Synopses & Reviews
This book consists of selected and revised papers from a conference held in North Carolina that brought together rural geographers from Canada, UK and USA, plus one representative from New Zealand. The papers included in the book are those that focus on agricultural restructuring and sustainability. This subject is of considerable current interest at a time when rural areas in developed market economies are undergoing considerable change. The chapters in the book examine, at various spatial scales, the broad processes and structural changes that are common to all rural systems in developed countries. Different geographical contexts are used to illustrate the uneven development of these processes and the implications for sustainable agriculture and rural systems. Authors provide both literature reviews and original research. The book is aimed at not only rural geographers but also agricultural economists, rural sociologists and policy-makers concerned with rural studies.
Synopsis
This book consists of selected and revised papers from a conference held in North Carolina that brought together rural geographers from Canada, UK, and USA, and New Zealand. The papers focus on agricultural restructuring and sustainability, a subject of considerable current interest as rural areas in developed market economies undergo rapid change. The book is aimed at rural geographers, agricultural economists, rural sociologists, and policy makers concerned with rural studies.
Table of Contents
SECTION I: Conceptualizing agricultural restructuring and sustainability
1. Sustainable development: a critical review of rural land use policy in the UK
2. Sustainability, spatial hierarchies and land-based production
3. Greening and globalizing: agriculture in 'the new times'
SECTION II: Family farming and farming culture
4. Sustainable technologies, sustainable farms: farms, households and structural change
5. Environmental change and farm restructuring in Britain: the impact of the farm family life cycle
6. The construction of environmental meanings within 'farming culture': the implications for agri-environmental research
7. Community-level worldviews and the sustainability of agriculture
SECTION III: Diversification and alternative agriculture
8. Rural re-regulation and institutional sustainability: a case study of alternative farming systems in England
9. On- and off-farm business diversification by farm households in England
10. Great Plains agroecologies: the continuum from conventional to alternative agriculture in Colorado
SECTION IV: Agriculture sustainability and climate change
11. Agricultural system response to environmental stress
12. Adaptability of agricultural systems to global climate change: a Renfrew County, Ontario, Canada pilot study
13. Agricultural response to climate change: a preliminary investigation of farm-level adaptation in Southern Alberta
SECTION V: Sustainable agriculture and environmental policy
14. Policy, sustainability and scale: the US Conservation Reserve Programme
15. Something old, new, borrowed and blue: the marriage of agriculture and conservation in England
16. Farmer reaction to agri-environmental schemes: a study of participants in south west England and the implications for research and policy development
17. Achieving sustainability in agricultural land management through landowner involvement in stewardship programmes
SECTION VI: Sustainability and restructuring the agricultural system
18. Scale change, discontinuity and polarization in Canadian farm-based rural systems
19. Sustainability issues in the industrialization of hog production in the United States
20. Sustainable agriculture and its social geographic context in Ontario
21. Restructuring for rural sustainability: overcoming scale conflicts and cultural biases