What is Land for?
Maximising the storage of carbon in our soils and the management of water could be as important as food production in the future, according to Professor Michael Winter, editor of “What is Land for? The Food, Fuel and Climate Change Debate”. Published by Earthscan, it includes contributions from leading academics involved in land use research, including many from across the Relu programme.
Read the introductory chapter by Matt Lobley and Michael Winter and leave your comments below.
5GQcI6 , [url=http://yztjkpfmnqir.com/]yztjkpfmnqir[/url], [link=http://hgvwpvhxuqks.com/]hgvwpvhxuqks[/link], http://fwvssxdmzphk.com/
StK6cb zhgenspukvea
I can’t hear anything over the sound of how awesome this aritcle is.
The imperatives behind the recent push for greater food and energy security are easy to understand – more people, greater risks from climate change, international and cross cultural tensions: no brainer. But we risk abandoning the tenets of what the chapter rather oddly calls the ‘old environmentalism’ at our peril. I have profound distrust of those who advocate a neoliberal confidence in markets. There are also huge risks if we treat land purely as a commodity – whether for food or carbon – and not as one of the foundations of individual and community identity. There is a balance to strike between the risks attached to the commodification of land and the risks of narrow localism. Although the language is clunky, the ecosystem goods and services approach offers solutions as long as the ’services’ net is cast wide enough to include cultural as well as provisioning and regulatory ones. It is also important to realise that localism is not necessarily counterintuitive in a global context: it is a necessary counter to globalisation. The more access to essential services evens out across space, the more the characteristics of specific places matter, not just to local people and communities but to any enterprise that can choose where to locate.
It is difficult to argue against the idea that farmers and land managers should be encouraged to work together, it is surely imperative for the future of farm businesses. There are many examples of land managers working together successfully on very practical types of collaborative working at the farm level, such as machinery rings and labour pools, and these are also followed by some worthwhile collaborative ventures into businesses in supply chains. We are however talking here about the provision of public goods, and as Alan suggests, the traditional owner occupier with land in a ring fence is only part of the picture. Whether this is indeed a stereotype, or for that matter whether considering the future of land management in this way is parochial or nostalgic is immaterial. The fact remains that the bulk of land is still privately owned or managed. Perhaps the issue could be that for many farmers and land managers, a public good is not tangible. It is not a tonne of grain, a lamb, a tanker of milk or some marketable forestry products. If managing land for carbon sequestration, growing energy crops, or thinking about phosphate and nitrate management at a catchment or regional level could perhaps become thought of in the minds of land managers in the same way as the more tangible goods above, collaborative working would be easier to achieve. This has to happen, and will happen. The experience of common rights holders working together should be built upon, and I believe will be when commons work through the new uplands agri-environment scheme. Collaborative working amongst land managers to provide public goods, one would hope, will one day be similar to land managers working together in the supply chain. A useful example of this could perhaps be the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, now taking the first steps on collaborative working between farmers and other stakeholders in keeping hold of the environmental benefits brought about by set-aside.
I agree with what Alan says. Encouraging and rewarding cooperation between neighbouring land managers in delivering public goods will be key to getting the most out of rural land. Much could be achieved through local or regional targeting of agri-environmental incentives. A more strategic approach is also needed to rural land use policy. We have a too nostalgic and parochial view of the countryside. Rural land and the way we use it must become central to our thinking about how we respond to climate change.
The chapter raises interesting issues around who manages land. Traditional stereotypes (e.g. owner-occupied family farm in a ring fence) are now only part of the picture. The many actors and their diverse motivations make it difficult for policy-makers to determine how best to influence behaviour so as to meet policy goals. That challenge, which is big enough, is increased by the need to encourage collaboration between groups of land managers in the same area (e.g. a catchment, or a habitat type) to deliver a range of ecosystem services. Traditionally the state has contracted with each farm as an individual business, so it is purely chance if adjacent areas of land end up being managed in the same beneficial way (e.g. to tackle phosphate pollution, or provide bird habitats). Do readers agree that we need to develop mechanisms for collaborative agreements where many land mangers are contracted in one go to take concerted action to deliver policy goals? Could our limited experience with collaborative agreements on common land be useful here?
The chapter provides a great overview and prompts many thoughts. For me, one of the critical issues is how society can meet its future food production needs without increasing the overall area of arable land at global, EU and national levels. Do readers agree that we need to protect the forests, wetlands and grasslands for the range of ecosystem services which they can provide and which arable land often cannot (e.g. carbon storage, locking up nutrients)? If so, how are we going to do that while maximising the range of ecosystem services which arable land itself can provide (not just food production)? Can modern techniques (e.g. precision farming, GM crops, minimal tillage) bring the productivity increases which are needed while also respecting environmental limits?