WT34 – The future of rural areas in China and Europe

In partnership with :

Fondation pour les Générations Futures (FGF) / Foundation for Future Generations (FFG) : www.fgf.be
Faculté des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux : www.fsagx.ac.be
La ville de Gembloux

Workshop Presentation

In economies mainly oriented towards farming, agricultural production involved most of the working population and non-agricultural activities were mostly distributed around the country. In the 18th century and beyond, the industrial revolution benefited from rapid gains in productivity in farming, both in terms of production per hectare and in the number of hectares cultivated by each worker, which released a vast labour force which went into industrial production then, increasingly, into the services, at the price of massive migration from the countryside to the town. Some 100 to 150 years later, China is going down the same path.

In the course of the last 50 years, both farming and fishing have now become largely industrialised, concentrating a growing proportion of production, notably of animal protein, in large industrial agricultural operations or chicken and pig farms. In Europe, many non-agricultural activities also abandoned the countryside to concentrate in the towns. The different levels of productivity in the sphere of farming between the most efficient agriculture and subsistence farming that were perhaps 1 to 10 two centuries ago are probably now closer to 1 to 1000. At the same time, rural areas have become differentiated, between spaces coveted for the expansion of towns and leisure activities or second homes, creating prosperity in rural areas but often making it difficult for farmers and their families to remain there, progressively pushed out by more profitable activities or by more powerful players, while in the hinterland processes of physical and human desertification take place.

Regional development programmes strive to compensate for or reverse this process. For example in the European Union, the Leader programme directs part of the credits formerly given to agricultural production towards policies designed to breathe new life into the countryside, but this programme is marginal in comparison with the credits of the Common Agriculture Policy which continue to benefit intensive farming.

It is only in the last few years that a collective debate has emerged in the European Union on what kind of countryside we want and on the strategies likely to achieve it. On the Chinese side, the concept of harmonious society relates notably to the harmony between the countryside and cities.

What is the future of rural areas in China and in Europe? What countryside do we want? What policies, resources and strategies are needed to achieve it? Relying on which players? These are the questions that will be discussed in the workshop.