Thinking Beyond Credit

Credit is often seen as an indispensable vehicle for the poor to get out of poverty, or as the tool that allows farmers to get access to new technologies, to increase productivity and their incomes. But many existing credit programmes often undermine farmers’ independence, tie them into dependency relationships, and oblige them to take all the risk. There are better ways to help farmers build their own resource base and independenc

Environmental co-operatives reconnect farming, ecology and society

Regional diversity, diversified farming styles and endogenous development are hot issues in the current political debate on European agriculture. This article presents a historical overview of development experiences and elaborates on the emergence of environmental co-operatives in Dutch farming. They are unique ‘field laboratories’ for innovations toward sustainable rural development. The achievements in terms of environmental gains and social cohesion are coupled with cost reduction for the farmers and the stat

The virtual farmer. Past, present, and future of the Dutch peasantry

The virtual farmer guides us towars a better understanding of the associated identities and practices that make up the agricultural sector. In this book the author developes a new and integrated view of agriculture and the countryside - a perspective that combines historical, economic, social, cultural and political dimensions with the technological. At the same time he attempts to identify new developments that might provide the bases for reestablishing public's confidence in the country's agriculture - a reconciliation that is urgently needed

Labor, markets and agricultural production.

Focusing on the complex and often contradictory relationships between agricultural production and markets, the author examines the micro-macro linkages between farm production, farm labour issues and the degree of autonomy or dependancy vis-a-vis markets. By comparing the case of farmers in Peru, generally regarded as peripheral agricultural producers, with European farmers able easily to access the centralized markets of the EEC, Dr van der Ploeg is able to draw general conclusions about the ongoing process of commoditization of agriculture and the roles farmers play in agrarian development

Seeds of Transition. Essays on novelty production, niches and regimes in agriculture

Agriculture is confronted with changing societal expectations and demands regarding its role in food production and in the countryside. Complying with these expectations and demands will require a comprehensive, far-reaching and therefore far from easy and long-lasting transition of agriculture. This books seeks to explore the seeds of this transition by describing and analysing the production of promosing novelties in relation to to the dominant regime. On a theoretical level this books aims at the integration of hitherto largely disconneted disciplines and bodies of literature