Rural Development Paradigm Research Articles

ICTs for rural development: potential applications and barriers involved

Rural policy nowadays is at the heart of the policy discussion in many countries all over the world, in the effort to address and effectively support the specific needs and opportunities of rural places and their population in the new era. Along these lines, the focus of the present paper is twofold: on the one hand it attempts to shed light on the role of ICTs and their applications as enabling tools empowering rural development; while on the other hand it explores the barriers appearing towards the adoption and use of ICTs in rural regions. In such a context, it firstly places emphasis on the evolving new rural development paradigm. Then, the range and potential of ICTs applications is explored, that can serve the implementation of the new policy paradigm in rural regions. It follows a discussion on the steps that are needed in order to develop value-added ICTs applications in rural regions and the barriers appearing in the adoption and use of ICTs in these regions. Finally, are presented some issues of policy concern in respect to the adoption and use of ICTs in a rural development perspective.

Sustainable Rural Tourism: Lessons for Rural Development

AbstractRural areas are recognised for their complex, multifunctional capacities with a range of different interest groups claiming their rights to, and use of, different rural spaces. The current rural development paradigm that is evident across the globe is epitomised by the European LEADER approach. Using evidence from the proposed National Park in Northern Ireland, we ask the question: what is the potential for sustainable rural tourism to contribute to rural development? In our analysis we consider the scope for adaptive tourism to overcome some of the ongoing challenges that have been identified in the LEADER approach. Four themes are revealed from this analysis: institutional (in)capacity, legitimacy of local groups, navigating between stakeholder interests and sustainable tourism in practice. These issues, discussed in turn, have clear implications for the new rural development programme.

Farming Livelihoods and Landscapes: Tensions in Rural Development and Environmental Regulation

European rural development scholars have been preoccupied with how to understand the pace and scope of rural landscape change, as increasingly liberalized market economic policies and stringent environmental mandates shape contemporary landscapes and livelihoods. Recent efforts to document and theorize the new practices occurring in rural landscapes have produced two competing explanatory frameworks of rural change, one of which asserts a paradigm shift in rural development based around new agri-food networks and the expansion of non-agriculturally related activities in the landscape, while the other argues there is more continuity than change in current practices. The paper presents a case study of livestock farming in Devon, southwest England, a region where agriculture is central to the iconography of the area and yet is under threat by environmental and economic challenges. Based on in-depth interviews and extensive surveys with nearly 80 farmers in a catchment in Devon, we find that most of the changes farmers are making in response to these challenges are agri-centric ‘coping strategies’ embedded within a productivist framework, rather than constituting a new paradigm of rural development.

Innovative Strategies of Agricultural Cooperatives in the Framework of the New Rural Development Paradigms: The Case of the Region of Valencia (Spain)

With this paper we aim to analyse how new entrepreneurial strategies are emerging in the field of agricultural cooperatives within the Region of Valencia (Spain), and how these strategies are characterised through the lens of the agrarian-based rural development model. Initial results show that these strategies have the potential to strengthen the role of cooperatives in rural economic development as they add value to specific territorial resources, create new ties with other local and nonlocal actors, and diversify the economy of rural areas. Nevertheless, the cooperative (collective) nature of these organisations can also create decision-making and investment problems, as they can divide the interests of their social base.

Creating Sustainable Rural Development through Stimulating the Eco-economy: Beyond the Eco-economic Paradox?

The article explores the potential of rural areas to contribute to sustainability by recasting their relationships with the increasingly contested carbon-based economy. By deriving concepts from a variety of theoretical strands, it is argued that it is appropriate to consider rural areas as distinguishable arenas for fostering the eco-economy. The article explores these pathways by first examining three theoretical bases of the eco-economy: ecological economics, eco-system services and ecological modernisation. These begin to provide a conceptual basis for an integrative model of rural development. Using a series of empirical case studies from rural Wales we construct and operationalise a framework for analysing the eco-economy and explore how the concept of the eco-economy can be taken forward. In conclusion, we assess how the eco-economy can contribute to the wider emerging rural development paradigm.

A LEADER-megközelítés helye és szerepe a vidékfejlesztési politika megvalósításában

The LEADER approach as a sustainable development streamline based on local resources, means a paradigm of competitive and sustainable rural development. The Local Action Groups (LAGs) as local development organizations forming in the framework for applying the concept of LEADER method, have an important role in realization of objectives of the rural development policy at local level. The execution of the rural development policy can be interpreted as the fulfillment of levels building on each other in an objectiveinstrument type of implementation, which is pervaded by the LEADER approach. The LEADER is not only a successful way of rural development, but a concept or a model that pervades and embraces the whole process of programming and execution of rural development from the policy level to the implementation of projects.

Rural development and the regional state: Denying multifunctional agriculture in the UK

Under the emerging rural development paradigm, we argue that to be multifunctional an activity must add income to agriculture, it must contribute to the construction of a new agricultural sector that corresponds to the needs of the wider society and it must reconfigure rural resources in ways that lead to wider rural development benefits. By evaluating UK rural policies on the basis of whether or not they attempt to meet these conditions, this paper shows that an implicit recognition of agriculture's multifunctional character has occurred recently through the shift from a sectoral to a regional and territorial perspective that reintegrates farming into rural development. However, in practice, and especially in England, the UK government has been unable to turn multifunctional activities into a real rural development option. In fact, by continuing to support agri-industrial/retailer interests on the one hand, and post-productivist— environmental and amenity— interests on the other, the State is governing mostly by setting up competitively organized ‘projects’ and schemes that continue to justify the concentration (and limitation) of resources allocated to agriculture. Based upon a critique of policy developments over the past decade, this paper emphasizes the need for more innovative forms of state innovation that provide opportunities for new, creative and more spatially embedded forms of supply and demand management in agri-food. In the conclusions, the paper also argues that more critical research is needed to uncover the existing and potential role of both governments and producer networks in progressing sustainable rural development through agricultural multifunctionality.

Coexistence or contradiction? GM crops versus alternative agricultures in Europe

Agricultural biotechnology (agbiotech) has intersected with a wider debate about ‘sustainable agriculture’, especially in Europe. Agbiotech was initially promoted as an alternative which would avoid or remedy past problems of intensive agriculture, but such claims were soon challenged. Agbiotech has extended the dominant agri-industrial paradigm, while critics have counterposed alternatives corresponding to an agrarian-based rural development paradigm. Amid controversy over environmental and health risks in the late 1990s, an extra issue emerged − the prospect that genetically modified (GM) material would become inadvertently mixed with non-GM crops. In response the European Commission developed a policy framework for ‘coexistence’ between GM, conventional and organic crops. This policy has aimed to ensure that farmers can freely choose among different production systems, which would develop side by side, yet specific proposals for coexistence rules favour some choices over others. Such rules have been contested according to different policy agendas, each promoting their model of future agriculture. Moreover, a Europe-wide network of regional authorities has promoted ‘GM-free zones’ as a territorial brand for green, localised, high-quality agri-food production, whose diverse qualities depend upon symbolic, immaterial characteristics. This alternative has been counterposed to the agri-industrial production of global commodities – symbolised by the European Union, especially its product authorisation procedure for the internal market. ‘Coexistence’ policy was intended to mediate policy conflicts over GM crops, yet it has become another arena for contending agricultural systems, which may not so readily co-exist in practice. Wherever an agrarian-based rural development paradigm gains local support, its alternative agricultures are in contradiction rather than coexistence with GM crops.

Slow Food's Presidia: What do Small Producers do with Big Retailers?

The paper deals with the transformation of local agrofood systems, in the context of the turn to “the economy of qualities” and the rural development paradigm. We will discuss a case study from Italy, specifically an agreement between Slow Food and Coop Italia concerning the Ark of Taste's Presidia, aiming at the protection of typical products and food traditions.The agreement is analysed as a change of strategy, implying a transformation of the local agrofood system from “local production for local consumers” to “local production for distant consumers”. The change is substantial and implies a restructuring of the entire local food network.

Information technology and mass poverty

If information technology (IT) is to have a mass impact on those living in rural areas of developing countries, it cannot occur on the basis of ownership (as it does in rich countries). Instead, it is to institutional innovations in and for developing countries, that one needs to look at. Two basic forms of innovation are identified: one which allows use of IT without ownership and the other which permits the benefits of IT to reach those who make no individual use of it. Either way, however, successful institutional innovations require a thicket of interactions between local actors, rather than interventions from foreign agencies (at least in the initial phase). Three case studies were used to illustrate these components of what I feel is an emerging paradigm of IT and rural development.

Book Review: Multifunctional agriculture: a new paradigm for European agriculture and rural development

Book Review: Multifunctional agriculture: a new paradigm for European agriculture and rural development

Rethinking the European countryside—can we learn from the South?

A new paradigm of multi-dimensional rural development has emerged which advocates a broader conception of the rurality where the rural is no longer the monopoly of the farmer. This new, broader paradigm needs to be reflected in the methodology of social scientific research, both generic and applied. In this paper we are primarily concerned with transfer of research methodologies utilised in development studies in the South to explore their usefulness for rethinking the European countryside. Such a transfer of methodology may be helpful, because integrated rural development can build on a long legacy in the South, while it has only recently been advocated in the EU context. The paper reflects upon the application of two such analytical concepts originating from development studies, which we have applied for research on the rural geographies in the European countryside, namely Sen's livelihood capabilities approach and Chambers’ concept of participatory rural appraisal (PRA). Having the sustainable livelihoods approach as overall framework, both methodologies are qualitative in nature and address people's survival strategies and livelihood practices with a focus on micro-level analysis at individual, household (Sen) and community level (PRA), while reflecting their embeddedness in wider social, political and economic structures. Our comparative studies suggest that the prospects for bottom-up development, as orchestrated by PRA or similar approaches, is constrained by structural factors, which define the boundaries for local development. The capabilities approach is useful to detect the capabilities to act and be within which bottom-up approaches may take their—though limited—role in rural development.

Multifunctional Agriculture: A New Paradigm for European Agriculture and Rural Development

Multifunctional Agriculture: A New Paradigm for European Agriculture and Rural Development

Book Reviews

GARDNER, B.L. and RAUSSER, G.C. (Eds) (2002). Handbook of Agricultural Economics: Volume 2A. Agriculture and its External Linkages.ROMERO, C. AND REHMAN, T. (2003). Multiple Criteria Analysis for Agricultural DecisionFAFCHAMPS, M. Rural Poverty, Risk and DevelopmentVAN HUYLENBROECK. G. and DURARD G. (eds.) (2003) Multifunctional Agriculture: a New Paradigm for European Agriculture and Rural Development. The Welfare Economics of Public Policy.ANDREOSSO‐O'CALLAGHAN, B. (2003). The Economics of European Agriculture.

Towards an Andean Rural Development Paradigm?

Towards an Andean Rural Development Paradigm?

The ‘espace productif’, the ‘théâtre de la nature’ and the ‘territoires de développement local’: the opposing rationales of contemporary French rural development policy

This paper examines how the current EU‐driven shift of CAP reform, away from a purely agricultural support agenda towards a broader approach to both agricultural and rural development, challenges many of the fundamental French beliefs as to what a European agricultural policy should be, yet, at the same time, responds very closely to, and indeed parallels, emerging social and political concerns within France. These concerns confront a domestic agricultural policy edifice that has grown up with, and been nurtured and strengthened by, the Common Agricultural Policy. The paper argues that the new EU agenda, in introducing a fundamentally different conceptualization of rural development from the agrocentric one that has so dominated French rural policy over the last 50 years, adds to an already confusing repertoire of rural development paradigms in France. Either directly, or in association with other trends in French policy evolution, CAP reform is articulating with French rural development in a number of different ways: through a growing acceptance of the multifunctional role of farming within rural space, societies and economies, through the redistributive potential of public funding streams within agriculture, through the support and enhancement of environmental capital, through the implicit decentralization of agricultural policy making that such changes necessarily imply and, finally, through the relationship established between farming and other rural development policies aimed at fostering territorial cohesion.

Rural Europe Redux? Reflections on Alternative Agro‐Food Networks and Paradigm Change

This paper examines some recent analyses of alternative agro‐food networks (AAFNs) and claims that these innovative modes of food provisioning are emblematic of a new rural development paradigm in Western Europe. A political‐economic critique of the territorialised, farm‐centric value added strategies underlying these claims suggests that this characterisation is overdrawn and premature. The neglect of the consumption side of the rural development equation also argues for a more modest assessment of AAFNs and their paradigmatic potential.

Environmental co-operatives as a new mode of rural governance

The modernization paradigm, which for many decades dominated agricultural practices, policies and science, is gradually being replaced by a rural development paradigm. The emerging rural development paradigm calls, amongst other things, for a new approach to policy-making, steering and control, in other words, for a new approach to rural governance. The need for new forms of rural governance is embedded in current political and scientific debates on shifts in multi-level governance that occur in a variety of socio-economic domains. Within the domain of agriculture and rural development, self-organization and self-regulation emerge as a new mode of rural governance. Environmental co-operatives are a promising expression of this. They are characterized by new institutional relations between state agencies and the agricultural community, new social networks of trust at local level and the re-embedding of farming in its local social and ecological context. In the Frisian Woodlands, the environmental co-operatives VEL and VANLA succeeded in building new local social networks of trust and in re-integrating dairy farming, nature conservation and landscape management. However, further development towards self-regulation is hampered by a lack of institutional support, particularly from national government authorities.

India's Development Information Network: Lessons Learned

Dans un pays en voie de developpement comme l'Inde, la fracture numerique menace d'accentuer les inegalites entre riches et pauvres. L'acces aux connaissances constitue pourtant la fondation du developpement de ces pays. L'efficacite du role des ONG (Organisations Non-Gouvernementales) repose sur l'utilisation de l'internet et la mise en reseau de leurs informations. Le projet indev doit permettre de resorber la fracture numerique au sein des ONG et de repondre a leurs besoins en matiere d'information du developpement, de technologie, de logiciel et de formation.

Integrating Agri‐Environment Policy, Farming Systems and Rural Development: Tir Cymen in Wales

This paper examines a conservation scheme in Wales called Tir Cymen (tidy land in Welsh) as a means of exploring the extent to which policies designed primarily to support habitat, landscape, biodiversity and conservation are commensurate with goals to maintain viable rural communities,including viable agricultures. Maximizing the broader rural development impacts of conservation schemes, it is argued, is a vital ingredient in the pursuit of sustain‐able rural development, particularly in regions where many farm businesses are likely to be already highly dependent upon subsidy support. It is argued, through the presentation of the Tir Cymen case, that conservation policies can,if appropriately designed and regionally embedded, go some way to mitigating both the ‘farm problem’ and the ‘rural problem’, and are therefore capable of a sustainable and desirable rural development impact commensurate with the new rural development paradigm.