- Email: [email protected]
Agricultural and environmental policy integration Recent progress and new directions
Conference
reportslBook
reviews
European Community and the changing nature of local governance having influence on empowerment of the public. The new forms of local governance could be seen as mechanisms which made redress and accountability much harder to achieve.
Parallel streams The remaining day and a half of the conference was characterized by three parallel streams. Thirty-two papers were presented in all (in addition to the opening papers from the two ESRC research teams). The local governance theme was continued by a range of presentations covering changing management practices in local government, gender and bureaucracy, partnership with the business sector and urban renewal strategies, and the local politics of regeneration. Within this theme were a number of papers from researchers from the developing world, including three interlocking studies of institutional change and urban and regional issues in Brazil. A second major theme was urban policy. A number of presentations focused on efforts by local authorities to manipulate the image and culture of their localities as an element of regeneration; Hague focused on Edinburgh, Cochrane and Charlesworth on Milton Keynes and Bounds on Melbourne. Post-modernity was a theme of the latter presentations which pointed to the fragility and danger of pursuing an ‘anything goes’ approach to planning and development. Ramsden’s paper on the Sheffield UDC gave some preliminary information on the limited success of this plank of UK urban policy and the shameful waste of public money that can result from unaccountable actions. Two further presentations from Brazil (Vincentini and Gunn) were fascinating accounts of urban change and policy in South America heard by only a handful of delegates. This is one of the costs of running parallel sessions where the majority opt to hear the ‘names’ and so miss the new. The third theme was social/spatial divisions and theories, and ranged across familiar topics (such as gentrification) to the emerging agenda of
148
sustainability. The latter topic was less well subscribed than I had anticipated (as organizer of the conference) but Geddes and Peter Dickens provided thoughtful papers on the question of safeguarding the global environment and on local strategies (of regeneration and environmental education) which identified problems and opportunities. Within the third theme were a few papers which raised other key policy issues such as the social/ economic costs of homelessness (Stitt, Griffiths and Grant, and Edwards). Martin Clark discussed marginalization of the long-term unemployed. A theoretical edge to the empirical studies was provided by Hamnett’s critique of Sassen’s theory of social polarization in global cities. A broader theoretical agenda was provided by papers from Sayer, Savage and Warde, and Tonboe. Sayer argued for a more serious critique of liberalism to be injected into critical urban studies, not as an abandonment of Marxism but because the varied discourses of political philosophy are deeply interlinked and exploration of commonalities is as important as polarization of divisions. Savage and Warde reflected on the state of urban sociology in the 1990s and saw deeper exploration of the relationship between capitalism and modernity as key to future theoretical development in urban studies. Tonboe’s paper returned to the familiar theme of the interlocking of the social and the spa-
tial - another key issue for urban theory. His conclusions reflected the discussions on this issue which were present at the first UCC conference back in the mid-1960s, namely that space is present and influential in social relations but not the most important dimension in society or sociology. The conference was successful. It brought together theoreticians and researchers, students and established writers and resulted in a broad spread of papers and topics. It was suggested to me at the outset that I should be very selective about the papers offered and take only a limited number of the highest quality. In the end many of the papers that were initially offered were accepted and presented. The fact that the conference sustained a high level of ideas and debate throughout is vindication of a liberal acceptance policy. The principal disadvantage is that because of parallel streaming some good papers were heard by only a small number of people. Roy Darke of Town and Regional Planning University of Sheffield, UK
Department
Copies of most of the papers presented at the conference are bound into a booklet which can be obtained from Roy Darke, Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield, SlO 2TN, UK, at a cost of El 0 (inclusive of p&p). Cheques payable to ‘The University of Sheffield’.
Book reviews Complex issues and conflicts of interest AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INTEGRATION Recent
Progress and New Directions
OECD, Paris, 1993, 95 pp, f 17.00 This relatively short book is not an and quite difficult to easy read,
absorb, even for someone with an interest and background in the subject. This stems partly from the complexity of the issues, partly from the varying agricultures and histories of the OECD member countries (which include countries as different as Greece, Japan and the USA). Also, an OECD publication has to be approved by a committee representing
LAND USE POLICY
April
1994
Book reviews
its members, so a clear, forceful expression of a coherent point of view is hardly to be expected. The background is the realization of the unfavourable impact of certain agricultural practices (essentially, intensification of methods of production, and their extension into previously uncultivated lands) on the environment, that is, on the land itself, rural communities, water, air, and the quality of food produced (the latter gets little mention here) during the last 30 years. At first, short-term impacts caused the greatest concern (eg on bird life) but as time has passed we have become more concerned about long-term effects: soil erosion, water pollution from long-term use of artificial fertilizers, the exploitation not only of non-renewable but also of slowly renewable resources (such as forests and marginal lands). The buzzword for the last few years has been ‘sustainability’, and the professed aim of policy makers is to encourage methods of agricultural production which are sustainable, ie make a sustainable use of renewable natural resources. This book does not tell us how differently this concept is understood: for some, provided the land in question has a stable soil structure, reducing its organic content to a minimum by repeated monocropping and adding artificial fertilizers every year with constant or even (because of new crop varieties) rising yields, is sustainable - even though utterly reliant on external inputs. For others, sustainability implies a duty to maintain natural soil fertility, using crop rotations including legumes, recycling plant residues and manure, etc. Even if we could reach a common understanding of ‘sustainability’, there would still be, as this book implies, deep conflicts of interest. For example, in several passages this book suggests that freer trade policies coupled with reduced agricultural subsidies would be ‘a good thing’. That is the US position in the GATT negotiations, supported by the UK, and they have no sympathy for the more protectionist views of some European Community countries, France m particular. But the bias (which it is) in favour of free trade is
LAND USE POLICY
April
1994
historically conditioned: the UK, the first industrialized country and moreover with a world empire, benefited from free trade, as did the USA, with its huge land resources, agricultural surpluses, low population density and vast, mechanized farms. Continental European countries still today _ unlike the USA and the UK - have significant agricultural populations and see no point in reducing them rapidly, especially at a time when anything like full employment seems to have become quite out of reach.’ How to sustain farmers and rural communities without subsidies, without protectionist measures? Is it possible? An important issue is one which, if we can understand the jargon, is expressed as being one of the aspects of the goal of ‘sustainability’: ‘To achieve sustainability, the private and/or public decision processes must incorporate the “shadow” prices of environmental quantity and quality dimensions. Shadow prices reflect the social opportunity costs of using resources (such as land, water and forests), whether traded in markets or allocated in some non-market manner.’ In other words, we must free ourselves from the blinkered view of ‘efficiency’ beloved of agricultural economists. If a given farmer can increase his profit by using more agrochemicals, or by buying his neighbour’s farm, draining and ploughing up his marginal land and selling his cows, then he is more ‘efficient’ -
never mind that he will increase water pollution, increase pesticide residues in his crops, reduces species diversity and land amenity, has to transport his straw off the farm, puts a family out of work and reduces the chances of the local shop and school being able to survive. Can we, will we, will our governments take the hidden costs (shadow prices) into account? It is relatively easy to legislate to control specific pollution practices (eg straw burning in the UK, manure disposal in the Netherlands) and to give token support to ‘alternative’ agriculture, such as organic farming (though, in most OECD countries, virtually no state-funded research is carried out). It is quite another matter to give priority to the environmental dimension when deciding on pricing policies and subsidies. When you next read about the GATT negotiations in your newspaper, ask yourself: are considerations of environmental quality and rural communities (or of food quality and health) having any influence on the outcome?
International
Tilo Ulbricht Consultant London, UK
Tracy’s Government and Agriculture in Wesfern Europe 1880-7998 gives ‘Michael
an excellent account of the historical origins of differing approaches to agricultural policy in Western European countries. See review in Food Policy, Vol 15, No 2, April 1990, pp 179-183.
The imperative of land reform LAND
edited by Marcus Colchester Larry Lohmann
IS LIFE
Land Reform and Sustainable Agriculture edited by Nigel Dudley, John Madeley and Sue Stolton Intermediate Technology Publications and Foundation Development and Peace, Bonn, 1992, 155 pp, f9.95 THE STRUGGLE
FOR LAND
THE FATE OF THE FORESTS
AND
and
World Rainforest Movement, The Ecologist and Zed Books, 1993, 389 pp, f11.95 For an issue that has been globally recognized for over two decades as a condition for improving agricultural productivity, land reform has reaped a remarkable lack of success: and yet landlessness or near landlessness concerns as many as 935 million people
149
reportslBook
reviews
European Community and the changing nature of local governance having influence on empowerment of the public. The new forms of local governance could be seen as mechanisms which made redress and accountability much harder to achieve.
Parallel streams The remaining day and a half of the conference was characterized by three parallel streams. Thirty-two papers were presented in all (in addition to the opening papers from the two ESRC research teams). The local governance theme was continued by a range of presentations covering changing management practices in local government, gender and bureaucracy, partnership with the business sector and urban renewal strategies, and the local politics of regeneration. Within this theme were a number of papers from researchers from the developing world, including three interlocking studies of institutional change and urban and regional issues in Brazil. A second major theme was urban policy. A number of presentations focused on efforts by local authorities to manipulate the image and culture of their localities as an element of regeneration; Hague focused on Edinburgh, Cochrane and Charlesworth on Milton Keynes and Bounds on Melbourne. Post-modernity was a theme of the latter presentations which pointed to the fragility and danger of pursuing an ‘anything goes’ approach to planning and development. Ramsden’s paper on the Sheffield UDC gave some preliminary information on the limited success of this plank of UK urban policy and the shameful waste of public money that can result from unaccountable actions. Two further presentations from Brazil (Vincentini and Gunn) were fascinating accounts of urban change and policy in South America heard by only a handful of delegates. This is one of the costs of running parallel sessions where the majority opt to hear the ‘names’ and so miss the new. The third theme was social/spatial divisions and theories, and ranged across familiar topics (such as gentrification) to the emerging agenda of
148
sustainability. The latter topic was less well subscribed than I had anticipated (as organizer of the conference) but Geddes and Peter Dickens provided thoughtful papers on the question of safeguarding the global environment and on local strategies (of regeneration and environmental education) which identified problems and opportunities. Within the third theme were a few papers which raised other key policy issues such as the social/ economic costs of homelessness (Stitt, Griffiths and Grant, and Edwards). Martin Clark discussed marginalization of the long-term unemployed. A theoretical edge to the empirical studies was provided by Hamnett’s critique of Sassen’s theory of social polarization in global cities. A broader theoretical agenda was provided by papers from Sayer, Savage and Warde, and Tonboe. Sayer argued for a more serious critique of liberalism to be injected into critical urban studies, not as an abandonment of Marxism but because the varied discourses of political philosophy are deeply interlinked and exploration of commonalities is as important as polarization of divisions. Savage and Warde reflected on the state of urban sociology in the 1990s and saw deeper exploration of the relationship between capitalism and modernity as key to future theoretical development in urban studies. Tonboe’s paper returned to the familiar theme of the interlocking of the social and the spa-
tial - another key issue for urban theory. His conclusions reflected the discussions on this issue which were present at the first UCC conference back in the mid-1960s, namely that space is present and influential in social relations but not the most important dimension in society or sociology. The conference was successful. It brought together theoreticians and researchers, students and established writers and resulted in a broad spread of papers and topics. It was suggested to me at the outset that I should be very selective about the papers offered and take only a limited number of the highest quality. In the end many of the papers that were initially offered were accepted and presented. The fact that the conference sustained a high level of ideas and debate throughout is vindication of a liberal acceptance policy. The principal disadvantage is that because of parallel streaming some good papers were heard by only a small number of people. Roy Darke of Town and Regional Planning University of Sheffield, UK
Department
Copies of most of the papers presented at the conference are bound into a booklet which can be obtained from Roy Darke, Department of Town and Regional Planning, University of Sheffield, Western Bank, Sheffield, SlO 2TN, UK, at a cost of El 0 (inclusive of p&p). Cheques payable to ‘The University of Sheffield’.
Book reviews Complex issues and conflicts of interest AGRICULTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY INTEGRATION Recent
Progress and New Directions
OECD, Paris, 1993, 95 pp, f 17.00 This relatively short book is not an and quite difficult to easy read,
absorb, even for someone with an interest and background in the subject. This stems partly from the complexity of the issues, partly from the varying agricultures and histories of the OECD member countries (which include countries as different as Greece, Japan and the USA). Also, an OECD publication has to be approved by a committee representing
LAND USE POLICY
April
1994
Book reviews
its members, so a clear, forceful expression of a coherent point of view is hardly to be expected. The background is the realization of the unfavourable impact of certain agricultural practices (essentially, intensification of methods of production, and their extension into previously uncultivated lands) on the environment, that is, on the land itself, rural communities, water, air, and the quality of food produced (the latter gets little mention here) during the last 30 years. At first, short-term impacts caused the greatest concern (eg on bird life) but as time has passed we have become more concerned about long-term effects: soil erosion, water pollution from long-term use of artificial fertilizers, the exploitation not only of non-renewable but also of slowly renewable resources (such as forests and marginal lands). The buzzword for the last few years has been ‘sustainability’, and the professed aim of policy makers is to encourage methods of agricultural production which are sustainable, ie make a sustainable use of renewable natural resources. This book does not tell us how differently this concept is understood: for some, provided the land in question has a stable soil structure, reducing its organic content to a minimum by repeated monocropping and adding artificial fertilizers every year with constant or even (because of new crop varieties) rising yields, is sustainable - even though utterly reliant on external inputs. For others, sustainability implies a duty to maintain natural soil fertility, using crop rotations including legumes, recycling plant residues and manure, etc. Even if we could reach a common understanding of ‘sustainability’, there would still be, as this book implies, deep conflicts of interest. For example, in several passages this book suggests that freer trade policies coupled with reduced agricultural subsidies would be ‘a good thing’. That is the US position in the GATT negotiations, supported by the UK, and they have no sympathy for the more protectionist views of some European Community countries, France m particular. But the bias (which it is) in favour of free trade is
LAND USE POLICY
April
1994
historically conditioned: the UK, the first industrialized country and moreover with a world empire, benefited from free trade, as did the USA, with its huge land resources, agricultural surpluses, low population density and vast, mechanized farms. Continental European countries still today _ unlike the USA and the UK - have significant agricultural populations and see no point in reducing them rapidly, especially at a time when anything like full employment seems to have become quite out of reach.’ How to sustain farmers and rural communities without subsidies, without protectionist measures? Is it possible? An important issue is one which, if we can understand the jargon, is expressed as being one of the aspects of the goal of ‘sustainability’: ‘To achieve sustainability, the private and/or public decision processes must incorporate the “shadow” prices of environmental quantity and quality dimensions. Shadow prices reflect the social opportunity costs of using resources (such as land, water and forests), whether traded in markets or allocated in some non-market manner.’ In other words, we must free ourselves from the blinkered view of ‘efficiency’ beloved of agricultural economists. If a given farmer can increase his profit by using more agrochemicals, or by buying his neighbour’s farm, draining and ploughing up his marginal land and selling his cows, then he is more ‘efficient’ -
never mind that he will increase water pollution, increase pesticide residues in his crops, reduces species diversity and land amenity, has to transport his straw off the farm, puts a family out of work and reduces the chances of the local shop and school being able to survive. Can we, will we, will our governments take the hidden costs (shadow prices) into account? It is relatively easy to legislate to control specific pollution practices (eg straw burning in the UK, manure disposal in the Netherlands) and to give token support to ‘alternative’ agriculture, such as organic farming (though, in most OECD countries, virtually no state-funded research is carried out). It is quite another matter to give priority to the environmental dimension when deciding on pricing policies and subsidies. When you next read about the GATT negotiations in your newspaper, ask yourself: are considerations of environmental quality and rural communities (or of food quality and health) having any influence on the outcome?
International
Tilo Ulbricht Consultant London, UK
Tracy’s Government and Agriculture in Wesfern Europe 1880-7998 gives ‘Michael
an excellent account of the historical origins of differing approaches to agricultural policy in Western European countries. See review in Food Policy, Vol 15, No 2, April 1990, pp 179-183.
The imperative of land reform LAND
edited by Marcus Colchester Larry Lohmann
IS LIFE
Land Reform and Sustainable Agriculture edited by Nigel Dudley, John Madeley and Sue Stolton Intermediate Technology Publications and Foundation Development and Peace, Bonn, 1992, 155 pp, f9.95 THE STRUGGLE
FOR LAND
THE FATE OF THE FORESTS
AND
and
World Rainforest Movement, The Ecologist and Zed Books, 1993, 389 pp, f11.95 For an issue that has been globally recognized for over two decades as a condition for improving agricultural productivity, land reform has reaped a remarkable lack of success: and yet landlessness or near landlessness concerns as many as 935 million people
149