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Environmental Care in Agriculture: A Social Perspective

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Abstract

At its beginning, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) did not include measures to guide farmers in preserving ecosystems. At the same time, the social context on the 1960s and 1970s did not encourage environmental care to become a priority. Since the 1980s, new social concern expressed alarm over ecology, recognizing that agriculture can pollute. These social changes moved the CAP to add measures that linked agriculture and environment. In order to study if the EU decision-makers have designed a CAP which responds to a new ethic that incorporates environmental care and social demands, two questions rise: whether the social image of agriculture as a polluting activity has changed; and whether farming performs the environmental functions demanded by society. To answer the previous questions, we have reviewed the environmental aspects added to the CAP, then a poll has been conducted and cluster method and classification tree models have been used to group respondents according to their opinions. The results show that the society ascribes great relevance to the environment for the future sustainability of the region, but they are not satisfied with the role of agriculture in producing environmental outputs.

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Notes

  1. The sample size was calculated for estimation of proportion, with a sampling error of 5% (Confidence interval = 95%; and p = q = 0.50). The sample size was based on Arkin y Colton (1962).

  2. For more methodological information on the multivariate cluster technique, see Chatfield and Collins (1980).

  3. The term “post-materialsim” emerged by Ingleharts (1971) in The Silent Revolution in Europe: Intergenerational Change in Post-Industrial Societies.

  4. The Uruguay Round within the framework of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), tending towards the liberalization of international trade, began in 1986.

  5. The Accompanying Measures were: afforestation of agricultural lands, pre-retirement scheme, and agri-environmental action program.

  6. The Focus Groups are dynamics organized with groups of selected people that allow us to pick up the diverse perspectives existing in relation to a subject and the general group view.

Abbreviations

CAP:

Common agricultural policy

EU:

European union

GDP:

Gross domestic product

UAA:

Usable arable area

INE:

Instituto Nacional de Estadística

GATT:

General agreement on trade and tariffs

RDP:

Rural development policy

EAFRD:

European agricultural fund for rural development

PBI:

To preserve biodiversity

CSE:

To control erosion and soil loss

WAT:

To maintain water quality and improve the water-resource management

LAN:

To preserve and enhance the agricultural landscape

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Acknowledgments

This research was financed by the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA) and the FEDER Founds of the European Union (EU) through the research project MULTIPREF (RTA2006-00055). The authors wish to express their gratitude for the economic support received. We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of an earlier version of this paper for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, Andalusian Institute for Agricultural Research and Training (IFAPA), Apdo. 2027, 18080, Granada, Spain

    Melania Salazar-Ordóñez & Samir Sayadi

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  1. Melania Salazar-Ordóñez
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  2. Samir Sayadi
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Correspondence to Melania Salazar-Ordóñez.

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Salazar-Ordóñez, M., Sayadi, S. Environmental Care in Agriculture: A Social Perspective. J Agric Environ Ethics 24, 243–258 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-010-9255-5

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