Description

This involves municipalities paying farmers grants to take over municipal or public duties. These duties may include managing green spaces in towns or villages, maintaining and looking after the road network or drainage systems, providing energy (especially renewable wood energy ), working in municipal forests or on municipal farms. Grants for performing municipal duties strengthen local economic structures and support structural change, revive local economies by incorporating farms into local economic cycles and utilise human and technical resources available on farms - including at quieter times. While farms may secure additional sources of income, the burden on municipalities is reduced. Farmers can also provide labour and machinery jointly (e. g. through machinery rings).

Requirements

• A properly functioning country-wide administration and monitoring system with access to the relevant information and sufficient technical and human capacities for its design, implementation and monitoring
• Clear and coherent political strategy and targets for policy-makers and public authorities
• Clear responsibilities in public authorities
• Close cooperation and knowledge sharing with farmers' organisations
• Ownership and initiative on behalf of the local population
• Regulated and legally protected payment structures
• Respect for cultural landscape and traditions
• Regulatory framework
• Sanction mechanisms
• Technical resources and machinery on the farms involved

Possible Negative Effects

• Lack of transparency in awarding grants and problems with non-performance of contracts
• Reliability of contract performance by contractors could be jeopardised if agricultural work has to take priority due to weather conditions