Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion - Israel Insitute of Technology, Technion City, 3200003, Haifa, Israel; Department of Sociology, College of Letters and Sciences, University of California, Davis, 1 Shields Avenue, Davis 95616, CA, USA.
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion - Israel Insitute of Technology, Technion City, 3200003, Haifa, Israel; Nature Conservation and Plant Ecology Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA, Wageningen, the Netherlands.
J Environ Manage. 2022 Jan 15;302(Pt A):114066. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.114066. Epub 2021 Nov 8.
Providing for growing food demand while minimizing environmental degradation is a major contemporary environmental challenge. Agri-environmental schemes (AESs) are often promoted to meet this challenge by providing subsidies to farmers who adopt agri-environmental practices (AEPs). The success of these schemes depends on the ability to engage farmers, thus understanding farmers' perceptions about AEPs is pivotal. Yet, current knowledge is limited as most research explores farmer's attitudes towards existing AESs, often based on subsidies. We explored the attitudes of farmers and their communities towards five different AEPs, and towards a potential AES, in an area of intensive agriculture in Israel, where currently no AES are implemented. We conducted five focus group sessions with 41 farmers, 12 follow-up interviews, and a survey with 296 community members. Findings indicate that farmers' willingness to implement AEPs was driven by environmental, personal, and social considerations, particularly perceptions of "good farming" practices, such as community cohesiveness and maintaining control of one's field. Farmers' lack of trust in the government, and lack of personal or local experience with specific AEPs, are other major barriers for joining a potential AES. Farmers perceived financial compensation as a safety net, but placed social and cultural values on par with, or above, financial considerations for joining an AES. Farmers' communities demonstrated high support for implementing AEPs, indicating that communities could be an asset for AES development. Therefore, while incentives for many AESs are based primarily on monetary compensation, to achieve their desired long-term results they should also focus on farmer resilience, independence, knowledge creation, and socio-cultural capital development.
在最小化环境退化的同时满足不断增长的粮食需求是当前面临的重大环境挑战。农业环境计划（AES）通常通过向采用农业环境实践（AEPs）的农民提供补贴来应对这一挑战。这些计划的成功取决于吸引农民的能力，因此了解农民对 AEPs 的看法至关重要。然而，由于大多数研究都基于补贴来探索农民对现有 AES 的态度，因此当前的知识有限。我们在以色列一个集约农业地区探索了农民及其社区对五种不同 AEPs 的态度，以及对潜在 AES 的态度，该地区目前没有实施 AES。我们与 41 名农民进行了五次焦点小组会议，进行了 12 次后续访谈，并对 296 名社区成员进行了调查。研究结果表明，农民实施 AEPs 的意愿受到环境、个人和社会因素的驱动，特别是对“良好农业”实践的看法，例如社区凝聚力和对自己农田的控制。农民对政府缺乏信任，以及对特定 AEPs 的个人或本地经验缺乏，是加入潜在 AES 的其他主要障碍。农民将经济补偿视为安全网，但将社会和文化价值观置于与经济考虑同等重要的地位，甚至高于加入 AES 的经济考虑。农民的社区表现出对实施 AEPs 的高度支持，表明社区可以成为 AES 发展的资产。因此，虽然许多 AES 的激励措施主要基于货币补偿，但为了实现其预期的长期结果，它们还应侧重于农民的适应能力、独立性、知识创造和社会文化资本发展。
