Search results

This paper aims to critically reflect the current specialist discourse on experiential approaches to higher education for sustainable development (HESD). Limitations to the current discourse are identified, and as a result, an alternative approach to the study of experiential education (EE) within HESD is suggested.

Three research questions are addressed by analysing the literature on EE and experiential learning (EL) within HESD in specialist academic journals.

There is a consensus among authors regarding the appropriateness of experiential approaches to HESD. However, limitations to the current discourse suggest the need for an alternative approach to studying EE within HESD. Therefore, this paper proposes the application of the learning landscape metaphor to take a more student-centred and holistic perspective.

The learning landscape metaphor has previously not been applied to EE within HESD. This alternative conceptualisation foregrounds student perspectives to experiential initiatives within HESD. The holistic approach aims to understand the myriad influences on students learning, while allowing examination of how experiential approaches relate to other educational approaches within HESD.

This chapter opens the second part of the Volume, focusing on the small farms' role and dynamics within the evolving food system. Assessing small farmers' actual and potential contribution to the change towards a sustainable food and nutrition security requires a deep understanding of their strategic decision-making processes. These processes take place in a context highly conditioned by internal and external conditions, including the complex relations between farm and household, which are mapped and described. Building on an adaptation of Porter's model (Porter, 1990), the chapter investigates how farmers, given those conditions, define their strategies (in particular their innovation strategies) aimed at economic and financial sustainability through a multidisciplinary analysis of scientific literature. Internal conditions are identified in the light of the Agricultural Household Model (Singh & Subramanian, 1986) which emphasizes how family farming strategies aim at combining business-related objectives, and family welfare. Then, a comprehensive set of external conditions is identified and then grouped within eight categories: ‘Factors’, ‘Demand’, ‘Finance and Risk’, ‘Regulation and Policy’, ‘Technological’, ‘Ecological’, ‘Socio-institutional’ and ‘Socio-demographic’. Similarly, six types of strategies are identified: ‘Agro-industrial competitiveness’, ‘Blurring farm borders’, ‘Rural development’, ‘Risk management’, ‘Political support’ and ‘Coping with farming decline’.

Among the food system's outcomes, food and nutrition security remains a key concern also in developed countries. This chapter analyzes food and nutrition security issues, unpacking the four dimensions in which the concept is articulated: availability, access, utilization and stability. Then the concept is explored, beyond the official definitions, through a description of the various frames that shape the public debate on food and nutrition security. These frames are: the classical productivist view emerged in the early post-war period; the neoproductivism, promoting a sustainable intensification aimed at producing more food while reducing negative environmental impacts, the entitlement approach based on Sen's reflections on people's capability to access food; the food sovereignty (Via Campesina, 1996) which regards food insecurity as an outcome of unequal power relations: the livelihood approach focused on the assets that determine the living gained by the individual or household; the right to food (De Schutter, 2014) based on the status of each individual as a rights-holder; the similar but less individualistic food democracy and food citizenship perspective which focusses on the collective dimension of those rights; the community food security, again close to the food citizenship but with stronger emphasis on communities and localization. Finally, the main contributions given by small farms to food and nutrition security are described, as identified on the base of the SALSA project outcomes.

This chapter focusses on food systems' vulnerability. In a rapidly and unpredictably changing world, vulnerability of farming and food systems becomes a key issue. The conceptual bases for food vulnerability analysis and food vulnerability assessment are discussed in a systemic perspective with an eye to the transition approach (Geels, 2004) as a perspective capable to analyze how novelties can develop and influence the system capability to fulfil societal functions, and food and nutrition security in particular. A framework for assessing people's food vulnerability is presented together with a simple vulnerability model based on the three dimensions of exposure (the degree to which a system is likely to experience environmental or sociopolitical stress), sensitivity (the degree to which a system is modified or affected by perturbations) and adaptive capacity (the ability to evolve in order to accommodate environmental hazards or change) (Adger, 2006). Then, other sections are dedicated to discuss the general questions that should be answered by a vulnerability assessment exercise, and the specific challenges emerging when the assessment concerns a food system. These elements are then used in the Annex to this chapter as a base for the development of a detailed method based on seven distinct steps for conducting participatory assessments of the vulnerability of food systems.

To analyze more deeply and in a systemic perspective food system outcomes, and the contribution that small farming can give to the achievement of those outcomes, a detailed analysis of food systems is required, which highlights its components, activities and dynamics. Thus, this chapter deepens the analysis of the food system. We first reflect on the complexity of the concept of food system, discussing the abundance of different conceptualizations proposed in the scientific and political debate on the base of different disciplines and perspectives. Then, a comprehensive representation is shown, which is then unpacked. The food system actors, assets and functions are explored, with an eye on power relations among actors and on the main drivers of change. Governance (that also includes actors external to the food systems) is called ‘reflexive’, as long as it characterizes a system that is able to reflect upon the conditions and the forms of its own functioning, to detect and analyze threats and to change accordingly, with the involvement of actors external to the food systems. This analysis, which represents the focus of this section, provides the base for the description of the food system vulnerability developed in Chapter 4. Drivers of change and governance emerge as key categories to consider.

This study aims to analyze the factors that determine non-farm enterprise diversification among farm households in Ethiopia. It extends the analysis by examining enterprises and using pooled data, which has the capacity to generate more accurate outcomes. The existing empirical evidence has focused on all non-farm activities, based on single period, single region data. Much of the existing empirical evidence is based on small-scale and location-specific sample surveys that do not demonstrate the characteristics of aggregate populations.

The empirical analysis was conducted using a quantitative method. To cater to the censoring nature of participating in non-farm enterprise activities, a panel data double-hurdle model is used to a representative sample of 3,594 Ethiopian rural households.

The study finds that the age of household head, household size, distance to the market, social capital and access to credit, are determinants for owning one or more non-farm enterprises. The level of income from these enterprises is then determined by the age and education level of the household head, household size, agricultural equipment, distance to markets and access to credit.

This study brings to light factors that influence households to participate in non-farm enterprises and the determining factors for the income level.

Non-farm activities are an important source of household income and a driver of development. This paper provides empirical evidence on factors that determine enterprise ownership using panel data.