scholarly journals The Return of Wooded Landscapes in Wales: An Exploration of Possible Post-Brexit Futures

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 59
Author(s):  
Syed Amir Manzoor ◽  
Geoffrey Griffiths ◽  
David Christian Rose ◽  
Martin Lukac

Changes in agricultural policy may have a rapid impact, even on landscapes which have taken millennia to form. Here we explore the potential impact of the UK leaving the EU as a catalyst for profound changes in the pastoral landscapes of Wales. Impending change of the trading regime governing agricultural produce, concurrent with public pressure to use agricultural subsidies for environmental goals, may lead to unforeseen consequences for the Welsh natural environment. We employ a combination of change demand modelling and a ‘story and simulation approach’ to project the effect of five hypothetical plausible scenarios on land use and land use change in Wales by 2030. We show that the most extreme trade scenario would result in a significant expansion of broadleaf woodland across much of Wales. By contrast, the ‘green futures’ scenario introduced to supersede the Common Agricultural Policy, results in significant expansion of woodland but not at the level seen with the more extreme trade scenarios.

Author(s):  
Syed Amir Manzoor ◽  
Geoffrey Griffiths ◽  
David Christian Rose ◽  
Martin Lukac

Changes in agricultural policy may have rapid impact even on landscapes which have taken millennia to form. Here we explore the potential of UK leaving the EU as a catalyst for profound changes in pastoral landscapes in Wales. Impending change of the trading regime governing agricultural produce, concurrent to public pressure to use agricultural subsidies for environmental goals, may lead to unforeseen consequences for Welsh natural environment. We employ a combination of change demand modelling and ‘story and simulation approach’ to predict the effect of five hypothetical scenarios on land use and land use change in Wales by 2030. We show that the most extreme trade scenario would result in a near-uniform distribution of broadleaf woodland across most of Wales. Abandonment of marginal and low productivity grazing would likely give way to afforestation, initiating a return to forested landscapes not seen in Wales for several thousands of years.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 40-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christilla Roederer-Rynning ◽  
Alan Matthews

Suppose we were in 2028: what would the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) look like then? Would it be significantly different from the policy we know today? How, and why? And to what extent would Brexit have catalyzed these changes? The CAP is one of the founding policies of the EU and a strategic lever to address critical 21st century challenges such as climate change and the rising demand for food at the global level. It also has an important role in Europe to address the growing urban-rural divide and its potentially destabilizing impact on European politics. In this article, we examine the impact of Brexit from a political-economic perspective emphasizing the multi-level context within which the CAP is embedded. As an EU member state, the UK found a way to partly accommodate the CAP to its needs even though this policy was a source of intense UK dissatisfaction with the EU. Post-Brexit, the budgetary and market implications of the UK’s departure may favour positions that support a return to a more traditional policy of farm income support. On the other hand, more radical farm policies in England and Wales could partly offset these effects by setting the agenda for continued CAP reform, if they are seen to be successful.


Author(s):  
John Doyle ◽  
Eileen Connolly

This chapter analyses the potential impact of Brexit on the Northern Ireland ‘peace process’, through a discussion of four interrelated issues—political divisions in Northern Ireland; the single market; the common travel area; and the Good Friday Agreement, all of which reflect the fundamental political divisions between Irish nationalists and those who believe that Northern Ireland should remain part of the UK. The chapter highlights two main threats to peace – the undermining of the Good Friday Agreement which is premised on membership of the EU and its institutional framework, and the crucial issue of where the inevitable hard border between the EU and the UK will be located. It argues that Brexit has the potential to destroy the peace process and suggests possible policy solutions to mitigate the impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland, while also assessing the political obstacles to the adoption of such flexible policy solutions.


2008 ◽  
Vol 53 (No. 12) ◽  
pp. 565-579
Author(s):  
P. Ciaian

This paper analyses the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and macroeconomy on land use changes in the EU. Three scenarios are simulated up to 2030: baseline, macro scenario and policy scenario. Simulation results indicate that GDP leads to a stronger effect on land use changes than the CAP. Stronger changes in land use are observed at the crop disaggregated level than at the aggregated level for the total agricultural area, arable land, grassland and permanent crops.


Management ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 473-487
Author(s):  
Andrzej Czyżewski ◽  
Sebastian Stępień

Summary The objective of the paper is to present the results of negotiations on the EU budget for 2014-2020, with particular emphasis on the Common Agricultural Policy. Authors indicate the steps for establishing the budget, from the proposal of the European Commission presented in 2011, ending with the draft of UE budget agreed at the meeting of the European Council on February 2013 and the meeting of the AGRIFISH on March 2013 and then approved by the political agreement of the European Commission, European Parliament and European Council on June 2013. In this context, there will be an assessment of the new budget from the point of view of Polish economy and agriculture.


Author(s):  
Maryla Bieniek-Majka ◽  
Marta Guth

The aim of this study is to determine changes in the structure of horticultural farms in EU countries in the years 2007-2017 and their incomes and determine the share of subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy in the income of horticultural farms in studied groups. Horticultural farms from the European Union Farm Accountancy Data Network (EUFADN) of all EU countries were surveyed. A dynamic analysis of the structure of farm numbers in particular groups of economic size (ES6) was carried out, and then the average change in income and the share of subsidies in income within these groups in 2007 and 2017 were presented. As a result of the conducted research, changes in the number of horticultural farms in various groups of economic size were taken into account and the assumptions concerning the decreasing scale of fragmentation of horticultural farms were confirmed by a decrease in the number of the economically weakest groups and an increase in the number of medium and large farms. It was noted that, in the studied groups, the strongest income growths concerned farms with medium or high economic strength, which may mean that income had a significant impact on the process. Moreover, it results from the conducted research that existing institutional solutions additionally supported the tendency to reduce the scale of fragmentation of horticultural farms in the EU-12 due to the fact that the shares of subsidies were higher in groups with higher economic strength.


2008 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karsten Kyed ◽  
Niels Kærgård ◽  
Henrik Zobbe ◽  
Maria Skovager Østergaard

Rural History ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Burkitt ◽  
Mark Baimbridge

United Kingdom (UK) accession into the European Economic Community (EEC), which became a political likelihood in 1970 and an actuality in 1973, led to a major change in agricultural policy away from a deficiency payments system supporting farmers' incomes towards the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) method of assistance through farm prices above the market level. Such a basic alteration in government activity not only imposed well-known and thoroughly researched costs on the British economy in the form of higher food prices and an additional burden of protection, it also undermined dominant post-1945 historical trends.Firstly, it reversed a thirty year old process towards greater British self-sufficiency Between 1938 and 1946 UK agricultural production rose in value from 42% to 52% of the country's food imports, while under the deficiency payments scheme, permanently established in peacetime by the 1947 Agriculture Act, the proportion of UK food consumption supplied by domestic producers grew steadily until it reached a level of just under 72% in 1972. EEC membership, involving compulsory adoption of the CAP, initially reversed this movement; British agricultural self-sufficiency fell to 66% in 1977, the year when the Common External Tariff (CET) was first applied in full. The higher import bill that inevitably resulted imposed a severe strain on the UK balance of payments, estimated by the pro-market. Heath government in 1970 at a net annual deterioration in the range of 18% to 26%.


Author(s):  
Oleksii Hryhorovych Korytnyi ◽  

The need for constant monitoring of existing practices to improve the efficiency of the agricultural sector and identify important guidelines for further development of this area.Using modern experience of EU countries to increase the efficiency of the national agricultural sector.Practical and theoretical issues of development of the agricultural sector and the use of existing practical experience in this field were considered by O. Borodin, O. Bublienko, V. Granovska, N. Karaseva, I. Klymenko, R. Kosodiy, M. Skoryk and others.Active development of economic processes in the agricultural sector requires current research on the existing practical experience of developed countries.Analysis of practical experience in ensuring the effective functioning of the agricultural sector of the EU.An effective direction of the transition to sustainable development of rural areas is organic production (regulatory principles are reflected in the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU). The institutional norms of the CAP EU act as a guarantor of positive transformations and a "substitute" for the interests of producers in conditions of market competition. In practice, the Council and the EU Commission are responsible for implementing the common policy. European policy for the development of the agricultural sector is funded by the European Agrarian Fund for Rural Development. EU countries use various mechanisms (subsidies, grants, state loan guarantees, etc.) for the development of the agricultural sector. The best results in the direction of sustainable development of the agricultural sector were achieved by countries that took radical steps quickly, decisively, comprehensively. The experience of the EU countries shows that it is also justified to limit government intervention in this sector, or to implement it through market-type mechanisms


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