ABSTRACT

Urbanization leads to a continuous loss of agricultural land, both directly under the form of land take, and indirectly through the use of agricultural land for non-productive rural activities like recreation, horse keeping or hobby farming. These urbanization processes put pressure on farmers, making farming activities harder through reduced agricultural land, negative externalities and the competition for land. To estimate possible future changes, an agricultural agent-based model was combined with spatially explicit urbanization scenarios and with different agricultural subsidizing policies for the case study of Belgium. As a result of an aging farming population and low succession rates, simulations until 2035 showed a continuous decline of farmers in all scenarios; a trend that will continue for as long as not every farmer that quits his activities is replaced. The results also showed that these declines are expected to be higher in the rural-urban fringe.

摘要

城市化导致农业用地的持续流失，既直接以土地占用的形式出现，也间接通过将农业用地用于非生产性农村活动，如休闲，养马或业余耕种。这些城市化进程给农民带来了压力，通过减少农业用地，负面的外部性和土地竞争，使农业活动更加困难。为了估算未来可能发生的变化，在比利时的案例研究中，将基于农业代理的模型与空间明确的城市化方案以及不同的农业补贴政策相结合。由于农业人口的老龄化和低继承率，直到2035年的模拟表明，在所有情况下农民都持续减少。这种趋势将持续下去，直到不是所有退出活动的农民都被取代。结果还表明，在城乡边缘地区，这些下降预计会更大。