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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the benefits of utilizing teams of personal and financial consultants to work with farm families in New York State on issues affecting farm business performance.

Program experience in implementing an integrated consulting model provides a framework for illustrating how such a model may be utilized on farms and other family businesses for succession planning.

An integrated personal and financial consulting model is effective in producing lasting business results such as business growth, improved profitability, and reduced interpersonal conflict on farms in New York State.

Farmers employ a multitude of risk management tools, such as crop insurance, to reduce various types of risk affecting their farm businesses in New York State, but an area often overlooked by farmers is managing human resource risk, namely succession risk. As the average age of farmers in the USA continues to increase, employing new tools and strategies is critical when developing an effective business succession plan for farmers.

The contemporary production, distribution, and consumption of food is today interconnected at the global level in the form of a global food chain, constituted by the relations between all the producers, distributors, and consumers of food in the World. A chain where the international trade law constitutes a conditioning element, which through the legal adoption of neoliberal ideals facilitates the strengthening of the agribusiness sector.

The present article aims to assess the environmental impact of the global food chain and engaging in the discussion of the adoption of more sustainable methodologies in the agriculture sector. By mobilizing the experience of participation in Civil Society Network for Food and Nutrition Security in the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (REDSAN-CCPL), we will critically expose the causal link of the activities of transnational corporations of the agribusiness sector with its environmental and public health impacts, particularly with cases in Global South countries (countries of the Community of Countries of Portuguese Language, CCPL).

At the end, and, following closely the current discussion at the United Nations level for the creation of a Declaration of the Rights of Peasants, and the creation, in 2017, of a legal regime for family farming under the CCPL, we will present a defense for the legal recognition of family farming at the international level, as a legal and political strategy to preclude the negative environmental impacts of the agribusiness sector.

Marshall (1950, p. 10) saw civil citizenship rights as concerning individual liberties, such as freedom of speech, property ownership rights, personal liberties and rights to justice. Women obtained many of these rights only after the acknowledgement of their political citizenship (Walby, 1997, p. 175) and much later than men did. Civil citizenship includes a whole range of issues which cannot be covered in this book. This book focuses on the gender aspects of ownership and land succession. Land succession is interrelated with a series of other civil citizenship rights issues such as access to training and education. While succession is also interrelated with issues of social (social security eligibility), economic (division of labour in the families) and political (political participation and representation) citizenship issues, these relations are to be discussed later.

This chapter focuses on the Swedish agriculture policy from the 1940s to 1960s. Which gender visions were explicitly and implicitly expressed in Swedish agricultural policy discourse during the formative period of the welfare state? In what way were farming women, men and families represented in debates in the Swedish Riksdag (the Parliament) in the parliamentary processes, in bills, proposals and protocols? The point of departure is the concept of family farm, its introduction and the different understandings and discussions it was met with.

The chapter seeks to reflect on the dynamics of the reconstruction of family farming and peasant agriculture in agrarian reform settlements (“assentamentos”) in Brazil, exploring the limits and potential of government food purchases from family farming, particularly the Food Acquisition Program (Programa de Aquisição de Alimentos – PAA), in the creation of alternative paths of rural development. The work analyzes the different strategies through which farmers and their organizations mobilize public policy instruments and market connections, expanding their room for maneuver and agency capacity. Research was conducted in the Baixo Sul Territory of the state of Bahia, focusing the heterogeneous web of social organizations involved in the implementation of the Food Acquisition Program in this setting.

This chapter deals with family/household relevance as a stakeholder institution in rural (farm) communities. The data collection approach is qualitative. Families in Japan and the Philippines’ rice-cultivating communities were the subjects of the study. Results revealed that households in the two sites were experiencing a unique ontological crisis vis-á-vis farming communities. The crisis pointed to the problem of farm families’ relegation as secondary stakeholders in the farming sector. Despite the struggle for survival in the farm sector, farm families were differently adaptive and enduring in dealing with the modern development – that is, selective technology adoption, farmland redefinition, struggle and resistance against farm policies, and community group accommodation, to name a few. This endurance contributes to farm family persistence as a relevant institution in Japan and the Philippines.

This chapter focuses on Norwegian farm families by analysing succession patterns across generations and genders in “beanpole” families, i.e. those with several living generations (Brannen, Moss, & Mooney, 2004). The focus is on transfer of property in the case of farm families and its importance for gender relations. Succession here refers to the transfer of farm management control, which may be seen as a continuous, multi-phase process in farm families which begins when the successor is young with gradual assumption of specific responsibilities within the farm business (Symes, 1990). One aim of the chapter is to connect changes in succession praxis in the case of farm families in Norway with the societal changes of three-four generations over the twentieth century. The dynamics of families and households are regarded as key elements of issues such as farm structure (Bengtson, 2001; Bokemeier, 1997; Hareven, 1996; Willson, Shuey, & Elder, 2003), and farm families offer an interesting case for examining intergenerational relations (Brandth, 2002; Elder, Rudkin, & Conger, 1995; Elder, Robertson, & Rudkin, 1996; Lee & Cassidy, 1981; Melberg, 2003).

Post-socialist transition affected rural gender regimes in multiple ways. This chapter focuses on how changes in the distribution of reproductive responsibilities between state, market and family affected the gender division of childcare and household labour in the newly established family farms and, as a result, affected the overall rural gender regime. The gender division of family care and household labour informs the genderedness of social and economic citizenship as it determines men's and women's opportunities to participate in productive work and their relations of economic and social dependency.¹ Local (in this case rural) care regimes are formed not only by the conditions of the hegemonic welfare state, but also by the specific conditions characterizing the locality, the local class, age, ethnicity and gender relations.

Family farms are seen as a powerful force for rural development, and they are gaining more and more research attention. This study aims to explore the relationship between the social networks of family farms and the dual innovation of the family farm business model from the perspective of entrepreneurial orientation.

Using a questionnaire survey of 169 family farms in Qingdao, China, descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data collected. The study hypothesis was tested using inferential tests (regression analysis).

The study results show that innovative, efficiency- and novelty-based business models facilitated by social networks have a favorable and significant impact on the performance of family farms. Furthermore, the relationship between social networks and new business model creation is positively influenced by an entrepreneurial orientation.

This study is distinctive in that it examines the mechanisms underlying family farm growth from an entrepreneurial standpoint, classifying family farm social networks for the first time into social, market and governmental categories and looking at their impact on the creation of new business models. In addition, it looks into the relationship between the innovation and social network aspect of the family farm business model from an entrepreneurial perspective, offering fresh insight into this connection. It also examines the family farm business model’s connection to innovation and social networks from an entrepreneurial standpoint, providing new insight into this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse how entrepreneurial bricolage empowers smallholder commercial farming, from a family business perspective.

The study employed a multiple case study design to analyse entrepreneurial bricolage in smallholder commercial farming in Uganda. It used multiple data collection methods and applied content analytical tchniques to establish cross-case correlations, patterns and relationships to aid in theory development and testing.

The study shows that entrepreneurial bricolage empowers smallholder commercialization through resource reallocation, improvization and prioritization as interconnected, self-reinforcing bricolage processes in smallholder farming. It provides evidence of how smallholder farms may not enact institutional limits, and overcome constraints imposed by their resource environments. It further reveals that smallholder commercial farms can be construed as family businesses given the interconnected relationship between farming business, family and smallholder farm(er).

The study was conducted in smallholder farms hence results may be used cautiously in other sectors and economies where resource environments are not structurally defined. However, it provides lessons for family businesses in developed countries particularly the micro- and small businesses. It also renders smallholder farming as a lucrative area for family business research.

This study deepens our understanding of bricolage in smallholder farming and provides a springboard for scholarship in enhancing smallholder commercialization. It proposes a model for entrepreneurial bricolage in smallholder commercial farming.