Causes and Impacts of Agricultural Structures

Book excerpt: While it is trivial to state that agriculture influences the rest of the rural economy and society, it is much less trivial to understand the difference that agricultural structures make to rural environments. As soon as agricultural structures switch from being the dependent to being the independent variable, they may have an impact on the profitability and sustainability of farming, on animal welfare, population development, unemployment or the gender situation. In fact, it would be surprising for most rural areas if domination by small subsistence farmers, by medium-size family farms or by large corporate farming did not make any difference to the rest of rural society. Not only is the diversity of agricultural structures in Europe impressive, but also the diversity of the contributions in this book. They range from technical modelling approaches to descriptive story-telling, from an in-depth analysis of regions to comparative studies of international differences and from normative considerations to positive observations. Altogether, they give an excellent overview of where research into agricultural structures stands today.