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In urban planning, peri-urban areas are often addressed with an urban-centric view on development, disregarding the multifunctional and dynamic opportunities that these spaces offer. As a consequence, we argue that land use functions such as agriculture do not reach their full potential, despite the increasing enthusiasm for peri-urban and urban agriculture. This chapter has a twofold structure: first it explores the opportunities and challenges for agriculture in peri-urban areas; and second, it studies success factors for envisioning processes promoting peri-urban agriculture in urban policy and planning.

Through action research, we gather and compare data from two envisioning processes in the Flemish cities of Ghent and Kortrijk. Both processes were initiated by the local authorities, with the purpose of developing a spatial vision for agriculture in peri-urban areas.

Results show that in both contexts, pressure on farmland is a key issue. In addition, we highlight that multifunctionality is rather complex, both in practice and from a governance perspective, but nevertheless promising as a territorial concept in envisioning processes. Regarding the envisioning process itself, the analysis shows that clarity and consensus on the objectives of the process, delineation of the study area, policy support, clear leadership, and inserting sound and reliable data into the process are important success factors.

This chapter provides insight into the visions, plans and strategies needed to embrace the potential of agriculture in peri-urban areas, through the exploration and valuation of participatory envisioning processes. Future research is needed to explore the implementation phases of envisioning processes in urban planning.

Why did peasants in old-regime Europe scatter their land in small strips within open fields? According to an influential theory advocated by Deirdre McCloskey, the system’s main aim was risk reduction. By spreading out land, peasants were less exposed to the caprices of nature: heavy rains, droughts, frost, or hailstorms. In a time when other insurance institutions were lacking, this approach could be a rational solution, even if, as McCloskey suggests, it could be achieved only at the expense of overall agricultural productivity.

Over the years, McCloskey’s theory has repeatedly been debated. Still, it has never been empirically established to what extent the open fields actually reduced risk. McCloskey offered only indirect evidence, based on hypothetical calculations from short series demesne level yields. Risks on enclosed and open-field land farms were thus never compared.

This chapter presents farm-level harvest variation series, including observations from both types of land. It is based on tithe records of 1,700 farms in Southern Sweden from 1715–1860. Results show that scattering had a limited effect on agricultural risk. The system did protect against small-scale local crop failures. It was less efficient, however, when it came to the large-scale regional harvest disasters that constituted a much more serious threat to peasants of the time. From this perspective, the inner logic of the open-field system is taken up for renewed consideration.

This chapter describes a method to analyse agricultural land use in terms of net value added and employment (working time requirement) in the agricultural sector as well as a corresponding ecological indicator: the nitrogen-leaching-rate. Watershed management demands a basic approach, which deals with common statistics and spatial information from digital maps. This causes a range of uncertainties, which are calculated in relation to the data input. A metamodel derived from a process model calculates the most probable value of the ecological indicator, whereas the economic indicators are estimated by the cumulative numbers of primary production. The uncertainties are expressed as the standard deviation of all impacts as percentages. The method described is applied to a rural district in the Elbe river basin.

This paper explores questions of value and the just price for two groups of farming families in southern Tuscany. As sharecroppers or small-holders they experienced the slow shift from subsistence farming to creating most of their livelihoods by selling the products or their labour. This created a complicated legacy in their views about the relationship between use-value and monetary value since the interaction of different spheres of the economy (what Gudeman calls mutuality and the market) continued to impact significantly on their material well-being and cultural values. This emerges in many contexts, from decisions to continue producing food for home consumption, to abandoning the investments of previous generations. In each case the quantitative questions (what does it cost? what is it worth?) play out alongside qualitative questions about use-values, values which are embedded in issues about the continuation of social and cultural relations. Two main points then emerge from this ethnography. First that in many circumstances local views about the just price cannot be understood by restricting the account to the market sphere. Even the innovative farming households who have moved to the production of high-quality foodstuffs find themselves in a market which eulogizes non-commercial values. Second, views about the just price mostly arise as part of a critique of the powerful forces shaping markets, and often draw on older political traditions concerned with social justice.

Purpose – This chapter compares bioenergy policy developments in Germany and Denmark to better understand the responses of EU country policy regimes to global shocks; to examine potentially emerging new trends of productivist policy models; and to explore potential land use conflicts in the context of a multifunctional EU agricultural policy.

Design/methodology/approach – The chapter reviews the bioenergy policy development pathways taken by Germany and Denmark, highlighting key consequences for agricultural land use and rural development. Findings from both case studies are then compared in summary tables, followed by a discussion of the possible emergence of productivist policy approaches in the bioenergy sector in these countries.

Findings – The bioenergy policies pursued by both countries differ in key respects and yet have had the same result-an increase in the productivist orientation of agriculture, legitimised by the environmental concerns of bioenergy policy. The Danish and German case studies also demonstrate that the particular pathways taken to establish bioenergy policies in each country have been strongly influenced by local political, farming and technological dynamics.

Originality/value – This chapter presents a telling case of what Burton and Wilson (this volume) call “repositioned productivism”, where productivist approaches benefit from environmental or multifunctional policy rationale to continue at the farm level.

The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on some outstanding patterns of change observed in Spanish agriculture over the last decades, and to discuss the ways in which the productivist rationale is reproduced in them. We start by providing an overall picture of the structural transformations of agriculture revealed by the national statistics, calling attention to the increasing importance of a “hard core” of farms progressing under a rationale of growth and modernization. Later, drawing on the literature, we comment some meaningful trajectories of farm change observed in three selected Mediterranean farming systems, namely horticulture (as an example of a long-consolidated intensive agriculture), vine growing (an orientation which has undergone stunning changes in Spain in recent times), and small ruminant production (an extensive farming system with a high conservation value). The three farming systems are advancing, to a greater or a lesser degree, along intensification, concentration, and specialization pathways. However, the introduction of new elements in the most expansionary farm strategies (such as the participation in quality schemes) will provide interesting elements of discussion of the adaptable nature of productivism and its capacity to accommodate to external opportunities and constrains.

This chapter is an examination of what is meant by the term ‘Good Farmer’ and whether or not this is compatible with being a good businessperson. The term ‘Feckless Farmer’ is introduced to describe someone who is the opposite of a Good Farmer. And all of this is considered with reference to the farmers of the village of Ambridge in the West Midlands, with special emphasis on the practices of Brian Aldridge and his recent issues with contamination of his land and neighbouring watercourses. This work starts by defining key terms before moving on to consider the similarities and differences between farms and other types of businesses. The different philosophical paradigms that can underlie different definitions and practices of a Good Farmer are also explored. The ways that the economies of farms differ from most businesses will also be discussed. With some conclusions being drawn as to whether Mr Aldridge is a Good Farmer or a Feckless one, and if he deserved to be lauded as an award-winning businessperson.

To determine the factors that motivate rural households to supply ganyu labor and to estimate its impact on food security.

Data from the 2010/2011 Malawi household survey were used. A probit model to evaluate the determinants of ganyu labor supply and a propensity score-matching estimator to assess its impact on food security were used.

Less educated males are more likely to supply ganyu labor. Ganyu labor supply increases with household size, while it decreases with the level of crop farming and size of land owned. Results from the average treatment effect indicate a positive and significant impact of ganyu labor participation on the number of meals consumed per day.

Ganyu labor participants in Malawi have better access to food as a result of cash income from ganyu. Government support mechanisms such as minimum wage regulations should consider the welfare of ganyu labor participants.

This paper provides standardized estimates of labor productivity in arable farming in selected regions of the early Ottoman Empire, including Jerusalem and neighboring districts in eastern Mediterranean; Bursa and Malatya in Anatolia; and Thessaly, Herzegovina, and Budapest in eastern Europe. I use data from the tax registers of the Ottoman Empire to estimate grain output per worker, standardized (in bushels of wheat equivalent) to allow productivity comparisons within these regions and with other times and places. The results suggest that Ottoman agriculture in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had achieved levels of labor productivity that compared favorably even with most European countries ca. 1850.

Supply of food from the early stages of societies was one of the most important needs of humans. Sustainable supply of food is a demand in modern societies. The agri-food market grows as the population rises every year. The increase in the demand side of the market is more than the growth of the supply side. The rate of using technology in the supply side is increasing rapidly. By using technology in some parts, the efficiency of production improved and caused more production while resources are the same. Availability of resources in different areas causes different ways of production and nurturing innovative technologies to maintain food security. Water, soil, climate change, and growth of population are drivers of using technology in food security. To depict the role of different technologies in the food industry, the authors have reviewed the role of the most important technologies in this field. Knowing the trends of changes in the industry will help to focus on the most important questions and solutions. Having a share in the global food market requires the major use of technology in production processes. In this chapter, the authors will review the most important trends of technology absorption in the food industry.