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Purpose – This chapter introduces the book collection and sets the theoretical framework for the subsequent chapters.

Design/methodology/approach – The approach of the book is to re-interpret major challenges to global agriculture – particularly climate change and the food crisis of 2008 – as demonstrating shocks to the resilience of global food systems.

Findings – Using resilience to shocks as a key quality of food systems enables recent crises to be understood as central to the ongoing dynamics of food systems rather than simply atypical events. Alongside climate change and food security, other potential shocks are identified: biosecurity, energy, financial and volcanic.

Originality/value – This framework establishes new criteria for examining the potential merit of multifunctional and neo-liberal policy regimes with world food systems.

Purpose – This chapter aims to explore the consequences of a renewed impetus for ‘neo-productivist’ agriculture on multifunctionality in Western Europe.

Design/methodology/approach – We analyse how the issue of multi-functionality has been interpreted and implemented in Western Europe through a comparison between Norway and Scotland (as an EU example). Relevant policy documents and literature are analysed. The chapter explores whether European agricultural multifunctionality is being revised in response to the rise of neo-liberal (neo-productivist) ideologies, food security and climate change issues.

Findings – Our results suggest that Norway and the European Union have developed somewhat different understandings of multifunctionality. In response to recent events these forms are diverging further with the EU strengthening and Norway weakening their respective policies and discourses. However, in both cases, food security and climate change are emerging as key elements in the restructuring of both policy and rhetoric.

Research limitations/implications and practical implications – The study has been limited to an overview of multifunctionality within the European context and a case study approach using Norway and Scotland. Nevertheless, in highlighting the flexible use of the notion of ‘multifunctionality’, it illustrates to policymakers the importance of maintaining a focus on its key environmental and social objectives in the face of pressures to increase production and liberalise agricultural policies.

Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to point out the varied nature of the ‘multifunctionality’ discourse in Europe and how it is likely to change further in response to economic, environmental and social changes.

To critically assess the contribution of community-based logging, low-carbon emission non-timber activities, and direct payment for environmental services in building sustainable rural livelihoods in the Amazon.

Fieldwork undertaken in 2008, 2010, and 2013 on sources of income for 110 interviewed families living in and around three different types of conservation units located on the advancing frontier in western Pará State.

Three scenarios identified with very different socio-environmental outcomes, (1) the multi-functional combination of agricultural and non-agricultural activities replaces frontier farming, reduces deforestation and carbon emissions, increases income, and promotes social inclusion, (2) the mere juxtaposition of green alternative activities alongside unsustainable frontier farming has limited regional impact, and (3) environmental restrictions interfere with rural livelihoods to the point that people to leave the countryside.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of GO and NGO policies in one of the poorest and environmentally problematic regions of Brazil.

First-hand information at the family farmer level concerning sources of income from conventional and green land use systems which is essential for formulating viable socio-environmental policy capable of reducing deforestation and carbon emissions which negatively impact global climate change.

This book is the result of a selection of papers presented in the seminar held in Beijing in 2012. It is the third in chronological order of a seminar series on the comparative analysis of rural development in China, Brazil, and the EU. In previous seminars (2010 in Rome, 2011 in Porto Alegre) the focus was, first, on the nature and dynamics of rural development processes and, second, on the performance of rural development policies. In the third seminar (held in Beijing in November 2012), the focus was on actors and practices. What motivates the actors who are actively involved in rural development? And how do they structure their new practices? In this chapter, different stories on rural development practices between China, Brazil, and the EU are illustrated, highlighting the differences and also commonalities and similarities. In this story, the figure of the peasant appears crucial and in different dimensions: from the manager of natural resources who takes the greatest care of their condition in order to achieve the largest profits; to the innovator who builds on age old methods to find novel solutions with the available conditions, resources, and technologies, and who creates the right synergies for harmonious and positive impact solutions; to the rural villager who does with what he/she has and knows, but who at the same time is curious about innovations; to the father who is aware that he is responsible for building a future for his children. Peasant agriculture seems to go beyond its own limits through a transition process that has led to a paradigm shift moving away from the modernization and creating new opportunities and alternatives in terms of practices, products, and markets. These alternatives are now representing the base for a new autonomy and competitiveness of rural areas in an increasingly globalized world.

Purpose – Reviewing the notion of ‘neo-productivism’ as represented in the literature, this chapter explores multiple forms of neo-productivsm and presents a case study of the dairy industry of New Zealand as a new form ‘cooperative productivism’.

Design/methodology/approach – First, a brief review of the literature on neo-productivist forms is performed in order to develop a framework of neo-productivism as presented in the literature. Second, a case study of Fonterra in New Zealand is undertaken and makes the case that Fonterra represents a new productivist form (that does not fit within the current literature) – that of cooperative productivism.

Findings – Three forms of neo-productivism are described in the literature, namely market productivism, competitive productivism and ‘neo-productivism’. We find that cooperative organisations (in this case Fonterra) can also develop into highly productivist forms when the objectives of members concur with the corporate objectives and are facilitated by a supportive government and weak environmental regulation. The possible implications for European rural development are discussed.

Originality/value – This chapter presents the first framework of the different neo-productivist forms and describes the new concept of cooperative productivism.

From a more general point of view the initiatives and novel practices of farmers represent ‘seeds of transition’. They are the ‘sprouts’ out of which new socio-technical modes for organizing production and marketing emerge – ‘sprouts’ that, taken together can be described under the term ‘rural development’. The examples are, on the whole, well-known; they include agro-ecological production, on-farm processing, agro-tourism, new credit associations and cooperative forms of commercialization. But it remains important to develop a more sociological interpretation of these new forms: since they are produced by social actors and are constantly redefined and modified through the relations and interactions implied by these new forms. This chapter defines the outline on actors and practices that will be discussed in later chapters of the book.

The future of unions hangs in the balance. Labor unions face enormous challenges to overcome decades of decline and diminishing power. The authors examine the current status of unions with an eye toward identifying pathways to rejuvenation. Our analysis focuses on what the authors know about the decline of unions, how its compares historically, and what avenues are available to unions to change. Pathways to growth with undoubtedly require breaking old molds, which have proven ineffective. Unions need to explore new models of representation to take advantage of a changing workforce with new employment relationships typified by the “gig economy.” The authors present an agenda for fruitful research and discuss the implications of a weakened labor movement on the well-being of society.