Abstract:European rural landscapes face today several changes, which might indicate that an ongoing transition process is taking place. While these transition processes have been mainly addressed for Western Europe and landscapes dominated by intensive agriculture, they remain to be understood in Southern Europe, where large areas are occupied by extensive farming systems, maintaining a distinctive landscape character. However in Mediterranean areas, new ways of managing the land arise, no longer by the conventional fa… Show more
“…The first step survey concerned farm and farmer characteristics, farmer management options and his/her attitudes towards farming, the environment, the market and public policy. A cluster analysis of the results has led to the identification of three types of Montado farmers: 1) productivist livestock farmers (58%), 2) entrepreneur cattle farmers (35%), and 3) multifunctional innovative (7%) (Almeida et al, 2013;Barroso and Pinto-Correia, 2014). The productivist livestock farmers are mainly full-time farmers, highly focused on increasing production and thereby increasing their income, highly determined by the CAP payments of the 1st Pillar.…”
The Montado is the silvo-pastoral land use system dominant in Southern Portugal, and similar to the Dehesa in Southern Spain. These systems combine an open tree cover of cork and holm oaks with grazing in the undercover. Despite the acknowledged value of these systems due to their adaptation to the scarcity biophysical conditions of Southern Iberia, the uniqueness of cork production, the biodiversity values and the support of multiple public goods and services, in Portugal the area of the Montado is declining every year. It has been shown before how this decline is related to increased grazing pressure and use of inadequate soil mobilization techniques. Supported on social sciences theoretical insights, this paper focus on the farmers decision process, and the representations that support their decisions. The analysis is grounded on a large scale survey followed by in-depth interviews to Montado farmers. The results show that there is an underlying conflict between farmers representation of the Montado and the practices they are applying in their everyday management. Dominant representations of the Montado by farmers rely strongly on the tree cover and the forestry component of the system. While their management is strongly focused on the livestock and grazing resources. Farmers are abandoning a resilient thinking of their farm system considering the factors internal to the system, to adapt an external, driver oriented representation of their farm system. CAP coupled payments are seen as the main cause of this change. If the policy construction remains in its present state, the resilience of the Montado as a complex socio-ecological system is threatened in the very short term.
“…The first step survey concerned farm and farmer characteristics, farmer management options and his/her attitudes towards farming, the environment, the market and public policy. A cluster analysis of the results has led to the identification of three types of Montado farmers: 1) productivist livestock farmers (58%), 2) entrepreneur cattle farmers (35%), and 3) multifunctional innovative (7%) (Almeida et al, 2013;Barroso and Pinto-Correia, 2014). The productivist livestock farmers are mainly full-time farmers, highly focused on increasing production and thereby increasing their income, highly determined by the CAP payments of the 1st Pillar.…”
The Montado is the silvo-pastoral land use system dominant in Southern Portugal, and similar to the Dehesa in Southern Spain. These systems combine an open tree cover of cork and holm oaks with grazing in the undercover. Despite the acknowledged value of these systems due to their adaptation to the scarcity biophysical conditions of Southern Iberia, the uniqueness of cork production, the biodiversity values and the support of multiple public goods and services, in Portugal the area of the Montado is declining every year. It has been shown before how this decline is related to increased grazing pressure and use of inadequate soil mobilization techniques. Supported on social sciences theoretical insights, this paper focus on the farmers decision process, and the representations that support their decisions. The analysis is grounded on a large scale survey followed by in-depth interviews to Montado farmers. The results show that there is an underlying conflict between farmers representation of the Montado and the practices they are applying in their everyday management. Dominant representations of the Montado by farmers rely strongly on the tree cover and the forestry component of the system. While their management is strongly focused on the livestock and grazing resources. Farmers are abandoning a resilient thinking of their farm system considering the factors internal to the system, to adapt an external, driver oriented representation of their farm system. CAP coupled payments are seen as the main cause of this change. If the policy construction remains in its present state, the resilience of the Montado as a complex socio-ecological system is threatened in the very short term.
“…The landscape has a great ideal value, and urban people are willing to pay for living in mostly city-near environments. A desired life context and the possibility to cultivate for family needs are drivers different from profitability for managing these landscapes [10][11][12][13][14][15]. Altogether, we refer here to hobby or lifestyle farmers to the various profiles who take over where professional farmers give up.…”
Many land use systems in Mediterranean sloping areas risk abandonment because of nonprofitability, while their hydro-geological stability depends on an appropriate management. However, who are the land managers? What are their practices? Our research on the traditional olive groves of the Monte Pisano (Tuscany, Italy) reveals for the first time the quantitatively important role of hobby farmers as land managers in the area. We used a three-step-method: first, a database was constructed using several data sources to identify and map the population of olive growers; then, 35 semi-structured interviews were conducted, and finally, the data were analyzed to highlight the contribution of olive growers to the land management, along with their motivations and constraints. Our results found that hobby farmers constitute about 90% of all land managers in the study area and manage more than half of the agricultural land. They are a very uneven group, and there are no clear categories detectable by analyzing sociodemographic factors, practices and farm characteristics. They are the “same but different”, not following any market rules, as they are not profit-oriented. Their farming practices are quite homogeneous and mainly in-line with professional farming practices of that area, oriented versus a minimum input management.
“…(a) A review of published and unpublished results from research projects developed by the authors over the last 10 years, where governance options and decision-making drivers have been explored [32,33]. A first research project in 2011 focused on landscape preferences in the Alentejo region, where the reasons for the stated preferences were also part of the questions.…”
The montado is a silvo pastoral system, and the dominant land-use in the region of Alentejo (Portugal). It bears high nature, socio-economic, and landscape values, shaping the strong cultural identity of the region. Despite these values, it has been under decay over the last decades, indicating the inefficiency of current governance strategies. In this paper, we argue how three main discourses can be found that underpin different governance strategies in the montado: The heritage discourse, the modern production discourse, and the land stewardship discourse. These discourses frame farmers' decisions, though not always explicitly. The discourse analysis is grounded on an analysis of the relevant literature and research results from diverse projects, including an analysis of media representation of the montado since the 1990s, participatory observations, and 30 in-depth interviews with key stakeholders. Each of the three discourses identified are characterized in terms of key farming developments and defining elements, their time-scopes, the ways in which they are perceived by society, their measures of success, and underpinning institutions and power mechanisms. We argue that these discourses co-exist today, and this is a cause of increased tensions in montado governance strategies, hindering more effective and sustainable potential alternatives for the system.
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