Understanding the diversity of European rural areas - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 42

changes result in the relocation of people and activities, in the sense both of a concentration
in urban areas and a progressive emptying of remoter rural districts; and of counter-
urbanization and new arrivals from the urban to the rural (Primdahl and Swaffield, 2010).
These emerging dimensions are linked to the involvement of a wider community of
actors at multiple governance scales, increasing the social complexity of the rural (Marsden
and Sonnino, 2008; Barbieri and Valdivia, 2010). In this way, multifunctionality and
sustainability are not just an issue of diversification and adaptation in farming but can be
interpreted as a paradigm shift in the management of rural space (Selman, 2009; Domon,
2011).
The multiple factors of change are combined in various ways (Wilson, 2007; Robinson,
2008) and occur in quite diverse directions and intensities in different regions and localities
(van Berkel and Verburg, 2011). In the same location, divergent processes may have been
taking place side by side, leading to complex patterns of occupancy, use of space, and
economic activity (Short, 2008). This means that understanding processes taking place in
the agricultural sector - and assessing pathways that may lead to enhanced sustainability in
farming - cannot be evaluated in isolation of wider socio-economic change. Grasping the
complex rural context, where agriculture is evolving within a wider set of regional
restructuring processes, is now a fundamental component in the analysis of agricultural
change.
This understanding of the broader rural context also raises the question of the farming
sector not only as a production activity, but also including other land management
activities. Land management may be not driven primarily by production or economic value
but by environmental concerns, recreation goals, investments in amenity value and lifestyle
- as the case studies in this topic will show. These land management activities need to be
acknowledged when studying farming adjustment pathways in Europe.
Whether post-productivism can be sustained under the threat of the so-called 'perfect
storm' (Beddington, 2009) of climate change, increased energy prices, reduced food
availability and water shortages is a moot point. Indeed, what Marsden (2013) terms bio-
economic productivism has been widely embraced by the land-based community in a
resurgent display of productivist rhetoric. Notwithstanding such rhetoric, rural Europe,
which was already diversified, has become much less homogeneous, with diverging land
management practices, products, and actors in different places, where practices are
significantly shaped by regionally specific socio-economic factors. Former differentiation
was grounded on the extremely diverse bio-physical conditions, structural factors, and
different political and economic rationales. But the rural was more or less everywhere tuned
by production agriculture as the dominant land use and the central economic and social role
of agri-business. The present differentiation is much more complex, as it adds to the former
but it is mainly related to divergent production paradigms, divergent land managers'
motivations and multiple combinations of small-scale and global networks.
A substantial effort has been made already in creating and developing European -scale
typologies for distinguishing between rural areas across Europe (van der Ploeg and
Marsden, 2008; Copus and Hörnström, 2011; van Berkel and Verburg, 2011; van Eupen et
al. , 2012). These typologies are mostly data-driven approaches undertaken by summing up
data layers. Often, they do not address the new modes of rural dynamics and occupancies,
which would require a stronger conceptual background (Holmes, 2006; Horlings and
Marsden, 2011).