 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Français | Contact Us | Help | Search | Canada Site | |
| Home | News Releases | Key Rural Initiatives |
Site Map | Publications |
|
Canadian Rural Partnership
Rural Research and Analysis 
THINKING ABOUT RURAL CANADA Presentations A series of Rural development Think Tanks organized for the Rural Secretariat by Professor Tony Fuller, University of GuelphNovember 28, 2001 to May 7, 2002
Think Tank One The Assets Approach to Valuing Rural Ontario Ontario Rural Dialogue 2001 Partners for valuing Rural Ontario:
What are Rural Assets? "An ASSET is something that we all value and which we want to sustain and build upon for the future" Assets are:
Conceptualizing Rural Assets: the Asset Wheel Rural assets include things such as:
The Asset Profile of Rural Ontario A survey done within Ontario indicated that health, water, agriculture and family farm and education and training where amongst the highest rated assets. The assets where also rated based on different groups: men versus women, Native Canadians and youth groups, which valued community involvement as being the most important asset. The Asset Wheel: Key Assets by Sector
The Assets Approach: Summary
There are at least two (2) ways to use this valuable idea:
Unpacking an asset includes taking into account its contributions to the community: jobs for example contributes positively to the production capacity, infrastructure, health, education and training, social, etc. Informing the Rural Policy Debate
Think Tank Two SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS IN RURAL CANADA THE EXISTING POLICY CONTEXT
THE SUSTAINABLE LIVELIHOODS APPROACH
SUSTAINABILITY CRITERIA
ACTION
ADDED VALUE
APPLICATION TO AN ADVANCED ECONOMY: THE CONTINUOUS ASSET TRANSFORMATION ENGINE: (CATE)
VALUE ADDING COMMUNITIES (VACS)
LINKS TO COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
Think Tank four Getting Around (or not) in Rural Canada Why Getting Around is Important In the short-distance society (urban) the focus of activity centripetal: there is a high overlap of community systems. In the open society (rural), interactions for work, education, pleasure are more diverse and imply the option of high personal mobility: the community systems are non-coherent. The Transportation Disadvantaged: Rural Youth and Mobility Young people in rural areas are disadvantaged in terms of access to transportation
Selected Findings on Rural Youth Mobility Issues
Solutions by Youth and Policy Implications
The Transportation Disadvantaged: Elderly and Disabled There is an increased reliance on the automobile which can cause confusion and increased travel: these in turn create higher costs for being mobile What Is Happening at the Community Level?
The Transportation Disadvantaged: Rural Roads, Increased Economic Activity and Increased Road Use
Increased importance of rural roads increases diversification of the rural economy. Attitudes, Perceptions & Outlook
The Community Transportation Action Program (C.T.A.P.), Ontario Partnerships for transportation service improvement includes Provincial Ministries and Local Partners Findings
General Observations from Four Rural Transportation Reports 1999-2001
"Rural transportation is Canada's forgotten issue"
Think Tank five Multifunctional Agriculture and EU Policy Presentation The concept of Multifunctional Agriculture (MFA) has recently come to the forefront of political debates concerning the rationale for agricultural support in Europe in the context of the new Trade Round. Thus the Conclusions of the Agriculture Council on 20 and 21 November 2000 on the European Community (EC) comprehensive negotiating proposal stated that: "The reform process which was agreed in the Uruguay Round also aimed at a balance between trade concerns - market access, export competition, domestic support - and non-trade concerns, which reflect important societal goals. The EC believe that further liberalization and expansion of trade for agricultural products are an important contribution to sustained and continued economic growth, in both developed and developing countries. The EC believe that in order to achieve these goals, it is vital to muster strong public support, which can only be achieved if other concerns are met, in particular the multifunctional role of agriculture, which covers the protection of the environment and the sustained vitality of rural communities, food safety and other consumer concerns including animal welfare." A key element in the EU negotiating position revolves around non-Trade concerns, specifically the social and environmental role of agriculture in rural areas, about which the Council had this to say: "The specific role of agriculture as a provider of public goods should be recognized. This is all the more important in order to muster public support to the process of further liberalization of trade in agricultural products. In this context, the multifunctional role of agriculture, which, in both developed and developing countries, includes its contribution to sustainable development, the protection of environment, the sustained vitality of rural areas and poverty alleviation should be recognized." The EC proposes that measures that aim at promoting or protecting the environment, the sustainable vitality of rural areas and poverty alleviation should also be provided for in the Agreement on Agriculture. It states that "such measures should be well targeted, transparent, and implemented in no more than minimally trade-distorting ways" [Council of the EU, 2000]. The purpose of citing these two extracts is to demonstrate the fact that Multifunctionality is being constructed in EU policy circles as an agricultural concept - and it is through agriculture that the rural development impacts are seen to arise. This is also the view of the OECD Agricultural Ministers: "The Ministerial Communiqué (OECD, 1998a) recognises that beyond its primary function of supplying food and fiber, agricultural activity can also shape the landscape, provide environmental benefits such as land conservation, the sustainable management of renewable natural resources and the preservation of biodiversity, and contribute to the socio-economic viability of many rural areas". (OECD, 2001) Nevertheless, in the same report it is clear that the OECD accepts a wider definition of multifunctionality which recognizes that it may be a characteristic of any economic activity: "Multifunctionality refers to the fact that an economic activity may have multiple outputs and, by virtue of this, may contribute to several societal objectives at once. Multifunctionality is thus an activity-oriented concept that refers to specific properties of the production process and its multiple outputs." [OECD 2001] More recently, the Ministerial meeting of the WTO Millennium Round confirmed: "the commitment to negotiate on market access, domestic support and all forms of export subsidies, but without prejudice to the final outcome, while clearly acknowledging the multifunctional nature of this sector …" ( http://trade-info.cec.eu.int/europa/2001newround/index_en.php ) It is thus clear that the EU wishes to continue the steady shift from agricultural commodity support to agri-environment type payments which 'reward' farmers for multifunctionality, in particular the public goods related functions which it is claimed they undertake. On this basis they, and no doubt other countries, will justify the continuation of inflated subsidies to farmers. There are plenty of economists willing to help them to do this, suggesting how to "measure" the value of public goods produced, and suggesting how such payments might actually be made (i.e. Mahe et al, 2001). There are however, several major problems with the approach. In the first place, it is clear that many relevant public goods in rural areas are not 'produced' by farming or agricultural activity at all - indeed, many are either produced by collective community efforts, or are a "gift of nature", for example in the form of mountains and coastline. Yet others are produced by foresters, by non-government organizations, and by public bodies and agencies caring for natural parks, etc. There is indeed an argument that where group A (a rural community) produces public goods which benefit group B (say, urban tourists) the latter should compensate the former, but it is not nowadays tenable to argue that even the majority of A in most rural areas are farmers. Secondly, in Zimmerman's words "natural resources are not given, but made", and this also applies to the public goods functions of many economic activities in rural areas that are linked with 'the environment", "amenities", "landscapes", etc. A forest of the same character cannot have the same value in Southern Germany as they have in Central Italy - there are important cultural differences concerning what is, or is not, valued; equally, such public goods clearly have different value for different people within a society, especially perhaps rich and poor(1). Even if these problems could be made to disappear, there remain overwhelming methodological problems in, for example, contingent valuation. It is to say the least absurd to suggest that this is an area where "one size can be made to fit all", and, further, that there is some agreed "scientific" method of unambiguously determining the relevant values. As if these obstacles were not enough, there is a further issue posed by the fact that economic activities also produce some negative externalities - in the case of agriculture, water and air pollution, harmful impacts on biodiversity and the landscape. These are seldom mentioned in this debate, but presumably a sectoral scheme designed to maximize the output of "public goods" and minimize the production of "public bads" should deal with both sides of the equation. When considering the multiple functions of economic activities it is necessary to look at both the supply and demand sides - production and use, if you like. From a rural development point of view, I have argued for some time that 'intangible' assets, many of which have the character of public goods, are forming an increasingly important element in new economic activities in rural areas, and hence in the competitiveness of different rural areas(2). The OECD, among others, focuses on one sub-set of these intangibles, which they call "amenities". It is however very important to broaden our understanding of intangibles beyond amenities. From our recent work on the Dynamics of Rural Areas it is clear that these certainly include less tangible dimensions of natural resources and landscapes as well as human resources, but they also include culture and community, institutional performance, networks, and quality of life (Bryden et al, 2001b). Sometimes, some or all of these are bundled into "Social Capital", a term which I generally avoid using as it contains so many different attributes. However, it is a critical question how these intangibles are 'produced', and then transformed into economic activity by small enterprises (mainly), non-government organizations, other bodies and individuals. Equally, it is important to examine how demand for such intangibles arises and how this process relates to the supply side. Since we are usually dealing with public goods, there is no "market" through which such interaction can be negotiated, leading to a "market-clearing" solution that balances supply and demand. So we are very much dealing with social and political processes when we ask this question. Let me now turn back to the specific case of farming, recognizing that farming is one rural sector which often has several "functions", both intended and unintended, other than their primary function of producing food and raw materials. These functions may or may not be "tradable" in the sense of providing the producer with a monetary return. An example of a tradable function would be the provision of wage labour to other sectors of the economy, that is, the off-farm component of "pluriactivity". "Non-tradable" functions, or outputs, are generally public or quasi-public goods and typically concern the production of "environmental" goods such as rural landscapes or bio-diversity as by-products or joint-products from commercial activities. The same goods can of course be a key asset in the development of rural tourism or in marketing other local products. Whilst it is relatively easy to assess the importance and implications of tradable outputs for local rural economies, it is much more difficult to assess the impact of non-tradables. This is not only because the value of such non-tradables vary from place to place as a result of cultural and other differences, but the extent to which commercial or other economic activities has grown around them also varies according to a range of contextual and other factors. Recent research has demonstrated the significance of non-tradables for local rural development through the commercial activities that are indirectly linked with them [Post & Terluin, 2000 and Bryden et al 2001b]. The most obvious examples are rural tourism and recreational activities, both of which have had income elasticity's of demand greater than unity in the past twenty years or so. However, these research projects clearly showed that even where there appear to be very similar non-tradables produced by farming, the extent to which these are indirectly commercialized varies widely between different rural areas. The reasons for this are likely to include varying institutional, knowledge and financial capacities, differing local priorities and perceptions of opportunities, and uneven entrepreneurial activity and capacities, among others [Bryden et al, 2001b]. Schematic Representation of Relations between Farm Households, Multifunctionality, and Rural Development [developed from Knickel & Renting, 2000].The four key research questions are:
Important subsidiary research questions are:
A comparative approach using study areas would be needed to answer such questions, and this has yet to be undertaken. One might ask then, on what "evidence-base" a central policy relating to Multifunctional Agriculture might rest, either in Europe or anywhere else? I will, however, speculate about some answers to these questions on the basis of my experience of undertaking major comparative studies, especially those on farm household pluri-activity in the 1980's and 1990's and, recently, on the Dynamics of Rural Areas. Briefly, I believe what we would find would be:
It is because I believe that these are inevitable consequences of what might be called the "agro-environmental approach to rural development policy" that I argue for the inclusion of agri-environment and any other policies concerning the public goods/ intangibles which affect rural development prospects of real places within a place-based, integrated, rural development policy framework. Only then can we be sure (a) that the public goods which are actually needed in the local economy are actually produced, and (b) that these relevant public goods will be transformed into appropriate local economic activity. Closing Remarks I believe that the current tendency of the EU (and, if to a lesser extent, the OECD, not to mention the USA), to look to an "agri-environmental rural development policy" as the way forward is a result to the success of the farmers and environmental lobbies, and the failure of rural people and communities in general to produce an equivalent "voice" in centralized policy-making circles. Farmers do not want to lose what they see as "their money", currently the (Common Agricultural Policy) CAP or the FAIR Act in the USA. This is disguised as "multifunctional agriculture", and given concrete expression in the contents of the so-called "green box" of the Uruguay Round Agreement. It is not at all what rural people, and rural communities, want to see! There is of course a case for rewarding those who somehow produce public goods, just as there is a case for penalizing those who produce "public bads". As I have argued, such people are not confined to the farming community. I have also argued that the business of encouraging the production of public goods, and transforming these into rural development, is not simply or even mainly an agricultural question. Finally, tendencies in Governance necessarily mean that such top-down and sectoral approaches are doomed as a future mechanism. Sooner or later, such things will come to be recognized as a necessary part of the integrated and "place-based" rural policy framework, which rural people want, and nations need, for the future. 1 A common, if usually implicit, result of contingent valuation studies of environmental assets. 2 See Dawe & Bryden (1998) and Bryden & Hart (2001).
Think Tank six PRESENTATION - David Douglas (University of Guelph) Mr. Douglas acknowledged the many views of "community" and placed emphasis on the "values" base of the concept.
Discussion
Towards Core competencies:
Knowledge:
Experiential-based component:
Skills base:
Personal:
|
