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If we can decipher the content of opinions and evaluations of those involved in ecological agriculture then we could know the subjective fundamentals/resorts of the modernization and ecological development’s process at the level of the rural communities. The study mainly aims at identifying the opinions on the ecological farm’s evolutions, and, as general objectives: knowing the projections regarding employment in ecological farm, employment in agriculture’s support services, determining the way in which the consequences of using ecological practices on the supply chain and impact on rural communities are perceived. The scientific approach on the ecological subjectivity has turned to a structured communication method, Delphi, in three stages. The study was implemented in a rural area defined by concernments and ecological agricultural activities – Dornelor Basin, Suceava county and it has identified the content, persistence, flexibility and statements’ meaning (positive/negative) of opinions regarding the future of the ecological farms.

This deliverable investigates the socio-economic effects of ecological approaches to farming through implementing two participatory approaches, namely Delphi exercise and Q-method, at the level of a case study area (CSA). The focus is on how people and other productive assets are employed and remunerated by ecological approaches to agriculture, particularly those aspects that can influence employment, and drive the prosperity and vitality of local communities and some rural businesses. It is based on the collaborative research on Task 4.2 ‘Socio-economic impact of ecological agriculture at the territorial level’ of the LIFT project between UNIKENT (United Kingdom-UK) (Task Leader), BOKU (Austria), INRAE (France), VetAgro Sup (France), DEMETER (Greece), MTA KRTK (Hungary), UNIBO (Italy), IRWiR PAN (Poland), IAE-AR (Romania), SLU (Sweden), SRUC (UK). Beginning with the Delphi exercise, this deliverable presents qualitative information extracted from stakeholders in the following four steps. First, the researchers build a presentation of differences between ecological and conventional farming approaches in each CSA. Second, stakeholders elaborate on how they understand ecological farming approaches to exist in each CSA. Third, stakeholders develop a scenario of adoption of ecological approaches to farming depending on two factors: pattern (ecological farms forming clusters or randomly spread within the territory) and rate of adoption 10 years in the future. After establishing this scenario across two rounds, the stakeholders explore the socio-economic effects of their adoption scenario. The Q-methodology then presents a Q-set of statements that the Delphi has developed and, through factor analysis,studies the key stakeholder perspectives of the socio-economic effects of the perceived adoption of ecological practices in 10 years in the future. Four key results can be derived from the Delphi exercise and the Q-methodology. First, a higher adoption of ecological farming approaches, especially so at a 50% adoption rate, is mostly thought by stakeholders in the Delphi Exercise to lead to an increase in skill level and quality of life in on-farm employment. This is as a result of an increased diversity of farming enterprises on farms using ecological farming approaches, the interest generated from this, the knowledge of natural processes and biology required, engagement with nature and change in machinery that is coming into the industry. Strongly related to this need for skills is a predicted increase in the number of advisers and civil servants to deal with more complicated farms and incentives as well as monitoring of ecological effects on farm. An increase in required skill level is repeated across all Q-studies. Second, especially where farms are clustered together, Delphi Exercise respondents predict an increase in the trade of inputs such as manure and compost replacing synthetic fertiliser, as well as more sharing of capital and labour. Q-methodology highlights that these clusters may support a stronger social movement, more consumers buying local food and increase collaboration between farmers. Supply chains are expected to become shorter as farmers sell more directly and there are fewer intermediaries upstream of the farming sector. As farmers collaborate more with each other on environmental objectives, trading inputs and sharing best practices, farmer relationships should improve in rural communities. Third, Delphi exercise finds that contracting, machinery purchasers, and machinery traders and dealers could increase, decrease or display no change – the anticipated effects are mixed. Stakeholders are in no doubt that machinery use will change and therefore new skills will need to be learnt, but the wider effect on machinery purchase is uncertain. However, stakeholders conclude that a greater specialisation in machinery will occur leading to changes in farm management as well as the suppliers of this machinery. Q-methodology highlights that ecological practices will not mean the end of machinery and a lot more labour – often machinery will be useful in weeding and reducing physical labour as technology has significantly improved and skills are improving too in order to use these technologies. Fourth, Delphi respondents argued that although rural populations might be little affected by ecological farming, a shift in people moving from urban to rural settlements, and thereby a higher rural population density, seeking a more attractive rural environment, might contribute to higher local consumer demand. The Q-methodology highlights that where there is high adoption, rural areas are expected to become more attractive, as landscapes will have a much greater variety of crops instead of fields of monocrops. This variety of crops may include agroforestry (farmers interested in ecological approaches to farming may also be interested in agroforestry as a way of boosting their yields and protecting crops and livestock from the elements) as well as intercropping.

"This paper explores what types of policy discourses are used by national policy makers to communicate the rationales of ecological farming practices in policy documents of the Rural Development Programmes (RDP) of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). A hybrid form of discourse analysis and content analysis is used to analyze both CAP and rural development discourses between six EU member states (MS) and across three different CAP periods. Findings indicate that over the whole period 2000-2020 ecological approaches are related with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominant sub-discourses: i) nature conservation in all considered EU MS (except in Sweden); ii) agri-ruralism (including Sweden). The neomercantilist discourse becomes more and more prominent over time, appearing in third position in the two last CAP periods of 2007-2013 and 2014-2020. Agroecology and organic farming are among the most frequently mentioned types of farming system cluster."

The main objective of the paper is to identify and understand how the Romanian farmers relate to ecological farming in terms of ecological practices and ecological products. To achieve this objective, qualitative research methods were used: hybrid forum method and in-depth interviews. The obtained results reveal that in the county Cluj-Napoca, the stakeholders opt for building an operational social system (balanced functioning of the education, production, research, distribution systems within multi-dimensional political programmes/projects). At the same time, the stakeholders from Suceava opt for building an operational social system where the ecological practices are the core of agricultural systems.

Human capital theories consider that education generates skills with economic efficiency because they make it possible to produce value. Generating appropriate skills in agriculture and an educational system specific for rural areas is a dynamic objective, mainly in the information-based developed economies, where technology and production methods are changing fast. The main objective of this paper is to analyse the educational training routes in agriculture, starting from pre-tertiary education, with all its forms, and ending up with tertiary education in this field. Based on the analysis of available statistical data, the paper emphasises that despite the progress that has been made in recent years, access to education, educational training levels measured in schooling years, insertion/integration opportunities throughout the educational cycle do not meet the human capital requirements specific to modern agriculture.

Ecological agriculture provides a favourable framework for maintaining biodiversity by using economically and socially efficient friendly farming practices, generating modern attributes to rural communities and offering a different lifestyle and a different quality of life to the entire society. In two counties ranking in the top ten counties with areas cultivated under organic farming system, Cluj and Suceava, there are positive implications of these farming practices on biological diversity. Qualitative research methods were used to see the local/rural actors' opinion on this topic: hybrid forum and in-depth-interviews. Farmers' decisions to adopt sustainable practices for the environment, which provide positive externalities for biodiversity, water, soil and landscapes, are generated by business-specific economic and social rationality tending to achieve profit specific objectives by using traditional knowledge and skills from the intangible rural heritage.

This paper targets to juxtapose the points of view of citizens, as beneficiaries of the European programmes – on the one hand, and of practitioners – as designers and experts in charge of implementing the Cohesion Policy programmes – on the other. The study was conducted at the level of a sample consisting of 9 NUTS II regions of the European Union, which were selected to be representative for the complex and heterogeneous reality of the EU Cohesion Policy. The analysis of data collected from the case study regions demonstrated that, regardless of the status of the regions (competitiveness or convergence regions), there are overlaps as regards points of view of the two categories of regional actors only for a part of regional priorities. At the same time, the study revealed that the citizens’ trust in the effectiveness of the EU in targeting regional issues is higher in the case of those regional needs that are on the agenda of both categories of regional actors and it drops for those regional issues for which perceptive divergences exist between citizens and practitioners.

This paper targets to synthesize the citizens’ and practitioners’ views on EU Cohesion Policy and to compare them in order to understand if there are different perceptions of this policy and its implementation between these two categories of regional actors. Nine EU regions are included in this study representing the complex and heterogeneous reality of EU Cohesion Policy performance and its multidimensional determinants in terms of socio-economic, political, and demographic development. For each region, the identification of the relevant regional needs is considered, followed by an assessment of the EU policy effectiveness in responding to the revealed issues. Both have been pursued at the level of citizens and of Cohesion Policy practitioners and are followed by a comparative analysis that helps to understand whether the EU Cohesion Policy is perceived and understood by citizens in the same way as it has been conceived by practitioners. The comparative analysis helped shed light on the convergence and divergence points between citizens and experts with regard to the public intervention needs through Cohesion Policy and in the evaluation of the effectiveness of these interventions, thus contributing to a better understanding of the general perception of the EU by the large public

The deliverable D6.1 of the LIFT project explores what types of discourses are used in six European Union (EU) member states’ Rural Development Programs (RDP) and other agricultural policy documents and how they incorporate ecological approaches acrossthree Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) periods. This multiple case study highlights similarities and differences in the dominant discourses as emerging from national policy documents in the following selected EU member states: France, Germany (Bavaria), Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It also demonstrates how discourse analysis can be used to gain understanding about the dominant discourses expressed in these documents in relation to how ecological approaches are defined, the policy rationale for encouraging ecological approaches and the expected consequences of doing so. Conceptually, we focused on two types of discourses identified from the literature: 1) the three CAP discourses: i) neomercantilism; ii) neoliberalism and iii) multifunctionality, and 2) the five socio-political discourses of Rural Development (RD): iv) agri-ruralist, v) hedonist, vi) utilitarian, vii) nature conservation and viii) community sustainability. These types of discourses were together integrated in a model, where each policy discourse depicts agriculture as accomplishing a specific function. The theoretical framework is grounded within a political economy perspective. This means that policy develops because of confrontation between different concerned agents with different interest, pushing for different objectives. The state acts as an intermediary between these agents and aims at ensuring consensus and maintenance of agreement. Policy documents are therefore often the result of competing discourses and contradicting policy objectives. Across EU member states, the results show that ecological approaches are mainly depicted with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominating sub-discourses of nature conservation and agri-ruralism. Nevertheless, we observe an increase in the use of the neomercantilist discourse in the last CAP period. This parallels what the previous literature finds in Commissioners’ speeches: a reappearance of the traditional neomercantilist discourse in the CAP agenda 2014-2020. Farming systems (with farming practices) related to agroecology, biodiversity-based and organic farming are among the most commonly mentioned farming systems.

This report is a comparative analysis of nine regional case-studies selected in our project, based on original data collected through the PERCEIVE field survey that was conducted during the summer of 2017 and on the reports on regional case studies written by Perceive’s partners. Each report was based on the analysis of the focus group’s section that addresses the assessment of Cohesion Policy. The general objective of this report is to synthesize the citizens’ and practicioners’ views on EU Cohesion Policy and to compare them in order to understand if there are different perceptions of this policy and its implementation. For each region included in the study, the identification of the relevant regional needs are considered, followed by an assessment of the EU policy effectiveness in responding to the revealed issues. Both have been pursued at the level of citizens and of Cohesion Policy practitioners, and are followed by a comparative analysis that helps to understand whether the EU Cohesion Policy is perceived and understood by citizens in the same way as it has been conceived by practitioners.&nbsp

This report is a comparative analysis of nine regional case-studies selected in our project, based on original data collected through the PERCEIVE field survey that was conducted during the summer of 2017 and on the reports on regional case studies written by Perceive’s partners. Each report was based on the analysis of the focus group’s section that addresses the assessment of Cohesion Policy. The general objective of this report is to synthesize the citizens’ and practicioners’ views on EU Cohesion Policy and to compare them in order to understand if there are different perceptions of this policy and its implementation. For each region included in the study, the identification of the relevant regional needs are considered, followed by an assessment of the EU policy effectiveness in responding to the revealed issues. Both have been pursued at the level of citizens and of Cohesion Policy practitioners, and are followed by a comparative analysis that helps to understand whether the EU Cohesion Policy is perceived and understood by citizens in the same way as it has been conceived by practitioners. The comparative analysis helped shed light on the convergence and divergence points between citizens and experts with regard to the public intervention needs through Cohesion Policy and in the evaluation of the effectiveness of these interventions, thus contributing to a better understanding of the general perception of the EU by the large public.

This document is a comparative synthesis of the reports on regional case studies written by PERCEIVE’s partners. Each report is based both on an original data collection and on the analysis of the focus group’s section that addresses communication issues. Each partner collected national and/or regional communication plans, which were mostly used for the first chapter of this report: “Communication strategy at different levels and LMAs’ organization.” Focus group were realized within Perceive’s Work Package 1. Part of the data collected in the focus groups have been already analysed in tasks 1.1 and 1.2, and presented in deliverable 1.1. Another part of data collected in the focus groups regards communication issues. This data collection was the ground for the second chapter of this report: “Focus groups and in depth interviews.” In particular, the partners of the PERCEIVE consortium realized the focus groups with practitioners of Cohesion Policy programmes between February and March 2017. Table 1 presents a description of the focus groups. Within the semi-structured questionnaire, a chapter was developed by UNIBO and WU to address communication issues: it is presented as appendix 1. The other parts of the focus group are analysed within Work Packages 1 and 4. The focus groups were moderated by members of the PERCEIVE partners' research units. The only exception being Italy's case-studies, where the moderator was a journalist with expertise in Cohesion Policy, under instruction and assistance of the researchers of the UNIBO team. The focus groups lasted between 3 and 5 hours. To allow for a deeper level of analysis and to collect feedback, a one-week follow-up phase was available to participants for providing an additional written contribution. In compliance with the Horizon2020 policy, the transcripts of each focus group, translated in English language, are stored in the PERCEIVE repository and available for open access.

Increasing attention is being given to the role of innovation in promoting rural development and sustainable intensification of agriculture. By means of quantitative data and semi-structured interviews with representatives of the main actors in the rural and agricultural innovation chains, this paper compares and contrasts the status and role of innovation among rural actors and farmers in Hungary and Romania. In both countries, many NUTS3 regions are predominantly rural (PR), showing the importance of promoting innovation in agriculture and rural areas. In Hungary the percentage of households in PR regions having subscribed to broadband Internet connection was almost double that of Romania and the selected education and training indicators (both among the general population and among farmers) were also higher. The state of innovation in farming in the two countries is assessed by the interviewees to be weak and it was confirmed that many farmers are either simply followers of innovation, or do not attach importance to innovation. In Romania, foreign/multinational firms/companies are believed to be the major producers of innovation. Although in both countries the state is perceived to have a major role in the mediation of innovation, governmental organisations could do more to improve innovation. It remains to be seen whether the current policy interventions will stimulate an increase in innovation in the two countries. Keywords

In our paper we tried to investigate the organisation and functioning of the Agricultural Knowledge System in Romania. On the basis of system analysis approaches, we critically examined the set of public and private organisations dedicated to research, education and extension, and their interaction with knowledge users (traditional farmers) and the main system failures and strengths in the innovation process in agriculture were identified. The empirical research in this study had a heuristic value.

A scientific approach referring to the reseach network development with the following objectives: • improvement of the degree of integration/involvent of the research-develop-ment-innovation (RD1') units in Romania with concerns in the field of rural development into the European research programs on this theme; • the transfer of knowledge resulting from the European scientific community, specialized in the rural developmentproblems, to the scientific community in Romania; • the knowledge transfer will aim at the development, in cooperation with the European partners, of some common projects under the future EU Framework Program 7.

The rural space of Romania is characterised in terms of administrative breakdown, area and population, with reference to the NUTS classifications. This is followed by a demographic analysis of the gender and age structures, as well as migration flows. The rural-urban flows are considered, as is the employment structure in rural areas. Then, the farming sector is analysed, both with respect to its productive and factor characteristics, and the farm population features, over the period of systemic transformation. It is noted that farming intensity has gone down altogether on almost all accounts, while privatisation of farming has been overwhelming. At the same time, during the transformation, there have been disadvantageous phenomena within the farm population (decrease of average acreage). Against this background, the institutional infrastructure of the Romanian agriculture and rural economy is considered, including various ownership and association forms. It is proposed that an adequate restructuring of Romanian agriculture would require a developed and pronounced agricultural policy, as well as significant outlays.

The investigation of the relationship between ecology and sociology, in a sustainable agricultural matrix, provides possible complete answers to the problems generated by the respect of the environment and building a favourable environmental matrix. The interdisciplinary perspective imposes the investigation of the following dimensions in sociological terms: environmental, economic and social processes induced by land use or land use changes, spatial interactions of processes and driving forces in anthropogenic landscapes. The specific trends of ecological farming are largely influenced by the behavioural factors, by the cultural and social capital of farmers involved in this type of farming activity.

The deliverable D6.1 of the LIFT project explores what types of discourses are used in six European Union (EU) member states’ Rural Development Programs (RDP) and other agricultural policy documents and how they incorporate ecological approaches across three Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) periods. This multiple case study highlights similarities and differences in the dominant discourses as emerging from national policy documents in the following selected EU member states: France, Germany (Bavaria), Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden. It also demonstrates how discourse analysis can be used to gain understanding about the dominant discourses expressed in these documents in relation to how ecological approaches are defined, the policy rationale for encouraging ecological approaches and the expected consequences of doing so. Conceptually, we focused on two types of discourses identified from the literature: 1) the three CAP discourses: i) neomercantilism; ii) neoliberalism and iii) multifunctionality, and 2) the five socio-political discourses of Rural Development (RD): iv) agri-ruralist, v) hedonist, vi) utilitarian, vii) nature conservation and viii) community sustainability. These types of discourses were together integrated in a model, where each policy discourse depicts agriculture as accomplishing a specific function. The theoretical framework is grounded within a political economy perspective. This means that policy develops because of confrontation between different concerned agents with different interest, pushing for different objectives. The state acts as an intermediary between these agents and aims at ensuring consensus and maintenance of agreement. Policy documents are therefore often the result of competing discourses and contradicting policy objectives. Across EU member states, the results show that ecological approaches are mainly depicted with the multifunctionality discourse with two dominating sub-discourses of nature conservation and agri-ruralism. Nevertheless, we observe an increase in the use of the neomercantilist discourse in the last CAP period. This parallels what the previous literature finds in Commissioners’ speeches: a reappearance of the traditional neomercantilist discourse in the CAP agenda 2014-2020. Farming systems (with farming practices) related to agroecology, biodiversity-based and organic farming are among the most commonly mentioned farming systems.

In the current context of increasing concerns for healthy agri-food systems, the adoption of ecological farming practices has gained ground and visibility both as sustainable approach to the farming activity and as scientific approach. The paper intends to analyse the differences between the organic and conventional systems of livestock raising in Dornelor Basin, Suceava county. The comparison of the two systems was based on several dimensions – labour, agricultural incomes, use of agricultural inputs, adoption of ecological farming practices, etc. The results obtained showed that both farming systems support, in different proportions, the health of ecosystems and inhabitants in the investigated area.

This deliverable (D2.3) of the LIFT project presents the results of a series of investigations around up-take of ecological approaches across the value chain. We use primary and secondary data collected utilising a number of methods, built on conceptual frameworks developed within LIFT and elsewhere. This provides a range of empirical investigations for an overview of farming, supply chains and consumption drivers which may constrain or enable uptake of ecological approaches. Both exogenous and endogenous drivers were considered for these studies. The report is presented as a set of summaries from academic paper outputs - to show the individual exercises across farmers, value chains and consumers – and to understand both the barriers and enablers for transition to more ecological approaches within European farming. A summary table is provided to show these investigations, as well as the approach used and the type of data collected. Specifically the following sets of studies are presented: Typologies of farm activity and farmer perceptions towards ecological practices.This allows us to partition a large scale farmer dataset (from the LIFT large-scale farmer survey) with multiple variables of interest [papers 1,2]. Examination of the exogenous and endogenous drivers behind ecological uptake, such as gender, the farm family life-cycle, neighbouring farms and supply chains.These papers take either a quantitative approach, through the application of behavioural models, or a qualitative approach to understand what drives this decision to adopt ecological practices [papers 3,4,5,6]. Examination of the value chain, collaboration and cooperation.These are explored through quantitative and qualitative routes to understand how value chains operate for ecological practices, compared to conventional practices, and how actors engage within specific value chains [papers 7,8,9,10,11]. Finally the role of consumption is explored, through market segmentation, labels or specific traits of food products that offer opportunities to promote ecological practices [papers 12,13,14]. Overall, we find much heterogeneity in both practice and attitudes towards production and consumption of ecological approaches. The investigations presented here provide illustrations of how these approaches and perceptions are driven by both personal, informal and formal institutional influences, such as the support from local market conditions or sharing of knowledge. This leads to us understand the relationships between economic and non-economic goals, which are key to eventual uptake of ecological approaches. Incentives were considered to balance the conflicts between endogenous and exogenous drivers, such as labelling and support for social incentives, but also as a means to overcome perceived or real barriers through mechanisms which support further collaboration between farmers.

In the current context of increasing concerns for healthy agri-food systems, the adoption of ecological farming practices has gained ground and visibility both as sustainable approach to the farming activity and as scientific approach. The paper intends to analyse the differences between the organic and conventional systems of livestock raising in Dornelor Basin, Suceava county. The comparison of the two systems was based on several dimensions – labour, agricultural incomes, use of agricultural inputs, adoption of ecological farming practices, etc. The results obtained showed that both farming systems support, in different proportions, the health of ecosystems and inhabitants in the investigated area.

A scientific approach referring to the reseach network development with the following objectives: • improvement of the degree of integration/involvent of the research-develop-ment-innovation (RD1') units in Romania with concerns in the field of rural development into the European research programs on this theme; • the transfer of knowledge resulting from the European scientific community, specialized in the rural developmentproblems, to the scientific community in Romania; • the knowledge transfer will aim at the development, in cooperation with the European partners, of some common projects under the future EU Framework Program 7.

The rural space of Romania is characterised in terms of administrative breakdown, area and population, with reference to the NUTS classifications. This is followed by a demographic analysis of the gender and age structures, as well as migration flows. The rural-urban flows are considered, as is the employment structure in rural areas. Then, the farming sector is analysed, both with respect to its productive and factor characteristics, and the farm population features, over the period of systemic transformation. It is noted that farming intensity has gone down altogether on almost all accounts, while privatisation of farming has been overwhelming. At the same time, during the transformation, there have been disadvantageous phenomena within the farm population (decrease of average acreage). Against this background, the institutional infrastructure of the Romanian agriculture and rural economy is considered, including various ownership and association forms. It is proposed that an adequate restructuring of Romanian agriculture would require a developed and pronounced agricultural policy, as well as significant outlays.

Ecological agriculture provides a favourable framework for maintaining biodiversity by using economically and socially efficient friendly farming practices, generating modern attributes to rural communities and offering a different lifestyle and a different quality of life to the entire society. In two counties ranking in the top ten counties with areas cultivated under organic farming system, Cluj and Suceava, there are positive implications of these farming practices on biological diversity. Qualitative research methods were used to see the local/rural actors’ opinion on this topic: hybrid forum and in-depth-interviews. Farmers’ decisions to adopt sustainable practices for the environment, which provide positive externalities for biodiversity, water, soil and landscapes, are generated by business-specific economic and social rationality tending to achieve profit specific objectives by using traditional knowledge and skills from the intangible rural heritage.

The investigation of the relationship between ecology and sociology, in a sustainable agricultural matrix, provides possible complete answers to the problems generated by the respect of the environment and building a favourable environmental matrix. The interdisciplinary perspective imposes the investigation of the following dimensions in sociological terms: environmental, economic and social processes induced by land use or land use changes, spatial interactions of processes and driving forces in anthropogenic landscapes. The specific trends of ecological farming are largely influenced by the behavioural factors, by the cultural and social capital of farmers involved in this type of farming activity.

In our paper we tried to investigate the organisation and functioning of the Agricultural Knowledge System in Romania. On the basis of system analysis approaches, we critically examined the set of public and private organisations dedicated to research, education and extension, and their interaction with knowledge users (traditional farmers) and the main system failures and strengths in the innovation process in agriculture were identified. The empirical research in this study had a heuristic value.

Farm demographic change at the farming system level is the result of individual farm demographic change processes made by individual farmers. This work invests intergenerational renewal in individual farms through focusing on unravelling complex relations between human behaviour/decisionmaking and observed trends. Indepth interviews performed in all 11 case-studies entailed the identification of drivers that affect the main farm-demographic change processes such as exit, entry, non-exit and non-entry. Then, a cross-case comparison was made to identify common themes affecting or related to farm demographic change., EU, en; contact: isabeau.coopmans@ilvo.vlaanderen.be

Ecological agriculture provides a favourable framework for maintaining biodiversity by using economically and socially efficient friendly farming practices, generating modern attributes to rural communities and offering a different lifestyle and a different quality of life to the entire society. In two counties ranking in the top ten counties with areas cultivated under organic farming system, Cluj and Suceava, there are positive implications of these farming practices on biological diversity. Qualitative research methods were used to see the local/rural actors’ opinion on this topic: hybrid forum and in-depth-interviews. Farmers’ decisions to adopt sustainable practices for the environment, which provide positive externalities for biodiversity, water, soil and landscapes, are generated by business-specific economic and social rationality tending to achieve profit specific objectives by using traditional knowledge and skills from the intangible rural heritage.

This deliverable (D2.3) of the LIFT project presents the results of a series of investigations around up-take of ecological approaches across the value chain. We use primary and secondary data collected utilising a number of methods, built on conceptual frameworks developed within LIFT and elsewhere. This provides a range of empirical investigations for an overview of farming, supply chains and consumption drivers which may constrain or enable uptake of ecological approaches. Both exogenous and endogenous drivers were considered for these studies. The report is presented as a set of summaries from academic paper outputs - to show the individual exercises across farmers, value chains and consumers – and to understand both the barriers and enablers for transition to more ecological approaches within European farming. A summary table is provided to show these investigations, as well as the approach used and the type of data collected. Specifically the following sets of studies are presented: Typologies of farm activity and farmer perceptions towards ecological practices.This allows us to partition a large scale farmer dataset (from the LIFT large-scale farmer survey) with multiple variables of interest [papers 1,2]. Examination of the exogenous and endogenous drivers behind ecological uptake, such as gender, the farm family life-cycle, neighbouring farms and supply chains.These papers take either a quantitative approach, through the application of behavioural models, or a qualitative approach to understand what drives this decision to adopt ecological practices [papers 3,4,5,6]. Examination of the value chain, collaboration and cooperation.These are explored through quantitative and qualitative routes to understand how value chains operate for ecological practices, compared to conventional practices, and how actors engage within specific value chains [papers 7,8,9,10,11]. Finally the role of consumption is explored, through market segmentation, labels or specific traits of food products that offer opportunities to promote ecological practices [papers 12,13,14]. Overall, we find much heterogeneity in both practice and attitudes towards production and consumption of ecological approaches. The investigations presented here provide illustrations of how these approaches and perceptions are driven by both personal, informal and formal institutional influences, such as the support from local market conditions or sharing of knowledge. This leads to us understand the relationships between economic and non-economic goals, which are key to eventual uptake of ecological approaches. Incentives were considered to balance the conflicts between endogenous and exogenous drivers, such as labelling and support for social incentives, but also as a means to overcome perceived or real barriers through mechanisms which support further collaboration between farmers.

Farm demographic change at the farming system level is the result of individual farm demographic change processes made by individual farmers. This work invests intergenerational renewal in individual farms through focusing on unravelling complex relations between human behaviour/decisionmaking and observed trends. Indepth interviews performed in all 11 case-studies entailed the identification of drivers that affect the main farm-demographic change processes such as exit, entry, non-exit and non-entry. Then, a cross-case comparison was made to identify common themes affecting or related to farm demographic change.

This deliverable investigates the socio-economic effects of ecological approaches to farming through implementing two participatory approaches, namely Delphi exercise and Q-method, at the level of a case study area (CSA). The focus is on how people and other productive assets are employed and remunerated by ecological approaches to agriculture, particularly those aspects that can influence employment, and drive the prosperity and vitality of local communities and some rural businesses. It is based on the collaborative research on Task 4.2 ‘Socio-economic impact of ecological agriculture at the territorial level’ of the LIFT project between UNIKENT (United Kingdom-UK) (Task Leader), BOKU (Austria), INRAE (France), VetAgro Sup (France), DEMETER (Greece), MTA KRTK (Hungary), UNIBO (Italy), IRWiR PAN (Poland), IAE-AR (Romania), SLU (Sweden), SRUC (UK). Beginning with the Delphi exercise, this deliverable presents qualitative information extracted from stakeholders in the following four steps. First, the researchers build a presentation of differences between ecological and conventional farming approaches in each CSA. Second, stakeholders elaborate on how they understand ecological farming approaches to exist in each CSA. Third, stakeholders develop a scenario of adoption of ecological approaches to farming depending on two factors: pattern (ecological farms forming clusters or randomly spread within the territory) and rate of adoption 10 years in the future. After establishing this scenario across two rounds, the stakeholders explore the socio-economic effects of their adoption scenario. The Q-methodology then presents a Q-set of statements that the Delphi has developed and, through factor analysis, studies the key stakeholder perspectives of the socio-economic effects of the perceived adoption of ecological practices in 10 years in the future. Four key results can be derived from the Delphi exercise and the Q-methodology. First, a higher adoption of ecological farming approaches, especially so at a 50% adoption rate, is mostly thought by stakeholders in the Delphi Exercise to lead to an increase in skill level and quality of life in on-farm employment. This is as a result of an increased diversity of farming enterprises on farms using ecological farming approaches, the interest generated from this, the knowledge of natural processes and biology required, engagement with nature and change in machinery that is coming into the industry. Strongly related to this need for skills is a predicted increase in the number of advisers and civil servants to deal with more complicated farms and incentives as well as monitoring of ecological effects on farm. An increase in required skill level is repeated across all Q-studies. Second, especially where farms are clustered together, Delphi Exercise respondents predict an increase in the trade of inputs such as manure and compost replacing synthetic fertiliser, as well as more sharing of capital and labour. Q-methodology highlights that these clusters may support a stronger social movement, more consumers buying local food and increase collaboration between farmers. Supply chains are expected to become shorter as farmers sell more directly and there are fewer intermediaries upstream of the farming sector. As farmers collaborate more with each other on environmental objectives, trading inputs and sharing best practices, farmer relationships should improve in rural communities. Third, Delphi exercise finds that contracting, machinery purchasers, and machinery traders and dealers could increase, decrease or display no change – the anticipated effects are mixed. Stakeholders are in no doubt that machinery use will change and therefore new skills will need to be learnt, but the wider effect on machinery purchase is uncertain. However, stakeholders conclude that a greater specialisation in machinery will occur leading to changes in farm management as well as the suppliers of this machinery. Q-methodology highlights that ecological practices will not mean the end of machinery and a lot more labour – often machinery will be useful in weeding and reducing physical labour as technology has significantly improved and skills are improving too in order to use these technologies. Fourth, Delphi respondents argued that although rural populations might be little affected by ecological farming, a shift in people moving from urban to rural settlements, and thereby a higher rural population density, seeking a more attractive rural environment, might contribute to higher local consumer demand. The Q-methodology highlights that where there is high adoption, rural areas are expected to become more attractive, as landscapes will have a much greater variety of crops instead of fields of monocrops. This variety of crops may include agroforestry (farmers interested in ecological approaches to farming may also be interested in agroforestry as a way of boosting their yields and protecting crops and livestock from the elements) as well as intercropping.