Environmental services provided by Agriculture

by Volker Appel ¹>,
Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Forestry
Bonn, Germany

Environmental services of agriculture can in general be related to

1. the environmental media soil, water and air (incl. climate),
2. habitat conservation and protection of species,
3. landscape (we talk about „cultural landscape") – not really to integrate fully under „environmental services", but related to aesthetical services or amenity services.

For all categories, it is clear that agriculture can have both positive and negative external effects. These effects have to be addressed separately by specific policy instruments.

The separation between positive and negative effects is a question of reference level. I do not want to go deeper into this question here, since Martin Scheele has tackled this problem in his excellent paper.

As my contribution to the discussion, I want to point out the link between food production and some examples of environmental services. So let us focus on the question of jointness.

Ex. no. 1: Take water as a natural resource. As a provocation related to what Jostein Lindland said before (i.e. that multifunctionality relates only to the positive functions that are purposely provided by agriculture), I look at the question of groundwater formation which might not be seen as such a purposely provided effect. Yet I think it can be an important positive externality of agriculture.

The rate of groundwater formation is generally higher under arable land than under grassland and forest. At usual German climatic conditions, in dry years, groundwater formation under grassland and forest can reduce to zero. Evaporation then equals precipitation. In wet years, groundwater formation under forests equals about 50 % of that under arable land (Frede, 1995, p.48).

The formation of groundwater is then basically an environmental service of agriculture.

What then is the link between this externality and ag production? Grundwater formation is an example of a non-food output associated with the amount of an input (land use, esp. amount of arable land).

But: In order to really create an environmental benefit, two criteria have to be fulfilled:

1. the quality of the ground water created has to be good so that an unrestricted use (e.g. as drinking water) is possible;
2. the valuation will depend on the scarcity of the resource „ground water". For example in Germany, ground water formation is sufficient in most areas (due to high rainfall). In some areas with lower rainfall (parts of NI, BB, MV), the higher groundwater formation is a valuable aspect.

As a second example, let us take the areas no. 2 and 3, mentioned at the beginning:

-habitat conservation and protection of species,

-landscape.

In Central Europe, agricultural and forest landscape counts for the biggest share in land use (approx. 70 – 80 %). In between these types of landscape, there exist smaller or larger fragments of semi-natural („naturnahe") landscape (Haber, 1996).

Concerning habitat and nature conservation, it is of crucial importance

1. that a huge amount of those habitats which we look upon nowadays as semi-natural was created as a consequence of agricultural and forest use (and overuse!) for ages. Ecological degradation and diminishing fertility of soil for centuries went hand in hand with a biological enrichment. That leads as to a second statement: That
2. the number and diversity of species was increased enormously by agricultural and forest use.

This relationship changed to a rivalry in line with the intensification of agricultural land use (an intensification which continued in Germany up to the end of the 1980‘s). But still nowadays, a substantial share of plant and animal species depend on agricultural land use and is threatened by the retreat of agriculture from ecologically valuable habitats.

On the other hand, there is of course a conflict between intensive agricultural land use and habitat conservation. The main problem is that intensification has led to quite uniform habitats (and habitats rich of nutrients).

What is the result of both opposite links?

In Germany, the number of species endangered by the retreat of agriculture is about as high as the number of species endangered by intensification of agriculture. As a consequence, protection of species can, in many cases, work only with agriculture. In Germany, this lesson was learnt when – after erection of our first nature preserve (Lüneburger Heide – Luneburg Heather) in 1921, the sheep grazing common for this type of habitat was stopped. As a consequence, the heather areas turned, by way of natural succession, into pine-birchtree-bushes.

I want to finish on this with the remark: Habitat conservation and protection of species are non-food outputs tied to commodity composition and farming practices.

Let us then devote 2 minutes on landscape and their characteristics. Starting with looking at the link between non-food output and farming-activity, we recognize that ag landscape is dependent of

-the amount of land use, i.e. input use, and

-(as are habitat conservation and protection of species) tied to commodity composition and farming practices.

Of course, ag landscape is influenced by other factors, too, among them differences in agricultural structure (size distribution of ag enterprises) and the degree of consolidation.

Agriculture’s influence on landscape reaches beyond habitat and species conservation. It can create amenity services, that is influence housing value and recreational value of an area.

Both values will depend on the one hand side (Neander, 1994) on

-type of landscape (e.g. hilly or flat),

-share of agricultural use in relation to other types of land use and their spatial distribution,

-degree of ag specialisation and the intensity of ag land use,

-field size and the existence of semi-natural elements of landscape like hedges, trees, or more general speaking, the length of habitat borders per unit of area;

on the other hand side

-on the requirements of the local population as well as those of tourists on the „experience value" and usability of the landscape.

Obviously there is a wide range of complementarity between the requirements from the point of view of habitat protection and from the one of the leisure and recreation function.

What then is the valuable service of agriculture concerning landscape?

Given the same „quality" of ag landscape, this is again a question of scarcity of the resource: in areas with a high share of non-ag land use (e.g. forest), to keep the landscape open – i.e. retain status quo - might be a valuable service. In areas where ag landscape is dominating by far, retaining the status quo may not be seen as a valuable non-food service of agriculture. (In addition, in those areas there often is a lack of desired landscape elements.)

A final remark: at least none of the environmental services I had under consideration is directly related to food production. This seems to me to be the key to resolve conflicts between trade liberalization and maintaining a multifunctional agriculture.

References

Frede, H.-G., Bereich Landschaftswasserhaushalt. In: W. Werner et. al. (eds.), Ökologische Leistungen der Landwirtschaft – Definition, Beurteilung und ökonomische Bewertung. (agrarspectrum, vol. 24) Frankfurt/Main 1995, pp. 47 – 54

Haber, W., Bedeutung unterschiedlicher Land- und Forstbewirtschaftung für die Kulturlandschaft – einschließlich Biotop- und Artenvielfalt. In: G. Linckh et al., Nachhaltige Land- und Forstwirtschaft – Expertisen. Heidelberg 1996, pp. 1- 26

Neander, E., Zur Bewertung der Landschaftsbeeinflussung durch Landwirtschaft – eine Literaturauswertung. Unpublished Manuscript, Braunschweig 1994

¹> The views expressed in the statement are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of BML.

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