The appearance of agriculture An assessment of the quality of landscape of both organic and conventional horticultural farms in West Friesland

“This landscape is offered to you by the local farmers.” In several places throughout the Netherlands and Belgium, billboards with such text can be found along the road. Perhaps the idea to promote farming in this way is new, but, for centuries, farmers, with their techniques and traditions, have strongly influenced the formation and nature of the surrounding landscapes. But what qualities do these landscapes have today? The aim of this study is to assess the (potential) contribution of farming systems to landscape quality. Eight horticultural farms in the region of West-Friesland (NL) were analysed after an intensive observation study during the four seasons of the year. A theory and a method on landscape quality at regional and farm level were developed. The starting point was that the visual quality of a landscape is determined mainly by four types of landscape coherence: vertical, horizontal, seasonal and historical. There are big differences between the landscape appearances of the eight farms, concerning, firstly, spatial aspects, like scale, layout and patterns, and, secondly, temporal aspects, like the expression of seasons. As an instrument to assess the quality of farm appearances, reference images were defined. In general, the organic farms had a better landscape quality than the conventional farms. These results may offer possibilities to farmers, organisations and policy-makers to improve the qualities of the rural area, for example, by supporting landscape-friendly farming practices or by local/regional platform discussions. The criteria used can be placed in the cultural realm of the framework created in the Concerted Action on Sustainable Development of Landscapes (see Stobbelaar and Van Mansvelt, 2000). ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.