Journal of Rural Studies最新文献

Regulatory regimes codify complex social objectives for agriculture, and judge producers' compliance relative to the resulting rules and standards. By combining Access Theory with Regulator-Intermediary-Target Theory, we frame farmers' compliance with agricultural rules and standards as a dynamic, relational product of social networks, rather than an asset that a farmer either has or lacks. To build these arguments, we compare four cases of governance over distinct social objectives sought from agricultural production: (1) legitimacy, examined through ongoing cannabis legalization in California; (2) safety, examined through the proliferation of microbial risk management into specialty crop agriculture in the United States; (3) organic, examined through the evolution of the US National Organic Program standards; and (4) fairness, examined through the fair trade movement and the split between Fair Trade International and Fair Trade USA. We find that farmers must continuously negotiate their compliance to maintain market access. Three key types of intermediaries participate in that negotiation: gatekeeping intermediaries who judge who shall pass, normative intermediaries who reify norms of ‘good’ as opposed to ‘bad’ farms and farmers, and facilitating intermediaries upon whom farmers depend to help them claim compliance. Our comparative analysis reveals novel insights into the network of social relations that shape who can comply and who cannot, which in turn determines who may participate in agriculture, in what ways, and for the sake of whom.

Agricultural growth poles and development corridors are key instruments for fostering economic growth in rural areas and widely employed across the African continent. This paper contributes to the growing body of scholarship that empirically investigates how these large-scale spatial development strategies ‘hit the ground’. Drawing on ethnographic research within the Bagré Growth Pole Project in Burkina Faso and focusing on its key sector, rice, we develop the notion of coordination work. Coordination work captures the quotidian dimension of a growth pole project that is the instruments and interventions aimed at aligning different actors, activities, and arrangements in the project zone. Deploying a practice theoretical lens, we empirically unfold three modes of coordination work, namely the work of agricultural advisors on demonstration fields, consultancy support to farmer groups and unions, and the setting up of a binding agricultural calendar. We contend that a focus on coordination work illuminates the underlying assumptions and effects of distinct measures and instruments while also pointing to the cross connections between them. Ultimately, we show how specific project components change socio-ecological rhythms by tuning and timing practices at the center of megaprojects.

Understanding technical knowledge acquisition modes in organic farming (i.e., how organic farmers learn about the means and methods underpinning the practice of organic agriculture) and how such learning modes and subsequent knowledge affect environmental sustainability constitutes a necessary condition to develop a more sustainable type of agriculture. Using survey data from 358 organically certified Spanish farms, this paper analyzes the role of educational and research institutions, advisory organizations, and sectoral organizations when it comes to promoting different types of knowledge acquisition pathways among organic farmers, as well as the degree of effectiveness of such learning alternatives and the acquired technical knowledge vis-à-vis environmental sustainability. The results obtained show that sectoral organizations are the most relevant actor and that a balance is needed between social interaction-based and codification-grounded learning pathways to facilitate the acquisition of technical knowledge by organic farmers and thus contribute to environmental sustainability.

This study aims to investigate how community leaders of Lurigancho-Chosica, in Lima-Perú, perceive environmental (im)mobility in their community, because of El Niño-Southern Oscillation [ENSO]. ENSO is a recurrent climate event that will likely worsen with rising world temperatures. Lurigancho-Chosica is a highly vulnerable area and one of the most affected by ENSO in the country because of landslides. Using a qualitative approach, interviews were conducted with ten community leaders as key informants from Lurigancho-Chosica to explore their perspectives on the effects of ENSO on their communities and to understand the social resilience of their communities to deal with similar disasters and changes. Findings indicate that, although knowledgeable about the impacts of ENSO, community leaders emphasized that most community inhabitants used multiple coping strategies to deal with the structural limitations of their communities to deal with ENSO. Community leaders themselves opted to strengthen the adaptive capacities of their communities to be more socially resilient, preferring community organization over migration or relocation strategies.

This paper scrutinises European methods developed since 2010 for identifying urban, rural, and intermediate areas, addressing the need for locally relevant and internationally comparable methodologies. The inadequacy of the traditional urban-rural dichotomy methods in describing peri-urbanisation and the demand for efficient fund allocation and international performance comparisons has driven the proliferation of these methods by European institutions, national governments, and statistical offices. Since a comprehensive study of such methods is lacking, the paper analyses their characteristics (through the variables and statistical techniques used, along with the spatial unit of reference), as well as their local relevance and international comparability.

The analysis reveals the predominance of a multi-scalar approach emphasising territorial discontinuity patterns and challenging traditional administrative boundaries. While these methods are effective for local policymaking with variables such as demographic dynamics and economic specialisation, they exhibit limited international comparability. Instead, methods relying solely on demographic data demonstrate harmonization, enabling more robust statistical comparisons due to their inherent simplicity.

Climate change poses a risk to agricultural activity. Understanding farmers' behaviors is increasingly important for managing climate risks and improving their adaptive capacity. This study aims to identify the key risk-related drivers influencing several adaptation and mitigation strategies by adopting various Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) technologies to reduce climate change vulnerability. We investigate the interrelated nature of the adoption of CSA technologies related to soil fertility, soil conservation, agroforestry, agro-advisory apps, and alternative coffee farming practices. To explore the role of the perceived risks related to CSA technology adoption, we constructed an extended model that combines protection motivation theory, perceived farmers' adoption risks and social and demographic determinants. We collected empirical data from 519 coffee farmers in Costa Rica and analyzed the data through a multivariate probit technique. The analysis reveals how the influence of perceived climate risks severity, perceived vulnerability, response efficacy, self-efficacy, and perceived cost changes according to the CSA technology. As for the perceived adoption risks, we show that the adoption likelihood of CSA technologies focused on mitigation decreases with increasing perceived adoption risk. Other determinants, such as the number of coffee buyers and the farmers' membership in an organization, steer the adoption of soil fertility practices, agroforestry, and agro-advisory mobile apps. Main theoretical implications include the integration of the CSA adoption risk-related perceptions to the protection motivation theory, since it reflects on farmers' fear of potential losses or additional costs associated with implementing these practices. The finding gives a nuanced explanation of farmers' decisions under pressing climate change threats. Practical implications for increasing CSA adoption are that CSA promotion programs must consider that farmers see CSA technologies as interrelated in their adoption decisions, meaning that more fruitful synergies could be promoted by acknowledging the bundled adoption of multiple CSA technologies. Thus, promoting a mix of CSA technologies and practices is essential for achieving resilience while increasing productivity.

This paper explores the development and work of the Rural Geography Research Group (RGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society over the last fifty years since its inception in 1972. It draws on the minutes of the RGRG's Annual General Meetings, content in its biannual newsletters, and reports of conferences. Using the concept of academic communities of practice (CoP), the paper explores the RGRG's contributions to UK and international geography and allied disciplines. It charts the evolution of the RGRG as a CoP through the influence of its members in (re)shaping rural geography. The roles of quadrennial conferences dating to 1991 between rural geographers from the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and a series of bilateral conferences with Dutch, French, German and Spanish geographers are explored. These conferences produced a series of books which help illustrate the evolution of ideas and research in rural geography. In addition, the paper outlines how the RGRG functions as a space for personal and professional development, and the influence its office holders have had both within and beyond the Research Group. The paper concludes with a consideration of the future of rural geography, including the position of the Research Group within contemporary critical debates and likely themes for future research.

Global sustainable development challenges affect the agricultural sector, and many innovations aimed at addressing these challenges have been introduced in the agri-food sector. In this complex context, new agricultural policies are being implemented in Europe. Their success depends on their potential to adapt to new realities, responding to the opinions and demands of the European population. Given the rapid rise of social media as an important part of people's daily lives, public administrations have introduced digitalization and communication strategies through social media sites. Social media can provide policymakers with large amounts of data on user opinions. Given the value of social media as a rich source of data on public views and opinions, the aim of this paper is twofold: (i) to use natural language processing (NLP) to identify the events that have led to negative or positive opinion about European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform and (ii) to evaluate the ability of NLP to study users' opinions on Twitter/X. The findings show that issues such as Brexit, the European Green Deal, the role of CAP in the environment, livestock farming, food safety, and illegal practices and corruption in the distribution of CAP funds have crucial implications for the design and application of the new CAP. Moreover, the study also suggests that NLP techniques can provide opportunities to integrate agricultural policies and instruments in the agri-food sector by assessing society's opinions. Sentiment analysis, even considering its limitations, could support sound and inclusive policymaking approaches anticipating public opinion in cases of risk of social unrest.