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With the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union and increasing pressures from climate change, English arable farming resilience is in a fragile position. Most Brexit impact assessments have focused on quantitative analysis, however here we take a qualitative approach to assess how future trade agreements could impact the resilience of the UK arable farming system. We discuss the main strategies that are currently taken by English arable farmers to improve resilience using evidence from a large‐scale survey in the East of England. Using information from a multi‐stakeholder workshop, we look at arable farming resilience in three forms characteristic of the farming system; namely, robustness, adaptability and transformability and how these relate to and are potentially influenced by three different Brexit trade scenarios. Stakeholders’ recommendations suggest that a ‘hard’ no‐deal scenario will require policies for social protection of farmers in more vulnerable rural areas, while in a ‘softer’ scenario a ‘public money for public goods’ policy could be implemented effectively by learning from previous environmental schemes. Nevertheless, resilience can be enhanced only by addressing structural and policy issues, such as generational renewal, advice and extension, tenancy duration limits and smarter PPP regulations, regardless of what post‐Brexit deal with the EU finally emerges.

International audience; In recent decades, various public policies have targeted agriculture and forestry’s relationship with environmental protection and management. Among environmental policy communities the approach is increasingly framed through the theoretical concepts of ecosystem services (ES) or public goods (PG). Both offer useful perspectives to enhance understanding, but each only partially reflects the complex inter-linkages between productive land management and multiple environmental and social assets (biodiversity, landscapes, water, soil and air quality, rural vitality, culture and heritage), constraining their capacity for effective policy development. The Social-Ecological-Systems framework (SES), considering both natural and socio-economic elements in complex systems and interrogating these joint production relationships, offers added value in this context. The PEGASUS project1 applied an adapted SES framework to identify the potential complementary and synergistic roles of policy, private and community actors in promoting socially beneficial outcomes, strengthening ecosystem services and sustainability. Two case studies illustrate the analytical process and its ability to connect top-down and bottom-up perspectives. This generated an expanded range of options focused on social processes and market development facilitated by an enabling, responsive policy framework. Lessons for governance and practice, as well as international relevance, are briefly considered.

Highlights\ud • Mobilising co-innovation involves a complex interplay between contextual forces and facilitation processes. \ud \ud •This interplay shapes the core co-innovation processes of joint framing, testing of solutions and creating new knowledge. \ud \ud •This interplay between contextual and facilitation processes requires an adaptive approach to research design and management. \ud \ud •An interface space is conceptualised where key CSP roles and processes intersect in co-innovation enactment. \ud \ud •The implications for multi-actor research projects are discussed.

Looking ahead, rural Europe faces significant challenges. Some of these are long-term and will require major adaptation, such as climate change, increasing scarcity of fossil fuels and the ageing indigenous population. Others are medium-term and subject to political uncertainty, such as economic stagnation and unemployment, pressures from in-migration, and constrained public finances. Markets appear likely to continue to encourage conventional farm modernisation and capitalization, but these may increase, rather than resolve, rural problems and tensions. Seen through an ecological lens, conventional patterns of development decrease rural social, environmental and economic resilience, and yet this is becoming increasingly important. New approaches are needed which can work with global and local processes to maintain rural diversity, quality and community: key factors in resilience-building. Interesting tactics may involve increasing local capacity to act, stimulating new local products, services and markets and new forms of pluri-activity. Business profitability and productivity will remain central, but can be realised in a variety of unconventional ways. Some examples and approaches are briefly presented and some general lessons identified for the new Rural Development Policy and Programmes, 2014–2020.

Rural land is a major source of environmental and social services. However, land-use decision makers (including farmers) and society might be unaware or underappreciate, and often under-value these services. Private and local action ensures the provision of these services, and there is evidence of shifting societal norms in relation to expected environmental or social behaviour. Societal demand for the provision of environmental and social services can be represented as a cascading process from awareness, appreciation and value. Private sector actions and market mechanisms emerge to valorise these services, helping to connect people and businesses with targeted policies. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) can help to foster more effective and efficient supply of environmental and social services through market mechanisms.

More environmentally sensitive management of farmland and forestry is needed in Europe in response to increasing public demand and to meet the requirements of EU legislation for example on biodiversity. However, the provision of environmental and social public goods from farmland and forestry is not increasing at the required pace. A step change in approach is required: the opportunity could be provided by the current debate on adopting a more performance focussed model of the Common Agricultural Policy. Current policy mechanisms, including regulation and a range of incentives to individual farmers, meet part of the need but are not sufficient. Detailed analysis of 34 cases across the EU has convinced us that a new approach based on greater engagement with a wider range of key actors through collective actions could have greater ambition. It could aim for greater scale, longevity and coherence of action across a territory or along a supply chain. Building trust and establishing the right form of governance for highly diverse networks and types of cooperation is vital. Commercial actors in the supply chain could play a larger role. Links between flexible and extended forms of policy support, including for new initiatives, multi‐stakeholder partnerships and projects and for facilitators, will be needed.

International audience; The two concepts of public goods and ecosystem services are often used to describe the same welfare benefits potentially generated by agriculture and forestry, but they originate from different perspectives and each offer only partial analysis of these relationships. A more holistic approach – Social‐Ecological Systems (SES) – has been adapted and applied in new research to understand more fully how the relationships can best be characterised, and beneficial change promoted, through policy reforms and practical action. An important and novel part of the description of a SES, as developed under the PEGASUS project, is the assessment of its ‘valorisation cascade’. Through the mapping and consideration of assets, actors, interactions, drivers and the nature of the valorisation cascade in 34 diverse case studies, the project highlighted the importance of multi‐actor approaches and social processes to foster beneficial change. These include collective action, co‐learning and trust between actors, promoting experimentation and innovation, developing public and/or consumer awareness and identifying new valorisation options, including via commercial supply chains and enhanced community involvement.

Scientific research continues to play a significant role in meeting the multiple innovation challenges in agriculture.\ud If this role is to be fulfilled, provision needs to be made for effective translation of research outputs,where translation is understood to be the process whereby science becomes part of useful knowledge for decision making. There is increasing interest in enhancing translation in the European agricultural innovation, research and policy context, and specifically in making it a more collaborative process. This new attention calls for a reorientation of how the concept is understood, theorised and operationalised. This paper considers these needs\ud and specifically asks how can interactive innovation approaches be integrated with science-driven approaches to\ud enhance translation; and how can this help to reveal the constituent translation processes? An interactive stakeholder methodology is described drawing on three agricultural case studies examined in the xx project which\ud aims to make translation of existing bodies of scientific knowledge more effective. Analysis to date shows how\ud this interactive methodology enables a communicative and reciprocal set of translation processes to evolve\ud which comprise: identification, prioritisation, articulation, searching, retrieval, extraction and synthesis, and evaluation of innovation issues and solutions. These insights allow us to move beyond an understanding of translation as science- or innovation-driven to envisaging co-translation, where multiple processes interact in a fluid middle-ground, and where the actors involved develop the capacity to jointly analyse innovation issues and solutions. From the perspective of the EU’s policy ambitions to stimulate collaborative translation, operationalizing translation needs re-thinking with respect to requirements for new mind-sets and skills, and in particular for committed and well-resourced intermediaries who can foster these multi-actors approaches.

Europe's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), its evolving role and financial and political significance have long been hot topics among rural stakeholders. This article analyses a ten-country study examining the nature and key points of discussion concerning the new reform of the CAP, finally agreed in September 2013. The study examined stakeholder views on the Commission's November 2010 Communication, the Impact Assessment and the October 2011 draft legislative proposals for the 2014–2020 period. Case-studies for each country and comparative analysis were used to stimulate discussion at an international policy conference in early 2012. The article updates Erjavec et al.'s analysis of the changing discourse in Brussels, contrasting its move from a neoliberal to a more neo-mercantilist position, with the nuanced, heavily path-dependent attitudes and negotiating stances in the Member States, even when key interest groups express consistent views across national boundaries. In this context, we see why what looked from Brussels like a consensus-oriented package still failed to offer a clear way forward for the Council and Parliament. Taking stock in October 2013, we note the outcome – a potentially greener and slightly more cohesion-sensitive policy, with weaker differentiation between its pillars but much increased national differentiation – and its future implications.

Recent decades have seen the emergence and increasing prominence of a range of public and private sector providers of agricultural information and advice, owing to state transition away from direct provision of agricultural advisory services. In this paper, we evaluate the establishment of trust in agri-environmental agricultural advisory services in England. Qualitative field research was undertaken with farmers, advisors and promoters engaged in four contrasting agri-environmental advisory initiatives. Findings suggest that longevity and expertise in service provision are more important than the public, private or charitable status of specific advisory service in engendering trust. Consistent funding allocated to well-known agencies or their affiliates is thus more likely influence farmer behaviour in the short term than 'contract' advisory projects awarded to novice service providers. Study participants also put their trust in services that were perceived as 'impartial' or actively 'pro-agriculture'. However, we suggest this 'pro-farmer' orientation can negatively impact on environmental outcomes: advisors may be incentivised to provide information on the easiest access to agri-environmental grants, rather than the actions with the most environmental benefit.

Rural areas face increasing pressures to deliver both private and public goods from land management. Multiple stakeholders seek different outcomes and there is substantial heterogeneity in values. Trade-offs, synergies and complementarities exist between different services and alternative bundles of goods. The resulting complex social-ecological systems (SES) therefore require adaptive co-management. In a governance context, no single organisation has oversight across the variety of interests involved, but the challenge remains as to how these interests can best be balanced and negotiated, to deliver socially beneficial outcomes. This paper analyses how this might be achieved by considering the perspective of a ‘social residual claimant’ (SRC). The SRC, as an ideal type, represents the ultimate ‘owner’ or steward of an ecosystem which sets the criteria to assess alternative outcomes, identifying best approaches and addressing uncertainty through adaptive management. A SRC cannot be a static construct, but must interact with and influence private land-holders and other stakeholders, adjusting actions as circumstances change. We identify the criteria that would be required in order for an SRC to act in the best interests of society. We then make a comparison of these criteria against the conditions applying in three contrasting approaches currently operating in the UK: National Parks, Landscape Partnerships and Nature Improvement Areas. This enables us to identify the differences between approaches and to suggest changes that could enhance capabilities, as well as ideas for further research. We suggest that the ideal of an SRC offers a simple method of benchmarking that has potential application across a wider range of different local contexts, beyond the UK.

The paper explored key factors that might lead to successful agri-environmental social learning and collective action in order to deliver landscape-scale resource management within agri-environment schemes. Using the theory of collective action as an analytical framework the paper examined findings from in-depth interviews with 20 members of two co-operative initiatives in Wales and two participatory workshops. Consideration of the theory helped in understanding how individuals come together to provide public goods, and the conditions that make this activity a success. Factors of importance for organising and delivering collective agri-environment schemes were: locally adaptable engagement strategies; working with group members previously known to each other; institutional arrangements that limited group size and which allowed groups to develop their own solutions and implementation rules; and external support offering the services of a local facilitator and funding for both planning and management stages. A clear finding from the research was the extent to which both business and social confidence can grow within such groups which opens up further development opportunities. The paper identifies key factors that could be used to encourage and enhance the success of co-operative groups in delivering landscape-scale agri-environment schemes. The research findings identify appropriate mechanisms for the design and delivery of collective agri-environment schemes and environment management in the UK, which can also be applied to other parts of Europe.

Evaluation is firmly established as part of rural development policymaking in the EU. A requirement to evaluate is set out in the Rural Development Regulation, the legal basis for spending EU funds on agreed aspects of rural development, which also stipulates the process to be used. Member States are responsible for ensuring that independent ex ante, mid-term and ex post evaluations are carried out for each seven-year Rural Development Programme (RDP), but with inputs from the Commission, notably on common evaluation questions to be used in all countries. Such a heavily structured system has both advantages and disadvantages. Consistency of approach enables synthesis of evaluation results at the EU level and provides a degree of quality control. However, it constrains the ability of evaluators to pursue issues which may be of importance locally or to other stakeholders. Technical details, especially the timing of evaluation stages, also diminish the ability to learn from past programmes. Data availability remains an important issue. Nevertheless, our experience is that it is both possible and important to learn from evaluating RDPs, not only to measure their apparent achievements, but also to enhance the quality of the policy process, at all levels.

The development of forward scenarios is a useful method of envisaging the environmental implications of potential changes in land use, as a tool for policy development. In this paper, a spatially explicit case study is used to provide insight into the environmental impacts of Common Agricultural Policy reform on Skylark Alauda arvensis, a species which is widespread on arable farmland, breeds in crops and has declined in recent decades. A generalized linear mixed model was used to estimate Skylark breeding population densities in different crops, using survey data collected from farms in the east of England, supplemented by the literature. Model outputs were then used to predict Skylark densities in an East Anglian Joint Character Area dominated by arable cropping. Predicted densities were mapped at field level using GIS, based on actual cropping derived from Integrated Administration and Control System data collected for the administration of subsidy payments. Three future scenarios were then created, based on expert opinion of potential changes in cropping over the next 5 years, and potential changes in Skylark density mapped on the basis of the predicted changes in cropping patterns. Overall, Skylark densities were predicted to decrease on average by 11–14% under ‘market-led’ (increasing wheat and oilseed rape, reduced set-aside) and ‘energy crop’ (5% area under short rotation coppice) scenarios, but remained virtually unchanged under an ‘environment-led’ (diverse cropping) scenario. The ‘market-led’ scenario is closest to short-term agricultural trajectories, but wider cultivation of biomass energy crops as modelled under the ‘energy crop’ scenario could occur in the medium term if energy policies are favourable. Appropriate mitigation strategies therefore need to be implemented if a continued decline in the Skylark population on lowland arable farmland is to be averted. The results provide a readily accessible visualization of the potential impacts of land-use change for policy-makers; similar techniques could be applied to visualize effects of changes arising through other drivers, including climate change.

Human and social capital play critical roles in rural development, in both the US and Europe. The development of these resources at the individual and community levels is both an ultimate goal of sustainable rural development (RD), and a key means to pursue it. Rural areas face a range of specific issues and challenges for human and social capital. In this article we examine some of these, finding similarity in many issues faced by EU and US rural areas, including the trend toward counter-urbanization in some locations. We also give examples of some apparently useful policy and grass-root approaches in the EU and US used to support farmers and in some cases rural people more generally. We assert that the US lags behind the EU in recognising the value of social capital development, but that it could learn from EU experience in terms of alternative approaches and their successes or failures. Traditionally, policies which promote the enhancement of rural human capital and strengthen social capital in rural areas have failed to attract large-scale RD funding or prominence. They have, however, gained in credibility, and influence within the policy rhetoric, in recent years. We suggest that they deserve a higher profile in RD policies given likely future trends and challenges.

This paper examines English experience with agri-environment schemes as a tool to promote sustainable landscapes. Evidence is drawn from policy and academic literature and selected recent research. Performance is assessed by reference to key notions of sustainable landscapes: spatial coherence, functionality and socio-cultural meaning. Whilst now widespread across England and well-supported by the environmental community, agri-environment schemes suffer from weaknesses in design and delivery including insensitivity to the evolving needs and concerns of farming businesses, the wider policy context, and thereby to the integrity of the landscape. An upland case study illustrates problems of poor communication and advice, narrow and inconsistent delivery, and under-recognition of social issues which together work against more sustainable agricultural landscapes. In the context of emerging EU and global challenges, a shift of emphasis towards systemic approaches, developed territorially in partnership with farmers, is needed. Emerging non-policy innovations and new initiatives may offer lessons for an improved approach.

The article assesses the influence of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) on the pastoral farming systems in a National Park within the south west of England and more recent attempts to use innovative and participatory techniques to reconcile pastoral farming systems with wildlife management. The paper confirms evidence that the economic sustainability of farm businesses in the UK involved in pastoral farming is reducing, and that wildlife-orientated schemes are changing traditional farming systems in a way that might not be in the long-term interest of wildlife. The data gathered raise questions about the cost-effectiveness of the current environmental approaches, which are government-run with centrally determined prescriptions relating to the natural resource and wildlife. Drawing on the concept of co-management, an alternative approach is identified and explored with both farmers and nature conservation regulators. This approach places more emphasis upon adjusting the traditional farming system of this marginal type of farming to align with the sustainable management of a fragile ecosystem.