working towards subsequently a policy paper, a mandate, a business plan and money to fund the REP. The presentation of Hosking and the presented good practices in England, Norway and Portugal form a fine basis for the policy paper. The cry for action from Zhovtonog underlined the urgency of the matter.
The REP meeting was organised by Alterra, Landbouw Innovatie Brabant, the municipality of Boxtel and the EU Interreg project Lifescape.
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