Browsing by Author "Graaff, Jan de"
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- SPINSMEDE: a transnational taining experience on soil protectionPublication . Figueiredo, Tomás de; Graaff, Jan de; Evelpidou, Niki; Martínez-Casasnovas, José António; Merino, AgustínSPinSMEDE, acronym of Soil Protection in Sloping Mediterranean Agri- Environments, an Erasmus Intensive Programme, funded by the EC Lifelong Learning Programme, was designed and implemented following the policy context of the Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection in Europe. This document announced expectable demand for technical competences to meet increased requirements on the issue, most needed to cope with the specific soil degradation problems of Mediterranean hill-slopes. SPinSMEDE took place during three years (2008-2010), in three different places (Portugal, Greece and Spain), involving students and lecturers from five Universities. The presentation aims at reporting this transnational training experience on soil protection. The design, implementation and evaluation phases are described, outlining the main background elements, methodological approaches and outcomes of each phase. Namely, context-driven justification of the project, a description of the partnership and programme contents are included in the design phase. Programme implementation is addressed in terms of students profile, activities performed, assessment requirements, support material provided, and project deliverables. After describing the programme evaluation procedures developed and applied, the discussion focus on SPinSMEDE success, drawbacks, and problems arose and ways adopted to cope with them. Final remarks state main lessons learned and and programme follow-up activities envisaged.
- SPINSMEDE: first presentation of a transnational training experience on soil protectionPublication . Figueiredo, Tomás de; Graaff, Jan de; Evelpidou, Niki; Martínez-Casasnovas, José António; Merino, AgustínSPinSMEDE, acronym of Soil Protection in Sloping Mediterranean Agri-Environments, an Erasmus Intensive Programme, funded by the EC Lifelong Learning Programme, was designed and implemented following the policy context of the Thematic Strategy for Soil Protection in Europe. This document announced expectable demand for technical competences to meet increased requirements on the issue, most needed to cope with the specific soil degradation problems of Mediterranean hill-slopes. SPinSMEDE took place during three years (2008-2010), in three different places (Portugal, Greece and Spain), involving students and lecturers from five Universities. The presentation aims at reporting, at a preliminary stage of data exploration, this transnational training experience on soil protection. The design, implementation and evaluation phases are described, outlining the main background elements, methodological approaches and outcomes of each phase. Namely, context-driven justification of the project, a description of the partnership and programme contents are included in the design phase. Programme implementation is addressed in terms of students profile, activities performed, assessment requirements, support material provided, and project deliverables. After describing the programme evaluation procedures developed and applied, the discussion focuses on SPinSMEDE success, drawbacks, and problems arose and ways adopted to cope with them. Final remarks state main lessons learned and and programme follow-up activities envisaged.
- The future of olive groves on sloping land and ex-ante assessment of cross compliance for erosion controlPublication . Graaff, Jan de; Duarte, Filomena; Fleskens, Luuk; Figueiredo, Tomás deUnder the past Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) olive oil subsidy regime, farmers were eligible for subsidies on the basis of the amount of olive oil they produced. This led to an intensification of production, particularly on flat land, and had inmost cases negative environmental effects, such as more soil erosion on sloping land and more pollution. With the decoupling of agricultural support under the newly established rules of the CAP, formalised in 2005, cross compliance measures have become obligatory. In this paper an ex-ante assessment is made of the application of cross compliance for soil erosion control (natural cover crops and terrace maintenance) in hilly and mountainous olive groves in Tr ´ as-os- Montes in Portugal. A linear programming model was developed to assess the various socio-economic and environmental effects of four different development scenarios for olive groves. The scenarios were developed on the basis of changing market prices, wage rates and subsidies; their effects included shifts towards intensification, abandonment and organic farming. Simulations considering a minimum return to labour constraint showed very high levels of abandonment, particularly in combination with cross compliance obligations. However, even without this minimum return to labour constraint, abandonment would reach more than 20% in three out of the four scenarios. The model showed that cross compliance obligations could be quite effective in reducing erosion, but that theywould depress income in all scenarios as a result of higher abandonment and lower percentage shifts towards intensive systems.