THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF THE
FRANCE
Magnin L*1
(1) LISIS, University Paris-Est
Marne-la-*Corresponding author: leo.magnin@ens-lyon.fr
Abstract
-2020? To highlight the ethnographic observations of paper work, in-depth sociological interviews, and grey literature. Two main results emerge. First, there is a gap between the policy and its implementation, and, second, most farmers have a negative representation of the CAP. We hypothesize that it is the complexity and argue that it engenders four political consequences: a lack of understanding, the perception of ecology as a way of saving on public spending, the rejection of a policy experienced as authoritarian, and political disaffection. To conclude, our principal recommendation is that in the preparation of the next CAP the technical feasibility of the measures should be an essential point in political negotiations.
Keywords: greening; ecologization; farming policy; qualitative methods; policy implementation
Introduction
How understand the relationships between farmers and agricultural policy? If quantitative methods are useful, they can also be usefully complemented by a qualitative methodology which allows us to reconstruct farmers' subjective representations. In this way, an ethnographic approach (Joly and Weller 2009) shows the chain of concrete actions between the e complexity of the paper work they have to do might perceive policy constraints as very distant from their own agricultural reality. This perception, along with other professional factors such as economic hardship and demographic decline, co-produces farm
aim of this paper is to contribute to this research area by showing that it is the implementation of the new Common Agricultural Policy
2014-it.
Materials and methods
To do so, we mobilize empirical materials obtained since 2015 through an ethnographic inquiry -Alpes region. This long-term study is still on-going and is part of a PhD thesis on the greening of agricultural policy. The anthropological method utilized is based on social immersion, which allows the researcher to go beyond respondents' public discourses and access their private language (De Sardan 2008). In this paper, we analyze three types of materials: ethnographic observations; in-depth sociological interviews; and grey literature. We observed the moment when the farmers filed their CAP forms. In general, they rely on diverse organizations such as the Chamber of Agricultural Agriculture, accountants specialized in agricultural matters, the largest union and the local breeders association. We then observed the state administration's treatment of the forms; we conducted interviews (n=20) with
Puy-de--livestock farmers and we consulted various official texts, from the European regulation to French local administration memorandum.
Results
Two main results emerge. First, there is a gap between policy and its implementation, and, second, most farmers have a negative representation of the CAP 2014-2020. Our hypothesis is
epresentations result from the complexity of its implementation. I- A complex implementation
A) The CAP 2014-2020 principles expressed in European regulation and the French legal framework: the new CAP as a text
In France, the CAP 2014-2020 really came into full effect in 2015. Greening has consisted in modification of first pillar direct payments: the single payment scheme has been replaced by a basic payment, a redistributive payment, and a green payment, each one representing approximately a third of the former single payment in France. The first two payments aim to distribute payments more fairly between farmers. The last one defines new environmental criteria, such as crop diversification, maintenance of permanent grassland, and the declaration of Ecological Focus Areas (EFA). The environmental cross compliance is reinforced by the seventh Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC7). The GAEC7 protects hedges, ponds and copses. It is now forbidden to destroy these topographic elements without t
promotes non-contractual agroforestry because these two measures 1) are not limited to the second pillar, 2) are obligatory, and 3) promote large scale agroforestry practices, recognizing both intra-plot trees and the importance of hedges.
B) A complex French implementation: the new CAP as a digital challenge
How have these CAP modifications been implemented in France? Concretely, an exceptionally precise digital project has been carried out on a massive scale, digitizing ponds, copses, lines of trees, hedges, isolated trees, streams, etc. over half of the entire French area. The purpose of this work has been to identify elements of the EFA and elements protected by the GAEC7. In addition to this digitizing, in France, the implementation of the new CAP coincided with the therefore to pay out 1,078 billion euros. The problem laid with the Land Parcel Identification System (LPIS), that is, a national digital map. This map was considered to be too imprecise: the EU punished the French administration for having attributed payments to non-eligible areas such as roads. Consequently, the French LPIS was completely redone. To do so, a new administrative category was created: non-agricultural areas. These include the EFA, GAEC7, and non-eligible elements (Table 1).
- .
In 2014, the identification of non-agricultural areas was delegated to the National Geographical Institute, which partly subcontracted this task to private companies. In 2015, French territorial administrations had to hire hundreds of temporary workers (Farvaques et al. 2017) to finish the job. In 2016, farmers had to verify and modify non-agricultural areas by themselves. The whole digital treatment took much more time than expected: though the new CAP has been running since 2015, it was still not finished at the end of 2017.
II- Four political consequences (PC) of the implementation of the CAP 2014-2020
The administrative consequence of this delay is simple: if all non-agricultural areas are not mitigate this situation, the state borrowed money to distribute repayable cash advances to the farmers, based on the payments distributed in 2014. De facto, for farmers, as they received in 2015 and 2016 the same payments as in 2014, the CAP 2015-2020 has no economic existence. Therefore, they do not understand the concrete modifications of the new CAP.
ic spending
When we asked about the changes brought by the new CAP (2014-2020), most farmers evoked the non-agricultural areas. Far from being a purely technical point, these areas have been the interface point between farmers and the new CAP. The single c
-refers to two types of areas, one of which is eligible, while the second is non-eligible (table 1). This complexity favored misunderstanding: many farmers then thought that the goal of the change in the CAP was to reduce
cadastral plan is a fixed reference for them that they can compare with the surface area eligible for the CAP payments. Year after year, they notice that their fields are getting smaller and smaller.
-The new CAP promotes an up-down policy system. -The GAEC7 is seen by farmers as an authoritarian mechanism forbidding the removal of hedges without approval. If agricultural red tape may engender resignation (Jacques-Jouvenot 2014) and despondency (Mesnel 2017), it may also engender anger as an outcome. Knowing that hedges are symbols of private property, forbidding their removal is perceived as emblematic of a vertical policy. This reinforces a e (frequently-heard?) sentence of the rule stimulated infringement. Though this phenomenon is hard to quantify, massive hedge up-rooting was the response to hedge protection by the GAEC7.
Saying that the CAP is complicated and must be simplified is an often-heard statement. It is however important to give an example of the lack of transparency of the CAP greening. The software computation of the EFA was only available in 2017, which means that farmers had to file their CAP form without knowing if they had the necessary 5 % of EFA of arable land. During the on-line filing, accountants and technicians were trying to calculate estimations of the EFA. They were measuring hedges and counting trees and applying weighting factors with their manual calculators, but finally they could assert nothing certain. Confronted with this opacity, crops, whose EFA value is easy to compute. Implementation difficulties are not voluntary, neither exceptional because they reveal the high-level demands of the CAP 2014-2020. Digitizing tree after tree may seem incredible for some farmers, who see in these meticulous tasks the evidence that the agricultural administration lives in another world, far removed from the day-to-day reality of their productive work.
Discussion
Negative representations are still more flagrant in difficult times for farmers who cannot live from n a global society. Coupled with severe difficulties in its implementation, the CAP 2014-2020 appears as a supplementary technical burden in a profession that is already deeply mired in economic and social difficulties.
Furthermore, the population studied is mostly composed of crop-livestock farmers living in a forested region, who do not understand why the same rules are applied to grain producers living on the plains and to them. It is now necessary to see if time will mend this attitude. However, if we cannot extend our results to the future, the compensation mechanisms for farmers who have up-rooted hedges may soon be the scene of new CAP rejection, because these farmers will have to pay to plant a new hedge or lose payment.
Our paper is a call to recogn
-exist the new policy measure, but that they are constructed ex post facto by its technical implementation.
Conclusion
To conclude, the principal recommendation derived from our observations is that, in preparing the next CAP, the technical feasibility of the new measures should be included as an essential point in political negotiations. Given that implementation of the CAP generates political consequences, it must not be treated as a purely technical and secondary matter, but rather as
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