ABSTRACT
Over the last 20 years, considerations concerning the protection and sustainable management of biodiversity have become more important in European agricultural practice. European Union (EU) and national agricultural policies emphasize the need for nature-friendly agriculture. It is widely acknowledged that farmers’ participation in undertaking conservation activities has a significant impact on the success of biodiversity policies. National and international conservation laws and policies frequently extend to farmland. In some areas, the production or safeguarding of natural values becomes a main task of the agricultural sector next to the production of livestock and crops. This represents a major shift in the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that over decades had focused on food production as the main, if not only, task for agriculture. Until the 1980s, EU mainstream policies directed virtually all agricultural measures, and most of the expenditures, to food production. This approach had substantial negative consequences for the environment (Janke, 2002; Sattler, 2008).
Modern agriculture provides a good example: it has been very successful at increasing food output. But these improvements also came at considerable cost. In the process of increasing output with greater use of renewable inputs, we have lost natural habitats and wildlife; soils have been depleted; water polluted with pesticides and fertilizers; human health damaged by pesticides (Pretty, 2000, p326).
Part of the negative consequences in the biosphere is a loss of biodiversity due to destruction, homogenization, fragmentation, and genetic isolation of habitats (Sattler, 2008). With the emerging awareness of environmental problems caused by agricultural practices during the 1980s, the EU policy focus widened. Accordingly, environmental protective goals as well as structural support for rural areas were incorporated by means of so-called accompanying measures (regulation (EEC) No 2078/92). This shift was accompanied by the development of the concept of multifunctional agriculture which was adopted—albeit with differing accents and perspectives—by several international institutions including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the EU (Council Regulation (EC) No 1257/99) (Helming and Wiggering, 2003).