Why has farming in Europe changed? A farmers' perspective on the development since the 1960s.

Farming in Europe has been the scene of several important socio-economic and environmental developments and crises throughout the last century. Therefore, an understanding of the historical driving forces of farm change helps identifying potentials for navigating future pathways of agricultural development. However, long-term driving forces have so far been studied, e.g. in anecdotal local case studies or in systematic literature reviews, which often lack context dependency. In this study, we bridged local and continental scales by conducting 123 oral history interviews (OHIs) with elderly farmers across 13 study sites in 10 European countries. We applied a driving forces framework to systematically analyse the OHIs. We find that the most prevalent driving forces were the introduction of new technologies, developments in agricultural markets that pushed farmers for farm size enlargement and technological optimisation, agricultural policies, but also cultural aspects such as cooperation and intergenerational arrangements. However, we find considerable heterogeneity in the specific influence of individual driving forces across the study sites, implying that generic assumptions about the dynamics and impacts of European agricultural change drivers hold limited explanatory power on the local scale. Our results suggest that site-specific factors and their historical development will need to be considered when addressing the future of agriculture in Europe in a scientific or policy context. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10113-023-02150-y.

Applying Landscape Ecology in Local Planning, Some Experiences.

Landscape ecology is repeatedly described as an applied science that can help reduce the negative effects of land-use and land-use changes on biodiversity. However, the extent to which landscape ecology is in fact contributing to planning and design processes is questioned. The aim of this paper is to investigate if and how landscape ecology can be integrated in a planning and design process, and to uncover possible problems that, e.g., landscape architects and planners, may face in such processes. Our conclusion, based on a case study from Asker municipality, Norway, is that such a landscape ecological approach has a lot to offer. However, it is difficult to exploit the potential fully for different reasons, e.g., biodiversity information tends to be specialized, and not easily used by planners and designers, and landscape ecological principles need an adaptation process to be applicable in a real-world situation. We conclude that for the situation to improve, landscape ecologists need to ease this process. In addition, we recommend collaboration across disciplinary boundaries, preferably with a common design concept as a foundation.

Farmer surveys in Europe suggest that specialized, intensive farms were more likely to perceive negative impacts from COVID-19.

It has been shown that the COVID-19 pandemic affected some agricultural systems more than others, and even within geographic regions, not all farms were affected to the same extent. To build resilience of agricultural systems to future shocks, it is key to understand which farms were affected and why. In this study, we examined farmers' perceived robustness to COVID-19, a key resilience capacity. We conducted standardized farmer interviews (n = 257) in 15 case study areas across Europe, covering a large range of socio-ecological contexts and farm types. Interviews targeted perceived livelihood impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on productivity, sales, price, labor availability, and supply chains in 2020, as well as farm(er) characteristics and farm management. Our study corroborates earlier evidence that most farms were not or only slightly affected by the first wave(s) of the pandemic in 2020, and that impacts varied widely by study region. However, a significant minority of farmers across Europe reported that the pandemic was "the worst crisis in a lifetime" (3%) or "the worst crisis in a decade" (7%). Statistical analysis showed that more specialized and intensive farms were more likely to have perceived negative impacts. From a societal perspective, this suggests that highly specialized, intensive farms face higher vulnerability to shocks that affect regional to global supply chains. Supporting farmers in the diversification of their production systems while decreasing dependence on service suppliers and supply chain actors may increase their robustness to future disruptions. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13593-022-00820-5.

Effects of landscape protection on farm management and farmers' income in Norway.

Protected Landscapes (PLs) are increasingly used in Norway to conserve cultural (human modified) landscapes. In many cases the maintenance of agricultural activities in PLs is required to preserve landscape character. Whilst research exists on land conservation policies in general, the particular effects of PL on management and adjustment of the farms involved have not received attention in the literature. We present results from a questionnaire sent to owners of agricultural land within PLs in Norway. Whilst landowners were divided upon the effects of PLs on farm management, the economic situation of the farm was little affected. Furthermore, changes in farm management after the establishment of a PL did not seem to have been driven by the establishment of the PLs per se. Most importantly, farm management changes were related to potential options to develop the farm and its land. A statistical model showed that PL-farms did not differ significantly from farms outside PL in the development of their land use or animal husbandry. Our findings thus indicate that the establishment of PL played a minor role as a driving force of changes in farm management and farm income.