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Access to financing is crucial for farmers to ensure competitiveness and to facilitate change. A better understanding of how farmers can access funds could help farmers to remain profitable and to adopt more sustainable farming practices. However, most of the academic literature discussing agricultural financing depicts farmers' access to funds as impersonal and universal – emerging from the idea of "optimal financial behaviour". This paper takes a different approach and introduces the concept of "financial subjectivities" to show how financial markets are constructed as locally embedded reinterpretations of the financialisation of agriculture that guide local agro-financial relations. We examine financial subjectivities in Latvia, Denmark and the UK respectively to understand how stakeholders co-constitute contextually embedded relations between farmers and banks and to assess processes of agro-financial relations in specific national contexts. The cases illustrate different relationships between banks and farms. In Latvia, agricultural crediting has developed comparatively recently and is heavily supported by government intervention; in Denmark, agriculture has undergone a period of financial crisis, and farmers are struggling to refinance and remain profitable; meanwhile, in the UK, relations between farmers and banks are well established but increasingly strained as agricultural producer returns on investment yield less profit. Each case thus reflects historical development trajectories and the regulatory engagement of agro-financial relations, asserting the importance of embedding analysis of agricultural financing in specific socio-political contexts. • Most farmers do not have resources to make the investments needed to ensure the competitiveness of their farm. • Financialisation is a global phenomenon which is maintained by actors that are global in their nature and foci. • Financial relations are locally embedded and locally reimagined. • Financialisation has to be renegotiated in diverse contexts as part of a broad set of development trajectories. • Financial subjectivities are locally embedded reinterpretations of the financialisation. • Banks play an important role in facilitating a shift towards more sustainable models of farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries has supported demonstration of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture through an EU grant-scheme in the years 2008–2013. This paper evaluates the individual as well as the collective potential of the grant receivers to promote public education about plant genetic resources. All grant-receivers are regarded as Informal Learning Environments, though the institutions are very diverse and include research institutions, museums, private companies, municipalities, pometa, local groups, and NGOs. The results show that the institutions had a high individual potential to promote education of plant genetic resources to the public. The potential was increased by many institutions with the same purpose disseminating the same core message with many different angles in different geographical places at the same time. This gives a possibility to reach more target groups in different ways with knowledge of plant genetic resources. The results are discussed and compared to the implementation of the Rural Development Programme in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Construction of scientific knowledge can be seen as a struggle over who should define the terms and conditions of legitimate fields of research. Sociologists of scientific knowledge (SSK) have pointed to the importance of analysing scientific knowledge in the same way as other types of knowledge. This idea guides the present paper on Danish research in agriculture and rural areas. Based on an ethnographic study of researchers involved in rural studies, we take stock of the agri-rural research community in Denmark and reflect upon the how and why ‘fashions’ in Danish rural studies differ from ‘fashions’ in rural studies in the UK. In the analysis, we show how a research community construct and reconstruct itself in relation to what is perceived as legitimate fields of research. Finally, the paper gives insight into the research world of those doing research outside the UK and adds to the discussion of ‘putting philosophies of geography into practice’ that is on-going in British geography. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The paper argues for the existence of two powerful discourses of rurality in Denmark after World War II. The first one is termed the modernist-agriculturalist discourse. Although still influential in the current public debate, in Denmark as well as in other Western European countries, this discourse of rurality had its heyday in the 1960s. It is based on key words, such as structural changes, development and vertical integration. Since the 1950s, it has belonged to groups of Danish farmers who use a productionist terminology in the public debate. However, the paper mainly focuses on a second discourse of rurality, established during the 1970s. Based on key words, such as community, culture, environment and active citizenship, this terminology was applied and promoted by new non-agricultural elites in the villages and can therefore be termed the non-agriculturalist discourse of rurality. The paper shows how this new ‘family’ of powerful words was developed and promoted by The National Confederation of Village Communities in rural Denmark (Landssammenslutningen af Landsbysamfund or L.A.L.), established in 1976. Thus, from the late 1970s, members of this organization contributed to build and apply a peculiar L.A.L. vocabulary in their journal Landsbyen (“The village”)—a vocabulary which later was to be disseminated among the population and, finally, to have a significant impact on state politics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

One of the major challenges in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive (WFD) is how to address diffuse agricultural pollution of the aquatic environment. In Denmark the implementation of agricultural measures has been fraught with difficulty in the form of delays and legal proceedings, despite an ambitious starting point. Why has the implementation of the WFD been so difficult? Based on an analysis of three core components (effectiveness, scale and legal issues) of three agricultural measures (riparian zones, reduced management of streams and catch crops), the paper argues that the legal and regulatory complexity of adopting mandatory land use related measures at the national level to achieve site-specific environmental objectives was underestimated in a top-down political process. The ambitious mandatory policy measures, which added to existing high regulation pressure, led to regulatory challenges, such as possible violation of private property rights raising questions about the actual environmental effects at local level. Consequently, political acceptability and legitimacy of the agricultural measures were undermined, resulting in a gradual withdrawal of the measures and a policy failure. It is argued that the adoption of more flexible measures to be implemented at the local level could have resulted in fewer difficulties from an economic and legal point of view as measures could have been applied where there was a clear environmental benefit, and possibly also at a lower cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmers are accustomed to coping with year-to-year changes in climate, but climate change is expected to accelerate the need and magnitude of farmers’ adaptation ( Wheeler and Tiffin, 2009 ). Based on a survey of farmers across Denmark (1053 responses), this paper assesses how farmers’ perceive climate change, weigh its attendant risks, and envision the barriers to adaptation as these factors stand to affect their likelihood to undertake adaptive action in the Global North. Descriptive statistics and an ordered probit model were used to disentangle the magnitude and direction of the cognitive factors underpinning farmers’ likelihood to adapt. We also differentiate between adaptation to positive and negative potential impacts of climate change and provide important new insights on loss aversion and, more specifically, the conditions under which loss aversion may give way to a preference for gains. Our results indicate that Danish farmers are not terribly concerned about climate change impacts and perceive many barriers to adaptation, yet they indicate a moderate likelihood to undertake adaptive action in the future, particularly to potential opportunities from climate change impacts. However, we also find that the more concerned a farmer is about climate change, the more he is likely to adapt in response to negative climate impacts − the balance between loss aversion and gain preferences appears to depend on context. In either case, Danish farmers appear to prefer incremental and flexible adaptations in the face of uncertain future climate change impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing interest in integrating climate change considerations into Programmes of Measures (PoMs) under the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) is being driven in part by the requirements of the next generation of River Basin Management Plans (RBMPs). However, so far most studies have focused on potential impacts of climate change on water bodies and the adaptation to climate change-related risks, whereas the relationship between RBMP's and mitigation of climate change -- through the reduction in emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG) -- has only been touched upon. This paper investigates the potential for synergies between reduction of nutrient losses from agriculture and climate change mitigation in a case study of the Isefjord and Roskilde Fjord River Basin in Denmark. For this purpose, a map-based approach is applied to analyze the effects and cost-effectiveness of selected PoMs to reduce both nitrogen loads and GHG emissions from agriculture at the river basin scale. The results indicate a substantial potential for cost- effective integration of climate change mitigation into WFD action programmes with special emphasis on four agri-environmental N-GHG measures applied in combination: (1) manure treatment for biogas production and improved N utilization, (2) cultivation of perennial energy crops, (3) extensification of intensively farmed lowland areas and (4) wetland restoration. The particular PoMs investigated can ensure fulfilment of the WFD GES objectives for Isefjord and Roskilde Fjord in a cost-effective way and at the same time reduce GHG emissions significantly, corresponding to a 35--65% reduction of total agricultural GHG emissions within the river basin. This study suggests that a targeted and differentiated approach to the development of PoMs is necessary in order to attain the full potential of these kinds of win--win solutions in the context of the WFD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ager: Journal of Depopulation & Rural Development Studies / Revista de Estudios sobre Despoblación y Desarrollo Rural is the property of Rolde de Estudios Aragoneses and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)