Understanding the diversity of European rural areas - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 33

Chapter 3

Understanding the diversity of European rural
areas

B. Slee 1 , T. Pinto-Correia 2

1 James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen ([e-mail]); 2 ICAAM, University of Évora

Introduction

In this chapter, we first sketch out the structure and diversity of European agriculture and
its evolution to its present state. Second, we examine the assembled evidence that explores
differences across Europe in the way the farm sector has evolved, offering tentative reasons
as to causes of difference and patterns of change. Third, we set these farm-level changes
within a wider framework of understanding the relationship between agricultural change
and broader economic change, addressing societal demands on the rural space. Finally, we
reflect briefly on the challenges of managing transitions in the farm sector given its
diversity and non-homogeneity. The relationships we explore relate partly to the
interactions between agriculture and the economy and also partly to the policies that shape
those interactions. Such information may help frame our overall understanding of
evolutionary pathways and sustainability transitions in the rural economy.
An exploration of existing and possible future pathways towards sustainability in
European farming can be framed in recognition of the diversity of rural Europe. Three types
of diversity are of particular importance in this respect. First, there is diversity in
production systems, which is largely, though not exclusively, conditioned by the
biophysical potential of land. Second, there is diversity in the structural characteristics of
farming and other land use activity and enterprise. Third, there is great diversity in socio -
economic conditions, not just within the rural land use sector, but also within the regional
economies of which the rural sector is but part. In the latter two forms of diversity, path
dependencies play a huge part in shaping aggregate socio-economic character, structural
characteristics of farming and the future opportunities for transitions towards more
sustainable agricultures.
Ignoring anomalous overseas non-European territories which are part of the EU,
European rural land use embraces Mediterranean conditions from Portugal in the west, to
Cyprus in the east and, in a more northerly transect, temperate grassland in Ireland, to the
boreal forests of North Karelia in Finland. Large mountain ranges impact significantly on
rural land use, with the Pyrenees, Massif Central, the Alps and the Carpathians constituting
a watershed that virtually spans Europe from west to east with other upland and mountain
regions from Greece to Portugal to Scotland and Sweden also creating limitations on, and
thereby structuring, land use possibilities. Operating within these biophysical parameters,