Effects and conflicts of community agrarian landscape protection measures among farmers and kurgans in Békés county

Rákóczi, Attila — Barczi, Attila

Keywords: national value, cross-compliance, conflict of landscape protection, rural sociology

Cumanian mounds are landscape elements of overriding importance, a great number of which are located in Hungary, mainly in the Great Hungarian Plain. The oldest mounds may even be 6,000 years old. These man-made mounds are valuable - among other reasons -because of their archaeological, cultural, historical, botanical, landscape and pedological significance. They have decreased significantly in number in recent decades since they became part of cultivated areas. There have been several unsuccessful attempts to protect them by bringing them under regulation. There was a significant alteration in the Common Agricultural Policy and in the European Union (EU) regulations for agriculture and as a result of this in the Hungarian regulations too, because the kurgans were declared protected by law in 2010 (Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition) in accordance with cross-compliance requirements. However, owing to an EU agrarian regulation, Cumanian mounds were designated as protected landscape elements which became the condition of payment of direct support. In our research we focus on the impacts of the regulation through field studies performed in Békés County, which makes it possible to assess the changes in the state of the mounds.
The article presents the history of the mounds and the reasons for their destruction, it mentions the regulation of their preservation as well as its effects, and it searches for compromise solutions to resolve landscape protection tensions. The new regulation has created conflicts in the triangle formed by small-holders, kurgans and regulations. For the detection of this tension and for the possibilities of a solution we conducted an empirical study, a sociological survey using a deep-interview method among Békés-County small-holders as well as experts on the subject. The respondents were selected according to predetermined viewpoints. From the results it is evident that the cultivation and destruction of the mounds is not the consequence of conscious activity, it can rather be attributed to the lack of knowledge and to ignorance. Having considered our results, we would recommend the rethinking of the range of mounds taken under the effect of the regulation, as well as the allocation of a minimal amount of extra subsidies, and to the authorities the establishment of contact with small-holders and their close cooperation in the interest of saving the mounds.

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