Resilience to environmental pressure: the role of agriculture in Wallonia (South of Belgium)

Agriculture is under environmental pressure since its modernization, mainly after the Second World War, which generated the use of large quantities of chemical products as pesticides and fertilizers. However, during the three last décades, the preservation of the quality of the environment progressively became a priority of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and different measures were successively implemented, some of them being compulsory and other ones not, or not yet. This paper focuses on the implementation of agricultural Policy measures at the regional level of Wallonia, the Southern part of Belgium, a founder state of the European Union. Three aspects are presented and analyzed: (1) the greening of the CAP, through the so-called "green payment" and its conséquences (permanent pasture maintenance, crop diversification, and the establishment of ecological focus areas); (2) the development of organic farming; and (3) the increasing number of specific quality labels. The paper argues that, supported by the CAP and the Walloon regional government through financial, research, education, extension, and advertising measures, the Walloon agriculture is farmed on the direction toward a more sustainable model, a more resilient onte to environnemental pressure.