8 pages, The use of digital technologies in agriculture offers various benefits, such as site-specific application, better monitoring, and physical relief. The handling of these technologies requires a specific skill set. Therefore, the question arises of when and how farm managers learn about digital technologies. Aiming to analyse the current situation, the present research investigated the role that digital technologies play in vocational training for future farm managers. Taking the example of farm management information systems (FMIS), the present study also analysed various predictors of adoption, including the effect of training. To investigate these research questions, an online survey among teachers and students of the farm management vocational programme across Switzerland was conducted in the spring of 2021. In total, 150 individuals participated, 41 of whom were teachers. Participants answered questions about the learning content in the farm management programme and their perception of digital technologies in general. Students further reported whether they already had a farm they would be managing in the future and how they perceived FMIS. The results indicate that both teachers and students are convinced that digital technologies play an important role in agriculture and will gain more importance in the future. A substantial part of 43% of the students who participated indicated that they had learned neither about digital technologies during their basic agricultural training nor the subsequent farm management programme. In terms of FMIS, 51% of the student sample indicated that they had never heard about FMIS during their agricultural training. While having learned about FMIS was not a significant predictor for adoption, gender, perceived ease of use, and intention to use more digital technologies in the future significantly predicted the adoption of FMIS. The paper concludes that, to support the adoption of digital technologies and FMIS specifically, training for future farm managers should focus on how to operate an FMIS to increase the perceived ease of use of this technology.
9 pages, In agricultural research for development adoption of new technology tends to be cast in categories: adoption, partial adoption, dis-adoption or non-adoption. While these may serve for pragmatic classification and measures for project success or impact they fail to properly acknowledge the ongoing and independent efforts of farmers (and others) in experimentation and integration of knowledge across a range of sources. This paper explores responses to practices for cattle management introduced during a research project, at project close, and five years after the project has finished. We consider the perceptions and application of new knowledge by farmers, extension staff, and policy makers. By taking a longer-term view, we demonstrate how farming households adapt and integrate knowledge from different sources into their daily practice, influenced by local institutions and changing cultural expectations, as well as external researchers. We also consider the influence of changing government priorities and incentives in steering farm-management decisions. Results suggest that a focus on measures to build capacity and empower farmers with information to adapt and respond to change, regardless of project activities, is a much more important goal and indicator of impact than measuring adoption.
3 pages, 11 pages, This paper examines the usefulness of the new social movements (NSMs) paradigm in the changing context of East European post-communist societies and their agricultural systems and rural communities. Starting with statements formulated in Western sociology in the context of Western democratic societies about NSMs as a protest against modernity, the paper analyses the role of such movements in the still modernizing Eastern European reality. The first part of the paper briefly examines some basic elements of the NSMs paradigm in European and American social science. The goal of this section is not only to identify the basic characteristics of NSMs, but also to identify the typical frames used by them. The second part of the paper focuses on the presence of NSMs in the communist era. Drawing on the idea of NSMs as indicators of a "post-materialist shift" as well as of "anti-establishment" and "pro-participatory democracy", the paper examines the frames of democratic opposition in Eastern Europe before 1989. The final part of the paper considers several selected examples from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to explore the role of NSMs in the process of shaping new ruralities during the post-communist transformation.
9 pages, This article represents the first systematic examination of BBC coverage of one of the most controversial rural issues in a generation, namely the culling of badgers (a protected species) to stop the spread of bovine TB in England. While the BBC has certain regulatory responsibilities set out in its guidelines to provide duly impartial coverage it has been regularly criticised for being biased. Little is known about the BBC's performance other than what is suggested by critics, previous research having focused on press coverage. Based on an original content analysis of news, current affairs and factual output this article assesses the BBC's coverage. It shows that while competing voices and perspectives were balanced its coverage was not that distinct from its commercial rivals, with both framing the issue as a conflict over badgers rather than about the spread of a disease affecting livestock and livelihoods, and both focusing on a narrow set of voices involved in the conflict.
14 pages, via online journal, Designing effective policies for economic development often entails categorizing populations by their rural or urban status. Yet there exists no universal definition of what constitutes an “urban” area, and countries alternately apply criteria related to settlement size, population density, or economic advancement. In this study, we explore the implications of applying different urban definitions, focusing on Tanzania for illustrative purposes. Toward this end, we refer to nationally representative household survey data from Tanzania, collected in 2008 and 2014, and categorize households as urban or rural using seven distinct definitions. These are based on official administrative categorizations, population densities, daytime and nighttime satellite imagery, local economic characteristics, and subjective assessments of Google Earth images. These definitions are then applied in some common analyses of demographic and economic change. We find that these urban definitions produce different levels of urbanization. Thus, Tanzania's urban population share based on administrative designations was 28% in 2014, though this varies from 12% to 39% with alternative urban definitions. Some indicators of economic development, such as the level of rural poverty or the rate of rural electrification, also shift markedly when measured with different urban definitions. The periodic (official) recategorization of places as rural or urban, as occurs with the decennial census, results in a slower rate of rural poverty decline than would be measured with time-constant boundaries delimiting rural Tanzania. Because the outcomes of analysis are sensitive to the urban definitions used, policy makers should give attention to the definitions that underpin any statistics used in their decision making.
9 pages, via online journal, This paper examines the role of the “Bluefin Tuna Cultural Festival” in developing and sustaining regional identities within the context of rural regeneration, sustainability, and the creation of closer relationships between production and consumption in the countryside. It focuses on Donggang, Southern Taiwan, an area with rural development issues, increasing tourism impacts, and contested issues of local identity, sustainability, and an aging society. This paper draws on public discourse and in-depth interviews with key stakeholders in Donggang to understand the conditions required for substantiating authenticity of the gastronomic products and experiences and the promotion of an appealing gastronomic image. This study traces the process of embedding bluefin tuna in Donggang through marketing,branding and provides a preliminary conceptualization of interrelations between gastronomic tourism and community development in East Asia.
The paper draws attention to these particular issues issues: the commodification of local heritage and countryside capital, strategies and challenges of hosting culinary festivals and resolving the issue of return migration.
14 pages, via online journal, China's rapid urbanization process has pushed rural villages into an urban-rural integration movement. Several modes and approaches have been applied to remake space in rural China, which differ greatly in restructuring outcomes. In response, this article builds on the insights of regime theory to develop a conceptual framework to reveal the mechanism behind China's rural spatial restructuring and seeks to explore the underlying reasons that affect the outcomes. It is found that resource adequacy, the quality of resource coalition, and the effectiveness of implementation determine the rural regime's capacity to manage spatial restructuring. Case studies from Hua County, Chaohu City, and Shenzhen are used to illustrate the conceptual framework's application and facilitate a comparative analysis from the perspective of rural regime capacity. The findings provide a critical rethinking of the “sustainable remaking of rural space”, which could therefore shed light on the rural governance of countries in the global south generally.
12 pages, via online journal, Rural settlements in China have been experiencing unprecedented transformation since the economic reforms of the late 1970s. This paper examines population movement over the post-reform era and how this affects settlement patterns in an inland nonmetropolitan county-level city region with a well performing economy. It is found that the settlement size distribution in Gongyi is generally transforming from a traditional rural pattern to one that features an urban system, taking place in the form of “in situ urbanisation” and “rural urbanisation”. Without experiencing mass out-migration and in line with the transition of China's political economy, Gongyi has developed its local urban system in parallel with the life and spatial cycles of city-based urbanisation in China. From the perspective of urbanisation cycles, “in situ urbanisation” underpinned by relevant socioeconomic and political conditions is argued to be both theoretically meaningful and practically useful in the context of the evolving settlement systems in China and less urbanised countries.
9 pages, via online journal, The conversion of population and land from rural to urban areas has been widely explored; however, the spatial change in rural settlements and its relations to population changes involved in urbanization have been ignored. This paper aims to reveal the underlying human-land relationship from the perspective of rural settlement urbanization (RSU). Based on identifying the spatiotemporal characteristics of RSU in Wuhan city circle from 2009 to 2016, we analyzed the human-land relations using a combination of a dynamic coupling model and a decoupling model. The results showed that a total area of 27.77 km2 (accounting for 0.81% of the level in 2009) of rural settlements was converted to urban construction land from 2009 to 2016. Although the rural population decreased by 32.21%, the overall size of rural settlements increased by 104.62 km2, and 37 counties had a low-level coordination between population urbanization and RSU. Only 2 counties emerged with high-level coordination in this process. Additionally, the changes in rural settlements and rural population showed a strong negative decoupling; that is, the population decreased while the area of rural settlements increased. Combining the decoupling results with the coupling analysis, eight human-land relationship patterns in rural settlement urbanization were identified, and “strong negative decoupling–low-level coupling” was the main pattern observed in counties, which summarized the human-land relations in most RSU and should be given priorities in improving rural human-land relationships. The question of how to promote harmonious human-land relationships lies at the core of promoting balanced urban-rural development. This research could provide a decision-making basis for formulating a sustainable development strategy for urban-rural integration.
12 pages, via online journal, This paper charts two exploratory practices of rural transformation in the Yangtze River Delta that began around 2008, aimed at revitalising villages and exploring new urban-rural interrelationships while simultaneously expanding the knowledge base on possible development opportunities, risks and existing diversities in rural China. Using a comparative case study, the study shows that both practices promoted a redefinition of urban-rural relationships, a reconnection of rural networks, and the introduction of alternative spatial intervention methods. However, they also led to the intrusion of certain social values which were alien to the local population and resulted in the further exclusion of rural residents. By revealing the substantial changes and analysing the interactions of actors involved in the practices according to actor-network theory, this paper highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the new initiatives and thus allows for a more rigorous understanding of how emerging bottom-up and top-down initiatives affect rural transformation. The paper argues that the inclusion of the locals primarily in the form of land-leasing contracts and a limited number of job opportunities are far from sufficient to stimulate sustainable development processes and to address the major social challenges facing rural areas. It further identifies 23 key factors distilled from the empirical evidence that closely related to rural sustainable development and proposed to constitute a checklist for assessing the sustainability of emerging rural practices. The practical insights from the study thus enrich the theory of sustainability with regard to rural development by expanding the scope and dimension.
