Research on the Geography of Agricultural Change: Redundant or Revitalized?

Future research directions for agricultural geography were the subject of debate in Area in the late 1980s. The subsequent application of political economy ideas undoubtedly revived interest in agricultural research. This paper argues that agricultural geography contains greater diversity than the dominant political economy discourse would suggest. It reviews ‘other’ areas of agricultural research on policy, post-productivism, people, culture and animals, presenting future suggestions for research. They should ensure that agricultural research continues revitalized rather than redundant into the next millennium

POSTPRODUCTIVISM AND RURAL LAND VALUES

There are a multitude of interdisciplinary values that people derive from rural land. Productivism focuses on the commodity values of rural land, such as the use of land as a commercial input into agricultural production, timber harvesting and mineral extraction. Productivistic uses and values of rural land have been the traditional focus of rural land policy and management in the United States. Many rural areas in the United States are moving into a postproductivism era. Postproductivism focuses on both commodity and amenity values of rural land. Amenity values of rural land include recreational, aesthetic and ecological service values. When a rural area moves from productivism to postproductivism, value conflicts may arise between individuals and groups who have different preferences with respect to commodity and amenity values. Traditional rural institutions may not be set up to effectively handle such conflicts. There is a need to explore what types of institutions may be most effective in resolving rural land use problems related to the different and often competing values people place on rural land and landscapes.postproductivism, rural land values and preferences, commodity values, amenity values, Land Economics/Use,

The Role of Knowledge in Constructing the Quality of Olive Oil in Spain

The sustainability of a large proportion of Spanish olive oil-producing territories depends to a great extent on their capacity to fit into a specific model of food quality. The strategies used in the di erent territories di er with respect to their adherence to the objectifiable conception of quality, based on scientific-technical knowledge, or subjectivating conception of quality, based on tacit and practical knowledge. In this paper, we analyse the route taken by two territories with olive oil protected designation of origin (PDO) status in Spain to construct their quality model, the type of knowledge that has been applied and how knowledge processes a ect the construction of sustainable quality models. This study applies a qualitative methodology based on participative observation and semi-structured interviews with key actors of the territories. The results indicate that processes of production, reproduction and dissemination of knowledge are basic pillars for the construction of sustainable quality projects. The degree of understanding of the objectifiable and subjectivating conception of quality in olive-producing territories and the interaction between them depend on the specific characteristics of the territory, the objectives set in connection to the olive oil quality method, the importance given to the di erent types of knowledge, and its standing on the issue of territorial sustainabilit

The political economy of a productivist agriculture: New Zealand dairy discourses

The New Zealand dairy industry faces political and commercial pressure to improve its environmental performance on the one hand while maintaining economic efficiency and commercial competitiveness in a global marketplace on the other. The growing scale and intensity of dairy production have caused significant cumulative environmental impacts. Productivist constructions of environmental improvement by the industry are an example of ecological modernisation by a large international agri-food organisation in the face of global trade competition and domestic political pressures. This paper explores the productivist constructions of environmental management by the New Zealand dairy industry in the context of global economic competition and notes an alternative response inspired by an ethic of sustainability. It suggests that despite global pressures of economic competition it is possible to incorporate non-material values into farm management provided these are recognised and rewarded

Rencontres intellectuelles et changement social: Henri La Fontaine et la Belle Époque

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Productivist and post-productivist conceptualizations of agriculture from a New Zealand perspective

This paper considers productivist/post-productivist conceptualisations of agriculture in the light of changing New Zealand attitudes toward protection of indigenous vegetation and wildlife. It will show how the attitude of farmers toward native habitat and wildlife mirror changes in the wider New Zealand society. It will suggest that post-productivist elements vary from one part of the world to another, and thereby reflect not so much change within agriculture, or even change within rural society, but changing relationships between the wider society (of which agriculture is always a part), and the environment

Conceptualizing Multifunctional Agriculture from a Global Perspective

The notion of multifunctional agriculture has been actively researched from diverse disciplines including economics, ecology, sociology, and geography since emerged out of the Uruguay Round in the 1990s. In particular, the economics approach represents an attempt to tailor the concept of multifunctional agriculture to market-oriented WTO trade regime. The economics approach has been fundamentally troubled by the lack of concord among WTO member countries on the question of what constitutes multifunctional agriculture. Upon examining how differently the notion of multifunctional agriculture is perceived across the US, the EU, the Cairns group, the LDCs, and the developed food-importing countries (the G10), this article theorizes that multifunctional agriculture connotes different contents in different countries/regions that are determined by their particular agricultural problems, which are in turn shaped by the cultural, ecological and economic characteristics unique to each country. The theorizing undertakes to overcome the Euro-centrism that has dictated the discourse of multifunctional agriculture since the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). This article fills an important gap in the literature of social sciences concerning the concept of multifunctional agriculture by explicitly recognizing the wide diversity of contemporary agricultural problems across countries.multifunctional agriculture, global governance of agriculture, WTO, agricultural trade, International Development, International Relations/Trade,

The Evolution of the Common Agricultural Policy and Social Differentiation in Rural Ireland

This paper investigates the contribution of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to the process of social differentiation in contemporary rural Ireland. It traces the evolution of the CAP from its inception in 1962, and evaluates the social implications of two rounds of CAP reform and the recent introduction of agri-environmental schemes. It is argued that the underlying productivist rationale of the CAP has exacerbated the marginalisation of smaller farmers, especially in marginal areas. The recent introduction of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) has cast these farmers in the role of environmental managers, while productivist agriculture continues unabated in other regions of the country.

Strengthening the positive links between organic farming and a sustainable development of rural areas

Organic farming can play a major role in the sustainable development of rural areas. Our assumption is that it supports the finding of a new balance between societal demands for high environmental quality, the pressures resulting from competition in a world market economy and a wide array of rural development goals and initiatives. The German 'Regional Action - Rural Areas Shaping the Future' pilot programme has been implemented in order to gain best-practice models for securing the economic, ecological and social viability of rural areas and for trial-testing a new integrated, bottom-up approach. In this contribution we present the results of an analysis of the project databank of the Regional Action pilot programme. It is concluded that the projects that are being implemented aim at a reconstitution of nature-society relations, indicating that agriculture and the potential of rural areas are no longer being evaluated in mono-functional terms

Concepts for a multi-criteria sustainability assessment of a new more biobased economy in rural production landscapes

This study presents a new approach to model the biophysical potentials for increased biomass harvest in Denmark, and a multi-criteria sustainability assessment of the socio-economic and environmental effects of different scenarios for such increased production and new biobased economy in rural landscapes. Thereby the results serve as input to the ongoing productivism – post-productivism debate related to rural spaces in Europe. Empirical results from a case study of large scale conversion to biorefenery technologies, aiming to increase the total Danish harvest of biomass by 10 million tonnes via the conversion to new types of crop production and land management, is used as an example, and will be related to the common conceptual model presented by the workshop convenors, and a so called “Traffic-light” multi-criteria sustainability assessment scheme introduced and exemplified in the present paper. The aim is to contextualize how the problems in relation to the concrete scenario results can be considered with the landscape as the meeting basis, and used as input for a discussion of innovative models for future farming systems, landscape research and management