Understanding the Nature and Extent of Farm and Ranch Diversification in North America*

Abstract Pressure to adopt enhanced production technologies, changing government support policies, increasing and more diverse competition, and changing markets have posed economic challenges to North American farmers over the past two decades. As a response, farmers are adjusting their production model by incorporating agricultural related enterprises. Although there is evidence that farm diversification is occurring throughout North America, there is a dearth of scientific information regarding the types of enterprises being developed and used in this context. This study aims to fill this void by exploring the extent of farm diversification by identifying and describing eight types of enterprises that farmers and ranchers are using. It was found that levels of diversification are often dependent on operating and management attributes and owner characteristics, such as the number of family members working on the farm and the number of days that the farmer's spouse works off the farm.     

The Dimensions of Agricultural Diversification: A Spatial Analysis of Italian Municipalities

Diversification in agriculture could ensure the survival of farming by broadening the income base of farms and encouraging agricultural sustainability. The diversification of on-farm activities may depend on socioeconomic and environmental characteristics. Although multifunctionality is a hotly debated topic, few papers have focused on the farm characteristics that influence diversification and none have focused on the influence of the spatial pattern. This paper examines the relationship between farm characteristics and the adoption of a specific type of diversification. An econometric model is presented that uses a spatial autoregressive lag model at the municipal scale. The results demonstrate that the activation of each diversification dimension is influenced by both internal and external factors, encompassing farmers’ characteristics, the farm structure, and territorial features, including regional and spatial patterns. Deepening is mainly influenced by the farmer’s age, education, and the presence of small and labor-intensive farms. The key factors for broadening diversification are the presence of small farms and farms with mixed production (breeding and crop cultivation). Regrounding is most affected by the labor-intensive farms in the area and the farms with mixed production.     

Modelling Farm Diversification in Regions Using Expert and Decision Support Systems

The building of expert systems (ES) and decision support systems (DSS) has become a recent feature of many academic disciplines, but few examples can be found in human geography research. This paper draws attention to the potential of ES and DSS by reporting research on modelling farm diversification in the northern Pennines of England for four agricultural policy ‘scenarios’. The results of similar modelling in four other ‘lagging’ regions of the European Union (in Ireland, Scotland, France and Greece) are discussed. The research shows the opportunities that diversification can bring to farm businesses, including raised farm incomes and increased farm employment. But much depends on the willingness and ability of farmers to modify traditional farming systems, undertake the borrowing of capital and occupy more farmland.     

The Socioeconomic Basis of Farm Enterprise Diversification Decisions1

Abstract In contrast to earlier studies, recent research on socioeconomic and ecological factors affecting farm decision making suggests that, at the microlevel, farm size is inversely related to specialization and directly related to diversification decisions but empirical tests have been limited. Using a social behavioral, farming systems perspective, we examine factors affecting diversification and specialization decisions, including land tenure, off-farm work, and education (which are crucial to successful management) and environmental variation (which affects the decision to select appropriate enterprises). Data from a random sample of Kentucky farmers were used to test the model. Diversification, whether defined according to crops or commodities, is significantly related to farm size, human capital, and regional variation in land and soil types. The study clarifies the relationship between diversification and farm size issues and broadens understanding of farm diversification decisions. The findings indicate that increased farm size and better farm management reduce the rate of increase in farm specialization.     

Organic Farming,Gender, and the Labor Process*

Abstract This paper seeks to explain variations in gender participation in farm production and decision‐making through an analysis of organic farm types, sizes, and orientations. Based on both survey and case study data, the analysis shows that female farmers on vegetable farms and mixed livestock/cash crop farms are more likely to be involved in farm production and management than women on field crop farms, where mechanization and capital intensive production is much higher. The links to ideological orientations and motivations are also examined, suggesting that farmers with more conventional orientations to organic farming are also less likely to support gender equality.     

Utilising a farm typology to identify potential adopters of alternative farming activities in Greek agriculture

Farm household survival strategies are acknowledged to determine the adoption of alternative farm enterprises as part of the farm household's production and reproduction pattern and are, thus, used to identify the potential adopters of such enterprises. The present work utilises an ideal typology of Greek farms in order to identify different types of farms as regards their mode of survival. Each survival strategy is linked to different motives for and constraints against the adoption of alternative farm enterprises. Results show that three types of farm households may be identified, namely subsistence, survivalist and productivist farm households. The potential adopters of alternative farm enterprises may be traced among farm households that pursue a survivalist mode of production. It is argued that the diversity of farm structures observed within this type of farm households cannot be regarded as the decisive factor as far as their mode of survival is concerned. Rather, it is considered to form a context of different motivations for and constraints against the adoption of alternative farming activities.     

Laggards or Leaders: Conservers of Traditional Agricultural Knowledge in Bolivia

Many sustainable agricultural practices are based on local and traditional farming knowledge. This article examines the conservation and loss of three traditional practices in the Bolivian Altiplano that agronomic research has shown increase the resiliency of small farmers in the face of climate‐related risks. These practices are the use of manure, the use of local forecasts and risk‐management strategies, and the preservation of crop biodiversity. Although these practices are widely used today, farmers have been steadily abandoning them during the past decade. This article examines the characteristics of those who maintain and those who abandon traditional practices to see if the abandonment of local knowledge can be explained by the adoption‐diffusion literature. This research does not support the adoption‐diffusion literature; although the factors related to conservation are slightly different for each practice, the findings do not support the idea that young, educated, and wealthier farmers are more likely to reject local knowledge. Instead, off‐farm activities such as migration, employment, and trade seem to be related to the decline in local practices as each affects the availability of labor and the availability of people to learn these practices.     

Why Don't They Just Change? Contract Farming,Informational Influence,and Barriers to Agricultural Climate Change Mitigation

Using a mixed‐methods study of contract seed‐corn farmers in southwest Michigan, we examine the effect of interlocking macro and micro social forces on climate change behavior and apply the theoretical frames of treadmills of production and informational influence. We find that competitive agricultural contracts in the seed‐corn industry impose significant structural barriers to adopting climate change mitigation behaviors. Seed‐corn contracts constrain adoption of those behaviors through competitive rankings based solely on net commodity production and by limiting farmers’ access to information to make judicious management decisions. At the micro level, our findings suggest that informational influence—that is, where farmers turn for trusted information—also affects climate change mitigation behaviors, and that these informational networks are embedded within structural constraints. Our findings suggest that agricultural contracts serve as a significant structural constraint on the adoption of mitigation practices and that climate scholarship and policy must address both macro and micro dimensions simultaneously to encourage adoption of climate change mitigation.     

New venture creation in the farm sector - Critical resources and capabilities

New venture activities and diversification at farms seem to be perceived as inherently beneficial both to farmers and to rural development. However, the benefit of such efforts and the critical resources and capabilities leading to them seem not to be well understood yet. The purpose of this paper is therefore to explore critical resources and capabilities for farm businesses engaged in entrepreneurial activities through on-farm diversification. The theoretical framework builds upon the resource-based view (RBV) and the dynamic capability (DC) perspective which have emerged as significant research streams within entrepreneurship and strategic management literature. A longitudinal study of three Norwegian farms engaged in on-farm diversification was undertaken through farm visits and in-depth interviews. Analyses show that the farm setting, its traditional production, its relative location, buildings and landscape might all be important resources which add value and uniqueness to the final product that is not easily copied by others. However, in order to reconfigure their resource base and perform necessary changes these farm businesses also rely heavily on developing appropriate dynamic capabilities. The farm businesses appear active in learning and integration of external resources and knowledge, but seem to struggle on building appropriate networks and strategic alliances. Implications for policy makers and practitioners are discussed.     

Diversification and Work Satisfaction: Testing a Claim by Marx and Engels for Farmers

In conventional economics, a great deal of energy has been devoted to empirical validation of the benefits of specialization in terms of efficiency, in fields including the agricultural sector. Marx and Engels's claim that the diversification of working lives would increase work satisfaction has gained attention among social scientists but has never been verified for the agricultural sector, despite a growing body of literature on the determinants of work satisfaction. Based on a survey of Swiss and northeast German farmers, this study shows that farm diversification significantly increases work satisfaction. This applies both to the lines of agricultural production pursued on a farm and to the farm's nonagricultural activities.     

The sugarcane-biofuel expansion and dairy farmers' responses in Brazil

The expansion of sugarcane for biofuels is a highly contentious issue. The growth of sugarcane area has occurred simultaneously with a reduction of dairy production in São Paulo state, the primary production region for sugar and ethanol in Brazil. This paper analyses different dairy farm rationales to continue dairy production in the context of a dramatically expanding sugarcane economy. Combining different data sets – semi-structured interviews with 34 farmers and baseline data from all members of a dairy farm co-operative – makes it possible to recognize different farm types. This heuristic tool is used to identify the various strategies regarding shifting to biofuel production or investing in dairy farming. The paper identifies labour availability, household resilience and technology introduction as key factors in the context of complex, multiple interactions between the biofuel sector and dairy production. We will argue that biofuel-sugarcane expansion not always pushes aside dairy farming. Those farmers that shift to sugarcane are not simply spurred by better prices, but mainly change as result of perceptions of labour constraints, risks and the opportunities offered by diversification. For farmers who totally quit dairy production the shift to sugarcane may pass the point of no return.     

Plus c’est la même chose? Questioning crop diversification as a response to agricultural deregulation in Saskatchewan,Canada

In the context of declining government subsidization of agriculture, many analysts have predicted reversals in certain characteristic trends of post-1945 Western agriculture with positive implications for agroecosystem well-being. One example, investigated herein, is the suggestion that, in the absence of government safety nets, farmers will seek to diversify their operations in order to buffer against production failures or market downturns in any one output. Such a shift is not only consistent with agricultural risk-management theory, but also, at first glance, early ‘mirror image’ conceptualizations of post-productivist agriculture; if (output) specialization has been an observed trend of productivism, then (output) diversification should be the trend of post-productivism. In fairness, however, where diversification has been identified as a manifestation of post-productivism, it has usually implied the development of largely non-agricultural activities that supplement household income. Clearly, a clarification of meaning is needed, and this paper offer some suggestions for doing so. Additionally, crop data from Saskatchewan, Canada are analysed for the years 1994–2000 to determine the degree to which arable producers there have sought to diversify their operations following the loss of an historically and financially significant export subsidy. Given limited evidence of diversification at the level of individual farms, the maximum scale at which crop diversity has any significance in ecological terms, a discussion follows of the various limitations to adopting an output diversification strategy to manage market and other risks, and the likelihood of farmers further pursuing output specialization in an era of reduced government support and increasingly chaotic commodity markets.     

Factors Influencing the Integration of Alternative Farm Enterprises Into the Agro‐Food System*

Abstract Financial stress and general crisis in European agriculture recently have generated a widespread interest in alternative paths of farm business development and structural adjustment. One of the options suggested by policy makers and adopted by farmers was the development of alternative farm enterprises (AFEs), in which farmers recombine resources on the farm and produce a new mix of products and services in order to supplement their incomes. In the present paper we examine the factors influencing the development of AFEs. According to empirical evidence from Etolia‐Akarnania, a prefecture in western Greece that merits “less favored area” status, AFE adoption is influenced by the amount of family labor, the ratio of hired to family labor, the presence of tobacco as a main enterprise, the proximity of the farm to grade A roads, and the farmers' age. Education, management experience demonstrated by the farm manager, physical size of the farm, enterprise specialization, the use of grants, and farm location are the main factors responsible for the farmers' integration into the agro‐food system.     

Multiple business ownership in the farm sector: assessing the enterprise and employment contributions of farmers in Cambridgeshire

Multiple business ownership has become an important theme within the small firms research literature. While early studies emphasised its role in reducing business risk, more recently portfolio entrepreneurship has been recognised as an important growth strategy, particularly in sectors where economies of scale can be achieved at a relatively low level. Research studies specifically examining multiple business ownership are still scarce, but the parallels between portfolio entrepreneurship in non-farm sectors and farm pluriactivity have been noted. Although pluriactivity has been subject to extensive investigation in recent years, analysis has generally focused on farm-centred diversification, rather than the wider entrepreneurial activities of the farmer. Using a survey of nearly 300 farm owners in Cambridgeshire, this exploratory study analyses the incidence of portfolio entrepreneurship in the farm sector and assesses its contribution to enterprise and employment creation. The results demonstrate that a core of farmers have multiple business interests and that these additional business activities make a substantial contribution to both numbers of enterprises and employment creation. While previous studies of pluriactivity have generally used the farm business as the main unit of analysis, it is argued that including the wider business activities of the farm owner enables a more precise estimation of the total contribution of farmers to rural economic development.     

Risk and returns of sustainable crop intensification: The case of smallholder rice and potato farmers in Uganda

The use of modern inputs such as synthetic fertilizers is often put forward as the best way to increase crop yields in an ecologically sustainable way. However, such inputs can be perceived as risky, and adoption may depend on how much extra risk a farm household can afford. This article describes the potential for fertilizer and pesticide use among Ugandan smallholder rice and potato farmers. In addition, it documents patterns observed in socioeconomic data that suggest that risk is an important barrier to sustainable crop intensification practices. We find that households that engage in risk‐management strategies, such as investing in risk‐reducing technology or engaging in precautionary savings, are more likely to practise intensified cropping. We also elaborate on the policy consequences.     

Determinants of domestic waste input use in urban agriculture lowland systems in Africa: The case of Yaoundé in Cameroon

This paper suggests policy actions for safe urban and peri-urban agriculture and domestic waste recycling in urban lowland areas of Africa, in particular, in lowland areas of the capital of Cameroon, Yaoundé. We identify the explanatory variables of recycling domestic waste and their use in three selected lowland areas. Data were collected between August and September 2005 among 126 farmers. Results show that the factors contributing to the adoption of recycled fresh and decomposed kitchen waste are: vegetable production, the distance between the house and its crop field and the use of livestock waste. The factors contributing to the adoption of recycled livestock wastes are the age of the farmers, the distance between the house and its crop field, the educational level of farmers and land size. Young farmers are more likely to adopt recycled livestock wastes, and short distances between houses and crop fields are more likely to contribute to the adoption of both recycled kitchen waste and recycled livestock wastes. In this context, the implementation of transfer stations for domestic waste, inside or next to lowland areas, appears to be an adequate solution of transport and sanitary constraints faced both by farmers and municipalities in Africa.     

Farm business and the development of alternative farm enterprises: An empirical analysis in Greece

The objective of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework and an empirical evidence of farm business change in relation to the adoption and development of alternative farm enterprises (AFE). The present paper adopts a business typology and looks at the various paths of development. A range of factors condition which path of farm business development will be selected. Some factors relate to the farms' physical characteristics, its business and its human capital. A sample of 200 farmers in the prefecture of Etolia-Akarnania in Greece is analysed in order to identify the factors influencing the choice of farm business development. Three main paths of farm business development are identified in this lagging region of Greece. Conventional (mainstream) farming, alternative farm enterprise development and conventional farming with off-farm employment. Appropriate statistical modelling revealed that both economic and social factors exert an independent effect on the choice of farm business development. Proposals concerning the formulation of future rural policy in the lagging regions of Greece are drawn, based on the results derived from the analysis of the present sample.     

Rainfall Patterns and U.S. Migration from Rural Mexico

In many rural regions of developing countries, natural resource dependency means changes in climate patterns hold tremendous potential to impact livelihoods. When environmentally‐based livelihood options are constrained, migration can become an important adaptive strategy. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we model U.S. emigration from rural communities as related to community, household and climate factors. The results suggest that households subjected to very recent drought conditions are less likely to send a U.S. migrant, but in communities with drought two years prior and with strong migration histories, emigration is much more likely. In regions lacking such social networks, rainfall deficits actually reduce migration propensities, perhaps reflecting constraints in the ability to engage in migration as a coping strategy. Policy implications emphasize diversification of rural Mexican livelihoods in the face of contemporary climate change.     

Farm diversification in England and Wales — what can we learn from the farm business survey?

Given the series of crises in agriculture, farm diversification is an increasingly relevant strategy for farmers. Trends in various types of diversification are described in England and Wales — as recorded in the Farm Business Survey. Although hirework is the most frequently reported diversification activity, renting out of farm buildings is the only activity considered here where there has been a substantial increase in participation over the last 10 years. Furthermore, for most types of diversification, the rate of exit is similar in magnitude to that of entry. When they are present, most types of diversification make a relatively small contribution to average business income. The probability of observing diversification is strongly related to farm size and type. A particular concern is that most types of diversification activities considered here may be more difficult to pursue on small farms, especially within less favoured areas.     

Why is diversification an attractive farm adjustment strategy? Insights from Texas farmers and ranchers

State agencies have been encouraging the development of different enterprises to diversify farm incomes in an effort to retain farmers in business, attract new entrants to agriculture and promote regional development. Entrepreneurship and farming are known to be driven by a complex set of goals including those which are economic and intrinsic in nature. However, little information is available regarding the set of goals that drive agriculture entrepreneurship, preventing state agencies to adequately target potential diversifiers. This paper provides a better understanding of the range of goals, both financial and nonfinancial, that are important in farmers' decisions to diversify their operations. The generation of additional income, the continuance of farming and ranching, and the enhancement of quality of life are among the most important diversification goals in Texas. A principal component factor analysis performed on the importance ratings of diversification goals resulted in six dimensions: (F1) Reduce Uncertainty and Risk; (F2) Grow and Service Markets; (F3) Enhanced Financial Condition; (F4) Individual Aspirations and Pursuits; (F5) Revenues Enhancement; and (F6) Family Connections. The study also examined the relationship between various entrepreneur and farm characteristics and the goal pursuit dimensions. Operator's age, number of generations the farm had been in the family, household income, number of farm employees, and distance to an urbanized area influence types of goals pursued through diversification.