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In order to mitigate the effects of climate change, the UK government has set a target of achieving net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. Agricultural GHG emissions in 2017 were 45.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e; 10% of UK total GHG emissions). Farmland hedgerows are a carbon sink, storing carbon in the vegetation and soils beneath them, and thus increasing hedgerow length by 40% has been proposed in the UK to help meet net zero targets. However, the full impact of this expansion on farm biodiversity is yet to be evaluated in a net zero context. This paper critically synthesises the literature on the biodiversity implications of hedgerow planting and management on arable farms in the UK as a rapid review with policy recommendations. Eight peer-reviewed articles were reviewed, with the overall scientific evidence suggesting a positive influence of hedgerow management on farmland biodiversity, particularly coppicing and hedgelaying, although other boundary features, e.g. field margins and green lanes, may be additive to net zero hedgerow policy as they often supported higher abundances and richness of species. Only one paper found hedgerow age effects on biodiversity, with no significant effects found. Key policy implications are that further research is required, particularly on the effect of hedgerow age on biodiversity, as well as mammalian and avian responses to hedgerow planting and management, in order to fully evaluate hedgerow expansion impacts on biodiversity.

By examining a case study in Tyrol, Austria, the paper aims to demonstrate the role of farm diversification and the influence of the peasants’ habitus on social-ecological resilience.

Drawing on a field study conducted in two remote villages of the Ötztal valley, Austrian Alps, this study provides insights into the interplay of tourism and farming and its impact on farm resilience. Qualitative narrative interviews, the so-called farm biographies, served to investigate these issues. Interpretations of data are based on qualitative content analysis.

The results highlight that farming and tourism are highly enmeshed in the case study area and that the additional income creates room for manoeuvre for the farms to activate their adaptive capability. At the same time, peasant values guide the farming activities. The farms in this study demonstrate a strong farm resilience that is enabled by farm diversification and rooted in their peasant habitus. This positively affects the social-ecological resilience.

In contrast to other studies, which have mainly applied the concepts of social or community resilience to investigate the resilience and vulnerability of rural areas, this study highlights the resilience of farms in mountain areas.

This paper aims to investigate how actors in the farmer’s network influence the adoption of smart farming technology (SFT) and to understand how social media affects this adoption process, in particular focusing on the influence of social media on trust in knowledge dissemination within the network.

The methodology used a two-stage process, with semi-structured interviews of farmers, augmented by a netnographic approach appropriate to the social media context.

The analysis illustrates the key role of the farmer network in the dissemination of SFT knowledge, bringing insight into an important B2B context. While social media emerges as a valuable way to connect farmers and promote discussion, it remains underused in knowledge dissemination on SFT. Also, farmers exhibit more trust in the content from peers online rather than from SFT vendors.

Novel insights are gained into the influence of the farming network on the accelerated adoption of SFT, including the potential role of social media in mitigating the homophilous nature of peer-to-peer interactions among farmers through exposure to more diverse actors and information. The use of a social network theory lens has provided new insights into the role of trust in shaping social media influence on the farmer, with variances in farmer trust of information from technology vendors and from peers.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of using indigenous forecasts (IFs) and scientific forecasts (SFs) on pastoralists’ adaptation methods in Rwenzori region, Western Uganda.

Data were collected using a household survey from 270 pastoralists and focus group discussions. The multivariate probit model was used in the analysis.

The results revealed that pastoralists using of IF only more likely to be non-farm enterprises and livestock sales as adaptation strategies. Pastoralists using both SF and IF were more likely to practise livestock migration.

Other factors found to be important included land ownership, land tenure, gender, education level, non-farm and productive assets, climate-related risks and agricultural extension access.

Increasing the number of weather stations in pastoral areas would increase the predictive accuracy of scientific climate information, which results in better adaptive capacity of pastoralists. Active participation of pastoral households in national meteorological dissemination processes should be explored.

A two-prong approach that supports both mobile and sedentary pastoralism should be adopted in rangeland development policies.

This study has shown the relevance of IFs in climate change adaptation methods of pastoralists. It has also shown that IFs compliment SFs in climate change adaptation in pastoralism.

The results of this study have significant policy implications for charting a new course toward enhancing agricultural productivity among Chinese farmers.

By establishing a rural household decision-making model based on the transfer market of farmland operation rights, this paper systematically analyzes the effects of land transfer-in and land transfer-out on the productivity (per labor income) of rural households. The authors conducted basic regression analysis and robustness tests using propensity score-matching and proxy variable approaches based on the micro survey data from rural households in 30 counties in 21 provinces/municipalities/autonomous regions in 2013.

After the completion of land transfer, the total productivity of rural households transferring in lands will increase with an increase in the agricultural productivity; the total productivity of rural households transferring out land will increase due to a rise in non-agricultural productivity and the absolute total productivity of rural households not involved in land transfer will remain unchanged.

Unlike previous literature, this paper discusses the impacts of land transfer-in and transfer-out on total productivity, agricultural productivity and non-agricultural productivity among various rural households (i.e. those transferring in land, transferring out land or which are self-sufficient).

The purpose of this paper is to explore the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms using a stochastic frontier analysis.

The analysis was based on a translog cost function and unbalanced farm-level panel data for 1991–2013 from 455 Norwegian farms specialized in crop production in eastern and central regions of Norway.

The results of the analysis show that the mean efficiency was about 78–81 percent. Farm management practices and socioeconomic factors were shown to significantly affect the economic performance of Norwegian crop farms.

Farmers are getting different types of support from the government and the study does not account for the different effects of different kinds of subsidy on cost efficiency. Different subsidies might have different effects on farm performance. To get more informative and useful results, it would be necessary to repeat the analysis with less aggregated data on subsidy payments.

One implication for farmers (and their advisers) is that many of them are less efficient than the estimated benchmark (best performing farms). Thus, those lagging behind the best performing farms need to look at the way they are operating and to seek out ways to save costs or increase crop production. Perhaps there are things for lagging farmers to learn from their more productive farming neighbors. For instance, those farmers not practicing crop rotation might be well advised to try that practice.

For both taxpayers and consumers, one implication is that the contributions they pay that go to subsidize farmers appear to bring some benefits in terms of more efficient production that, in turn, increase the supply of some foods so possibly making food prices more affordable.

Unlike previous performance studies in the literature, the authors estimated farm-level economic performance accounting for the contribution of both an important farm management practice and selected socioeconomic factors. Good farm management practices, captured through crop rotation, land tenure, government support and off-farm activities were found to have made a positive and statistically significant contribution to reducing the cost of production on crop-producing farms in the Central and Eastern regions of Norway.

This paper reviews the academic contributions that have emerged to date on the broad definition of farm-level management information systems (MISs). The purpose is twofold: (1) to identify the theories used in the literature to study the adoption of digital technologies and (2) to identify the drivers of and barriers to the adoption of such technologies.

The literature review was based on a comprehensive review of contributions published in the 1998–2019 period. The search was both automated and manual, browsing through references of works previously found via high-quality digital libraries.

Diffusion of innovations (DOIs) is the most frequently used theoretical framework in the literature reviewed, though it is often combined with other innovation adoption theories. In addition, farms’ and farmers’ traits, together with technological features, play a key role in explaining the adoption of these technologies.

So far, research has positioned the determinants of digital technology adoption mainly within the boundaries of the farm.

On the practical level, the extensive determinants’ review has potential to serve the aim of policymakers and technology industries, to clearly and thoroughly understand adoption dynamics and elaborate specific strategies to deal with them.

This study’s contribution to the existing body of knowledge on the farm-level adoption of digital technologies is twofold: (1) it combines smart farming and existing technologies within the same category of farm-level MIS and (2) it extends the analysis to studies which not only focus directly on adoption but also on software architecture design and development.

The purpose of this paper is to present the way in which the mainland of the German Wadden Sea area transitioned from traditional sectors into an almost entirely tourism destination, and which factors contributed to and/or necessitated such a development.

The overall approach in this paper has adopted a focus on an extensive case study of the German mainland of the Wadden Sea area. Scientific articles have been used to, first, structuring the theoretical framework and then to gain a general understanding on what a transition exactly entails. As a result, the theoretical framework has been written in an examination of existing literature on transitions and functioned as the theoretical support and foundation for the case study analysis. The analysis has been shaped by means of a number of scientific articles, branch reports, books and websites that, in most instances, specifically focused on the chosen case. Since the area of study is located in Germany, specific literature on this area was mostly limited to the German language, a language of which the author has a basic, yet not thorough, understanding. However, the overall scope of the developments in the case in regard to the transition from agricultural and fishing communities to communities in which tourism plays a substantial role has been understandable.

One of the most important sectors that economically benefit the Wadden Sea region, especially on the Dutch and German Wadden islands, is tourism. While tourism development on the Dutch mainland is minimal, the sector considerably developed in the past few decades on the German mainland, generally as a result of declining yields through multifarious unfavorable developments in traditional sectors such as agriculture and fishing, amongst others. Throughout previous centuries, Norden-Norddeich possessed some small-scale tourism facilities; however, negative developments in those traditional sectors required the municipality to prevent an impasse situation, resulting in altering business models and upscaling tourism facilities. Initiatives in different layers (micro, meso and macro) were initiated and gradually intensified in order to develop Norden-Norddeich as a counter destination for the expensive German islands. Following the phases of transition, Norden-Norddeich gradually developed and can now be regarded as a stable and dynamic holiday destination as well as a system that nowadays almost completely adheres to tourism. It took Norden-Norddeich ten years to transition toward tourism. Presently, Norden-Norddeich is the most visited mainland destination at the German Wadden Sea coast. In contrast, small-scale activities are set up in the mainland part of the Wadden Sea area in the Netherlands, but miss out on effective collaboration between different stakeholders that are involved in both planning and management (such as policy makers) and executive roles (such as the people who organize activities and/or facilities). Furthermore, the area is managed in such a way that does not contribute yet to upscaling economic development, mostly as a result of regulatory issues that hinder such developments. However, increasing efforts by several stakeholders are being taken that should ultimately lead to a sustainable socio-economic development of the Dutch mainland part of the Wadden Sea area.

Analyzing the stages of transition on the German mainland of the Wadden area might function as an example for stakeholders in villages or cities located on the mainland of the Dutch Wadden to become aware of how processes of tourism transitions occur, what factors are needed to start off such a transition and what effects a transition might have on the revitalization of a certain area. Moreover, the case of Norden-Norddeich could stand out as an example for Dutch stakeholders in the Wadden region to perceive in what way a locked-in situation could be prevented or solved by shifting from one system to another by taking on a wide range of initiatives that might be led and stimulated by different actors.

Between 2006 and 2016, local communities in semi-arid Bobirwa sub-district in the Limpopo Basin part of Botswana had endured notable fluctuations in the delivery of critical ecosystem services. These changes have been coupled with adverse effects on local people’s livelihood options and well-being. However, a few such studies have focussed on the semi-arid to arid landscapes. This study therefore aims to provide recent knowledge and evidence of consequences of environmental change on semi-arid arid landscapes and communities.

To examine these recent changes in key ecosystem services, the authors conducted six participatory mapping processes, eight key informant interviews and several rapid scoping appraisals in three study villages. The analyses were centred on changes in seasonal quantities, seasonality, condition of ecosystem service sites, distance to ecosystem service sites and total area providing these services. Drivers of change in the delivery of key ecosystem services and the associated adverse impacts on human well-being of these recent changes in bundles of ecosystem services delivered were also analyzed.

Results show that adverse weather conditions, drought frequency, changes in land-use and/or land-cover together with unsustainable harvesting because of human influx on local resources have intensified in the past decade. There was circumstantial evidence that these drivers have resulted in adverse changes in quantities and seasonality of key ecosystem services such as edible Mopane caterpillars, natural pastures, wild fruits and cultivated crops. Similarly, distance to, condition and total area of sites providing some of the key ecosystem services such as firewood and natural pastures changed adversely. These adverse changes in the key ecosystem services were shown to increasingly threaten local livelihoods and human well-being.

This paper discusses the importance of engaging rural communities in semi-arid areas in a participatory manner and how such information can provide baseline information for further research. The paper also shows the utility of such processes and information toward integrating community values and knowledge into decisions regarding the management and utilization of local ecosystem services under a changing climate in data-poor regions such as the Bobirwa sub-district of Botswana. However, the extent to which this is possible depends on the decision makers’ willingness to support local initiatives through existing government structures and programmes.

This study shows the importance of engaging communities in a participatory manner to understand changes in local ecosystem services considering their unique connection with the natural environment. This is a critical step for decision makers toward integrating community values in the management and utilization of ecosystem services under a changing climate as well as informing more sustainable adaptive responses in semi-arid areas. However, the extent to which decision makers can integrate such findings to inform more sustainable responses to declining capacity of local ecosystems in semi-arid areas depends on how they value the bottom-up approach of gaining local knowledge as well as their willingness to support local initiatives through existing government structures and programmes.

This paper aims to analyse the main variables and causal relationships in the system structure of the diversification of non-agricultural activities on agricultural holdings using system dynamics (SD) modelling. The SD model aims to simulate depictions of the behaviour of the real system while testing the effects of alternative decisions over time.

An SD methodology was chosen to model diversification in farm tourism.

A system approach increases the authors’ understanding of the transition of agricultural holdings to farm tourism. The results indicate that the transition to farm tourism depends on the level of tourism development in a certain area. The system is influenced by subsidies allocated by authorities to expand primary agricultural activities. The model describes a situation in which the tourism and agricultural industries have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research is limited by the small set of available data due to the limited number of farms in Slovenia. One major problem is the difference in statistical data on the same activity collected from different institutions in Slovenia.

The paper includes implications for understanding the transition process to farm tourism, allowing policymakers to experiment with subsidies and promotion to explore the efficacy and efficiency of proposed policies.

This study provides a structured, systemic view of the diversification of non-agricultural activities on agricultural holdings, where the simulation results are a reliable reflection of the behaviour of the actual system being modelled.