Lifestyle farming: countryside consumption and transition towards new farming models - Transition Pathways towards Sustainability in Agriculture: Case Studies from Europe - page 79

landscape. Starting as a consumption-driven land management style, lifestyle farming is in
some cases moving toward a stronger role in production, responding both to actors'
aspirations and to the global crisis affecting food markets and family incomes and may yet
be redefined again. This suggests, for the MLP, that the establishment of the niche phase
more often than not may overlap with the take-off phase of the transition, the latter
contributing to defining the contours of the niche.
Our analysis is consistent with a criticism raised by Lawhon and Murphy (2012) of the
lack of attention to space and scale within the MLP. Local physical landscape features as
well as the location in relation to large urban areas clearly have an impact on where
lifestyle farming is most likely to occur. Characteristics of the locale thus determine how,
and if, this niche will occur. In addition, the changing characteristics of this space, as a
result of increased transport and IT facilities, have been shown to be crucial. This issue is of
particular importance to studies of agricultural transitions as these, more than most
transitions, will be rooted in biophysical space (see also Darnhofer et al. , this volume).
In this way, the role of land in transitions in agriculture needs to be questioned.
Differing from other transition processes, in agriculture the issue of land is part of the
process. It could be that, within the MLP, land itself is to be considered in a similar way as
technology whereby the use is developed and shaped by different actors for different
purposes. The emergence of the niche also has particular contours here. The landscape
pressures and opportunities enabling niche emergence have been described and are
represented in Fig. 5.2. They correspond to long term changes in society and not to a
window of opportunity created by a sudden event, although the food crisis of 2007-2008
and the recent global financial crisis may have fuelled them further. As such, these
landscape pressures and opportunities have not resulted in awareness in the dominant
regime (agriculture). So there are a lack of strategies and policies that acknowledge the
phenomena of lifestyle farming, while at the same time the regime also does not oppose it.
It may also be that this niche will, in any case, not be best supported by a transition of the
regime, but rather by creating its own parallel space which acknowledges the diversity of
land management paradigms emerging all over Europe and deviating from production as
the sole priority.
The agricultural regime has, in the last few decades, been concerned with a totally
different agenda, namely the increase in industrial production and globalized networks, as
well as problems related to market fluctuations. Therefore, it has remained weak in relation
to processes affecting small-scale farming. The real-estate regime is becoming dominant,
probably also due to this weakness, penetrating the agricultural regime in terms of decisions
over land. With the higher economic power of those able to buy land for lifestyle farming,
and the dynamics of real-estate agents, there may be a power shift occurring, where in
particular places, the real-estate regime replaces the agricultural regime in shaping the
context for the management of agricultural land.
The assessment thus demonstrates that the agricultural regime is missing two major
opportunities. The first would be to strengthen its territorial role and responsibility for the
management of natural resources as well as the physical space in rural areas - a physical
planning role for the rural, which is strongly needed in the light of increasing resource
scarcity and land use conflicts. This role has been present in the political discourse of the
agricultural regime in Europe but to date it has been weak in content - as demonstrated by
the increased dominance of the real-estate regime in the cases studied. The second would be
to embrace a leading and overarching role in supporting innovation by embracing the local