torsdag den 3. september 2015

Noter fra kongressen i Aberdeen

Kære Læser,

Dette indlæg er antageligt kun interessant hvis man er akademiker eller arbejder mere strukturelt med landbrugets udvikling. Det er hastigt nedskrevne noter, på engelsk, fra de foredrag jeg deltog i. Hvis man skimmer indholdet ser man hurtigt, at de fleste lande i (den vestlige) verden slås med de samme problemer som i Danmark. Manglende rentabilitet i kerneproduktionen, manglende evne til at gennemføre generationsskifte, øget modsætningsforhold mellem erhverv og samfund, landbrugsjord og fødevarer er blevet spekulationsobjekter, produktionen bliver mekaniseret og/eller flyttet hen hvor arbejdskraften er billigst, priserne på fødevarerne falder og/eller svinger uforudsigeligt, computerteknologi og designede fødevarer skaber en lukrativ følgeindustri, mens landmændene bliver endnu mere magtesløse og det familie-ejede landbrug forsvinder til fordel for eksterne ejerskaber. 
Og sidst men ikke mindst vigtigt, overalt i Europa oplever landdistrikterne fraflytning, skoler og service-erhverv lukker og den sociale sammenhængskraft smuldrer. Hvilken rolle har - og hvilken rolle kunne landbruget få i denne omstrukturering af landdistrikterne/ produktionslandskaberne - det var et centralt tema på kongressen. 

Det skulle være muligt at finde både program og de enkelte bidragsyderes forskning på nettet, hvis man er interesseret.


ESRS Aberdeen 18-21 august

Places of possibilities? Rural societies in a neo-liberal world.

Tuesday opening by Mark Shucksmith 

Keynotes:

Bettina Bock (Wageningen) Social innovation...optimistic

Costis Hadjimichalis (Greece) Neoliberalism and the omission of socio-spatial justice...pessimistic, too much emphasis on the supply-side, too little attention to demand and global competition...inadequate analysis of the impact on jobs and consumption - and of everyday life...


18: Farmers market local food fayre.


Wednesday WG8 11-12:30

Change in landownership patterns (Canada Jostein Brobak)

Saskatchewan farm ownership and acts - Canadian

average size 1600 acres. viable 5000 acres 10.000 is what investmentcompanies are interested in.

Farm sector restructuring:
fewer and larger, succession challenges,
average age of farmers are increasing
access to capital and farmland important in order to grow
exposure to global food commodity price fluctuation
Farm capitalization
Changing of agricultural acts

"Land ownership is the last area in which the farmers still have some independence. Elsewhere, the corporate sector has taken over"
"Today...the ability to stay in (agriculture) is based on access to capital"
2010 the public pension-funds entered farm-investments "we are being outcompeted by our own money" Corporate Family Farmin: small clusters of family farms

Skyline Agricultural Financial Corp. (is canadian but owned by US investors )bought 15 acres challenging the act that stipulates only 10 acres (4 ha) can be owned by foreigners.....more and more political issues are resolved in legal battles in courtrooms.

This is a risky investment (Norway Bjørn Klimek)

Polanyi's fictious commodities

de-commodify agricultural (polanyi)

Carlota Perez (2002) implementation of techno-economic paradigms is followed by financial bubbles.

5 mil consumers
2 nation-wide organized farmer cooperatives
Five Private Equity investments
Targetprize for agricultural produce, negotiates every year with the state, build the wage formation for farmers (in conflict with WTO)
The nordic neighbour markets grew into much bigger EU market, which was a competetive disadvantage for the norwegian farmers.
commodification and finacialization go hand in hand
PE investors cooperate with labour unions

New farm/land investments and local dis/content (Jana Lindbloom Slovakia)

Rhetoric of market-rule: global competion, need enhanced effiency and productivity.
Local Oligarchs with own banks/insurance comp. ready to enter agriculture.
No official statistics
Estimate 60% of farms in the lowland areas, owned by foreigners: DK, Holland, Chinese?
"They were five of them who owned the farm. Three of them wanted to retire. The other two had no chance of pay for their shares. They were given an offer from the Danes...they didn't hesitate for a second! ...It is always a mtter of money. Who gives more, he takes." (Slovak farmer, a friend of the sellers)
Local laywers and other business men buy up land and sell it to foreign investors,
Inequality is the basis of the landgrabbing, Slovakia is the rural part of the former Tjekoslovakia.
The first thing they do, when they have purchased a farm, is that they  open an office with a lawyer it is very foreign to rural slovaks...it is very systematic....
The Farmers Organisation have teamed up with the foreign investors, in order to feel more empowered in realtion to other sectors in society...
Perhaps like 8000 euros for a hectar today, a guess

Q&A's

Capital looking to make profit, many thought agricultural land was the next goldrush...

Symposium: Land and Community; 14:30-16

Lesley Riddoch Community-based land reform in Scotland

you get community-buy outs when you have rubbish systems

Scotland 19.46 acres
432 owns approx 10 mil acres
16 own approx 2 mil

25.000 owns 1/2 mil acres
Tom Johnston 1909. Churchill 1909  quotes about the landowners who doesn't help/develop
around loch ness the landowners are registered in Caymann Islands

The story of Eigg (Laird = landowner) 1997
16 buy-outs to today
West Whitlawburn cooperative
large estates are excempt for land-tax

Ottar Brox The role of small  farms in Norway

Hard to hear

Tim Ingold Designing Environment for Life
Shaping the future, designs must fail, if every generation must have its own future, facilitating the possibilty for improvisation

WG 13 16:30-18

Magnar Forbord Norway, Spatial distribution

Kristina Marquadt Norway structural development among grain-farmers in Sweden .
 When the farms grow bigger, most of the farmwork is organised around the use of the machines, e.g. the field will be sown too early or too soon - and much of the logistics are framed by this efficient use of the machines.

Lots of officework, finding the right prize, buyer and so on...management

soil-quality dropping, the production only possible because of historical build-up
little understanding of what soil actually is, because of the type of education at agro-schools

Ron Methorst Holland  Difference in perception of income strategies

80.000 Euro pr hectar not uncommon in Holland

how farmer's themselves perceive their possibilities/opportunity....the farmer has multiple roles, he is an entrepreneur, businessman and caretaker Difficult to assess small businesses, there is not always economic logic
Personal characteristics important!
the business-kind of farm does not view the continuation of the farm important!!

Magnar Forbord Land Labour and Capital,
Norway political goal to increase foodproduction 1% pr year/ like population
but decrease


Q&A
No fulltime farmers in Norway
In Holland education seems to favour maximization and a decrease in diversification
not the prize of land, the prize of soy and maize is the real productioncost
The Swedes didn't know anything about N-quotas, it was only soil-structure....one reason could be that the environmental measures had been internalized


Thursday WG13

9-10:30

Camilla Structrural development in Sweden 1990-2040
Mælkerobot nr 1000 i Sverige blev fejret - "Jeg er urolig men lykkelig"
Example nr 1. Otto - midforties, 6th generation. think of himself as a businessman like any other, encouraged by the neoliberal discourse
Example 2: Britta, 7th generation....lived 4 generations of farmers on the farm at the same time, "a bit difficult"
Gezelius (2014) Pritchard (2007) Sutherland (2010)

WG9

Malgorzata Mic-Pawlek The role of Common Agricultural Policy and the Cohesion Policy in strengthening the ...rural Poland.

Percentage of rural pop. in Poland average 39,4% (rurban areas?)
Percentage of people employed in agriculture in Podalski 58, 6 Lubelskie 44,3  Swietokzyskie 36,9% (same areas have the lowest unemployment-rate??)
Four measures dedicated to multifunctional development (samme ministerium i Polen)
2014-2020 Pillar 1  fra 15.222 til 23.493 mil euros  Pillar 2 13.999 til 8.600 , samlet fra 28.621 til 32.116
16 Regional Operational Programmes but only 20% goes to rural projects, 80 to urban
Some of the fertile regions have a positive demographigal development, people move to these areas! If you have 1 hectar of land, you are not unemployed but a farmer, the average size of a farm is 5 hectar, so these farms do not generate employment. Very little advising on economic development, or strategic policies to help people who want to create business within or without agriculture.


David Quist Pears (primdahl/kristensen) Creating space for rural self-governance
Odderbæk historien

Mark Shucksmith Localism and rural development Newcastle

Hele Skotland er lokal i forhold til EU,
Community-led localism instead of delegated top-down localism
Territorial cohesion, EU-program
Pillar 2 only masquerades as rural development, in most if not all european countries it has been captured by farming and environmental concerns.

Q&A
The same problem all over

11-12 Harriet Friedman Food-regimes. follow the traded commodities, Food-crises

Wheat goes from the US to Egypt and Japan, Maize goes from the US to Japan, and from SouthAmerica to Africa, Soy-beans from Brasil to EU (intensive livestock-production), from US to China. Palm-oil is the new big commodity, the new mono-cultural crop
what is food? functional and genetically tailored edible commodities
breakdown or emergence? permaculture/agroecology
debt permeats every sector and government all over the world
the genetics of food is entwined with pharmaceutical products, which people want

Excursion: Contemporary large-scale land management in North East Scotland.
visits to Kincardine and Glen Tannar.

Dutch the secondlargest landowner in Scotland, The gentry/Lairds provides affordable housing for their tennants - if the system changed a lot of people would face market-value rents and have to move...The story of the Steinway-piano, that began with a hat...agriculture less than 20% of revenue,
Stories from Tasmania
Copper-beech imported from England

Hunting/Sporting/Shooting/ Stalking 

Friday WG 13 9-10:30

Azim (Rethink Israel)   Changing paradigms, time for a new business model

Pepperproduction accounted for 70% of the areas produce which accounted for 60 of Israels exports..... and it all crashed when the state privatised the export-company, and Holland and Spain caught up...
Diversification is necessary but creates problems for experience-exchange
knowledge rather than produce is at the center of the new businessmodel

Q:
It is hard to compare these problems/learn from other Rethink-projects, as the region is rather unique. The population is not declining.

Gunnar Vittersø (Norway consumer-research) Sustainable valuechains in Wool

2 mil sheep, 4 mil kg wool, norwegian spinningmills only use 70% of the production, consumers prefer new zealand and australian sheep-wool, more soft
White Paper 38 (2014-2015) Wool not mentioned at all
norwegian wool sold under the norwegian flag is not from norway

Gabor Kiraly Slow development of a wine region in Hungary

Pedro Reis Revitalization of traditional of olive groves in Portugal

80% of the oliveproduction traditional extensive, but only 30% of production
(området det fattigste, mindst befolkede)

11-12:30

Rasmus Blædel Larsen The view from Brussels

Renate Neoproductivism and political parties in European Parliament (Norway)
Empirical data: 1 debate 22 june 2011.


Jostein Vik, Understanding agri-production developments: Pluriactivity, motivation and farm level characteristics Norway
The lesser farms have a lesser tendency to quit than the bigger ones...
we should pay more attention to factors outside the farm itself..
the labourmarket e.g.
Q:
Outsource, keeping the land and letting other work it (forpagtning?) Not so normal
Selfperception, the public  image of the farmer - how does that affect
good at the desk, is the most important..

Key-note Terry Marsden and Nigel Swain
Terry how to combat Neoliberalism, Nigel about the rural transformation of EEC's

Effiona Thomas Lane Wales: Sinks trails and festivals, stakeholder debates...
Different schemes trying to reverse the de-development....The Glastir-plan....some farmers feel they are driven off the land, because plans are directed towards using the land for residential/business/recreational uses

Katrina Røningen Norway The mulitifunctional models of european agriculture..
Aim 50% of agro-calories homeproduced, currently 37% (even less with livestockfeed)
Burton and Wilson 2012, a table of the various strategies
One general frustration among farmers have been the many various programmes replacing each other, partly with new regulation and being admin'ed quite rigid.

Jerzy Banski Poland Future of farming and rural areas..
90% of the total territory rural, 40% of poles live there
Agriculture 4% of GDP, but 12% of workforce

Sarah Peter Germany Sustainable regional agriculture and the 'promise' of bio-economy
Two examples: Rethink (2014-2016) and Farmpath (2011-2014)
Using Terry Marsden (?)  'my colleague Karlheinz Knickel'
Bio-economy coined in genetics in 1997 - OECD 2005. Criticism Technology-oriented innovation at the corpporate-level




Ingen kommentarer:

Send en kommentar