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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.

In the context of rural development, the question how farmers are interconnected with local rural communities is crucial, as farmers historically have played a key role in rural areas, always shaped by the cultural-systemic context in which they acted. The purpose of this paper is to explore this connection in North-East (NE) Germany and Switzerland, two countries whose agricultural systems can be seen as diametrically opposed to each other with respect to their structure.

The authors conducted a survey on NE German and Swiss farmers to assess the connectivity between farms and rural communities in terms of the farm managers’ perceptions of their social networks, social support, sense of belonging, and active involvement in organizations.

The results show commonalities and differences between both study regions. Smaller farms are characterized by strongly locally based networks and a higher sense of community belonging, whereas larger farms rather have networks with strong ties outside the local dimension. Moreover, farmers’ local origin and farm diversification are positively associated with strengthening the connection between farms and local communities. Off-farm work is a means for this connection only in NE Germany.

This paper contributes to the discussion about adverse effects of farming scale and corporate farming on community well-being by simultaneously delivering insights into two structurally different agricultural systems. At the same time the approach allows for a comparison between the systems.

This chapter aims to analyse the evolution of competing paradigms and theoretical frameworks that have pervaded the debates on the present and future of agricultural and food systems and their associated rural areas. From this global overview, we will extract common features of paradigms that are being reproduced over time as well as highlight the innovations introduced. Particular attention will be paid to discuss the responses and contributions inspired by European Mediterranean-based research, setting up the framework that underlines the subsequent chapters of the volume.

This study examines the adoption drivers of scale-appropriate mechanization in Nepal's maize-based farming systems. The authors also assess the contribution of scale-appropriate mechanization to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of zero hunger (SDG2) and no poverty (SDG1).

Propensity score matching and doubly robust inverse probability-weighted regression adjusted methods were applied to estimate the effects of mini-tiller adoption. These methods control the biases that arise from observed heterogeneities between mini-tillers users and nonusers.

The study findings show that farm size, labor shortages, draft animal scarcity, market proximity, household assets and household heads' educational level influence the adoption of mechanization in Nepal. Mechanized farms exhibited enhanced maize productivity, profits and household food self-sufficiency. Reduced depth and severity of poverty were also observed. Nevertheless, these effects were not uniform; very small farms (≤0.41 ha) facing acute labor shortages benefited the most.

The study results suggest that policymakers in developing nations like Nepal may wish to expand their emphasis on scale-appropriate mechanization to improve farm productivity and household food security, reduce poverty and contribute to the SDGs.

This first-of-its-kind study establishes the causal effects between scale-appropriate farm mechanization and SDG1 (no poverty) and SDG2 (zero hunger) in a developing nation.

The consequences of extreme climatic events that threaten food security have created the urgent need to properly adopt climate-smart adaptation techniques to improve productivity. The study examined the sustainability responses to climate-smart adaptation and the implication it has for explaining the food security situations among farm households in the Central Region of Ghana.

We estimated Heckit treatment effect model to analyse cross-sectional data collected from randomly selected farmers in the Central Region.

Analysis of farm sustainability index suggests that farmers' agricultural practices in response to climate change are lowly or moderately sustainable. We further found that while majority of the farm households are severely food insecure or food insecure with hunger, only about one-third are food insecure without hunger and the remaining few being food secure. The sustainability of farm practices is being impacted by the farmers’ choice of climate smart adaptation measures at the farm level. Consequently, the farm households' food security situation is found to be improved when sustainable farming practices are employed in the face of managing climate change effects.

Conclusions drawn from the study findings give rooms for policy implications that suggest responsibilities for policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders to promote CSA practices in food crop production in Ghana. These policy implications will contribute to improve crop productivity, increase incomes and thus enhance food security among farm families. Awareness campaign about benefits of CSA practices and technologies need to be strengthened among farmers in Ghana by government and NGOs that matter in promoting farm resilience to climate change. Given the important impacts of sustainable farm practices on household food security situation, policies that seek to build the adaptive capacity of farmers to climate vulnerability impacts should take into consideration the sustainability dimensions of the adaptation and mitigation measures to be advocated for use at farm levels.

Our paper contributes to literature knowledge on climate-smart adaptation practices effect on food security as evidenced in some recent literature. The paper makes a unique contribution by highlighting the food security implication of the sustainability impact of CSA practices, thereby exploring sustainability as an impact pathway between climate smart adaptations practices and food security in a developing country like Ghana. We approached our study aiming at making new contribution by introducing in the study implementation a quasi-experimental research design which future studies on impacts of climate smart adaptation practices can replicate.

The objective of this study is to estimate the impacts of access to irrigation on farm income, household income and income diversification.

This study employs an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model to address the selection bias arising from both observed and unobserved factors and analyze cross-sectional data collected from Fujian, Henan and Sichuan provinces in China. The authors use the Simpson index to measure household income diversification. The propensity score matching (PSM) model and control function approach are also used for comparison purpose.

After controlling for the selection bias, the authors find that access to irrigation has a positive and statistically significant impact on rural incomes and diversification. The treatment effects of access to irrigation are to increase farm income, household income and income diversification by around 14, 10 and 107%, respectively. The positive effects of access to irrigation are confirmed by the estimates of the PSM model and control function approach. Further analysis reveals that the irrigation effects on rural incomes and diversification are heterogeneous between small-scale and large-scale farmers and between male-headed and female-headed households.

The authors’ findings suggest that the government should continue to improve irrigation infrastructure construction in rural China to promote smallholder farmers' water access and at the same time facilitate farmers' access to better agronomic and irrigation information. There exist gender and farm size related income and diversification effects of access to irrigation, and the irrigation access is associated with farm location. Thus, when developing regional irrigation programs consideration needs to be taken of whether the rural farming systems are dominated by male/female household heads and land fragmentation/consolidation issues.

Although a large body of literature has investigated the effects of irrigation development in rural areas, little is known about the impact of access to irrigation on income diversification. The selection bias associated with unobserved heterogeneities is usually neglected in previous studies. This study provides the first attempt by examining the impacts of access to irrigation on rural incomes and diversification, using the ESR model to address both observed and unobserved selection bias.

This study aims to explore the utility of anticipatory adaptation to climate variability and related livelihood sensitivities in rural African contexts using the case of Mbire district situated in the mid-Zambezi valley region of Zimbabwe. The provision of decadal climate information (up to ten years), as part of an anticipatory adaptation package, is at the centre of analysis.

The study used semi-structured and key informant interviews, with a total of 45 semi-structured interviews being conducted with randomly selected long-term communal farmers in the case study area. Whilst data from semi-structured interviews was arranged in Microsoft Excel, thematic analysis was used in analyzing all data.

Anticipatory adaptation and decadal climate projections are shown to potentially enhance flexibility in adaptation planning vis- à-vis responding to climate variability and other challenges, as well as reduce chances of maladaptation in responding to climate challenges in the context of multiple and reinforcing stresses and shocks.

Anticipatory adaptation, with its three main pillars of future analysis, flexibility of strategies and proactive action, is emerging as key in assisting adaptation planning, the harnessing of opportunities and decision-making vis- à-vis responding to climate uncertainties and related livelihood sensitivities. Yet there have not been much empirically grounded analyses in understanding the role of anticipatory adaptation in rural Africa. This study therefore adds to evidence-based analyses towards understanding the role and utility of anticipatory adaptation in local communities in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the relative impacts of full-scale land reallocation (FLR) and partial-scale land reallocation (PLR) on household land rental behavior in rural China.

Probit model, Tobit model and Semi-parametric model are used to provide empirical evidences.

Drawing upon an unique farm survey in 2003, the authors find that in rural China, FLR is more likely to follow egalitarian rule and PLR takes productivity of households into consideration. Econometric analysis provides two main findings. First, FLR has positive effect on household land rental behavior, possibly because egalitarian FLR creates a mismatch between household agricultural ability and land size and after FLR households have to participate in land rental market to adjust the mismatch. Second, PLR has negative effect on household land rental behavior which supports that land reallocation and land rental market are substitutes (Brandt et al., 2004).

The main contribution of this study is to show that FLR and PLR in rural China are motivated by two different rationales (i.e. FLR by egalitarian concerns and PLR by efficiency concerns).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of indigenous agricultural knowledge for sustainable development.

Drawing upon fieldwork on the natural resource management practices of diversified farming systems in a mountainous community in southern Greece, the paper explores the potential of the traditional system for a sustainable food security system.

Small‐scale mountainous farmers possess a range of ideas and concepts from experience related to land degradation. At another level the findings of the study suggest that farmers place over‐riding emphasis on the physical characteristics of their environment in judging the various stages of degradation. Until in a direct interview situation they were forced to confront the part played by human‐related factors.

A major implication is that mountain farming communities need to be educated on the human aspects of degradation and in fact the interrelatedness of cultural activities and the physical world. Furthermore, sustainability in mountain communities depends on more than ecological factors; it requires sensitivity to socio‐economic parameters such as labour demands and food security policies.

The current paper presents useful information on indigenous resource management practices and environmental degradation in mountain communities in Greece. The approach, fieldwork data and interpretation of data can be of value to social researchers in Greece and southern Europe who study issues of sustainability in mountain farming communities.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles social networks play in households’ contribution to the provision of small hydraulic facilities (SHFs) in rural China.

This paper adopts a sample-selection ordered probit model (Greene and Hensher, 2010) to estimate the impacts of overall social-network intensity, of the number of strong ties (relatives), and of the number of weak ties (friends), using data on 1,064 representative households collected from three provinces (Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Shandong).

The numbers of strong ties and weak ties both have significant impacts on households’ willingness to contribute to SHFs provision, but only the latter has a significant impact on their level of contribution. More specifically, a one standard deviation increase in the number of weak ties (i.e. friends) is associated with a 6.6 percent increase in households’ propensity of contributing more than 550 yuan and a 8.2 percent decrease in their propensity of contributing less than 100 yuan.

This paper is the first to examine the impacts of social networks on households’ contribution to SHFs provision in rural China. Its finding is of great policy relevance-fostering and maintaining social networks (e.g. through rural cooperatives) can significantly increase households’ contribution to public-good provision.