the common agricultural policy and the european historic landscapes

Paper presented at the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape, September 2014, Gothenburg/Mariestad. Special session ‘CAP and landscape’.

1

The Common Agricultural Policy and the European historic

landscapes

Hans Renes, Utrecht University / VU University Amsterdam, [email protected]

It is generally taken for granted that the Common Agricultural Policy (the CAP) has been one of

the main driving forces in the changes in the landscape in ever larger parts of Europe during the

last fifty years. Particularly the loss of cultural heritage and biodiversity is often attributed to

the CAP. For those interested in landscape history and landscape heritage, this is an extremely

important topic, that is however also complex and stubborn, as it is almost impossible to isolate

the influence of the CAP from other, sometimes more long-term, developments. This may be

the main reason for the lack of research and publications on this subject. Even in the main

handbooks on European rural policies the influence on landscapes is missing.1

The most important publication on the subject is a report from 2012, written by a team of

writers and published by the European Union.2 But this report speaks of landscapes in very

general terms and is not extremely critical on the direct, indirect and side-effects of measures.

Also in the many publications on local and regional landscape change, the main causes are

rarely isolated, so again the role of the CAP remains unclear. By organizing this session, we

hope to improve this situation.

In this introducing paper, I want to start by sketching the main characteristics of the CAP.

In the second part of the paper, I summarize the main developments in agriculture and in

agrarian landscapes. Then, in the third part, I try to combine the two.

The Common Agricultural Policy

The Common Agricultural Policy started in 1962 and quickly became the prime example of

European collaboration. For many decades it absorbed the majority of the finances of the

EEC/EC/EU.

Already in Article 39 of the Treaty of Rome that, in 1957, marked the beginning of the

European Economic Community, four priorities were formulated for agriculture. These were:

[1] an increase in agricultural productivity and self-sufficiency, [2] to ensure a fair standard of

1 For example Oskam et al., 2010.

2 Lefebvre et al. 2012.


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living for farmers, [3] to stabilise markets and [4] to ensure that food was available to

consumers at a fair price.

They illustrate the background of European unification. France and Germany had been at

war with each other three times in a century and the two most recent of these wars had left

most of Europe in ruins. By interconnecting both economies, this danger should diminish and in

that process, a key role was foreseen for agriculture. France was already exporting at the end of

the 1950s, whereas Germany, that had lost some of its best agricultural regions after the War

and was building its future on industry, needed the surpluses of French agriculture. The wish for

a growing productivity refers to the problems in food supply in certain regions during the War,

for example in the Winter of 1944/1945 in parts of the Netherlands, that were (although the

problems were more in logistics than in production) very strong in Dutch collective memory.

The aim of stability refers to the large fluctuations in food prices in the past, that alternatively

had troubled the farmers and the urban consumers.

At the same time, fair prices for the farmers and low food prices for the urban consumers

were contradictory, in the 1950s even more than nowadays because the distance between

farmers’ products and consumers were then much shorter than nowadays.

A few years later, the ideas on agriculture were implemented in the Common Agricultural

Policy, with as its basic principles: [1] one common market, [2] preference for products from

inside the European Economic Community and [3] financial solidarity.

Central place was taken by a system of guaranteed prices without a fixed maximum

production level. It offered a guaranteed sale and stimulated farmers to maximize their

production. During the 1960s and 1970s the policy almost collapsed when the farmers did

exactly what could be expected: they produced ever more and as production grew faster than

consumption, and as the prices within the community were constantly higher than world

market prices, surpluses became a problem. Discussions during the 1970s were dominated by

lakes of milk and wine and mountains of butter. The cost of destroying or selling these

surpluses took a growing part of the EEC budget.

When we try to judge the results of the early CAP decades, we can say that from the

original aims the stabilization of markets and the raising of agrarian production were successful,

the second one even too successful. The other aims, however, remained problematic.

Consumers, as tax-payers, paid for the subsidies and for the costs of overproduction. They also

paid more for their food than they would have in an open market and on top of that they

suffered from a degrading environment. At the same time the situation of the small farmers

remained so difficult that in the course of time most of them had to quit. The subsidized export,

often referred to as ‘dumping’, gave conflicts with other agricultural exporters such as the

United States (that camouflaged the dumping of its own agricultural surpluses as food aid) and

Australia.


3

And even when substantial parts of the money that went into the CAP did not reach the

farmers (much was paid to the trading firms that exported products, for example), the part that

did was mainly spent further growth of production by using large quantities of artificial

fertilizers, crop protection measures and land improvement (including land consolidation

scheme in most countries). This resulted in environmental degradation, loss of habitats and loss

of landscape heritage on a huge scale.

As a result, between the 1970s and the present-day, the CAP was characterized by a

continuous series of reformations. The supertanker could not be turned around, but changed

its course little by little. The main developments were: [1] trying to control production levels by

the introduction of quota and set-aside measures; [2] the gradual abolition of subsidies for

production and relocation of the money towards direct payments (income support), regional

funds and, in the early 21st century, the development of the so-called second pillar of rural

development. Within this second pillar, agri-environmental measures should diminish the

negative environmental effects.3

The agricultural organizations – and the ministries responsible for agriculture that usually

focused on the real or imagined short-term interests of large farmers – kept trying to send as

much money as possible on minimum conditions to the farmers. They are still successful,

although the number of farmers is on its lowest point since the Neolithic. This is partly due to

the importance of food, but on the other hand also shows the small interest of urban

populations in the countryside. Most politicians leave rural matters to the agricultural experts,

most of whom have their own agenda of subsidizing large-scale high-tech farming.

Important is also, that planning has always remained a national responsibility, with only

indirect effects of the CAP.4 In recent years, European policies protect a number of rural areas

under the Nature 2000 programme, but that mainly concerns ecological values. The European

Landscape Convention is developed not by the European Union but by the Council of Europe.

All these measures brought the main problems under control. Moreover, additional

measures have been designed, many of which have effects on landscapes. When we want to

look at the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy for landscapes, we must distinguish

between the first period, up into the 1980s, and the more recent decades. The first period was

characterized by a huge pressure on rising productivity and, hence, on landscapes. The second

period is more diffuse, more complex and – would by my hypothesis – less harmful. In all cases

we cannot know how the development would have been without a European Agricultural

Policy.

3 Brouwer & Silvis, 2010, p. 338.

4 Pedroli et al., 2007, p. 13.


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Main developments in agriculture

On this point I need a short sidestep to the long-term development in agriculture. In 1988, so more or less on the tipping point of old and new policies, the landscape architect Johan Meeus mapped the main developments in agriculture (figure 1). The map shows on the one hand regions in which agriculture went through processes of enlargement of scale or intensification, or even both (a process that is labelled as industrialization). On the other hand it shows regions in which agriculture was on the retreat, labelled as marginalization. Moreover, other processes were active, particularly specialization, within farms as well as within regions.

Intensification and marginalization can have some of the same effects, such as erosion, loss of landscape features and loss of biodiversity.5 Seemingly, historic landscapes are best served by stability.

5 Brouwer & Lowe, 1998, p. 205.


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Specialisation and the spatial separation of functions particularly threaten the complex

landscapes in the Mediterranean, such as the combination of cork oaks with pig rearing on figure 2, a so-called montados-landscape in Portugal. Also, the concentration of viticulture in core regions, for example, can lead to loss of vineyards and loss of landscape variation elsewhere.6

6 Brouwer & Lowe, 1998, p. 210.


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The geographical patterns of intensification and extensification as mapped by Meeus

show a surprising similarity with the existing differences in intensity of agriculture. But these differences in intensity have a much longer history: during the last three quarters of a century, as is shown on this slide, but in fact already since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the most intensive agriculture could be found in the strongly urbanized North-Western Europe, characterized by a strong and concentrated demand and by high land prices. When we compare this with the Meeus map, the main impression is that the differences become stronger: intensification and even industrialization in the core regions, marginalization in regions that are already marginal and enlargement of scale in the intermediate regions, particularly in the large arable landscapes. It suggests that in this respect, the CAP was not a radical change, but only strengthened existing developments.

Another case in point is the decline in the number of farms, which more or less follows a straight line, seemingly independent from the changes in agricultural policies.

The strengthening effect must have been strongest during the first period. The subsidies on production subsidies guided unprecedented amounts of money towards the agricultural sector, particularly to the farmers that produced the largest quantities. The system favoured large farmers and made survival for small farmers difficult. The subsidies made huge investments in land consolidation, drainage, fertilizers and crop protection profitable, because the extra production still could be sold for fixed prices. Moreover, the chemicals and technical measures diminished risks and fluctuations. The result was a level of investment that would never have been profitable in an open economy.7

7 Toen Nieuw-Zeeland de landbouwsubsidies afschafte, daalde onmiddellijk het gebruik van kunstmest en

bestrijdingsmiddelen.


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CAP and landscape

But then, what are the main effects on landscape and landscape heritage? In general, during

the first quarter of a century the effects of the Common Agricultural Policy on the historic

landscapes were radical and mainly negative. The most direct effect of agricultural policies, but

on a national level, was land consolidation. This activity aimed at making the landscape more fit

for modern mechanized farming and particularly in arable regions the ownership structure end

field-patterns. Such land consolidations were known in Britain for centuries, in Scandinavia

from the period around 1800 and in parts of Germany during the 19th century. The most drastic

of such land consolidations took place in parts of communist Eastern Europe after the Second

World War, after the examples in the Interwar Soviet Union. In countries such as France, the

Netherlands and Belgium as well is in parts of the Mediterranean, however, the rise of land

consolidation was connected to the period of the CAP.

Where such government organized land consolidation projects were not implemented,

the changes in landscape structures were less drastic and the historic landscape remained

recognizable. Particularly for pasture regions, in my opinion, land consolidation was a political

choice rather than an economic necessity.

Maybe the best image of the effects of the CAP comes from countries that joined the

European Community after the introduction of the CAP. But again there are problems in

measuring the effects. In the first place, those countries did have their own agricultural policies

and the process of adaptation to the CAP took many years. In the second place the

developments in the landscape are often insufficiently monitored, even in Britain.

I found it almost shocking that in the famous report of the Countryside Commission on

‘New agricultural landscapes’, published in 1974, not a single sentence refers to the European

Community or the Common Agricultural Policy.8

And in the third place, there were always other developments that are difficult to isolate

from the effects of the joining of the CAP. The British admission in 1973, for example, coincided

with an unprecedented rise of oil prices and, hence, the prices of other resources. The British

admission was followed by rising land prices and a shift from pasture towards arable9 (resulting

in a huge loss of landscape archaeological remains such as the visible traces of hundreds of lost

medieval villages). But this growth of arable is not unequivocally connected to joining the CAP.

In countries that joined the European Community before 1990, the affiliation to the CAP

usually meant a fast growth of production related support for farmers. But even in Sweden,

8 Westmacott & Worthington, 1974.

9 Brouwer & Lowe, 1998, p. 103.


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that joined the community in 1995 but that had deregulated agriculture a few years earlier,

direct support doubled.10

In Greece, the integration into the Community (Greece joined in 1981) seems to have led

to intensification of agriculture in the plains, with a fast growth in irrigation (resulting in water

shortages and salinization), to increasing erosion and increasing use of pesticides and artificial

fertilizers. The developments in the plains in turn speeded up the marginalization of traditional

agriculture in the mountains.11

For the second period, the effects are even less clear. However, the 1980s seem to have

been a watershed.12 A crucial factor seems to have been the introduction of quota in 1984. This

took away the largest pressure on the land, certainly in the Netherlands with its extremely

intensive dairy farming. Stabilising milk production together with a rising productivity of

individual cows, meant a surplus of land in dairy regions. Farmers now started showing interest

in using part of their land for subsidized production of nature. The decline in the length of

hedges and wood banks stopped during the 1980, as this graph shows.

10

Morell, 2011, p. 44. 11

Brouwer & Lowe, 1998, p. 275. 12

Zie o.a. Potter, 1999.


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In the Netherlands, the absence of protected cultural landscapes, suggests that this

slowing down in decline must be related to changes in the pressure on the land and on the

declining investment in land consolidation.13 These developments were related: the quota’s

and the diminishing subsidies on production derived the land consolidation machine of its

foundations.

But the changes in the CAP comprised more. Already since 1975 measures for less-

favoured areas exist, originally aiming at farmers in mountainous regions. It shows the

effectivity of the Dutch agrarian lobby that even parts of the Netherlands fell under this so-

called mountain farmers measurements. The aim of the measurements for less-favoured areas,

that has been used for 56% of the agricultural land within the Community, was to continue

farming in difficult region and thereby to preserve landscape diversity and semi-natural

habitats.14

13

Vlahos & Louloudis (2011, p. 132) vermelden dat binnen de EU15 in de jaren negentig alleen Griekenland en Nederland geen landschapsdoelen vaststelden voor het beleid. 14

Dupraz et al., 2010, p. 356.


10

Also parts of the Structural Funds went to these areas, particularly the support for rural

problem region (so-called Objective 5b, between the early 1990s and 2007) and the support for

empty regions (known as Objective 6, added after the joining of Sweden and Finland in 1995).

It is interesting to note that the flow of money from Brussels changed direction. Profits of

the subsidies on production from the first period of the CAP went mainly to the large bulk

producers, such as Northern France and the Netherlands. Gradually since the 1980s, small

farmers in difficult production regions (which often means in attractive landscapes) received a

growing share of the European money. The Netherlands for the first time became net payer,

which was one of the backgrounds of a declining popularity of European unification in that

country.


11

Yet another scheme, dating from 1992, aimed at the protection of regional products

based on protected designation of origin (PDO), protected geographical indication(PGI),

and traditional specialities guaranteed (TSG). The list of products under this scheme is still

growing: from 850 in 2009 to more than 1200 now. The scheme received much publicity when

the production of feta-cheese was limited to Greek goat farmers, blocking the much larger

production of feta in Denmark. The emphasis of the scheme is on Southern Europe, that has a

much larger reservoir of typical, locally produced products. Also a related development, the

slowfood movement, has its origins in Italy and is concentrated in Southern Europe.

A last development I want to mention is the rise of organic agriculture, also stimulated by

the European Union. It is a type of agriculture that emphasizes a sound relation with nature and

environment and that in most cases has positive effects on the management of landscapes.

Different from slowfood, organic agriculture is not necessary small-scale. Together with a rise in

demand for local olives, this brought new life and better maintenance for terraces.15

Conclusion

In this paper I could only give some general perspectives. It is clear that much more research is

necessary. Such research also seems relevant, when on the one hand lots of money and efforts

are used for local products and small-scale agriculture, whereas on the other hand European

15

Rolé, 2007, p. 416.


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agriculture will have to survive in an open world market. Next year, the quota on milk

production will be abolished and in the Netherlands this is already leading to huge investments

in future growth. It can mean a return of the landscape under pressure that has cost us such a

large share of historic landscape structures.

Preparations for the new CAP started with ambitious environmental aims, including

management of cultural landscapes. However, during the process the new CAP seems to have

been hijacked by the interests of large-scale high-tech farming. Many of the more successful

programmes for the management of cultural landscapes with high heritage and ecological

values, are again under threat. Some experts suggest to take our losses and start preparing to

influence the next revision of the CAP in 2020.

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the common agricultural policy and the european historic landscapes

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