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Livestock farming systems are major sources of trace gases contributing to emissions of the greenhouse gases (GHG) nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4), i.e. N2O accounts for 10% and CH4 for 30% of the anthropogenic contributions to net global warming. This paper presents scenario assessments of whole-system effects of technologies for reducing GHG emissions from livestock model farms using slurry-based manure management. Changes in housing and storage practice, mechanical separation, and incineration of the solid fraction derived from separation were evaluated in scenarios for Sweden, Denmark, France, and Italy. The results demonstrated that changes in manure management can induce significant changes in CH4 and N2O emissions and carbon sequestration, and that the effect of introducing environmental technologies may vary significantly with livestock farming practice and interact with climatic conditions. Shortening the in-house manure storage time reduced GHG emissions by 0–40%. The largest GHG reductions of 49 to, in one case, 82% were obtained with a combination of slurry separation and incineration, the latter process contributing to a positive GHG balance of the system by substituting fossil fuels. The amount and composition of volatile solids (VS) and nitrogen pools were main drivers in the calculations performed, and requirements to improve the assessment of VS composition and turnover during storage and in the field were identified. Nevertheless, the results clearly showed that GHG emission estimates will be unrealistic, if the assumed manure management or climatic conditions do not properly represent a given country or region. The results also showed that the mitigation potential of specific manure management strategies and technologies varied depending on current management and climatic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last ten years have witnessed a crisis in European agriculture and most farmers have reevaluated their farming strategies. This re-evaluation has taken place within an internal and external farm environment. Traditionally, the key factors within this environment were seen to be economic ones related to the Common Agricultural Policy. In contrast a growing number of research studies have revealed that farm household factors, like age, family lifecycle and family background may be just as important in decision-making. This paper reports on research that examined a number of household factors, which the literature had indicated might be important in distinguishing those French farms that participate in direct selling of farm produce, as an alternative farming strategy. Generally, it was found that background and education were of paramount importance, followed by attitudes to profits, suggesting the need for a less economically dominated approach to examining farm decision-making behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the characteristics of wine growers' syndicates in the French Départements of the Languedoc. These characteristics are distinctive for several reasons: the vine monoculture and the importance of the wine growers in this country but also cultural and political traditions of the Languedoc. Wine growers' syndicates have for long been independent of national agricultural syndicalism. They wanted the state to organize the wine market and defended a regionalist ideology. The European legislation on wine production in 1970 changed the situation. Syndicalism tried to resist and then was forced to change. Today. wine growers choose to improve the quality of their wines and to create groups of producers to sell their products. Beyond change, permanent features are always present and when crisis occurs the traditional discourses re-emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, agro-environmental measures are introducing a social control on agricultural practices in several European countries. Focusing chiefly on the French case, but with cross-national comparisons, this paper analyses the development of ambiguous social concern about environmental degradation linked to farming activities. Several causes are examined: the crisis of the productive agricultural model, renewed urban pressure on countryside uses and overall development of environmental anxieties. The article stresses the fact that farmers are given the ambivalent part of being at the same time damaging and managing the environmental qualities of the countryside. In conclusion, it questions the durability of public support to a policy based on local compromises and leading to greater territorial differentiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 1950's the character of agricultural syndicalism in France was transformed by the arrival of a new generation of militant farmers from the geographically and economically peripheral regions of France. This paper examines the chronology, causes and consequences of this process in one department of France, Aveyron, and argues that an understanding of the social history of agricultural organizations in France is essential to a fuller appreciation of their current role and preoccupations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of the relations between the agricultural sector and its context has been given much attention lately. Although there has been a shift in focus &mdash from explaining the disappearance of the peasant to explaining the consolidation of the family farm — these theories have often tended to be one-directional, treating agricultural forms of production mainly as the outcome of external factors. In this paper, based on data from a wine growing region in Southern France, the interaction of processes at different levels is the focus of attention. Economic, technological anal cultural processes influencing the agricultural production unit are described, as are the internal dynamics of the family holding. Reference is made to Chayanov's micro theory of the peasant economy. By analyzing the interrelation of both external and internal factors it is shown that several types of adaptation can be accounted for within a single theoretical frame. In this way not only the consolidation of the family holding, the overall tendency towards capitalized farming, but also processes of differentiation and marginalization can be explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper discusses the problem of the regions which are being abandoned by agriculture. It deals with conditions in France, and is built on research and studies conducted in various French regions, but the problem, of course, exists in several other countries. Thus two sets of principles and policies oppose each other, "productivist" agriculture, and the "other." This "other" agriculture seems to have been gaining some strength in the past three to five years, as a result of recent events. These changes are the cause of some action against further desertification, as well as in favour of some change in technology, particularly in fertilizers and feeds. But what action there is has appeared to be until now insufficient and inefficient, so that the productivist model continues to gain ground. The line of thought is probably linked with an implicit assumption about technical and social change, that is, the idea that one technological model replaces another. In other words, the greatest part of the literature presents the current dominant model as having replaced a former model.