Agri-Food and Rural Development: Sustainable Place-Making

Description

The agri-food and rural development world has experienced significant changes in recent years. The evolution towards globalized and highly complex food supply systems has been accompanied by growing competition, reduced state subsidies as well as concerns about quality, output and the environment. At the beginning of the 21st century, the agri-food industry is urgently searching for new solutions. Exploring these recent developments, Agri-Food and Rural Development highlights the latest research on understanding and promoting sustainable food systems. Featuring a range of international case studies, it investigates different models of rural development for food production, examines the implications for a sustainable future, analyzes future challenges, and suggests new strategies for future agri-food development in a world fast exceeding its resources. An ambitious new study written by a leading authority in the field, this book offers a vital new perspective on this important debate and is destined to become a landmark text for students, scholars and policy-makers in food studies, agriculture, rural sociology, and geography. Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Preface Replacing the bio-economy – the necessary renaissance of agri-food and rural development Chapter 1 Governing for agri-food security and rural sustainability: Antecedents and transitions Introduction Imperial ‘outsourcing’ of productionism The emergence of post-war UK productionism and modernization The onset of contradictions and the rise of post-productivism Private-interest governance and post-productionism in the 1990s and 2000s Rural development, relocalization and the rise of alternative food networks (AFNs) Conclusion: A postscript and the rise of food quality Reasons for the ‘glass ceiling’ Chapter 2 Contested sustainabilities in agri-food and rural development: Exploring sustainable pathways of green growth and the bio-economy in the UK Introduction: Shifts in the governmentality of rural areas and agri-food New productivism and the bio-economy Rural land: A new bio-economic frontier? Towards a sustainable bio-economic strategy for the UK Conclusions: Towards a broadened sustainable bio-eco-economy Towards a new rural paradigm: From crisis to capacity-building Chapter 3 Socializing and spatializing the bio-economy: Reconstructing natural powers Introduction: From post-productivism to the bio-economy Unpacking the sustainable bio-economy paradigm: Explorations of green growth in rural and regional development Theoretical integrations and spatial development Competing and hybrid strands of the bio-economy Some key research questions and the emerging research agenda Progressing the research agenda: Developing the sustainability science approach and methodology Regional approaches to bio-economy framings Major contestations and fault lines in the bio-economy Islands and empires: Producers and users of seeds Institutionalizing the bio-economy in the sustainability agenda: UK and Wales Discussion: Shaping and spacing the bio-economy Fragmentations and integrations Chapter 4 An alternative model: Exploring the ‘new rural paradigm’ and the rural eco-economy in Europe The eco-economic paradigm and sustainable place-making Understanding the complexity of sustainable rural regional development Methodological aspects of the comparative case study analysis Comparative analysis: Pathways for sustainable rural regional development in Europe Conclusions: Exploring and qualifying the new rural development paradigm as the eco-economy Chapter 5 Evolving webs of agri-food and rural development in the UK: The case of Devon and Shetland Introduction: Changing places Conclusions: A landscape of food insecurity; fragmenting the rural web in the post-carbon economy Chapter 6 Towards a sustainability science and place-making for rural and agri-food development Introduction: From romanticism and modernization to sustainable place-making Enacting resilience and managing vulnerability: Some concepts to progress Conclusions References Index