Regional Concentration and Specialisation in Agricultural Activities in EU-9 Regions (1950-2000)

Both traditional (von Thünen) and modern (Hayami & Ruttan, Krugman) theories on land use suggest that productions with a high value added per unit of land tend to be located near urban centres. In this article it is tested to what extent these theoretical findings are confirmed by empirical data on agricultural land use and production for the EU-9. The focus is not only on the degree of concentration and specialisation, but also on their development over time. Growth and decline of agricultural productions are here related to the degree of rurality. It is found that high value productions indeed tend to be located in urban regions. It is also found that most specialisation patterns that already existed in 1950 are even stronger in 2000

Side Activities of Non-Farmers in Rural Areas in the Netherlands

In many rural areas, not only in The Netherlands but also elsewhere in Europe, has been observed a variety of employment opportunities for rural populations, following the decline in traditional agricultural employment. This contributes to the fact that the countryside is changing and rural areas can be viewed as new spaces of work. As a result, rural economy is no longer dominated by agricultural activities, but by activities such as small scale industrial production, service provision, landscape management, and residential use. To a certain extent these activities have the form of side-activities next to primary income sources. Most attention in both scientific literature and policies is focused on side-activities by farmers, such as agro-tourism and direct marketing. However, according to empirical data from The Netherlands, most side-activities are developed by non-farmers. In this paper the focus is on this last group. The amounts and types of non-farmers’ and farmers side-activities will be deployed, together with their motives to start new entrepreneurship endeavors and the impact on the local community. It will be argued that this type of activities will stimulate rural economic development offering new job opportunities for income generation to the rural inhabitants and create new economic spaces in rural geographical contexts transforming the rural economy

New pedagogies and re-usable learning objects: toward a new economy in education

While the idea of reusing objects in digital learning environments is not new, continual strides are being made toward improving the prospects of reusability. However, three of the main steps in reusability—finding a pedagogy in which both contribution and reusability are regular aspects, having a convenient technology for all stages of contribution and reuse, and finding institutional motivation and support for reuse—are far from common procedures in most higher education and company training settings. In this article we describe a shift in pedagogy and technology requirements that we see as major steps in accelerating the reusability process. We also position the reusability process in a broader context: an evolution in education and training toward either a Stretching the Mold Scenario or a New Economy Scenario