Panel 2 Paper 2.1: Rural Landscapes: Farm and Forest Heritage in the 21st century

ABSTRACTThe emerging, next generation of people engaged as managers in agriculture differs from the “baby boomer” farm generation that relishes certain traditions and an agrarian lifestyle. These futuristic producers and managers have been raised in a society that promulgates safety environment rules. They have witnessed lives saved by automobile seatbelts and lives improved from clean air and water. They know the basic cost of effective safety compliance is relatively fixed, regardless of the number of employees, and they are willing to invest resources that ensure a culture of safety, because it is economically beneficial, socially responsible, and probably required by the companies to whom they need to market their products. These same millennials understand that society and their customers will not continue to tolerate the high rate of agricultural injuries and deaths indefinitely. Public policy as a means to improve agricultural workers’ safety and health is likely to be less resisted by the next generation of farmers, ranchers, producers, and agribusiness leaders who, regardless of legal or regulatory pressure, will implement internal business policies emphasizing safety, health, sustainability, and social justness as they understand it.

Tropical wetlands as a carbon source

Organic vegetables that are mostly consumed by the community in the midst of the rapid development of the organic farming sector, can generally be obtained by purchasing vegetables that have been harvested so that the interaction between consumers and farmers is very limited. However, a concept called CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that connects farmers with consumers directly and invites consumers to be involved with the production process. Seni Tani is one of the few organic farming businesses that apply the CSA concept in Indonesia. This study aims to explain the type of business and the application of CSA in Seni Tani as an example of the application of CSA in Indonesia which has not been widely carried out. The research design is a qualitative research design with a case study approach. This study uses data collection techniques in the form of observation, in-depth interviews and literature study. The results are indicate that Seni Tani applies regenerative organic agriculture. The plants are organic products and fullfil the principles of health, ecology, justice and protection by imitating natural patterns without adding synthetic chemical inputs. Seni Tani implements social entrepreneurship with a socially responsible enterprise type of business and carries out urban farming activities. CSATani Sauyunan at Seni Tani has fulfilled the CSA concept. CSA Tani Sauyunan fulfills four principles namely partnership, locality, solidarity, and producer-consumer relations. CSA Tani Sauyunan is a small scale CSA that operates informally and can be categorized into the Multi-Farm CSA, Subscription CSA and Mixed-Vegetable CSA types.

Context. The process of urban sprawl brings the human population and their domestic cats (Felis catus) in close contact with wildlife in areas that were previously remote, including reserves and conservation areas created to protect populations of vulnerable or threatened species. Various mitigation measures have been proposed, including devices designed to hinder cat hunting ability, desexing to reduce wandering and nuisance behaviours, containment at night or at all times and regulations governing cat ownership. Such regulations may aim to reduce cat densities by limiting the number of cats per household, or they may define zones around sensitive conservation areas where cat ownership is prohibited. Aims. The present study sought to establish the necessary size of cat-exclusion zones in rural and urban-fringe landscapes where vulnerable prey species may also reside. Methods. With GPS collars, we tracked 38 domestic cats at three sites (one rural, two urban fringe) where small reserves contained threatened lizard species. Key results. Home ranges (95% kernel density estimates) were considerably larger for cats at the rural site (0.3–69 ha) than at urban-fringe sites (0.35–19 ha at Kaitorete Spit and 0.2–9 ha at Otago Peninsula), and were larger at night than day. Resource selection ratios indicated avoidance of open areas with little cover, such as cultivated areas (farmland), tussock grassland and duneland, whereas sources of cover such as trees and buildings were preferred. Maximum distances moved and large variability between individual cats suggest buffers in rural landscapes would need to be at least 2.4 km wide, whereas those in urban-fringe habitat could be half as large. Conclusions. Despite significant home-range size differences exhibited by cats living in rural v. urban-fringe habitats, exclusion zones would need to be wide to account for considerable inter-cat variation in movement behaviour. Implications. The size of an effective cat-exclusion zone should represent the specific landscape, amount of residential development and substantial variability between individual cats.

Solutions to neutralize greenhouse gas emissions of the rice value chain — A case study in China

Rice is one of the leading commodities for organic products, organic rice commodities are one of the widely consumed organic products. West Sumatra Province is one of the regions that have the largest organic rice land in Indonesia. The development of Organic Agriculture has become a policy of the West Sumatra Provincial Government since 2006. There are several problems in marketing organic rice, namely the lack of market access by farmers so that only a small portion of the harvest of organic rice farmers is absorbed as the final product of organic rice and the product is sold at the price of conventional rice. The purpose of this research was to determine and analyze the marketing efficiency and marketing operations (margin, farmer's share, and profit ratio) of organic rice in West Sumatra. The research location is decided by purposive method. To find farmer respondents using purposive sampling and trader respondents using snowball sampling. Qualitative descriptive analysis is used to analyze organic rice marketing channels. Meanwhile, quantitative descriptive is used to measure the marketing efficiency of organic rice using marketing margin analysis, and farmer's share. The results showed that organic rice marketing in West Sumatra consists of 4 marketing channels, which involve five marketing institutions, namely intermediary traders, large traders, city farmers, small-scale retailers, and large-scale retailers (supermarkets). Farmers - intermediary traders - wholesalers - small-scale retailers (channel 2) is the channel pattern chosen by most farmers which are 50%. The most efficient channel pattern is channel 4 because it is the shortest channel with the lowest margin of Rp. 5,500 and the highest farmer's share value of 50%.

Forest carbon storage is almost estimated by the ground survey data, there is a difficulty of huge statistical work and modeling complexity. To calculate forest carbon stocks in a quick and accurate way, which has been the current research focus in forestry both inside and outside of China. A new method is proposed by combining a little input parameters of the InVEST model with a large monitoring scale of remote sensing data. First, InVEST model was used to estimate regional carbon stocks according to forest type carbon data and according to raster data. Then this data was compared to the multistage carbon data from remote sensing data to achieve a dynamic monitoring of forest carbon stocks. This paper estimated and mapped carbon stock of the Qingyuan (a county) in 2009, according to the administrative division map can estimate the carbon storage of the scale of town and village. After estimated carbon reserves of Kengxi (a village) in 2009 and 2014, carbon difference method was adopted to dynamic monitoring of carbon sink. Results showed that the carbon sink estimated with the new method for Qiyuan(a county), Zhejiang, China was 3.274 3×107 Mg in 2009. Also, the carbon stock for Kengxi (a village) increased 1.780 3×104 Mg from 2009 to 2014. Compared to forest average carbon density, adding forest species average carbon storage and carbon sinks to forest carbon stock monitoring improved estimation precision of forest carbon stocks. This dynamic multi-dimensional method for monitoring forest carbon sinks being simple, convenient, user-friendly, and advantageous because it used less data input and visual output in the model, could be used in the county, township (town) and village forest carbon monitoring. [Ch, 5 fig. 4 tab. 32 ref.]

Swedish agriculture faces new challenges on an aggregated level, as well as for individual farms. The number of farms in Sweden is decreasing, but the average size of farms is increasing. Much of the structured changed can be explained by the increase in global competition and the design of the CAP within the EU. The situation also creates a detachment of the consumers from the food production. As a reaction to this large scale production, alternative food production business forms have emerged. Community supported agriculture (CSA), is a fairly new business concept in Sweden. It is an alternative food production business form that builds on close a relationship and cooperation between the producer and the consumer and the concept is well-established in other parts of the world. The economics within CSA is built on the idea of pre-payments from consumers and as a result the consumers and producers share the financial risks linked to the insecurities of not knowing the outcome of the harvest in advance. The business model has financial similarities to crowdfunding and therefore it has been useful to use information about the crowdfunding model to analyse the empirical material collected for this thesis. Trust and a strong relationship between the farmer and the consumer is vital within this business model. Therefore, theories on relationship marketing and details from the shared value concept have been used in this project. Also, in order to obtain a better understanding of the development process of new businesses, theories on business platforms have been applied to the empirical material. The aim of this project is to identify social, economic and political environmental enabeling factors for food producers who work with CSA as an alternative marketing strategy for food crops in Sweden. This was done in a case study where five business owners of CSA farms in Sweden were studied. An additional interview was also done with a project manager of a CSA project in Sweden. This project has a flexible design and subsequent to the literature review, a narrative analysis of the empirical material was finalised. The results indicate that the social factors explain why individuals choose to start CSA farms in Sweden. Contributions to society, the lack of sustainable food production and detachment from the consumers and the food production are strong motivations for developing CSA in Sweden. The increasing interest in locally produced and organic food is one of the enabling factors for developing CSA farms in Sweden. The results also reveal that the required level of bureaucracy is challenging for farmers who want to develop an alternative agricultural business form due to the complexity of the administration. Finally, the pre-payment financial model is a possibility for the farmer to receive payments all year around instead of just during the harvesting season and the risks are therefore reduced, even if there are indications of a greater pressure for the farmers to satisfy their consumers. For future research an interesting area would be to investigate a concept of cooperation between CSA farms and the public sector. Today there is little knowledge about CSA, and bureaucratic barriers which complicate the development of a possible cooperation. Further studies could also investigate if CSA might contribute to increased employment while developing the local food systems.

La déforestation massive dans la partie Nord-Est de Madagascar, notamment à Andapa, grenier à riz de la région SAVA (région regroupant quatre districts dans la partie Nord-Est de Madagascar qui sont : Sambava, Andapa, Vohémar et Antalaha), entraîne l’érosion des bassins versants et l’ensablement de la plaine rizicole. En amont du bassin versant de Sahamazava, la culture sur brûlis forestier participe à une stratégie de survie des ménages agri- coles les plus démunis. Ces pratiques per- turbent également l’approvisionnement en eau potable de la commune urbaine d’Andapa. Un système de Paiements pour Services Environnementaux (PSE) a été envisagé en vue de réorienter le compor- tement des agriculteurs défricheurs. Le mécanisme promeut l’abandon de l’agri- culture itinérante sur brûlis forestier (tavy) au profit de la pratique de cultures pérennes en amont du bassin versant. Des questions se posent quant aux condi- tions de mise en place et de pérennisation de ce dispositif. La présente étude se pro- pose de mettre en exergue l’importance de l’appréciation des besoins locaux dans le contexte de la mise en place d’un PSE dans un pays en développement. À partir de trois scénarios différents, elle retrace l’évolution des exploitations agricoles avant et après l’établissement de l’inter- diction de défricher la forêt sur le bassin versant de Sahamazava, alors que les compensations liées à la réduction des droits d’accès ne sont pas encore effec- tives. Des pistes d'actions précisant l'af- fectation des compensations attendues sont finalement proposées.

Farmers in the Chattogram Hill Tracts (CHT) practice jhum farming raising several crops together with upland rice being dominant. For regenerating soil fertility farmers leave the plot fallow moving to another plot. In recent years shortening of fallow length resulted in declining land productivity impacting negatively on jhum farmers’ food security. This paper mapped out the food security status of jhum farmers conducting a survey of 103 farmers across 23 villages (para) in four subdistricts of Bandarban district. Farms and farmers growing jhum crops were selected. Assessment of farmers’ household demography and level of food security was made conducting questionnaire-based survey and FGDs. Rice yields were estimated harvesting sample plots from the selected farmers’ fields. Majority of the households (83%) had 3-6 members per family and 74% households were headed by male farmers but women take on major responsibility of jhum farming. More than 56% household heads had no formal schooling. Land holding per family varied between 0.486 ha and 6.00 ha and about 54% farmers engaged two labors in jhum operations. The extent of food security in hilly region was measured based on the amount of rice production in relation to their annual demand. Rice grain yields varied greatly between 318 kg and 4,411 kg ha-1 among farmers’ plots across locations. Rice production per household indicated that about 93% farm households suffered from food insecurity to varying degrees. As a coping mechanism, food-insecure farmers met up their food demand scavenging uncultivated forest products collecting vegetables, fruits, roots and bamboo shoots. This study indicates that jhum system can no longer support household food security due to poor yield of rice and thus not sustainable.

Slash-and-burn shifting agriculture, still common in Africa, is one of the major causes of deforestation in regions where excessive population pressure has accelerated the rate of agricultural rotation. The transformation and fragmentation of natural habitats, affects the structure and functioning of the forest ecosystem, leading to erosion and biodiversity loss. The main purpose of this research was to analyze capture, marking and recapture techniques, the specific richness of the rodent population in some habitats selected on the basis of an anthropogenic gradient in Masako forest reserve. The study was conducted in Masako Forest Reserve located in the Northeast of Kisangani city, Province Orientale, Democratic Republic of the Congo between February and June 2018. In fact, rodents were captured in different habitats namely primary forest, secondary forest, old fallow and young fallow where square grids were installed with Sherman traps. The number of trapping days depended on the habitat and an alphanumeric code was used for each individual for identification. Five campaigns of trapping were performed while different indices of biodiversity were used to assess the specific richness. The findings showed that a total of 545 specimens were collected distributing into 10 species. The most abundant species were: Praomys spp, Hylomys spp., Deomys ferrugineus and Lophyromys dudui but Praomys spp. was the most predominant and the most motile of identified species in the studied habitat. From different similarity indices used, it was found that the secondary forest has a large number of individuals while the high number of species was observed in the secondary forest and young fallow respectively. It was observed that the most important recaptures were obtained in primary and secondary forests while in both fallows the recapture rate was weak. Thus, human activities such as slash-and-burn shifting, although modifying the environment, and also acting on relative abundance, appear at the current stage, is not significantly affecting the rodent community.

SUMMARY This paper examines the critical role of forests in a green economy, and provides recommendations to transform the forest sector such that it can lead to sustainable development. The concept of green economy describe the “process of reconfiguring businesses and infrastructure to deliver better returns on natural, human and economic capital investments, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions, extracting and using less natural resources, creating less waste and reducing social disparities” (Altinger, 2008). In the wood and forestry sectors it was observed could make a significant contribution towards meeting green economy objectives, linked to climate change policies, mainly through the abatement of greenhouse gas emissions and expansion of renewable energy objectives. The Green Economy Report suggests the main routes by which the wood and forestry sectors can contribute: biomass energy and green infrastructure and building which are related to forest products, the role of forest resources as carbon sinks, which is related to resource. Forests contribute optimally to a green economy when, in particular, their full range of private and societal benefits are realized. In this vision of forests, growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments. These investments reduce carbon emissions, enhance resource efficiency, and prevent the loss of forest-based biodiversity and ecosystem goods and services. Forests contribute substantially to local, national and global economies. They can contribute to a low-carbon, high growth, socially inclusive and equitable, adaptive and low scarcity green economy through their multiple functions and improved management. Forests are also a source for low-carbon raw material and energy, and offer a full range of services for many sectors, human well-being, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Romania has a large and diverse forest and is one of the few European countries that still have virgin forests. Many of these forests play important roles as environmental and recreational space, but also represent an important economic value. The Romanian national priorities included: afforestation activities; inventory updates; prevention of illegal logging; and support to forest owner associations. In conclusion, Forests in a Green Economy provides an evidence based roadmap for policy makers, the private sector, forest sector and forest dwellers alike, and underscores why these ecosystems must be managed for their full societal value if we are to successfully build a low-carbon, resource efficient future.

Norway covers an abundant wilderness, only 3 % of the land are cultivated. Population is scarce many places of the country, but like trends elsewhere, there are a concentration towards more urban settings. Urban citizens take action for future sustainable development through producing some of their own food. Politics protect land resources for agriculture, but agricultural areas are still decreasing. The official goal of 15 % production and market shares of organic products in 2020 can stimulate urban farming. Literature states how people carries out top goals for sustainability in a humble practical approach. The eagerness to grow food is underlined by the growth of community supported agriculture (CSA) from a single one in 2006 to more than 50 in 2016. Market statistics illustrates that the majority of organic food in Norway is distributed in alternative channels like CSAs, Farmers market or directly from the farms. Compared to other Scandinavian countries the common market chains for organic food are less developed in Norway. Consumers motivation for participating in CSA is food security, environment and control of the food chain. CSA farmers are motivated by minimizing the economic risk and getting company in everyday life. CSAs are mostly located in urban surroundings and directed by a farmer or a gardener. Consumers in the cities also initiate CSAs. The visibility and learning by doing makes a comprehensive demonstration of sustainability.

Exploitation of natural forests works well as long as they are reasonably accessible, adequate in size and produce materials desired by the society served. However, as natural stands are exploited and lands are diverted to nonforest uses, it is likely that without an input of technical silviculture, the natural development of secondary and residual forests will be inadequate. This is particularly true of the diverse tropical hardwood forests where often relatively few species and even fewer stems per hectare produce desirable material. A serious technical problem presents itself in trying to match the complex forest production system with the utilization system. In early stages of exploitation of a natural tropical forest this match is likely to be poor as the forest conversion system is often simple with only one or two products and a small spectrum of industry, which usually is highly selective as to species, size and quality. Consequently a very small fraction of the trees and volume in a tropical hardwood stand has marketable utility. As long as there is surplus forest land, this situation can be tolerated. However, this utilization system of low concentration of marketable material per unit of area results in high operating costs in attempting to assemble meaningful quantities of material. This occurs even if the cost of the raw material itself is low. Furthermore, this system can result in depletion of useful material per unit area with time, as the unavoidable high grading that occurs commonly results in the replacement of usable forest stocking by unusable species, qualities, and sizes. As a result, the match between the forest production and utilization systems may worsen. Unfortunately the classical extensive forest inventories often conducted have not always proved a useful tool in assessing the utility of natural tropical forest stands. The usual approach allocates most of the resources to counting and measuring standing trees without regard to utility. In later analysis stages the data may be adjusted to reflect merchantability but merchantability in this sense is often based on arbitrary classifications of trees into use and size categories that often bear little relationship to the conversion system in use. Furthermore, conversion system standards change and the above merchantability impositions in inventories have generally failed to loo k at merchantable volumes in terms of flexible alternatives. As a result, the data from such inventories can be dangerously misleading in guiding planning discussions. This paper presents some preliminary results from a study aimed at providing a loo k at the match between the forest production and conversion systems when different sets of utilization standards are imposed on the forest. The results focus on three Costa Rican forest situations: the mixed natural forest at La Selva, dominated by Gavilan ( Pentaclethra macrolaba ) ; the mixed natural forest along the Atlantic coast dominated by Cativo ( Prioria copaifera ) and Cedro Macho ( Carapa guianensis ); and pure even-aged plantations. The mixed forests contain many trees of unusable species or qualities, such that over-all usable productivity is quite poor. This situation may be improved by either simplifying the forest structure by silviculture to favor the more usable species and/or increasing the complexity of the conversion system to enable a greater use efficiency of currently desired species and to include currently unused species.

Through studying the articles published in the proceedings of the Chinese Forestry Association during 2001-2010, the shift trend of the forestry researches in Taiwan in last decade was analyzed. There are a total of 1,042 articles composed of oral and poster presentations. All articles were divided into two groups: as forestry and forest products sectors. The forestry sector was classified into 5 divisions of silviculture, ecology, forest management, forestry economy, and forest protection. The forest products sector as a whole was categorized as ”forest products utilization division”, which actually subdivides into wood physics, wood chemistry, and others (hard to categorize). The contribution rates of the forestry sector and the forest products sector were 66.4 and 33.6%, respectively. The article counts and rates of the silviculture, ecology, forest management, forestry economy, forest protection, and forest products utilization divisions were respectively 240 (23.0%), 139 (13.3%), 258 (24.8%), 27 (2.6%), 28 (2.7%), and 350 (33.6%). In the forest products utilization division, the subdivision articles counts of wood physics, wood chemistry, and others were 87 (8.4%), 222 (21.3%), and 41 (3.9%), respectively. In comparison, more articles were published in the fields of forest products utilization division; followed by forest management and silviculture divisions. The articles published by the forestry economy division were the least. Owing to diversification trend of the research fields, the broad classification mentioned above was hardly adequate in showing the shifting trend. Therefore, for further analyzing the shifts in details, this study made a further classification of the 6 main divisions into 25 subdivisions. The authors' affiliations were also compared. We expect that this study will be useful references to Taiwan's forestry research and education in the future.