Indicators in the study sites

Table of Contents

1. Compilers and contributors
2. Introduction
3. Climate indicators
4. Water indicators
5. Soil indicators
6. Vegetation indicators
7. Water runoff indicators
8. Forest fires indicators
9. Agriculture indicators
   1. Farm ownership
   2. Farm size
   3. Land fragmentation
   4. Net farm income
   5. Parallel employment
10. Cultivation indicators
11. Animal husbandry indicators
12. Land management indicators
13. Land use indicators
14. Water use indicators
15. Tourism indicators
16. Human characteristics indicators
17. Institutional indicators
18. Conclusions
19. References

Agriculture indicators

Agriculture has greatly contributed to land degradation and desertification in the last decades due to its intensification (increase in fertilizers, using improved varieties, and irrigation) in certain areas, to expansion in hilly natural areas with poor soils, and abandonment when land productivity was low. Mismanagement of the land was stimulated in the previous century by socially and economy based political decisions that increased demographic dynamics leading to the movement of people and their agricultural activities to marginal areas, with poor soils not suitable for agriculture. The fast cultural, social, economic and technologic changes occurred in the decades of 60 and 70 of the last century led to a spectacular increase in crop yields, accompanied by increased rates of land degradation. The area cultivated in many areas of the world has been increased because the population increase and the development of new technologies that have made new areas suitable for farming. Dry farming was expanded in marginal lands while irrigated farming was conducted mainly in the most productive soils, in the lowlands. Human impact on the landscape was increasingly negative through conventional large scale extensive agriculture, generating a situation of degradation of soil properties affecting erosive processes. The main changes in soil characteristics due to the degradation were the decrease in organic matter content, increase in salinity, demotion of soil structure and soil compaction, decrease in water retention capacity and infiltration.

The reasons leading to mismanagement of the land are closely related to social and economic changes in the rural areas. Low prices of dry farming products and competition from other countries resulted in low farmer's income. Farmers then had to adopt different cultivation methods to get public subsidies or change to more profitable crops or to expand agriculture in marginal areas or to abandon the land and migrate in urban areas. These processes have favoured land fragmentation with parcels to be smaller and smaller. Furthermore, mismanagement of the land was related to social characteristics such as farmer age. Older farmers are more negative to change their practices be more aware of the degradation problems in contrast to young farmers who were more easily convinced to new technologies expecting increase of their income. Land abandoned has been a trend by new farmers in which inappropriate management practices were applied since their main purpose was to increase income. Low farmer's income leads to low investment on applying measures for protection. Furthermore, growing economic activities like tourism have attracted labour due to the relatively high wages or having a parallel employment considering their farming activity as a secondary job taking less care of the land than before. The following indicators related to social and economic characteristics of agriculture have been considered in this project: (a) farm ownership, (b) farm size, (d) land fragmentation, (e) net farmer income, and (f) parallel employment.

Table 7. Number of field sites in which the indicators related to agriculture was recorded in the filled questionnaires