Transition pathways towards sustainability in agriculture: case studies from Europe
In: CABI Books
The aim of this book is to improve the understanding of transition processes in European agriculture. It focuses on 'emerging transitions' - how new organizational forms and technologies change, and are changed by, mainstream actors and practices in the agricultural sector. This is achieved through an integration of recent academic theory on transition and change in agricultural systems and assessing its utility for empirical research. The multi-level perspective (MLP) on system transition is applied to clusters of case studies, which focus on different types and aspects of transition processes within agriculture. The purpose in studying transition in agriculture is not only to understand how change has occurred, but to assess how intervention can successfully be made to facilitate sustainability transitions. Most of the cases studied in this book have had active policy intervention, although some demonstrate that transition processes can occur endogenously without such assistance. This book is based on research findings from the FarmPath (Farming Transitions: Pathways towards regional sustainability of agriculture in Europe) project, funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme. The book has 14 chapters. The findings of empirical case studies are presented in chapters 5 through 11. In each of these chapters, three regional level case studies are contrasted, selected from the seven study countries: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Portugal and the UK.