- Email: [email protected]
Can the cap fit the environment?
Book reviews the situation through what he terms a ‘foresight and insurance’ approach. In the concluding chapter, Healy proposes three policy areas which must be addressed to improve the potential of the American South to deal with future needs. The first is that the production and efficiency of forestry and agriculture must be improved through research, particularly that which produces more environmentally tolerant plants, and through forestry management and marketing techniSecond, potentially valuable ques. land and non-land resources, such as water, must be conserved. Voluntary and advisory programmes, such as agricultural districts or soil conservation programmes, should be more fully developed to achieve this. Also water planning, particularly drought management strategies, must be developed before demands make rational decision making more difficult. Finally, the environment must be protected and enhanced, through sound laws backed up by well-developed management programmes. The book is useful to many different land planning professionals, including agricultural managers, urban and regional planners, foresters, landscape
architects, public administrators, agricultural economists and land developers. Clear organization and straightforward presentation makes this book readable for both general background information, as well as for specific issue and policy considerations, and useful as both a reference and a text. Competition for Land in the American South is an important addition to the literature of land use policy. It emphasizes the dynamic nature of the land competition system, evaluating relevant factors well beyond parochial limits. Healy admits that prediction of future events is impossible, but also recognizes that there are reasonable limits within which future changes can be expected to occur. It is these limits and their possible interactions which can be understood and used in the creation of feasible policy which maximizes the regions potentials. For those interested in land use in general and southern land policy in particular, this excellent book cannot be too highly recommended. Nancy J. Volkman Department of Landscape Architecture Texas A & M University, TX, USA
Searching for common ground COUNTRYSIDE
CONFLICTS
The Politics of Farming, Forestry and Conservation by Philip Lowe, Graham Cox, Malcolm MacEwen, Tim O’Riordan and Michael Winter GowerIMaurice Temple Smith, Aldershut, UK, 1986, 382 pp, f 19.50 hb, f8.95 pb CAN THE CAP FIT THE ENVIRONMENT? edited by David Baldock Conder
and David
Council for the Protection of Rural England and institute for European Environmental Policy, London, UK, 1986, 76 pp
LAND USE POLICY April 1987
Readers who are concerned about the conflicts between agriculture and conservation in the UK will be familiar with much of the material presented in Countryside Conflicts. It begins by explaining the changes in agriculture since the war and the kind of price support systems developed before and after the UK joined the Common Market. The incentives to expand production, to intensify, and to substitute capital for labour led first to changes in the countryside and eventually to EEC surpluses and to growing disenchantment with modern agriculture - its cost and its deleterious effects on the environment and rural life. All these changes are described in detail, including the growth of the conservation movement and the origins and implementation of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. There follow four chapters which
discuss a series of case studies: Exmoor, the Berwyn mountains, Sedgemoor and the Halvergate Marshes. Much of this material is not available elsewhere and will be of great interest to some. It does, though, give a somewhat parochial air to the book which, despite much talk of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the early chapters, seems to lack a real European dimension. It is not that the UK’s problem of conflicting interests in the countryside could be solved by changes in the CAP alone, but rather that lack of change in the CAP - or the wrong kind of change - could inhibit the development of a UK agriculture more in harmony with its environment.
Unclear The final section of the book, ‘Proposals for reform’, is disappointing. No clear picture emerges. What will be the effects of reduced agricultural support on the environment? What objectives should we have in mind for our agriculture? In a book of such length it is odd to find only half a paragraph on organic farming and practically no mention of Integrated Rural Development (on which the EEC sponsored a Symposium at Wageningen in 1985). The CPRE Report is based on a seminar held in 1985 on the environmental implications of the pricing policies of the CAP, and how these policies might be changed to take the environment better into account. Potter, for example, considers what the effects of a drastic reduction in levels of farm spending, and in cereal price support in particular, would be. In fact the outlook turns out to be very discouraging - a domino effect leading to the demise of the small upland farmer. Indeed, there would be no prospect of a small grassland farmer on poor land being able to make a living. The environmental effects would be very damaging, with upland farms being abandoned and further amalgamations in the lowlands. As Baldock, one of the editors, writes in the conclusions of his own contribution: ‘Price changes alone are too coarse an instrument ’ and there
171
Book
reviews
need to be specific measures designed to address environmental and social problems. This is absolutely true, but both publications lack an analysis of CAP politics. When the agriculture ministers of the EEC meet, why do they come up with the proposals they do? There is a real need to understand each member country’s background, attitudes, prejudices and vested interests. Otherwise, a new, environmentally more sensitive CAP will have no chance of emerging, although we
need it so much. What we need to consider is not just agriculture, or even agriculture, forestry and conservation, but rural life as a whole and its relation to the life of the whole country. Difficult though that undoubtedly will be, there would be a better chance of finding common ground with other member states of the EEC than when considering agriculture in isolation. Tilo Ulbricht London, UK
An ingenious cartographic presentation TYPES OF AGRICULTURE EUROPE edited
by Jerzy
MAP OF
Kostrowicki
Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, 1984 The preparation of a map of world types of agriculture has been one of the objectives of the Commission on Agricultural Typology of the International Geographical Union. and a possible method was worked out by Professor Kostrowicki as long ago as 1972. Various case studies have followed testing the method in a number of countries and a preliminary map of types of agriculture in Europe was presented by W. Jankowski to the 1980 International Geographical Congress in Tokyo. A more detailed compilation, edited by Professor Kostrowicki, has now followed and is available in a printed form. The preparation of a world map is still awaited. The new map of Europe is a masterpiece of cartographic ingenuity. It is prepared on a scale of 1:2 500 000 and covers Europe in nine sheets. The agricultural types are differentiated into three basic orders which are distinguished by colour, shading and symbols respectively. At the first level, colour shows six types - Traditional Extensive agriculture, Traditional Large Scale (Latifundia) agriculture, Traditional Small-Scale
172
(Peasant) agriculture, Market Oriented agriculture, Socialized agriand Specialized Livestock culture, Breeding. Second and third levels of information relating to productivity, scale, capital, labour, irrigation, subsistence and commercial aspects are shown by shading the colours and by various symbols such as stripes, dots, circles and squares. Vertical stripes, for instance, are used to indicate livestock breeding; horizontal stripes to indicate specialized crop growing; diagonal stripes from upper left to lower right for mixed agriculture with livestock breeding dominant: diagonal stripes from upper right to lower left for mixed agriculture with crop growing dominant: and a chequerboard of stripes for fully mixed agriculture. Other symbols are used for further various specialist types. All told this enables 62 different agricultural land types to be distinguished and shown, Non-agricultural land and built-up areas are excluded, but shown by grey and black respectively. It must be emphasized that the resulting map is neither a conventional land use map, nor a map of crop or animal distribution, or a combination of both. It is a synthetic map representing productive, structural, social and operational characteristics of agriculture expressed in a quantitative way and put together by computer. The analysis of the data, however, goes beyond the cartographic repre-
sentation, for we find additionally three tables on the face of the map. The first of these is a list of 27 variables used in agricultural typology grouped under the headings of social (7), operational (7), production (7) and structural (6) attributes. The second table is a list of the world ranges of each of the 27 variables, ranging from very low, through low, medium, and high to very high. The third table integrates the first and second tables for each of the 62 agricultural types already determined - the class for each of the 27 attributes being given for each of the 62 types. This produces a table of 1674 pieces of thus giving a detailed information, picture of the model codes of the agricultural types of Europe.
Congratulations An immense amount of information has been condensed into the map and the accompanying tables and Professor Kostrowicki and his colleagues are to be congratulated on yet another ingenious cartographic presentation. There is, however, one improvement that could be made - a few words of explanation linking the three tables would facilitate a quicker understanding of what these attempt to show. The map also has limitations in the reliability of the information upon which it is based. Both of these points are in fact dealt with in a paper by Professor Kostrowicki which really needs reading as a background before attempting a detailed interpretation of the map.’ A reference to this paper on the map would have been of value. This new approach to the agriculture of Europe will clearly be of value to all those concerned with the intricacies of EEC, CAP, etc as well as to those involved in European land use policy, or social, economic and legal aspects of European land use. W. G. V. Balchin University College Swansea, UK
’ J. Kostrowicki, ‘The types of agriculture map of Europe’, Geographia Polonica, Vol 48, 1982, p 79.
LAND USE POLICY
April 1987
architects, public administrators, agricultural economists and land developers. Clear organization and straightforward presentation makes this book readable for both general background information, as well as for specific issue and policy considerations, and useful as both a reference and a text. Competition for Land in the American South is an important addition to the literature of land use policy. It emphasizes the dynamic nature of the land competition system, evaluating relevant factors well beyond parochial limits. Healy admits that prediction of future events is impossible, but also recognizes that there are reasonable limits within which future changes can be expected to occur. It is these limits and their possible interactions which can be understood and used in the creation of feasible policy which maximizes the regions potentials. For those interested in land use in general and southern land policy in particular, this excellent book cannot be too highly recommended. Nancy J. Volkman Department of Landscape Architecture Texas A & M University, TX, USA
Searching for common ground COUNTRYSIDE
CONFLICTS
The Politics of Farming, Forestry and Conservation by Philip Lowe, Graham Cox, Malcolm MacEwen, Tim O’Riordan and Michael Winter GowerIMaurice Temple Smith, Aldershut, UK, 1986, 382 pp, f 19.50 hb, f8.95 pb CAN THE CAP FIT THE ENVIRONMENT? edited by David Baldock Conder
and David
Council for the Protection of Rural England and institute for European Environmental Policy, London, UK, 1986, 76 pp
LAND USE POLICY April 1987
Readers who are concerned about the conflicts between agriculture and conservation in the UK will be familiar with much of the material presented in Countryside Conflicts. It begins by explaining the changes in agriculture since the war and the kind of price support systems developed before and after the UK joined the Common Market. The incentives to expand production, to intensify, and to substitute capital for labour led first to changes in the countryside and eventually to EEC surpluses and to growing disenchantment with modern agriculture - its cost and its deleterious effects on the environment and rural life. All these changes are described in detail, including the growth of the conservation movement and the origins and implementation of the Wildlife and Countryside Act. There follow four chapters which
discuss a series of case studies: Exmoor, the Berwyn mountains, Sedgemoor and the Halvergate Marshes. Much of this material is not available elsewhere and will be of great interest to some. It does, though, give a somewhat parochial air to the book which, despite much talk of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the early chapters, seems to lack a real European dimension. It is not that the UK’s problem of conflicting interests in the countryside could be solved by changes in the CAP alone, but rather that lack of change in the CAP - or the wrong kind of change - could inhibit the development of a UK agriculture more in harmony with its environment.
Unclear The final section of the book, ‘Proposals for reform’, is disappointing. No clear picture emerges. What will be the effects of reduced agricultural support on the environment? What objectives should we have in mind for our agriculture? In a book of such length it is odd to find only half a paragraph on organic farming and practically no mention of Integrated Rural Development (on which the EEC sponsored a Symposium at Wageningen in 1985). The CPRE Report is based on a seminar held in 1985 on the environmental implications of the pricing policies of the CAP, and how these policies might be changed to take the environment better into account. Potter, for example, considers what the effects of a drastic reduction in levels of farm spending, and in cereal price support in particular, would be. In fact the outlook turns out to be very discouraging - a domino effect leading to the demise of the small upland farmer. Indeed, there would be no prospect of a small grassland farmer on poor land being able to make a living. The environmental effects would be very damaging, with upland farms being abandoned and further amalgamations in the lowlands. As Baldock, one of the editors, writes in the conclusions of his own contribution: ‘Price changes alone are too coarse an instrument ’ and there
171
Book
reviews
need to be specific measures designed to address environmental and social problems. This is absolutely true, but both publications lack an analysis of CAP politics. When the agriculture ministers of the EEC meet, why do they come up with the proposals they do? There is a real need to understand each member country’s background, attitudes, prejudices and vested interests. Otherwise, a new, environmentally more sensitive CAP will have no chance of emerging, although we
need it so much. What we need to consider is not just agriculture, or even agriculture, forestry and conservation, but rural life as a whole and its relation to the life of the whole country. Difficult though that undoubtedly will be, there would be a better chance of finding common ground with other member states of the EEC than when considering agriculture in isolation. Tilo Ulbricht London, UK
An ingenious cartographic presentation TYPES OF AGRICULTURE EUROPE edited
by Jerzy
MAP OF
Kostrowicki
Institute of Geography and Spatial Organization, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, 1984 The preparation of a map of world types of agriculture has been one of the objectives of the Commission on Agricultural Typology of the International Geographical Union. and a possible method was worked out by Professor Kostrowicki as long ago as 1972. Various case studies have followed testing the method in a number of countries and a preliminary map of types of agriculture in Europe was presented by W. Jankowski to the 1980 International Geographical Congress in Tokyo. A more detailed compilation, edited by Professor Kostrowicki, has now followed and is available in a printed form. The preparation of a world map is still awaited. The new map of Europe is a masterpiece of cartographic ingenuity. It is prepared on a scale of 1:2 500 000 and covers Europe in nine sheets. The agricultural types are differentiated into three basic orders which are distinguished by colour, shading and symbols respectively. At the first level, colour shows six types - Traditional Extensive agriculture, Traditional Large Scale (Latifundia) agriculture, Traditional Small-Scale
172
(Peasant) agriculture, Market Oriented agriculture, Socialized agriand Specialized Livestock culture, Breeding. Second and third levels of information relating to productivity, scale, capital, labour, irrigation, subsistence and commercial aspects are shown by shading the colours and by various symbols such as stripes, dots, circles and squares. Vertical stripes, for instance, are used to indicate livestock breeding; horizontal stripes to indicate specialized crop growing; diagonal stripes from upper left to lower right for mixed agriculture with livestock breeding dominant: diagonal stripes from upper right to lower left for mixed agriculture with crop growing dominant: and a chequerboard of stripes for fully mixed agriculture. Other symbols are used for further various specialist types. All told this enables 62 different agricultural land types to be distinguished and shown, Non-agricultural land and built-up areas are excluded, but shown by grey and black respectively. It must be emphasized that the resulting map is neither a conventional land use map, nor a map of crop or animal distribution, or a combination of both. It is a synthetic map representing productive, structural, social and operational characteristics of agriculture expressed in a quantitative way and put together by computer. The analysis of the data, however, goes beyond the cartographic repre-
sentation, for we find additionally three tables on the face of the map. The first of these is a list of 27 variables used in agricultural typology grouped under the headings of social (7), operational (7), production (7) and structural (6) attributes. The second table is a list of the world ranges of each of the 27 variables, ranging from very low, through low, medium, and high to very high. The third table integrates the first and second tables for each of the 62 agricultural types already determined - the class for each of the 27 attributes being given for each of the 62 types. This produces a table of 1674 pieces of thus giving a detailed information, picture of the model codes of the agricultural types of Europe.
Congratulations An immense amount of information has been condensed into the map and the accompanying tables and Professor Kostrowicki and his colleagues are to be congratulated on yet another ingenious cartographic presentation. There is, however, one improvement that could be made - a few words of explanation linking the three tables would facilitate a quicker understanding of what these attempt to show. The map also has limitations in the reliability of the information upon which it is based. Both of these points are in fact dealt with in a paper by Professor Kostrowicki which really needs reading as a background before attempting a detailed interpretation of the map.’ A reference to this paper on the map would have been of value. This new approach to the agriculture of Europe will clearly be of value to all those concerned with the intricacies of EEC, CAP, etc as well as to those involved in European land use policy, or social, economic and legal aspects of European land use. W. G. V. Balchin University College Swansea, UK
’ J. Kostrowicki, ‘The types of agriculture map of Europe’, Geographia Polonica, Vol 48, 1982, p 79.
LAND USE POLICY
April 1987