Biotechnologie, Agronomie, Société et Environnement (Jan 1997)
Mesures d'incitation en faveur de la conservation de la diversité génétique en matière agricole. 2. Analyse des mesures agri-environnementales belges
Abstract
Incitation measures in favour of a conservation of genetic diversity for agricultural matters. 2. Analysis of the Belgian agro-environmental measures.The environmental cost of an intensive agriculture can be high. Nevertheless, any policy to protect the environment and the biological diversity has to take into account the agricultural sector considering the surface of national territory taken up by cultivated lands. The political authorities are faced with the choke of either to assert the individuel responsability for naturel resources by ecotaxes or to soften, by agroenvironmental measures, the productivist logic of our agriculture by attenuating the most flagrant nuisances to which the general public is the most sensitive. The environmental benefit of the application of agro-environmental measures will depend above all on their impact and on the farmers participation. To know the efficiency of the measures would require the use of tools assessing their impact. Concerning the extent of the adoption of the agro-environmental measures by the agricultural world, it is obvions that it will chiefly be determined by their economic attractivity. As yet, it generally seems low. Concerning the enforcement of ecotaxes, it should be progressive, so as not to penalize farmers which have a vert' narrow margin to manoeuvre in changing their crop management sequence. The objective of a sustainable agriculture would require the setting-up, of three action lines, complementary to the particular measures previously mentioned: the setting-up of instruments to measure biodiversity; the establishment of measures for a financial evaluation of the net cost of agroenvironmental measures; the setting-up of coordinated policies for research and other instruments of agricultural policy.
