Towards a geography of agri-environmental policies in England and Wales

Abstract Agri-environmental policies have become increasingly prominent measures in the farm sector of England and Wales. This major development has not escaped the attention of agricultural geographers, but little work has emerged which overtly explores the geographical consequences of agri-environmental policy on land use patterns and countryside conservation. Understanding this geography is important in the evaluation of the unevenness of post-productivist processes in the countryside. Using different ‘scales’ of analysis and specific examples, this paper examines published literature, secondary and primary data to tease out the geographical impacts of agri-environmental policy. Each scale of analysis informs the interpretation of agri-environmental policy impacts in different ways. A national scale analysis provides a general impression of farmers' interest in conservation and their receptiveness to agri-environmental schemes. However, numbers of farmers enrolled gives little idea of the quality of environmental practices undertaken and any subsequent modifications to land use patterns. Moving to a regional scale permits greater sensitivity to interactions between scheme characteristics and factors peculiar to farming in a locality. A wide variety of agri-environmental policy outcomes emerge, demonstrating that a meso-scale analysis is a useful aid to detailed research into the geography of agri-environmental policy. Farm and field scale approaches show that existing studies concentrate on processes of adoption and less on outcomes ‘on the ground’. However, a selection of complex patterns at these scales are highlighted. Micro-scale aspects of agri-environmental policy deserve far more attention from agricultural geographers, although integrative research which draws upon insights gained from each scale is advocated to understand fully the geographical impacts of agri-environmental policy on land use patterns.