Last week, from wednesday 21 to friday 23 of January, I stayed in Basenberga, mid Sweden for a workshop on cross cultural learning in rural development. The workshop was organised by the Swedish team of an informal LEADER-based network which exists since 2005 and which calls itself ‘European Network for Local Development Teams (ENLDT). The ENDLT is a knowledge building and shared learning network involving mixed teams of local practitioners, local politicians/civil servants and academics from the countries Ireland, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and with some earlier participation from Germany, Hungary and Great Britain. By visiting each other, by the mixed nature of our teams and by developing a method for cross cultural learning, we jointly deepened our understanding of local development in different European settings which benefited our own practice. This time in Sweden a small proportion of the network came together to test and discuss the Manual of our method, written by the Swedish team. The Manual will be published in March and will be available on the web.
Category Archives: Rural Development
Rural Sociology starts blogging!
As one of the first chairgroups of Wageningen University the Rural Sociology Group starts blogging about their work! All members of the group and related students fill this blog with up to date information about their work. So quickly subscribe to our feed to follow us!
From CAP to CRP and CFP
The Common Agricultural Policy is in a continuous process of reforms. Price and market regulation are gradually reduced, income support is increasingly linked to the provision of public goods and a gradually growing portion of the budget is made available for rural development activities. In general these reforms are inevitable and timely, yet I wonder if they are sufficient considering today’s realities and tomorrow’s challenges. In particular I am thinking of the blurring boundaries between urban and rural (in particular with regards to economic activities and employment opportunities), urbanisation of the countryside, the diminishing economic significance of agriculture in rural areas and the rapid increase of food-related health (obesity, malnutrition) and environmental (waste, food miles) problems.
Is diversification desirable?
Should farms and rural regions specialize or is it, both at farm and regional level, more desirable to diversify? Based on ample research carried out by my group during the past decade I’m inclined to plea in favor of diversification. At farm level there is much evidence that diversification of economic activities is desirable: Continue reading
The tension between rural and regional development
Last week I participated in a conference in Vienna entitled “Rural potentials for regional development“. One of the issues discussed in one of the workshops at that conference was the field of tension between rural development and regional development policies. Rural development policies focus on the sustainable provision of agriculture’s primary products (food, feed and fibre) and on the other good and services provided by farmers, such as biodiversity, landscape, tourism and care in rural areas. The importance of urban and peri-urban agriculture tends to be somewhat neglected. Regional development policies focus on spatial development and on the economic development of and employment in industry and non-agricultural or rural activities and services. The importance of agriculture in regional development largely remains unnoticed. Continue reading
