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This chapter presents an overview of the ‘big’ data of Mediterranean agriculture, with a special focus on the four EU countries (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece), in order to provide a backdrop for the rest of cases analysed in the volume. In this regard, two thesis are discussed: the assumption that farming systems in the South have not followed the process of ‘productivist modernisation’ characterising post-war Northern European agricultural change, and that, precisely due to this reason, most holdings and regions from the South would have more possibilities to adapt to new approaches of multifunctional rural development.Thus, the chapter tackles both the static and dynamic structural traits of Southern agricultures and their differences with the North, as well as several aspects of the organisation of farming in the Mediterranean and other key components of productivist modernisation: farm intensification and specialisation. Later, the diffusion of multifunctional dynamics is addressed, in order to introduce some reflections about their meaning and scope in the Mediterranean regions. The chapter ends with a straightforward typology of Southern farming systems and a concluding section, which goes back to discuss the two initial theses.

Understanding complex farming organizations is important in the USA given the rapid consolidation of the agricultural production sector. Multiple entity farms arise from a desire to enhance the ability to transfer the farm from one generation to the next, a desire to affect tax liability, and a desire to affect legal liability. To determine the extent of the multiple entity phenomena and the complications that multiple entities can cause in data collection, the purpose of this article is to address the importance of multiple entities in Kansas.

An overview of reasons leading to additional organizational complexity are discussed. Two case farms are presented to understand the depth of the complexity and how that complexity has implications for data collection.

The number of multiple entity farms is expected to continue to increase. Obtaining data through the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) will become more difficult as production agriculture increases the use of multiple entities. ARMS must reconsider how multiple entity organizations are handled. Possible solutions include an alternative system for data collection of multiple entity farms. Documenting the prevalence of multiple entity organizations in the production sector and tracing through how those organizations are currently handled is critical to understanding potential impacts on the current data collected.

The National Research Council completed a review of ARMS that addressed challenges in keeping the survey relevant into the future. However, research that examines the construction of financial statements and other information had not been conducted since the early 1990s. This study fills part of that gap.

Fighting the drought. Based on this idea, for almost two centuries now the Brazilian State has elaborated policies and programmes intended to stimulate rural development in the semiarid region of the country. It is this idea which has nourished the illusion that immense infrastructures need to be built to capture, store and transport large volumes of water in order to supply production activities in the region. Associated with this proposal is the attempt to reproduce the same pattern of development adopted in other Brazilian biomes, the main characteristic of which is the use of monoculture practices on large properties managed according to entrepreneurial modes of production. However the rich social experience promoted by rural worker organizations in the region has challenged this model by proposing living with the semiarid (Convivência com o Semiárido) as the guiding principle for alternative trajectories of development. Inspired by the experience of territorial development under way in the Agreste da Borborema region of Paraíba state, the chapter shows that the evolution of these new paths of development depends on revitalizing and mobilizing locally available resources, such as ecological potentials, social mechanisms for organizing labour and for producing and sharing knowledge, local forms of connecting food production to consumption and so on. The text concludes by emphasizing the need to design and implant institutional frameworks that enable a more balanced distribution of power between the State and civil society organizations, thereby allowing the latter to assume a more substantial role in identifying and managing endogenous resources that underpin self-centred development strategies.

The agricultural sector has undergone extensive changes in the 20-30 years since the peak academic debate on family farming. Still today, the understanding and concept of family farming has political implications in the processes of rural and agricultural policy. The purpose of this paper is to study the development of agrarian structure by analysing the gendered and family relations of family farming.

This paper examines the concept of the family farm and its utilisation and diversity in the current Swedish agricultural sector from a gender perspective, using empirical data from the Farm Accountancy Data Network. The paper operationalises a situated agrarian typology and examines the gendered position and temporalities of family farms in Sweden, based on patterns of labour use.

A workable, fruitful typology of the agrarian structure suitable for future comparative studies is revealed. It also demonstrates the gendered time in the farm labour process, the different temporalities involved and their interconnection between gender, family and various spheres. The spatial and geographical implications, as well as the increased dependence on family and hired labour in different farm types, are emphasised.

The focus of this study contributes to the understanding of spatial-temporal relations of family farm business and organisation in general and in Sweden particularly. It also provides empirical basis for developing and gender mainstreaming rural and agricultural policies.

This study investigates the drivers of social innovation in disability services with specific reference to the context of nonprofit organizations of social farming. In addition, it highlights the role of stakeholder networks in enhancing the social innovation process and the characteristics of stakeholders and networks driving and supporting social innovation.

Following a qualitative methodology, research was conducted through a case study survey with interviews to 13 nonprofit organizations of social farming for people with disability located in the northeast of Italy.

Insights gained from the interviews revealed that individual, organizational and contextual factors drive social innovation in disability nonprofits. In addition, networks play a key role in enhancing the three drivers of social innovation through the social innovation journey, from opportunity recognition to implementation of the innovation, to its consolidation phases. Characteristics of the networks and the stakeholders involved are also outlined.

Practical implications for social entrepreneurs include the need to establish cross-sectoral partnerships with diverse stakeholders, including private companies.

Implications for policy makers stress the need for ongoing support for nonprofit disability organizations. Social implications are not limited to the inclusion of socially weaker groups; rather, the entire community benefits from the social innovation process.

Social farming represents a valuable solution to meet the needs of disadvantaged people. While much research has investigated the topic of social innovation in social entrepreneurship, only a few studies have addressed social innovation in the context of disability nonprofits involved in social farming.

Care farming is an underexplored example of agricultural diversification. In their process of diversification, care farmers are newcomers to the healthcare sector, facing high entry barriers and lacking the skills required to build a solid and legitimate presence in this new domain. Changes in the care regime have provided opportunities for new players, like regional organizations of care farmers, to gain access to care budgets. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze how strategies designed to establish regional organizations of care farms with similar access to institutional resources unfold and are translated into entrepreneurial behavior, organizational identity and legitimacy, and help provide access to care budgets.

Using entrepreneurship, identity formation and legitimacy building as guiding concepts, the authors interviewed stakeholders and analyzed activities and documents to gain a broad perspective with regard to the organizations, skills and activities.

The authors identified two types of regional care farm organizations: a cooperative and a corporate type. While the corporate type clearly exhibited entrepreneurial behavior, leading to a trustful and appealing organizational identity, substantial fund-raising and an early manifestation of institutional and innovative legitimacy in the care sector, the cooperative type initially lacked entrepreneurial agency, which in turn led to a lack of legitimacy and a slow development toward a more professional market-oriented organization. Manifesting entrepreneurial behavior and strategically aligning the healthcare and agricultural sectors, and building up both institutional and innovative legitimacy in the care sector proved to be crucial to the successful development of regional organizations of care farms. This study contributes to existing literature by exploring relationships between entrepreneurial and institutional strategies, legitimacy, organizational identity and logics.

This study contributes to the literature by exploring how in times with changes in institutional logics, strategies to establish new organizations unfold. The authors have shown how differences in strategy to establish new organizations with similar access to institutional resources unfold and are translated into diverging organizational identities and degrees of legitimacy. Entrepreneurial behavior is the key to create a trustful and appealing identity and innovative and institutional legitimacy which is important for providing access to an institutionalized sector.

This paper suggests that a corporate-environmental food regime is emerging as part of a larger restructuring of capitalism. Like past food regimes, it reflects specific social and political compromises, which I interpret through the social movement concept of interpretive frames. The diasporic-colonial food regime of 1870–1914 grew up in response to working class movements in Europe, and created a historically unprecedent class of commercial family farmers. When world markets collapsed, those farmers entered into new alliances, including one that led to the mercantile-industrial food regime of 1947–1973. Lineaments of a new food regime based on quality audited supply chains seems to be emerging in the space opened by impasse in international negotiations over food standards. Led by food retailers, agrofood corporations are selectively appropriating demands of environmental, food safety, animal welfare, fair trade, and other social movements that arose in the interstices of the second food regime. If it consolidates, the new food regime promises to shift the historical balance between public and private regulation, and to widen the gap between privileged and poor consumers as it deepens commodification and marginalizes existing peasants. Social movements are already regrouping and consolidation of the regime remains uncertain.

The paper intends to show why farms as we know them today may soon be a thing of the past and that organisational behaviour research has an important contribution to make in assisting the upcoming transformation.

Two strains of literature are reviewed and then synthesised: the literature on robots replacing humans in agricultural production and the literature on vertical integration that shifts decisions to agribusiness. Then the potential contribution of organisational behaviour research is outlined.

It is shown how the farm is likely to lose both roles for which their geographic entity is important: making decisions and carrying out production. This requires contributions from organisational behaviour research in the realms of decision designs and social systems.

It can be anticipated that the most profitable strategy for farmland owners in the future will be collaboration with contractors. Farms as organisations, are increasingly losing their importance. This not only has grave social implications for farmworkers and landowners but also for scholars in organisational behaviour research.

The paper challenges an organisational unit that is so familiar to us that it is rarely questioned.

Agriculture sectors in China and India are going through rapid changes. There is a shift in demand pattern, significant changes in the supply chain, greater competition due to opening up of the domestic and external markets and fuller integration with rest of the economy. These developments have impacted traditional agriculture and its institutional underpinning. Latter are being transformed and new institutions are coming into existence. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper discusses the changes in economy and the agricultural sector, explores institutional responses in terms of various producer organizations in the two countries, and examines their adequacy for the coming phase of agricultural development in China and India.

The co-existence of various farmer organizations will sustain for a long period in both China and India. Overall, they have benefitted agriculture producers, and more particularly the surplus generating farmers. However, the incompatibility between these and the vast and growing small farm sector is not disappearing. Next set of institutional reforms should address this critical question of “reaching the unreached.”

China and India are the world’s two largest countries in terms of population as well as agricultural population. They share a lot of common features. This paper discusses the changes in agricultural sector, explores institutional responses in terms of farmer organizations, and examines their adequacy for the coming phase of agricultural development in China and India, which has never been seen before.

This study aims to identify the key drivers influencing the success of farmers who employ direct marketing at wholesale markets. The diversification of the distribution system in Thailand has created many challenges for farmers, with diversified farm businesses struggling to survive and to ensure profitability across channels. Direct marketing channels at wholesale markets provide farmers the opportunity to develop a new farm business division.

The study consists of qualitative and quantitative approaches. First, in-depth interviews with farmers were conducted, and selected case studies were employed to develop a research framework and design the questionnaire. Second, the questionnaire survey was conducted. Using factor analysis and logistic regression, farmers' data were studied to define the factors of success in direct marketing.

Three key drivers were examined and verified. The findings indicate that the development of direct marketing channels requires farmers to efficiently allocate family labour, possess negotiation skills and manage a farmer network. Particularly, the presence of negotiation skills coupled with digital technology can enable farmers to expand the market and build their network.

Two marketing channels have been explored. However, more choices in marketing channels utilizing digital resources should be addressed in future research.

This is the first empirical study to define the drivers leading Thai farmers to continue employing a direct marketing channel.