Where did the marginal land go? Farmers perspectives on marginal land and its implications for adoption of dedicated energy crops

Highlights

• Modelling marginal land as a static category doesn’t reflect farmer understandings.

• Farmers proud of their land, do not consider it marginal enough for energy crops.

• Farmer identified marginal land considered marginal for energy crop cultivation.

• Emerging opportunities for energy crops due to rise in resistant weed species.

• Understand farmer values and on-farm realities to improve policy communication.

Abstract

Dedicated energy crops such as miscanthus and short rotation coppice willow were expected by UK policy and academic modelling to be deployed across large swaths of UK marginal lands in response to farm and market level incentives, delivering on bioenergy policy objectives. Yet, this never materialised. This article examines a previously unanalysed component of this policy failure by comparing and contrasting policy and farmer perspectives on marginal land as a suitable site for energy crops.

Drawing on qualitative interviews with 32 livestock, arable and mixed farmers in England this research suggests that the policy framing of energy crops on marginal land to resolve sustainability controversies, was translated by the farming community into ‘energy crops are for marginal land’. This acted as a multifaceted barrier to dedicated energy crops due to complex interactions between farmers’ personal and cultural values, on-farm practices, technologies, regulations and market developments. Farmers, never considered their land marginal enough, consequently this policy framing invoked considerable resistance. This highlights the importance of embedding understandings of farmers’ cultural values, on-farm practices, technological change, and tensions between different bodies of regulation when articulating new policy initiatives and the way in which policy narratives translate into practical settings.

Introduction

Cultivating dedicated energy crops such as miscanthus and short rotation coppice willow on marginal land has been consistently cited as an attractive means of achieving sustainable bioenergy and lignocellulosic biofuels feedstock production in academic and policy literature in the UK. However, in many instances the expectation that dedicated energy crops would find a willing home on UK marginal lands has remained just that. Expectations put forward in UK policy (DEFRA et al., 2007, HM Government, 2009, DECC et al., 2012) and academic research (Haughton et al., 2009, Lovett et al., 2009, Turley et al., 2010) identified considerable tracts of marginal land in the UK. Furthermore, policy modelling identified price thresholds at which dedicated energy crops were presumed to become highly lucrative for farmers (DEFRA et al., 2007, DECC et al., 2012). While the Energy Crops scheme (2000 – 2013), provided 50% establishment grants to reduce the high up-front establishment costs perceived to be a barrier to cultivation. With these farm level and market incentives in place, alongside expectations of large tracks of suitable land, energy crops were anticipated to undergo rapid expansion in numerous policy documents throughout the early 2000s (Biomass Task Force, 2005, DEFRA et al., 2007, DECC et al., 2012). In practice farmers have not planted significant quantities of miscanthus or SRC willow in the UK. Planted acreage has instead declined since 2009 from an already low base (DEFRA, 2013).

This raises the important question, why, despite a long period of dedicated farm level and market level incentives, alongside explicit policy support for energy crops and bioenergy, did energy crops fail to meet expectations. The limited array of social science research on dedicated energy crop adoption has, to date, primarily focused on on-farm experiences with the crops, and farmer attitudes to this new cropping system. In the process, they have highlighted practical on-farm barriers, economic barriers (Convery et al., 2012, Sherrington et al., 2008, Sherrington and Moran, 2010) and broader industry failures (Adams and Lindegaard, 2016) as underpinning farmer apathy to dedicated energy crops. This small body of literature provides a number of key insights; however, it has not examined an unstudied component for understanding the failure of dedicated energy crops. Farmer perspectives on marginal land, and its implications for their attitudes towards dedicated energy crops.

To answer this empirical question, the paper draws on literature from the sociology of modelling, which has explored, in a variety of contexts, the way in which modelling practices construct an inevitably selective reading of and gaze upon the world (Leach and Scoones, 2013, Morgan, 2009, Kruse, 2012). In particular, aiming to link these insights to a rich body of rural sociology that has focused on farmers values, behaviour, culture and practices (Burton, 2004, Burton et al., 2008, Morris and Potter, 1995) as a means of addressing a knowledge gap regarding farmer attitudes towards the concept of marginal land in the context of understanding (non)adoption of dedicated energy crops in the UK. Following this work, the analysis examines farmer values, practices, and perspectives towards energy crops but shifts focus to place emphasis on examining the disjuncture between marginal land as outlined in policy and academic modelling, and on-farm understandings, opposed to just focusing on the energy crops per se. This is an understudied area of social science research regarding energy crops specifically, and how farmers value land more broadly, and the implications this has for land use and management decisions.

Previous work specifically on marginal land has focused on examining policy assumptions (Shortall, 2013) or has focused on marginal land in the global south. Much of this work has highlighted the implicit value-based assumptions within formal policy land categorisations (Borras and Franco, 2010, Franco et al., 2010). Although adopting different approaches they touch upon the distance between abstract policy categorisations of land and on ground realities. This paper explicitly examines these realities in the context of UK farmers.

Drawing on 32 qualitative seated and farm walk style interviews with arable, mixed and livestock farmers from the North West, Humberside and East Midlands conducted in 2012–2013 the analysis will highlight three key themes. Firstly, that farmers have considerable pride in their land holding which impacts on its use and management. Second, marginal land was deemed marginal by farmers, and thus its uses inflexible. Third, land quality emerges from complex arrangements of on-farm practices, regulations and relationships with other farmers and contractors. The article will examine the implications for energy crops of each of these themes in turn. Finally, this article will examine how these findings are important for future modelling and policy engaging with land management and use.