Lifestyle farming: countryside consumption and transition towards new farming models - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 78

example, in the Scottish case study, lifestyle farmers often participate in specific networks
associated with commercial farming, such as rare breed societies or pedigree livestock
shows. In the Portuguese case, they employ or buy services from conventional farmers or
from other local conventional service providers and moreover participate in local NGOs
such as cultural collectives or hunting groups. However, they remain largely disconnected
from mainstream agricultural knowledge systems (such as advisory services), and although
they may utilize commercial marketing venues, they are not typically part of the associated
networks that have built up at these locations. In contrast, the new lifestyle farmers in the
Portuguese site appear to integrate with more traditional networks, whereas in the
Bulgarian site, participants are part of a 'movement', which represents a network in itself,
albeit separate from local networks.
What is perhaps most notable about the anchoring of countryside consumption is the
lack of normative institutional anchoring; formal or informal rules about what is desirable
which can be embedded in laws, regulations or policies (Elzen et al. , 2012). Lifestyle
farming is largely unrecognized in agricultural policy in all three study sites. Instead,
policies are clearly oriented towards commercial production. As a result there are several
unintended influences on the evolution of lifestyle farming. Tax advantages associated with
managing agricultural land, intended to assist commercial farmers and their successors, can
also be of advantage to lifestyle farmers. In Portugal and Scotland land is for sale to the
highest bidder, making it easily transferable from commercial to lifestyle use. However,
legal reporting requirements (for instance livestock tracking and welfare reporting) are also
designed for commercial-scale farming operations and can act as a barrier to less intensive,
leisure-oriented management of livestock. Lifestyle farmers are often excluded from
traditional sources of state support (such as agri-environmental funding) through lack of
awareness. Despite mainstreaming, lifestyle farming thus continues 'under the radar' of
official state practices.
Technological anchoring is also not immediately obvious in the analysis of lifestyle
farming. Some new specific technological approaches are developed by, or for, lifestyle
farmers, for example in order to facilitate the leisure management of livestock or to obtain
high quality or quantity production in small plots (such as for fruit and vegetables). These
technological novelties may also interest large-scale commercial farming, creating a link.
However, this niche is not primarily based in technology but as an ideal of life quality and
for the use of physical space, although further definition and refinement of this ideal is
difficult to assess. The wide range of proponents of the ideal - and its widely varying forms
- suggest that it is mainstreaming through becoming more flexible and amenable to social
standards, rather than through becoming more specific.
Discussion
The increasing consumption of the countryside is an ongoing process, operating at different
spatial and temporal scales throughout Europe. Analysis utilizing the MLP was found to be
useful for identifying who is involved in change, and why the processes occurring are not
always explicit. The particularities of the observed niche also bring new insights into the
MLP conceptual construction. The analysis reveals resistance from the regime as well as
contradictions within the niche. It reveals also how the niche can change over time
according to the interplay of its own actors but also the changes in the external context ; the