Conclusions - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 213

became insular and focused on meeting the needs of their own members. As such,
bridging social capital had initially been strong but the connections between different
groups became exclusive, restricting the development of further bridges outside of the
established group.
Managing diverse members and their resources generally requires formalization of
niche activities (into NGOs, for example, or legally recognized businesses). Formalization
is necessary to handle the range of actors and their disparate needs (such as the growing
volume of clients for machinery rings, Schiller et al. , this volume). Formalization is also
often explicitly required to access government support (i.e. institutional anchoring):
Darrot et al. and Lošťák et al. (both this volume) describe Czech cases where
formalization of an NGO was necessary to access government grants. This need to
formalize in response to specific state requirements further distorts the original vision of
niche actors. Whilst some niches flourish under this expansion of aims, Peneva et al. (this
volume) question what happens when the final goal of the network is achieved and, as a
result, momentum may be lost. State support for these initiatives could, thus, usefully
focus on developing networking and management skills (e.g. through training), and
fostering interactions between different types of actors at local and regional levels ( such
as engaging both farmers and other rural residents in LEADER-style approaches).
An important finding of this research is that in some cases, transition processes can
occur without overt network development. As Pinto-Correia et al. a (this volume)
demonstrate, lifestyle farming developed in response to larger societal trends towards self-
provisioning, appreciation of rural amenities and the 'experience economy', whilst open
land markets enabled individuals to purchase peri-urban land. Anchoring occurred in the
form of input supply businesses re-orienting their sales strategies towards new consumers
but there was no associated social movement in two of the three cases. In MLP terms,
landscape pressures directly led to an overlap between real estate and agricultural sectors,
without clear network formation or anchoring.
Innovators in the agricultural sector
One of the underlying research questions addressed throughout the FarmPath project was
the role of young farmers in sustainability transitions. There is widespread concern in
European policy circles about the perceived shortage of young farmers in agriculture, due
to their role as innovators in agricultural systems (DGIP, 2012). Evidence from the
FarmPath project in support of this contention was mixed. Young people were found to be
important instigators in the case studies involving AAFN and local certification schemes.
In some cases, such as Regionalwert AG (Vlahos and Schiller, this volume), support for
young farmers was the primary purpose of the initiative. However, young people played
no appreciable role in the up-take of lifestyle farming, or on-farm renewable energy
production. Our findings, thus, suggest that young farmers cannot be recognized as the
main source of innovation in sustainability transition processes. Their engagement in the
initiatives resulted from a combination of factors, among which the economic attraction of
farming and a desire to live in the countryside were most important. Barriers become
more pronounced in initiatives that require the purchase of agricultural land or substantial