Agri-environmental schemes and farmers’ landscape management at local-regional scales. A viewpoint on multiple functions in the rural countryside

Our study aimed at identifying key processes in the dynamics that relate agriculture under different driving forces and landscape ecological patterning, in a perspective of multifunctional development. Regarding driving forces, a particular emphasis was put on agri-environmental schemes, seen as a possible support for the development and maintenance of landscape. This study was based upon an empirical multiscale research setting on two NUTS 2 (Basse-Normandie) and NUTS 3 (Eure-et-Loir) regions. This paper presents results from the Basse-Normandie case. The research setting beneficiated from several years surveys in a Natural Regional Park (NRP Cotentin-Bessin) on farms socioeconomic trajectories, farmers’ adoption of agri-environmental measures and the role of the Park in agri-environmental development. A municipality was chosen for a set of farmers’ interviews and field observations about the evolution of farmers’ landscape management in relation to farm trajectories and agri-environmental schemes. At regional scales, dynamics of municipality cropping patterns were assessed from CAP crop registration databases; explanatory factors of these patterns were tested. At farm-local scales, the result firstly showed that farmers applied differently to agri-environmental schemes according to their farm profile and contract trajectories. This confirmed earlier results on larger samples of farms. Similar conclusions applied to the question of the maintenance of contractual practices after the end of the contract. The role of Natural Regional Park of Cotentin-Bessin was underlined in term of coordination and institutional support for the agri-environmental scheme and local development. This role has been however mitigated by the organization of the different phases of agri-environmental schemes that did allow little anticipation. The results showed that agri-environmental measures had different consequences on farmers’ landscape management and on landscape patterning according to between and inside farm diversity and organization of practices. At landscape scales, both landscape processes toward more heterogeneity or more homogeneity of the mosaic (even accompanied with management intensification) accompanied farm changes under agri-environmental contracts. At local-regional scales, the tested factors of municipality crop patterns emphasized the combined influence of historical features (Small Agricultural Areas), farm profiles and recent processes like rural activities, population changes and the enlargement and scattering of farms among several municipalities. This study takes part in our search for the development of indicators of these relationships and methods for evaluating changes in the long run and supplementing models for scenario-based simulations