The Role of Small Farm Activities for the Sustainable Management of Agricultural Landscapes: Case Studies from Europe

Abstract

In Europe, a broad variety of agricultural landscape types have originated as a result of traditional farming activities and landscape diversity maintenance over centuries. The rapid development of socio-economic activities during the twentieth century caused significant loss of traditional rural landscapes. Traditional/historical European agricultural landscape types (EALs) represent a type of cultural landscape with many specific unique cultural, historical, and biodiversity patterns. Despite their high value, maintenance in practice is lacking. European farmers and landowners need to learn how to implement innovative multifunctional farming techniques within these landscapes. An online interactive educational tool of the ERASMUS+ FEAL project (FEAL: multifunctional Farming for the sustainability of European Agricultural Landscapes) deals with these topics. Case studies from the FEAL project showed the best examples of sustainable agricultural management practices in different types of EALs. The aim of this article was to evaluate case studies within coordination of information on the environment (CORINE) Land Cover (CLC) 2012 classes representing traditional land use forms, nature and landscape protection areas, and ecologically important areas, as well as High Nature Value (HNV) farmland. Results based on 28 case studies from five European countries interpreted the positive external effects of farms on values of EALs. A prevailing number of farms exhibited a coincidence between CLC 2012 classes with traditional land use forms and HNV farmland and protected areas. Regarding land cover classes with traditional land use forms, key words selected by farmers gave importance to recreation and tourism, furthering of biodiversity, direct sale, social farming, renewable energy, and traditional building. The highest frequencies of the key words were achieved in CLC 2012 classes concerning (to some degree) natural and semi-natural ecosystems.

Agri-Food Markets towards Sustainable Patterns

“…Many of today's subsidies encourage economically perverse or trade-distorting or ecologically destructive and socially unfair practices [94,103]. For example, CAP subsidies end up supporting the so-called 'corporate farms', almost always prone to an intensive and industrial form of agriculture, of a different nature from those that have traditionally characterized the European agricultural landscape [104,105]. In this context, it is clear that medium and, especially, small farms, which have always represented the majority in terms of spread and workforce in EU, have been gradually The role of governments (cf.…”

“…Many of today's subsidies encourage economically perverse or trade-distorting or ecologically destructive and socially unfair practices [94,103]. For example, CAP subsidies end up supporting the so-called 'corporate farms', almost always prone to an intensive and industrial form of agriculture, of a different nature from those that have traditionally characterized the European agricultural landscape [104,105]. In this context, it is clear that medium and, especially, small farms, which have always represented the majority in terms of spread and workforce in EU, have been gradually marginalized, also compromising the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the sector; the direct payments system is accused of having led to the degradation of hundreds of thousands of hectares of natural places throughout EU, contributing significantly to the decline of historical landscape features as well as of genetic biodiversity [100,106,107].…”

Mapping Cultural Ecosystem Services Enables Better Informed Nature Protection and Landscape Management

“…Recent scientific developments have also acknowledged social media potential for collecting data on recreation activities and landscape aesthetic beauty. Here, photographs uploaded to image-sharing websites provide information on the visited sites' spatial distribution, visitor appreciation and locations of the most accessible sites [46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. This information can be used in modeling the density of infrastructure for recreation and valuable aesthetic sites.…”

Characterization of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) in Europe

“…However, the traditional structure of rural landscapes has been deeply altered in Europe where low-production agriculture has been abandoned in favor of intensive agriculture, with the consequent loss of traditional knowledge, biodiversity and cultural landscape [52,53]. Nowadays, we still can find traditional agricultural systems in Europe that have survived through changes in development by innovating and adapting and providing high-quality products.…”