Responses to LEDD in cropland

Authors: Constantinos Kosmas, Geoff Wilson
Editor: Alexandros Kandelapas 

Editor's note: text for this article derived from D112-3.

LEDD issues and representative responses to LEDD in cropland: analysing the relationships among the three capitals

The action of LEDD drivers may be understood by studying the modifications they cause to components of the three types of capitals; natural, economic and social. The outcomes of these modifications depend on the drivers, the interplay among them and the context within which their influence is manifested. While direct drivers act locally, indirect drivers tend to originate at various spatial levels. The response dynamics refer to the complex and multi-dimensional interactions between components of the three types of capitals in different contexts and under different circumstances. Thus, the outcome of the same driver will differ in different SES, or the same outcome may be attributed to different drivers. Under different conditions, the outcomes vary in terms of the type, character and intensity of LEDD issues and the specific responses to these LEDD issues.

Problems directly or indirectly related to land degradation and desertification, such as intensification of agriculture, poor water quality, salinisation, land pollution, soil erosion and soil sealing, are often viewed as integral parts or outcomes of wider socio-cultural phenomena. These are often related to the relative lack of social capital and of wider social and institutional trust; that is, of willingness to comply with social norms that transcend narrow, short-term individual and group interests and promote long-term social cooperation, cohesion and environmental sustainability.

Table: Representative LEDD issues and response types in cropland.

LEDD Issue	Response	Important for the study sites	Response type
Soil erosion	Erosion control measures	Messara Valley, Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin, Western Andévalo, Zhang Jiachong	Informal/formal positive
	Integrated land management	Alento River Basin, Messara Valley	Informal/formal positive
	Over-cultivation	Messara Valley, Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin, Western Andévalo, Zhang Jiachong	Informal no action/negative
Land desertification	Reclamation of salt affected soils	Messara Valley, Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin, Western Andévalo, Zhang Jiachong	Formal/informal positive
	Water conservation/harvesting	Messara Valley, Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin, Western Andévalo, Zhang Jiachong	Formal/informal positive
	Modern land terracing	Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin, Zhang Jiachong	Formal negative/positive
	Soil sealing	Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin	Formal negative
	Land abandonment	Messara Valley, Alento River Basin, Júcar River Basin, Western Andévalo	Informal negative/positive
	Depopulation of rural  areas	Western Andévalo	Informal /negative

Source: LEDDRA Partners 2012

Responses to soil erosion: the relationships among the three capitals

The role played by capital components in responding to LEDD depends on the characteristics and evolution of each capital and the ways it is related to other capital components. In particular, social capital components tend to mediate the relationship between other capital components, producing positive or negative outcomes with regard to environmental sustainability.

Certain landscape and topography precursors tend to heavily influence on whether erosion will become an issue in a given area. They include climate, soil type and vegetation cover. Moreover, two important characteristics of soil affect soil erosion: erodibility and water storage capacity. Erosion processes may trigger positive feedback mechanisms, further enhancing their effects. For example, reduction of soil depth reduces soil water storage capacity making slopes vulnerable to surface runoff and erosion.

In European Mediterranean countries, neglect of existing terraces leads to their collapse leaving the soil exposed to water erosion. The maintenance of traditional terraces in olive groves can become economically unsustainable due to high labour costs and reduced income. This economic driver is often combined with the loss of local environmental knowledge. In areas with enough rainfall, natural vegetation takes over quickly thus stabilizing the soil while in drier areas the delayed growth of vegetative cover leads to enhanced erosion rates. In both cases, use of land for grazing accelerates terrace collapse.

In non-terraced sloping land, destruction of vegetation cover due to tillage using heavy machinery leaves the soil exposed to the erosive action of water. On the other hand, in areas affected by land abandonment and rural depopulation, or by a rise in alternative employment opportunities (e.g. tourism), land may be extensively covered by wild vegetation and prone to wildfires. Keeping perennial crops, such as olives, clear of herbaceous vegetation during the dry period is a necessary precaution against wildfire. In some cultures, clear well-tilled fields are also a sign of being a ‘good farmer’ and this social pressure to clear fields of vegetation can be intense. Conversely, allowing vegetation cover to develop provides a barrier to erosion through root growth stabilisation of light soils.

In the case of soil erosion, specific components of social capital play a crucial role in mediating the relationship between capital components. Mitigation of soil erosion often presupposes collective action: social trust and cooperation between primary producers facilitates willingness to comply with social norms that transcend short-term individual interests and promote long-term environmental sustainability. Furthermore, institutional trust towards development agencies, primary producer cooperatives, municipalities, government agencies and other such organisations is needed in order to formulate and implement policies that mitigate soil erosion. The absence of social and institutional trust, and of inter-institutional networking and cooperation, may lead to exacerbation of short-term behaviours by stakeholders, and to highly unsustainable, erosion-inducing practices.

The absence of social trust and networking may also exacerbate soil erosion: for example, financial resources (e.g. agricultural subsidies) are often allocated through informal, hierarchical, power-driven socio-political networks accompanied by informal norms of short-term profit maximization. The persistence of such mechanisms erodes the prospects of forming wider collectives and social networks based on trust, solidarity and reciprocity and undermines the efforts of building thick and effective institutional networks in the long-term. These processes are indirect drivers of soil erosion, ‘slow’ in terms of the rate of their change, but with potentially lasting and deep repercussions on land management practices.

Soil erosion also negatively affects the regulating services provided by soil, namely, on vegetation growth and regulation of the hydrological cycle through water storage capacity. The decline of these two ecosystem services can also generate positive feedbacks by, for example, making agricultural activities less profitable, leading to abandonment of terraced land that may further enhance erosion under adverse conditions.

In deep soils, the effects of erosion on crop productivity in deep soils will not appear until a threshold of soil depth is crossed. In other cases, the effects may be more gradual and blurred due to declining rainfall or declining intensity of land care, and therefore may not be apparent until the threshold has been passed. It is also important to note that the impacts of erosion depend on local topography and stakeholder geographic position. While upslope, soil depth may be declining, the accumulation of materials downslope may locally enhance soil quality and depth, leading to higher productivity.

The main responses to soil erosion identified in the study sites are: (a) integrated land management, (b) soil erosion control, and (c) over-cultivation.  

(a) Integrated land management: Integrated land management is an approach aiming to secure the sustainability of natural resources while maximizing crop production. Integrated land management may originate either from consumer demand at higher spatial levels or bottom up recognition of soil conservation issues by farmers. It is more easily adopted when there is a high level of trust towards institutions which promote and monitor this approach as the higher costs it entails are generally prohibitive for small scale farmers, without financial compensation either from the end-buyer or from state agencies.

In the case of integrated land management they are part of a wider scheme involving a comprehensive effort to deal with environmental and health issues related to agricultural practices, and to gain access to, and a competitive edge in, global markets, making them different from stand-alone erosion rosion control measures.

Organic agriculture is also found in several LEDDRA cropland study sites: organic citrus cultivation in Andalusia (Spain) and organic olive oil production in the Messara Valley (Crete) and the Alento River basin (Italy) are generally growing. Multiple components of economic and social capitals have contributed to this phenomenon, most notably the presence of well-educated young farmers and expectations of higher market prices for organic products.

(b) Soil erosion control measures: Erosion control is one of the main responses explicitly addressing soil loss in sloping areas by reducing soil erodibility through increasing soil organic matter content, and reducing the impact of rainfall erosivity through increasing vegetation cover. Examples of erosion control measures used in LEDDRA study sites include hedgerows (strips of plants interspersed with cultivated areas) and reforestation, used in the Changjiang River basin (China) and the establishment of scrub patches of kermes oak in the Jucar River watershed (Spain). Although hard landscaping techniques such as terraces may significantly reduce erosion, they do not necessarily increase crop production or farm incomes.

Adoption, use and continuation of erosion control measures presupposes the availability of (often informal, local) knowledge and skills. Availability of financial resources is also a determining factor for their adoption and continuation use of both formal and local environmental knowledge (LEK).

Other components of social capital interact in various ways with natural and economic capital components to produce different outcomes with regard to the adoption of erosion control measures. For example, cultural meanings, attitudes and beliefs related to land and natural resources may in some instances have positive effects on sustainable land management practices especially when they are associated with local knowledge-driven ‘traditional’ activities. In other instances, those meanings may have negative effects in efforts to modernize primary production. Generally, wider trustful social relations mediate in a positive way the relationship between economic and natural capital as they enhance the introduction of, and compliance with, collective rules and norms of sustainable land management and the adoption of long-term policies and practices.

(c) Over-cultivation: Over-cultivation refers to the repeated tilling of land to produce crops faster than soil restoration rates, resulting in a decline in soil quality and productivity. Repeated cultivation of soils, together with other management practices (use of herbicides and pesticides) results in decreased organic matter content and aggregate stability, favouring soil crusting, overland flow and erosion. Use of heavy machinery in this context results in soil compaction.

Intensification is more likely to occur within a context of social antagonism and conflict which undermines the prospects of building wider generalised social trust, collective cooperative resources and practices and the prospects of compliance to common environmental rules. It is worth noting that in Greece over-cultivation is also more likely in areas where the existing land use had been in place for less than 10 years. A similar conclusion may be drawn from the western Andévalo study site in Spain where newly converted citrus plantations have high erosion rates due to intensive cultivation practices.

Availability of financial capital for mechanisation has influenced the adoption of (often inappropriate) technologies and the breakdown of traditional practices such as networks of support between farmers, as is the case for exchange labour.

Responses to desertification: the relationships among the three capitals

Desertification can be attributed to the interplay of a large number of direct and indirect drivers associated with components of natural, social and economic capitals including:

• Changes in traditional agriculture accompanied by land abandonment and deterioration of traditional soil and water conservation measures
• Unsustainable exploitation of water resources leading to serious environmental damage, including chemical pollution, salinization and exhaustion of aquifers
• Concentration of economic activity in coastal areas as a result of urban growth, industrial activities, tourism and irrigated agriculture
• Unintentional or unanticipated policy impacts

Important characteristics related to agriculture which increase desertification risk are farm income levels (financial capital) and farm ownership patterns (institutional capital). When farm income is relatively low, farmers may be forced to seek additional sources of income through off-farm employment in other economic sectors, to intensify production (over-cultivate) or abandon their land if additional sources of income are not available. Land use change may also result from decreasing land profitability (an economic driver) or it may result from rural population change (a demographic or social driver) leading to land use change or, in extreme cases, land abandonment.

The characteristics of the demographic component of social capital are important structural components of a SES that condition the socio-economic capacities of an area and impact development trajectories. They include population density, age and gender structures, as well as in/out migration patterns. Furthermore, demographic phenomena and processes such as population pressures and de-population have serious repercussions on natural resource use and production practices.

The human component of social capital (educational, experiential, training, informal and local knowledge and skill characteristics) is also critical for sustainable land management and for the formulation and implementation of long-term environmental policies. Equally important is the integration of formal (scientific) and informal (local) knowledge and the existence of stable mechanisms of effective knowledge and information transfer to local producers, as well as cultural beliefs, attitudes, spiritual and other values and identities.

Finally, institutional capital (common rules, norms and sanctions, trust in institutions, political and institutional structures at local and regional levels) affect the ways policies are formulated, implemented and applied. Moreover, institutional structures and institutional networking, including norms, rules and sanctions, influence economic and production capacity, ecological sustainability and levels of trust in formal institutions. The ways that formal institutional structures are implicated with informal patterns of social networking are, also related to the allocation of economic resources, production practices and natural resource use. The above components of social capital produce divergent outcomes and have repercussions for the sustainability of natural resource use and land quality.

The main responses to land desertification identified in the study sites are (a) reclamation of salt-affected soils, (b) water conservation and harvesting, (c) modern land terracing, (d) soil sealing and (e) changing land use, rural depopulation and land abandonment. 

(a) Reclamation of salt-affected soils: Successful and effective reclamation of salt-affected soils presupposes institutional networking, cooperation and trust between stakeholders at multiple spatial levels. The outcomes of such cooperation can be the formation of stable structures of knowledge transfer, dissemination, and engagement supporting collective action to prevent or mitigate the problem. Collective action, however, requires a relatively high degree of social trust between stakeholders as reclamation works require extensive drainage networks across multiple land holdings. Moreover, wider social networking and trust is needed in order to establish common rules and norms governing the rational use of water resources and the prevention of water over-exploitation by individuals or groups.

Evidence of soil reclamation responses can be found in the Chiang Jiang (China) study site. These responses include:

• Earth filling and raising the height of parcels of land, through transportation of  fertile earth and raising the lowland salt-affected soil at parcel level. This is an expensive option, often beyond the means of individual farmers
• Converting rice paddy areas to other types of cropland, such as potato or maize which require less water. This response can result in a significant decline in farm incomes.  
• Construction of controlling ponds, temporary or permanent constructions, built across a minor channel or drainage ditch to intercept sediment in the drainage ditch or during a flooding event.

(b) Water conservation and harvesting: Water conservation and harvesting techniques include systems for runoff water collection and storage; stone and/or earth embankments, grass strips, terraces, semi-circular bunds, micro-basins or half-moons; conservation tillage; drip irrigation; construction of water reservoirs; water transfer; desalinization of seawater; minimization of water loss in distribution networks.

As a response to LEDD, the implementation of water conservation and harvesting techniques depends on the availability and use of local environmental knowledge. Technology-orientated development of agriculture and the proliferation of competitive, short-term market-oriented logics tend to undermine more collective-oriented local knowledge and traditional sustainable agricultural practices including water conservation and harvesting techniques. These practices also tend to be weakened or totally abandoned where available financial resources are deployed to directly address water scarcity as a limiting factor for production.

Adoption of water conservation measures depends upon farm size, farming practices (including tillage depth, sustainable farming and soil erosion control), land use intensity and policies. Water conservation/harvesting actions are positively correlated with soil conservation actions such as sustainable farming, soil erosion control, and minimum tillage depth. Large-scale interventions can also be very important for water conservation, particularly in centralized administrative systems where water distribution networks are built and rules and restrictions in the use of water are imposed.

(c) Modern land terracing: Unlike traditional (Mediterranean) terraces, modern terraces' construction materials and methods may have undesirable effects: as their main incentive is to enable easy access for large machinery, terraces are constructed on large scales and involve moving of large amounts of soil, often destroying topsoil and damaging fragile soil structures in already vulnerable areas. Upper soil layers become mixed with subsoil which, in combination with compaction caused by heavy machinery, leads to reduced soil organic matter and soil water holding capacity, increased soil sealing, reduction of infiltration and increases in overland flow leading to enhanced erosion and reduced fertility. Availability of state finance covering construction costs has been a major driver for modern terracing in the Mediterranean.

(d) Soil sealing: Sealed areas are lost to uses such as agriculture or forestry while ecological soil functions are severely impaired or even prevented. In addition, surrounding soils may be influenced by change in water flow patterns or the fragmentation of habitats. Current economic development patterns, closely related to improvement of roads and railways, housing and industrial development, have negative impacts on natural capital components such as removal of vegetation cover, exposing soils to erosion, decreasing aquifer replenishment and exerting an adverse effect on urban climate and runoff.

Covering areas with impermeable materials as happens with the construction of large scale polytunnels and greenhouses for fruit and vegetable production is also a type of soil sealing, although this type may be more easily reversed. In the Alento study site in Italy, regional laws allow up to 75 per cent of farmland to be covered by greenhouses. High rates of technological innovation alongside out-of-season demand for fresh fruit and vegetables are the main drivers pushing land owners to build more greenhouse developments, facilitated by the availability of financial capital, specific plant cultivars and water (quantity, quality and distribution). Allowing greenhouses to remain in situ throughout the year. This significantly affects the level of soil disturbance, as the soil remains sealed with plastic for long periods. Extensive greenhouse development has spread rapidly as a result of increased agricultural competition and the need to keep production costs as low as possible.  The quality of soil capital decreases while its economic value increases. While the operation of greenhouse developments requires skilled workers, nevertheless traditional knowledge and skills, in particular related to low input production methods, are progressively eroded.

(e) Changing land use, land abandonment and rural depopulation: Cessation of cultivation is one of the main changes in land use in cropland in Mediterranean countries, driven by changing policies, urbanisation, globalisation, desertification and climate change. Changes to cultivation practices are often related to decreasing land profitability. Land abandonment refers to the complete cessation of agricultural activity (including grazing) on previously cultivated or grazed land usually as a result of agricultural intensification in lowlands, technological developments and the CAP. Other factors influencing land abandonment include industrialisation, rural depopulation and increased economic importance of tourism.

Cessation of cultivation and land abandonment may have positive or negative impacts depending on the context. Rates of land abandonment are often positively correlated with tillage operations: as the rate of abandonment increases, the remaining cultivated land is used more intensively to maintain yields. In areas where water stress is considered to be the main cause of land degradation, land abandonment positively influences plant cover (partial recovery of natural vegetation). Low population density and poverty tend to be correlated with high rates of land abandonment even in areas with adequate water supplies.
Cessation of crop production and land abandonment negatively affect social capital through the loss of local ecological knowledge (LEK) and local customs and cultural activities. Given the close links between natural capital quality and availability and economic and social capital, the cessation of crop production and the abandonment of land in turn leads to a loss of on-farm employment opportunities. This loss of employment opportunities may exacerbate wider social processes such as rural outmigration of young people, leading to a decline in social cohesion in local communities, negatively affecting social memory. Communities may, as a result, become locked into narrow pathways with limited opportunities for positive change.

• < Prev
• Next >