Socio-cultural valuation of Polish agricultural landscape components by farmers and its consequences

Abstract

Abstract The current model of agricultural intensification is a threat to traditional agricultural landscapes through landscape simplification and leads to the loss of biodiversity, ecological function and critical ecosystem services in rural areas. The way people perceive and value landscape can be one of the factors that influences landscape structure, especially in situations where nature is perceived from an anthropogenic perspective as a resource that provides short-term economic benefits. The present research investigated the values that farmers from Central Poland assigned to landscape features, including forests, farming areas, non-productive elements and field compositions. In addition, we explored how the preferences towards specific landscape features were influenced by the demographic characteristics of the respondent and his/her place of residence as described by the forest cover of the community and the size of farm holdings. Statements about the justification of the landscape attribute valuations constituted additional qualitative information that was gained from the rural villagers. The results indicated high assessed values of the cultivated fields, forests and meadows and lower values for the features that characterized the mosaic landscape (dirt roads, meadows, mid-field woodlots, solitary trees and their groups, small pools of standing water and patchworks of different fields). The valuation was determined mainly by the utilitarian perspective of the residents and by demographic characteristics, such as age and education. The strict productivity-based valuation perspective threatens the regulating, supporting and cultural services supplied by the agricultural landscape. In this paper, we identified the mosaic elements that build multifunctional landscapes as those that are endangered in the context of the processes occurring in rural areas. These findings were discussed within the perspective of management and the future of traditional agricultural landscapes, which are currently endangered due to the ongoing processes of farm enlargement, demographic changes and agriculture mechanization in Poland.