Areas of intensive livestock agriculture as emerging alternative economic spaces?

Abstract

The ideal of the intensification of agriculture has vanished in developed market economies as the outcomes of conventional production have caused growing environmental problems, in particular in areas with a high concentration of livestock. There is also a growing concern notable about animal welfare issues, accompanied by the belief that agricultural production needs to move away from an conventional agriculture towards one that is loosely defined as ‘alternative’. This paper uses the concept of multifunctionality as a lens for describing and explaining the nature of rural change in Germany. I argue that the case study example of the Oldenburger Münsterland illustrates that multifunctionality rates weakly as agricultural practice in production systems dominated by a conventional food regime and – hence – a transition towards diversity and resilience has to occur within conventional agriculture. In spite of the popularity of the idea that areas of intensive livestock farming might have been gradually transformed into emerging alternative economic spaces, the principle of coexistence between ‘productivist’ and ‘non-productivist’ practices poses major challenges. In particular the scarcity of agricultural land hinders the transition into ‘alternative’ food futures in the Oldenburger Münsterland, while the doubts about conventional agriculture and the industrialized food industry rise in an unprecedented way in German society.