LIVIA ORTOLANI1,RICCARDO BOCCI2 MORTEN GYLLING3,GIANLUCA BRUNORI4 1 University of Pisa – CIRAA, www.avanzi.unipi.it, [email protected]
2 Italian Association for Organic Agriculture, AIAB, www.aiab.it, [email protected]
3 Institute of Food and Resource Economics - University of Copenhagen, [email protected] 4 University of Pisa –www.unipi.it, [email protected]
Key words: farm autonomy, sustainability, innovation, network analysis
Summary: The potential relationships that the farmers can develop with the society, the environment and the local and global economy have an important role in defining individual capacity of innovation for sustainability. The aim of this study is to create a socio economic model of farms with a focus on these relationships. Network analysis is tested as a methodology to describe farm structure and to include human and social capital in a comprehensive sustainability assessment of individual farms. A case study of a french farm will be presented as an example.
Background
Using a transition theory approach to innovation (Geels and Schot, 2007), it is possible to state that the present landscape at EU level characterized by economic crisis, increasing unemployment and volatility of energy prices (Woodhouse, 2010) could offer an opportunity for a change in farm structure and an application of low input strategies by a larger typology of farms. The need to reduce the dependency on fuel and energy exists, however it need to be compensated by innovation that increase the farm autonomy (Van der Ploeg, 2008) through the use of on-farm input (eg. Seeds), innovative distribution models and non agricultural activites that help increasing the added value of food production.
Shifting the attention from the goal of productivity and the use of yield as unique indicator of farm efficiency to a combination of goals such as productivity, sustainability and quality, a diversity of possible combination of resources at farm level exists. This asks for innovative methods of farm structure analysis. The potential relationships that farmers can develop with the society, the environment and the local and global economy have an important role in defining individual capacity of innovation. Human and social capital strongly influence the definition of the best solution at local level, a specific attention to the farmer should be considered in micro economic assessment.
An application of network analysis for sustainability assessment
Starting from the concept of farm autonomy introduced by van der Ploeg (Van der Ploeg, 2008), the general aim of the individual farmer become the reduction of dependency from input producers and market prices and the increase dependency and investment in social connection and interaction with nature. Considering sustainability as a moving target, depending on decision making and governance (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1990, Tillman et al. 1994 Steyaert and Jiggins, 2007), the “new peasant” (Van der Ploeg, 2008) can increase sustainability, with his economic activity, through his contribution to local development and regional policies on health, education, tourism, local promotion etc.
The individual capacity of proposing innovative solutions at local level is an important aspect to be considered in a comprehensive sustainability assessment of individual farms. A network approach to innovation (Leeuwis 2004, Knickel, 2009, Roling, 2009) can be used to describe the interactions of the farming systems with the system as a whole and the synergies that organic and low input systems can create at environmental, social and economic level.
The aim of this study is to test the possibility to use network analysis in the assessment of individual capacity of innovate for sustainability. The methods has been tested in innovative farms (SOLIBAM case studies) looking at organic and low input strategies as a key for economic viability.
A participatory mapping approach (Pahl-Wostl, 2002, Newig et al. 2008) has been used to draw the farm structure network (fig.1) with the farmer or with someone that have a good knowledge of the specific farm. The analysis of the relationships of the farmer, described by the map, allows an interesting qualitative description of the farms that can integrate other sustainability assessment methodologies. Qualitative data has been collected talking to the farmers about the relations they consider relevant for their economic activity. The farmers have been asked to describe the type of relationship they have with different actors, choosing among exchange of information, materials and money. As an example this paper will present the case of a french farm involved in PPB (Participatory Plant Breeding) programme within the SOLIBAM project.
The map can give interesting input for a descriptive analysis of the farm. The main components of the map that can be observed are the nodes and the fluxes. The nodes represent the actors that the farmer consider relevant for his economic activity and the fluxes represent the type of interaction with them and among them that the farmer percive. The circle line has been drawn by the farmer to distinguish the internal system from the external one. It is interesting to see the complexity of the internal system of this farm due to the number of family member and workers directly involved in the economic activity.
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Fig. 1 Network map of a french farm.
An interesting result is to observe that the main relevant actors for this farmer are other farmers and farmers’associations togehter with consumers or citizens. No role is given to the extension services, that often are considered as the key for innovation transfer. Another interesting point is to see the perception that the farmer have of EU funding schemes. Most of the relevant actors involved in the EU project are listed by the farmer as relevant actors and the fluxes of money among them are well described.
Looking at knowledge fluxes, the exchange among farmers and with farmers’associations is the more relevant, together with the knowledge exchange in the market, associated to material exchange of final products. Material fluxes includes both final products and input produced on farm. In this case the farm is directly producing old varieties seeds and most of the material exchange with other farmers, also in different countries are related to seeds. Seeds’ exchanges are often associated also to knowledge exchages. Money fluxes are of 3 types: wages, paid by the farmers to the actors of the internal system; payments of final products by consumers, fundings coming from EU and associations.
References
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Session D Poster D2