Journal of Rural Studies最新文献

How do we test solutions for greater social sustainability in food systems when those alternatives do not yet exist? How do we create solutions that account for the entire food system? This paper presents an innovative research method, the serious game, and its application for researching propositions that are systems-wide, integrating consumer equity and viable small farming in the Northeastern United States. It is presented as an example for other researchers interested in applied, policy-relevant research We detail our mixed-methods, stakeholder-informed process of developing a game that tests policy interventions for increasing the accessebility of small-farm produce, which arose from exploratory qualitative data collection as an example of how to use this method. We describe the resulting “Race Against Rot” game and present an example of results generated by game play. Finally, we discuss the translational potential of using serious games methodology to represent food systems and test real-world solutions to pressing concerns.

We propose that post-productivism offers a useful analytical framework for understanding the multi-scalar and diverse changes that are taking place in China's rural revitalization. As a theoretical framework that emerged from the study of rural changes in the Global North, the applicability of post-productivism in the Global South has been contested. This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence of post-productivism in rural China and uses post-productivism as a framework to conceptualize a wide range of changes in China's rural revitalization. We conceptually clarify the driving forces that give rise to post-productivism and the outcomes these drivers produce. The two key drivers of post-productivism in China have been: 1) discontents with productivist agriculture from the state, urban consumers, and rural communities, which manifested in a shift in government's policy priority from agricultural production to ecological restoration, urban consumers' demands for “quality food”, and rural producers' demands for a “quality life”, and 2) urbanites' desire to experience the rural idyll, which translated into demands on rural space for urban consumption. We use seven representative cases to illustrate the various types of post-productivism that the two drivers have generated in rural China. These cases underscore that the transition to post-productivism is a key characteristic of China's rural revitalization.

Norway has undertaken specific governance measures to eradicate and control MRSA and ESBL E. coli, two AMR bacterium, in pigs and poultry respectively. These measures are unique in the context of AMR governance in Europe and globally, and extend AMR governance in agriculture beyond a focus on reducing antibiotics use, towards direct efforts to control the prevalence of two AMR bacteria of concern. Based on interviews with public health, animal health, and agricultural industry organisations, this article contributes to a growing body of literature examining practices and policies of AMR governance and work on the intersection between spatial imaginaries and AMR governance. The article specifically analyses the different discursive dimensions of a dominant spatial imaginary encompassing Norway as a protective, protected and purifiable space. Within this context, AMR bacteria, as a wicked problem eluding human boundaries and barriers, is imagined as being directly actionable because the Norwegian agriculture and its spatial vulnerabilities are positioned as sufficiently stabilised that they can now be controlled. Broader agricultural and AMR governance arrangements in turn work to sustain social and material barriers to new AMR bacteria (re-)entering Norway. This sustained mode of action has arguably succeeded in reshaping Norwegian agriculture to the exclusion of these AMR bacterium from pigs and poultry. These efforts reinforce the spatial imaginary and protectionist regulatory practices that sustain Norway as a protected place.

We can obtain knowledge about how sustainability transitions can take place through experimenting with niche-activities. An alternative food network (AFN) called Green Parallel was co-created through action research in an agri-food living lab and was piloted in 2019 and 2020. The purpose was to contribute to more organic produce in localized food systems and improve communication between producers and professional buyers (e.g. specialty stores, restaurants, chain retails, private and public canteens) in the Vestfold region in Norway. This paper analyses the occurring forces and tensions that support or hinder the viability of the AFN.

The methods of data collection were interviews, reflection notes and participants’ notes from the participatory processes. We utilized perspectives from field theory and institutional economy to understand individual behaviors in relation to internal and external forces and tensions in a multi-level perspective (MLP).

A strong supportive force was the initial motivation participants in Green Parallel had to collaborate. In addition, we identified seven forces and tensions affecting the viability of Green Parallel. These forces and tensions worked through complex interdependencies within individuals and actor types and across actor types, as well as across internal and external niche spans. The study can inform further development of organic and local agri-food systems.

Poverty eradication is a critical objective of the Un 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. China's Poverty Alleviation Relocation (PAR) has made positive contributions to global poverty alleviation. The success of PAR depends on identifying factors affecting migrants' intentions to move and understanding their lives post-PAR, which is usually ignored in the literature. Therefore, based on the social integration theory, this study adopts a structural equation modeling framework to empirically explore the social integration process of PAR migrants using the sample data sourced from a survey on the resettlement site in Yunnan province, China. The results show that the social integration of PAR migrants goes through the path of economic integration, community integration, and psychological integration, where community and social support help migrants to transition from improving economic standards of living to finding a place attachment and being a member of the new community. The empirical evidence indicates policymakers should consider providing support for PAR migrants to participate in community activities and engage with residents to gain social capital for them to adapt to the new community.

The English countryside is set to undergo significant changes in the way it will be managed in the coming year. The incoming Environmental Land Management schemes represents a shift in scale and focus of public goods provisioning, with the Landscape Recovery scheme in particular now geared more in favour of a coordinated landscape scale delivery of these public goods. This also comes at a time when the countryside has been experiencing a diversification within the land management community, which are moving towards an increasingly heterogenous mix of values and motivations for occupying and managing land. This will have implication as to how effective these public goods can be delivered on a landscape scale. Further complicating this is that while the idea of landscape scale collaboration to deliver more meaningful outcomes towards conservation has been widely accepted in scientific circles, uncertainty about how to achieve this in practice remains. This prompts a growing need to better understand how willing these increasingly diverse range of landholders are in collaborating together.

To address this, this paper explores how collaborations consisting of a heterogenous mix of stakeholders might function, and the drivers and interventions required for such collaboration to be sustained in the long term. Utilising Q-methodology, we establish various models of collaboration based around the range perspectives of different stakeholders. Our findings yield five models of collaboration: the “Traditional Farmer”, “Social Farmer”, “Hybrid Collaboration”, “Modern Collaborators” and “Pragmatic Collaborators”. While distinction between the groups are reflected by the aspects of collaboration they placed most importance to, several commonalities in views have emerged as well. This includes the trust required between conservation groups and landholders for effective conservation outcomes, and the opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience in collaborations. Ultimately, the models of collaboration suggest a need for future policies to think more directly about how different landholders might be grouped according to their perspective on collaboration and how they can be incentivised. This will facilitate more effective, and sustained, landholder collaborations that fulfils landscape scale ambitions of upcoming policies.

This review paper draws upon a wide range of diverse international sources to give a still relatively early assessment of the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic stimulated a resurgence of counterurbanisation across much of the global North. Whilst it finds and argues that a ‘resurgence’ was apparent, it may not have been as strong or lasting as was suggested by media reports in particular. Indeed, numerous challenges to any such a resurgence are noted, drawn especially from recent reflections on the pandemic period. Nonetheless, any counterurban revival is seen as being significant more widely as it fits with a wider resurgent interest in ‘all things rural’ that pre-dated COVID-19 but was stimulated further by it. In contrast to the widely celebrated rural, the paper also notes how city life was often seen as unsatisfactory during the pandemic, not least because its usual underpinning by diverse everyday mobilities was strongly compromised. This condition stimulated, in particular, a turn to rural often more for pragmatic than idealistic reasons, such as for health and to have more freedom and space. Overall, the whole COVID-19 experience sits within a range of political questions about access to space centrally involving the rural.

Viticultural regions around the world have faced considerable challenges in the past two decades. This is particularly the case in Australia where climate change, labour shortage and tariff fluctuations are pronounced. This study explores the viticultural industry's financial returns in Australia over time, and in particular focusses upon a case study of a key irrigated viticultural region (the Riverland in South Australia) that faces additional challenges of water scarcity, high irrigation costs, but lower output prices. Using two decades of wine industry tax financial data (n = 13,600+), the study examines small, medium, and large viticultural businesses defined by gross financial turnover in the Riverland. Results find businesses of all sizes have experienced falling net income, and – while smaller farms accounted for this through reducing total expenses – larger farms implemented strategies to increase gross turnover. Through further in-depth interviews with 25 growers in the Riverland, accounting and business strategies are identified to help irrigators to respond to risks. These strategies include product and process diversification, innovative business models, technology, and collaboration that allow businesses to remain financially viable whilst adapting to change. However, the increasing advent of climate change and lower prices means farm exit will probably be an increasing option for many small grape growers in the future.

This study is the outcome of research on family farming in a coastal valley in northern Spain. The objective of the study is to determine to what degree traditional norms and values persist in the practices of family farmers. A qualitative methodology was used in the research. It demonstrates that, contrary to the optimism expressed by some studies, social changes have not succeeded in transforming the organization of family farms, or the rigid guidelines associated with the social reproduction of these rural economy units, which are still subject to traditional forms of succession and inheritance. As a result, so-called farm ideology is still a very present feature of everyday life. This ideology, defined by its strong masculine and patriarchal content, places the man as the majority owner and the woman as the wife and producer, left to take on an endless list of roles, both visible and "invisible”. Equal rights for women, although universally recognised, are still far from being achieved in this valley of northern Spain.