Understanding the diversity of European rural areas - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 35

than creating commercially viable farms. Islands of commercial, large-scale capitalist
farming have since found a niche in some post-socialist areas where restitution was to
farms that had capacity to become commercial; where consolidation of holdings has
occurred; or where state farms were bought up by capitalist farming ventures.
For a variety of reasons, European agriculture was perhaps not as wholly penetrated by
capitalist logic as some commentators, such as Newby et al. (1978) might have presumed.
Others have argued against this view. Family farming has long been a significant part of
European agriculture (Gasson et al. , 1988; Gasson and Errington, 1993). Harriet
Friedmann's (1980) arguments about simple commodity production and its differences
from capitalist commodity production may have been heavily criticized by some (e.g.
Goodman and Redclift, 1985) but there is something compelling about the durability of
what can only be described as family businesses in the farm sector. Much earlier, Chayanov
(1966) had made the same point about the peasant farm household's capacity for survival.
Agriculture does not change evenly across regions, farm types or across tenancy and land
ownership structures. In many areas there remains a strong legacy of small farms, many not
capable of supporting a household (Ortiz-Miranda et al. , 2013).
In a European context, the work of Marsden et al . (1996) probes further into farming's
increasing engagement in the market through processes of subsumption. More recently,
Potter and Tilzey (2005) have argued that this is more than a market process and is
substantially assisted by neoliberal policy architecture. Family farms may not be wholly
capitalist entities, but they are increasingly locked into circuits of capital in agri-food
systems which shape both development trajectories and sustainability outcomes. Potter and
Tilzey (2005) further argue that support for this transition towards incorporation into major
circuits of capital in the agri-food system drives policy, rather than post-productivist values
or multifunctionality. We return to such issues below.
We should not accept the European idealization of the family farm uncritically. Alanen
(2002) argues that the desire for reinstatement of the family farm in post-socialist countries
through restitution is premised on ideological grounds unrelated to the desire to produce a
competitive, market-oriented farm sector. Furthermore, from the early 1990s onwards,
Bryden's (1988) work has also shown that, in many ways, family farms are embedded in a
wider economy through pluriactivity, not just the agri-food complex, even where they are
still significantly self-sufficient. The much-heralded independence of the family farm is
thus illusory because it is often sustained by income derived from other sectors of the
economy and a locking-in to wider circuits of agri-food capital. Indeed, the connectivity
between members of farm households and the economy may be a vital force in maintaining
small farm family units.
A further complication in the rural land use sector is the extent to which farming is not
always intended to comprise formal market driven economic activity, not only because of
subsistence demands but also because of recreational preferences of more affluent farm
owners (Primdahl and Kristensen, 2011). Hobby farms (or lifestyle farms) have been
identified as a significant proportion of farming activity in many regions of Europe (Pinto-
Correia et al .a, this volume). Hobby farmers typically have a significant external (non-
farm) income source and tend to treat their farms as platforms for recreational activity,
which may or may not have marketable outputs. The range of hobby farming types is
enormous. In northern Europe, such farms are often used as places for recreational horses
and, particularly in the horse sector, the boundary between commercial and lifestyle activity