<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>Productivity alone is not the most important defining character of contemporary agriculture. On the grounds of the dominant models of market liberalization and multifunctionality, farmers have been urged to take new roles beyond food production. By deploying a ’normative’ view of multifunctionality, based on the acknowledgment of spatial heterogeneity, and on an actor-oriented explanation of agricultural change, this paper investigates Finnish farmers’ visions on the redefined and redifining role of contemporary agriculture. From a review and anaylsis of sixteen qualitative semi-structured interviews, it emerges that such visions — through their components of identity, opponent, and project — are constructed upon three factors which are linked to each other to a various extent: 1) farming contingent conditions (as location, climate, terrain); 2) externalities (including international policy environment, and market liberalization); 3) farmers’ personal views on profitability and risk. In a policy context dominated by uncertainty, decision-making has shifted mainly from the national to the international level, and the collected data supports the dominance of productivist actions and thoughts. On one hand, farmers still tend to prioritize the continuity of production, which contribute both to resistance identity, and to the identification of a variety of opponents. Yet on the other hand, farmers are, to an embryonic stage, upgrading themselves to meet the challenges faced by contemporary agriculture.</p></abstract>

Productivity alone is not the most important defining character of contemporary agriculture. On the grounds of the dominant models of market liberalization and multifunctionality, farmers have been urged to take new roles beyond food production. By deploying a ’normative’ view of multifunctionality, based on the acknowledgment of spatial heterogeneity, and on an actor-oriented explanation of agricultural change, this paper investigates Finnish farmers’ visions on the redefined and redifining role of contemporary agriculture. From a review and anaylsis of sixteen qualitative semi-structured interviews, it emerges that such visions — through their components of identity, opponent, and project — are constructed upon three factors which are linked to each other to a various extent: 1) farming contingent conditions (as location, climate, terrain); 2) externalities (including international policy environment, and market liberalization); 3) farmers’ personal views on profitability and risk. In a policy context dominated by uncertainty, decision-making has shifted mainly from the national to the international level, and the collected data supports the dominance of productivist actions and thoughts. On one hand, farmers still tend to prioritize the continuity of production, which contribute both to resistance identity, and to the identification of a variety of opponents. Yet on the other hand, farmers are, to an embryonic stage, upgrading themselves to meet the challenges faced by contemporary agriculture.

Approaching Multifunctionality by a ‘Normative View’: Finnish Farmers’ Visions on Contemporary Agriculture

Doctor of Social Sciences Fulvio Rizzo (PhD), Research Fellow, Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111 80101 Joensuu;

European Countryside

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Productivity alone is not the most important defining character of contemporary agriculture. On the grounds of the dominant models of market liberalization and...

Approaching Multifunctionality by a ‘Normative View’: Finnish Farmers’ Visions on Contemporary Agriculture

Published Online: Apr 09, 2016

Page range: 16 - 32

Received: Sep 02, 2015

Accepted: Mar 18, 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/euco-2016-0002

Keywords
multifunctionality, normative view, vision, territorial expression, productivism, non-productivism, resistance identity

© 2016 Fulvio Rizzo, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Approaching Multifunctionality by a ‘Normative View’: Finnish Farmers’ Visions on Contemporary Agriculture

Published Online: Apr 09, 2016

Page range: 16 - 32

Received: Sep 02, 2015

Accepted: Mar 18, 2016

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/euco-2016-0002

Keywordsmultifunctionality, normative view, vision, territorial expression, productivism, non-productivism, resistance identity

© 2016 Fulvio Rizzo, published by De Gruyter Open

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Keywords
multifunctionality, normative view, vision, territorial expression, productivism, non-productivism, resistance identity