The countryside provides a multiplicity of resources: its productive capacity, its landscapes and its wildlife. Few would doubt that the countryside plays a central role in many people's lives, although we may well disagree as to why it seems important or indeed quite what it means. This book is about the physical resources and environmental quality of rural areas. However, it is also about the way in which those qualities are determined, who benefits from them, how they are able to do so, and who misses out.

The dictionary tells us that countryside is a ‘side’ or a part of the country: ‘a tract of country having a kind of natural unity’ (Oxford English Dictionary). However, in practice the idea of the ‘countryside’ is socially constructed. While its definition may indicate assemblages of various plants and animals and topographical features, our appreciation of it embodies particular combinations of these attributes together with its personal, cultural and historical associations. To most of us, the term countryside conjures up ideas of various patterns of agriculture and types of landscape. It also implies something beyond these physical attributes, the human society that lives within it and perhaps is dependent on it, that has moulded the natural resources of an area, its history and its culture. We all have a subjective view of what this entails, perhaps drawing on idealised notions of a rural society or of our heritage. Others may see it in terms of the economic activity located there or in its views or its biodiversity. No single view is correct.

There are several words in this context that would cause us similar problems, such as ‘country’ (Williams, 1973), ‘nature’ (Macnaghten and Urry, 1998), ‘landscape’ (Cosgrove, 1985), ‘rural’ (Hoggart, 1990), or ‘ecosystem’ (Pickett and Cadenasso, 2002). The understandings of these words differ between people and alter through time.

3.1 Introduction

Because the character of the British countryside is essentially determined by the way in which its land and other resources are used, we need to consider the institutional arrangements that govern land management and decision-making. This chapter applies principles from Chapter 2 to examine the institutional arrangements for the ownership and occupation of land and the incentives for the management of the countryside. In later chapters we evaluate the more specific governance issues.

Most of the decisions that directly affect the rural environment are taken by the person or organisation that owns the land. Thus, the way in which the land is controlled and the interests of the landholder are critical to the way in which the countryside is used and developed. In this chapter we first look at the ways in which land is controlled and the rights associated with ownership. We then consider the incentives that private owners have to influence environmental quality. However, in many circumstances, land is held and used under alternative property regimes. Sometimes there is no single ‘owner’ and the land may be held and used by the state, by groups of individuals or by non-profit organisations, or the use of the land is shared between a landlord and tenant.

16.1 Introduction

If we think of property as an entitlement to a benefit stream, there is a sense in which we all have some proprietorial interest in the countryside. Even if we do not own land ourselves, we each hold rights of access and we have expectations in terms of our capacity to enjoy landscape, wildlife and living space and to benefit from marketed products, increasingly characterised in terms of ecosystem services. At the same time, landowners hold rights to use their land for their own purposes, free from unreasonable interference. As individual aspirations and social priorities, circumstances and the distribution of power and influence change, rights, duties and incentives are reformed and recast to reflect new situations. There is thus a constant flux along margins of interaction between conflicting aims and interests. As a result, the very nature of property itself is modified over time.

16.2 The shifting dimensions of governance

Governance is the process whereby these aspirations and divergent interests are resolved into rules, incentives and norms that determine outcomes on the ground. There is no single or correct model of governance, but rather a permanently shifting contest between different stakeholders to coordinate their actions and influence the character of the benefit streams that arise from the countryside and to gain access to them. Demands to change the outcomes from this process are pursued at multiple levels constantly and simultaneously: to achieve a legislative body that implements rules sympathetic to particular interests, to influence a government department to approach an issue in a particular way, or to persuade those on the ground to take or not take particular actions. These contests are played out in respect of many different issues, whether it is the public right of access to open land, the ownership of forests, the development of greenfield land for housing or the introduction of fracking. Sometimes new benefit streams emerge or old ones disappear, and the debates surrounding them become distorted or conflated with other issues. Take for example the issue of the control of bovine TB through badger culling.

10.1 Introduction

Urbanisation and enclosure separated much of the population from their traditional access to rural areas, but at the same time, informal outdoor recreation away from concentrated settlements and urban pollution has an increased importance for both physical health and spiritual renewal (Gray, 2010). As noted in Chapter 1, we make vast numbers of visits to the countryside, some 1.4 billion visits in England between August 2011 and July 2012. Walking in the countryside is a regular activity for many. The majority of visits involve walks within a short distance of where we live and hence rely on our being able to get out into the countryside or open space within urban areas that are closest to our homes. At the same time, access to areas of the highest landscape value is important too. We noted the annual number of day visits to the National Parks in Chapter 8; over 23 million to the Lake District and 10 million to the Peak District. Such areas rely substantially on the expenditure associated with recreation and tourism that supports a significant proportion of total economic activity and incomes across rural areas.

2013 is one of the most significant years in our agricultural and national history. When India became independent in 1947, we were suffering from acute food shortage, leading to the introduction of food rationing. Later, we started depending on imported food, largely under the PL480 programme of the United States, although our population was only a little over 300 million at that time. In 1966, the year in which Indira Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India, India had to import nearly 10 million tonnes of foodgrains to ward off famine. Mrs Gandhi was worried about India's dependence on imported food for feeding its population, a majority of whom were women and men farmers and farm labourers. Also, she was convinced that an independent foreign policy could be built only on a foundation of food security based on home-grown food. This led to her determination to achieve food self-sufficiency as soon as possible, and also to always maintain substantial grain reserves.

The relationship between self-reliance in food and national sovereignty became evident when several important decisions became possible only because we had built up sufficient foodgrain reserves to meet our needs. Thus, India's assistance to Bangladesh in its liberation struggle in 1971, our help to Vietnam to avoid famine following the unification of the country in 1975, as well as our ability to conduct nuclear implosion tests at Pokhran in 1974 were all possible only because we had become food self-reliant in the early 1970s.

Agriculture is a powerful instrument for national integration. The wheat and rice produced by the Punjab farmers help feed many other parts of the country. Farmers everywhere have a common need, namely, opportunity for assured and remunerative marketing. They are willing to share their knowledge and expertise freely without the thought of intellectual property rights. We should recognize the pivotal role of farmers and farming in fostering the culture of integration.

India has a long heritage of secularism and mutual respect for people in its different regions, a heritage which, unfortunately, is now under threat. In 1998, while awarding me an Honorary Doctorate of the University of Jerusalem, the President of the University told the audience: ‘Professor Swaminathan comes from a country which is the only one which has never persecuted Jews during the 2000 years of our history.’ I felt very proud when I heard these remarks.

There is widespread persistence of under- and malnutrition in the world, particularly in the developing countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. India is unlikely to achieve the modest UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) number 1, namely, reducing hunger and poverty by half by 2015. Nearly a billion children, women and men go to bed now partially hungry. Even in countries like ours, where as early as 40 years ago an ICDS was introduced to deliver nutrition, healthcare and education in an integrated manner to children below five years of age, a recent survey reveals that in the 100 districts studied, 42 per cent of children under five are underweight and 59 per cent are stunted. The Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh, referred to this situation as a ‘national shame’.

It is clear that a business-as-usual approach will not help remedy this unacceptable situation. Farmers constitute the majority of the population in most developing countries and most of them operate small holdings, 1 to 2 ha in size. Malnutrition among such producer-consumers is an important cause for a large proportion of the population also remaining malnourished. This is why the movement for spreading nutrition-sensitive agriculture assumes significance and urgency. We should make this movement environmentally, economically and socially sustainable and implementable.

Agriculture is a profession based on crop and animal husbandry, forestry and agro-forestry, capture and culture fisheries and agro-processing, practised either separately or in combination in the form of integrated farming systems, such as crop-livestock, crop-fish, crop-livestock-fish, tree species and annual crops (agro-forestry) and a wide range of on-farm and off-farm occupations. In most developing countries, agriculture is both a way of life and the principal means to livelihood. Unlike in industrialized countries, it is not just a commodity producing enterprise, but is also the backbone of the livelihood security system of a high proportion of the population. This is true for a majority of developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America. Small-scale family farming is generally the rule in developing countries, while farming usually takes the form of large agri-business enterprises in industrialized countries. In developed nations, only 2 to 3 per cent of the population is classified as farmers, in contrast to 50 to 70 per cent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

In recent years, particularly after the very steep escalation in the cost of fossil fuels in 2008, there is a debate about the potential impact of bio-fuels on food security. How can India develop policies for making efforts in the areas of food and energy security mutually reinforcing and not antagonistic? Food versus fuel is not an option, since we need both.

World bio-fuel production increased from about 20 billion litres/year in 2001 to over 100 billion litres/year in 2011. The steepest rise in bio-fuel production occurred in 2007–08 when a sharp rise in food commodity prices occurred. In the evolution of bio-fuels, the first few efforts were in the field of utilizing crop plants. For example, Brazil started a large programme with sugarcane as the feedstock. Public policies like investment subsidies, mandatory installment of ethanol pumps, and taxation of gasoline led to bio-fuel production reaching 12 billion litres/year within a decade. Similarly in the US, ethanol production grew substantially following the enactment of the Energy Tax Act of 1978. Maize-producing states like Iowa started diverting a high proportion of maize for ethanol production. In the European Union also, public policies stimulated the production of biodiesel. The second generation bio-fuels are largely from agricultural crop residues and biomass utilization. Rice straw and other crop biomass are being increasingly used for ethanol production. Jatrophacurcas became the preferred non-edible oil crop for biodiesel manufacture. The third generation bio-fuels will come from microorganisms and from genetically-engineered bacteria. Thus, bio-fuels are providing important new opportunities for scientific research and for income and employment generation.

The future of biofuels will depend upon the development of new technologies. At present ethanol production is largely from sugar-beet, maize, sugarcane and cassava. Biodiesel production is from rapeseed, soybean, palm and jatropha, while bio-methane production is from anaerobic digestion, mainly in maize. The Government of India announced a National Policy for Biofuels in 2009. Under this policy, the target of 20 per cent for all bio-fuels was set for 2017. Progress in achieving the goals of this policy has been slow largely because there were exaggerated expectations from jatropha.

On 12 August 2012, the closing day of the London Olympics, a largely unnoticed and unsung event took place. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, launched on that day, along with the Vice President of Brazil, Michel Temer, and double Olympic gold medal winner, Mo Farah, a programme designed to rescue 25 million children from malnutrition-induced stunting between now and 2016, when the next Olympics will take place at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. This is of particular interest to India, since according to the National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS-3; 2005–06), 43.1 per cent of girls and 41.9 per cent of boys under the age of five in India are underweight. Such widespread prevalence of malnutrition was described by India's Prime Minister as ‘a national shame’. It is now fashionable to add the term ‘inclusive’ before growth. Maternal and foetal under-nutrition and malnutrition lead to children being born with LBW. Such children are denied even at birth, an opportunity to fully express their innate genetic potential for physical and mental development. This is the cruelest form of exclusion in a development paradigm dedicated to the cause of social, gender and economic equity.

The Olympic hunger event led to the announcement of three new initiatives by the UK Department of International Development (DFID). These initiatives include mobilizing science and innovation for marrying agriculture and nutrition, involving the private sector food industry, and enhancing government accountability in the area of timely response to the needs of ‘nutrition hotspot’ areas. The emphasis at the London meeting was on promoting partnership among government, business, NGOs and the media for overcoming widespread endemic and hidden hunger (caused by the deficiency in the diet of micronutrients like iron, zinc, vitamin A, vitamin B12, folic acid and essential amino acids like lysine in protein). It was agreed that the first 1,000 days in a child's life, that is, from conception to the end of two years, need particular attention to prevent the child from facing several disabilities in later life, such as impaired cognitive ability. Our country is in danger of facing intellectual dwarfism if we do not combat maternal and foetal malnutrition.

Globally, overcoming hunger and malnutrition is now getting increasing political, public, professional and media attention.

Recently there has been controversy about the steps needed to save the Western Ghats ecosystem from further damage caused by development programmes. Both the greed of the rich and the needs of the poor are leading to soil and genetic erosion and to the disruption of hydrological cycles. Consequently, ecological and livelihood security are under threat. Human–wildlife conflicts are also growing in all parts of the country, with even peacocks being considered by farmers as threats to crop production in the Delhi area. India's population is likely to reach a level of 1.5 billion in another 20 to 25 years. How can we make development and ecological security mutually reinforcing and not antagonistic?

Delivering a lecture on ‘Agriculture in Spaceship Earth’ way back in 1973, I referred to the need for a ‘Do Ecology’ approach in our country to environment protection. I quote what I then said:

What we need is a culture of ‘Do Ecology’, i.e., meeting the needs of the current and future generations without ecological harm.

2013 marks the seventeith anniversary of the Bengal Famine, which resulted in the death of an estimated 1.5 to 3 million children, women and men during 1942–43. A plethora of factors led to this mega tragedy: the Japanese occupation of Burma, the damage to the aman (kharif) rice crop both due to tidal waves and a disease epidemic caused by the fungus helminthosporiumoryzae, panic purchase and hoarding by the rich, failure of governance particularly in relation to the equitable distribution of the available food-grains, disruption of communication due to World War II, and the indifference of the then United Kingdom (UK) Government to the plight of the starving people of undivided Bengal.

Famines were frequent in colonial India and some estimates indicate that 30 to 40 million died out of starvation in Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Bengal during the latter half of the nineteenth century. This led to the formulation of elaborate famine codes by the colonial government, indicating the relief measures that should be put in place when crops failed.

The Bengal Famine attracted much attention both among the media and the public, since it occurred soon after Mahatma Gandhi's ‘Quit India’ call to the British in 1942. Agricultural stagnation and famines were regarded among the major adverse consequences of colonial rule. I wish to narrate the impact of the twin developments, namely, the Bengal Famine on the one hand, and the ‘Quit India’ movement on the other, on the minds of students like me. I was studying at the University College, Thiruvananthapuram during 1940–44, when gruesome pictures of starving children, women and men in the streets of Calcutta (now Kolkata) and in the other parts of Bengal appeared in The Hindu, The Statesman and other newspapers. The goal of my university education was to get into a medical college and equip myself to run a hospital in Kumbakonam left behind by my father, M. K. Sambasivan, who had died at a young age in 1936.

Unlike today, when students have to search hard for role models, those of my time had many leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose who were worshipped. A few of my college mates and I used to meet to discuss the role we can play when the British quit India. During my BSc biology course, I fell in love with the science of genetics.

In all areas of human endeavour, the past, present and future constitute a continuum. The past history of biodiversity conservation teaches many lessons. First of all, about 10,000 years ago, men went out hunting for food, women started gathering seeds and cultivating crops. This was the origin of agriculture or settled cultivation. The evolution of agriculture was based on selection from naturally-occurring genetic variability. Thus, there is a strong relationship between cultural, culinary and curative diversity and agro-biodiversity.

The 2009 bicentenary celebration of Charles Darwin's life and work reminded us that the great biodiversity on Earth underlies natural selection, selective breeding, and the biotechnology required to provide humanity with food, fibre, fodder and fuels. In particular, biodiversity affords the development of plant varieties with novel genetic combinations, which will be required to meet the challenges arising from adverse alterations in temperature, precipitation, sea level, and the frequency of drought and floods – all of which are anticipated from human-induced climate change. The loss of each gene and species, therefore, limits the options for the future.

It has been an act of foresight on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of UN, to initiate a programme for recognizing globally important agricultural heritage systems (GIAHS). These have been defined by FAO as: ‘remarkable land-use systems and landscapes which are rich in globally significant biological diversity evolving from the co-adaptation of a community with its environment and its needs and aspirations for sustainable development.’

The selection of GIAHS sites is done by a high level panel of scientists headed by Professor Li Wenhua of China. The Satoyama and Satoumi area of the Noto peninsula of Japan is the first GIAHS-recognized site. The Satoyama-Satoumi system is a beautiful example of ‘agri-culture’, which creates wisdom and life in a sustainable environment and passes on blessings and happiness from present to future generations. So far, 19 agricultural heritage systems have been recognized in 14 countries. In India, two systems, namely, the tribal agro-biodiversity-based sustainable agricultural system of Koraput in Odisha and the Kuttanad below sea level farming system of Kerala have been denoted as globally important agricultural heritage systems.

These two GIAHS sites serve as inspiring examples of human innovation and creativity in the field of agriculture and food security.

The Indian Food Security Act represents the largest social protection measure against endemic hunger ever undertaken in human history. India has graduated from a ‘ship-to-mouth’ existence to a situation where right to food is being implemented with home-grown food. The other rights conferred over the past 10 years relate to information, education, work and ownership of land for tribal families and forest dwellers. These rights can be implemented through administrative actions and with the help of files. The right to food, however, falls under another category. It can be sustained only with the help of over 700 million farm men and women. To successfully implement the right to food, India has to turn its attention from files to farms.

The factors that have the greatest influence on a farmer's well-being are the monsoon and the market.

Market volatility is closely related to the excess or deficiency of rainfall. Going by past experience, drought in most parts of the country and floods in Assam are usual meteorological events of public and political concern during the month of July. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) classifies monsoon behaviour into five categories:

1. • deficient: less than 90 per cent (of long period average);

2. • below normal: 90–96 per cent;

3. • near normal: 96–104 per cent;

4. • above normal: 104–110 per cent; and

5. • excess: above 110 per cent.

Phenomena related to global warming and climate change are making accurate weather predictions difficult. Extreme weather events like drought and floods are becoming more unpredictable and also more frequent. The IMD has gained the capacity and equipment needed for making long-, medium- and short-term weather forecasts. IMD, in partnership with the state agriculture departments as well as fertilizer companies like Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO), is making local-level weather forecasts available to farmers. Advances in information communication technology have made it possible to send farm and fisher families short message service (SMS) messages on the likely weather behaviour in the short term. India's capacity to render timely and reliable advice to farmers on crop-weather relationship has increased enormously. Today, the Agromet Advisory Services cover the whole country. Crop weather watch groups provide timely advice to farmers on how to manage crops, both in rainfall-scarcity and rainfall-surplus conditions.

2010 was declared the International Year of Biodiversity by the United Nations General Assembly. For long, in situ conservation of biodiversity through national parks, biosphere reserves, heritage sites and other forms of protected areas, as well as ex situ preservation through botanical and zoological gardens and cryogenic gene banks have received considerable attention.

Such forms of conservation as well as monitoring through Red Data Books (documents established for recording rare and endangered species of animals, plants and fungi as well as some local sub-species that exist within the territory of the state or country) have mostly been undertaken by professionals and publicly-funded organizations. The significant contributions to biodiversity conservation and enhancement by tribal and rural women and men have, however, remained largely unrecognized and unsung. Community conservation methods range from in situ on-farm conservation to ex situ preservation through sacred groves and home gardens.

Community conservation is largely responsible for the existence of numerous landraces in crop plants, as for example, for over 125,000 strains of rice in the world. Fortunately, both the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted at the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and the FAO Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food Security (2001) recognize the role of farmers and rural communities in the field of biodiversity conservation and their enrichment through natural and human selection.

The Aichi Biodiversity targets are 20 ambitious goals that make up part of the CBD's Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011– 20, adopted in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010. The targets provide a framework for action by all stakeholders – including cities – to save biodiversity and enhance its benefits for people. Two of the targets are of great interest in our context.

1. • By 2020, the traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and their customary use of biological resources, are respected, subject to national legislation and relevant international obligations, and fully integrated and reflected in the implementation of the Convention with the full and effective participation of indigenous and local communities, at all relevant levels.

2. • By 2020, knowledge, the science base and technologies related to biodiversity, its values, functioning, status and trends, and the consequences of its loss, are improved, widely shared and transferred, and applied.

India is going through a serious agrarian crisis. Grains are rotting while children are starving. Food inflation has once again emphasized the need for building a food and nutrition security system based largely on home-grown food, particularly in the field of pulses and oilseeds. The next National Family Health Survey may reveal an increase in malnutrition among children and women due to the steep escalation in the price of protein-rich foods like pulses. Agricultural growth is slow and the contribution of agriculture to GDP has come down. Rural poverty and agrarian distress are thus increasing.

There are at least five major groups of factors leading to rural and agricultural distress. First, the ecological foundations essential for sustainable advances in the productivity and profitability of major farming systems like soil, water, biodiversity and climate are weakening. The water table is going down and water quality is also poor in many places. The funds allotted for conservation farming and climate-resilient agriculture in the heartland of the Green Revolution – Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh – have been grossly inadequate but a beginning can be made in fostering ecologically sound farm practices.

The second area of concern is the prevailing adverse cost-risk-return structure of farming. It is obvious that if farm ecology and economics go wrong, nothing else will go right in agriculture. The adverse economics is due to the escalation in the cost of inputs on one hand, and a steady decline in factor productivity on the other. Soil organic carbon content is also low and hence building soil carbon banks through fertilizer trees is an urgent necessity, if India is to derive full benefit from nutrient-based subsidies.

The third area of concern relates to technology. There is a growing mismatch between production and post-harvest technologies. Hence, there is not only inadequate value addition to the primary produce, but also huge post-harvest losses. Storage facilities are poor, and government agencies will have to find methods of storing the food-grains being purchased. We need a bold initiative like the Golden Quadrilateral of Atal Behari Vajpayee in case of roads, for organizing a national grid of modern grain storages.

The fourth area relates to small farm management. A suitable farm management revolution is essential for bridging the gap between potential and actual yields in most cropping systems.