The foregoing empirical material showed that farm-level multifunctionality in the Netherlands is closely interwoven with: 1) the variety of underlying driving forces of new farm activities; 2) their lifespan; 3) the specificities of family-based farming and 4) the interconnectedness of overall farm-activities. Especially, the wish to ‘farm differently’ drives Dutch agrarian pathways to multifunctionality. In general, the lifes- pan of new farm activities enlarges their socio-economic significance, which is also due to the frequency of the uptake of additional new activities. yet, as shown, multi- functional pathways are not to be perceived as unilineair processes of change. Spe- cific reasons for family farms to engage in new farm activities go to different degrees along with substantial changes in terms of mobilisation, allocation and valorisation of labour and capital resources and their interrelated capacities to create synergy- effects based on multifunctional resource use.
Figure 3.4 stresses that it is the overall outcome of complex interaction patterns that explains the robustness of multifunctional agricultural pathways. A strong desire to ‘farm differently’ may initiate a process that results in a steady expansion of new farm activities that, in time, increasingly induces synergy-effects through multifunc- tional resource use. In some cases, the uptake of new farm activities is primarily driven by the wish for an own income activity among family members, which sets the boundaries in terms of labour input, expansion and professionalization ambi-
tions, strategic meaning, etc. The new farm activities may be connected with agri- culture through financial flows but do not influence with the farming activities sub- stantially. These continue to be primarily structured according to the logic of global food markets, which brings fewer benefits in terms of mutual re-enforcing network configurations, multiple resource use, etc. The more co-evolutionary nature of this type of farm-level dynamics may be further reflected in relatively strongly present beliefs that conventional growth remains a serious option for further farm develop- ment and that own farming practices do not differ fundamentally from conventional farming. In line with transition theory thinking, farm-level multifunctionality appears here as a more gradual changing of the balance between productivist and non- productivist action and thoughts. Figure 3.4 underlines that the temporal aspects of such changing balances may have rather different explanations.
This can be further illustrated by some of the key features of the ‘longer-stronger’ pathway. Particularly this group of farm enterprises combines the desire to ‘farm differently’ with a gradual expansion of the number of new farm activities, a steadily growing significance of these activities in terms of turnover and income genera- tion and positive interrelations with further agricultural development. It results in increasingly robust multifunctional rural business models, including the capacity to surpass traditional gender-based labour divisions and more reluctant attitudes towards external labour mobilisation to fully explore and unlock the potentials of multifunctionality.
The more recent emergence of an accelerated trajectory towards strong multifunc-
Driving forces of new farm ac0vi0es
Lifespan of new farm-‐ac0vi0es
Farm organisa0onal model
Interconnectedness of overall farm ac0vi0es
Figure 3.4 Agrarian pathways to multifunctionality as complex interaction patterns
tionality, in turn, suggests that both ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors seem to have gained importance in the Netherlands. Dutch family-farms may increasingly have to face agricultural marginalization tendencies but are simultaneously surrounded by newly emerging rural market opportunities and - albeit still to a lesser degree - a facilitat- ing institutional environment. That this farm-development trajectory is relatively often accompanied by an extensification and/or downscaling of agricultural activity further suggests that multifunctional pathways in the Netherlands may be increas- ingly the outcome of a more radical transformation of the role of agricultural activity in overall farming strategy.
Figure 3.4 further underscores that family-farms often search for a certain flexibility in overall farm management. Frequently, interviewees stress that the future of their new activities remains uncertain and that different scenarios are imaginable. yet, these uncertainties are not so much perceived as problematic than as something that enables the preservation of a certain flexibility with regard to the unknown, a flexibility that would be lacking in the case of a strategic choice for further agri- cultural expansion. The uptake of new rural development activities gives potential successors a certain space to develop their own professional preferences, to reduce the financial burden of farm-succession and to incorporate the unknown profes- sional skills and preferences of future partners. The latter, particularly, applies with regard to the future of traditionally typical female domains such as agri-tourism and the provision of care and education facilities. The importance attached to the preservation of a certain flexibility may further appear in relation to the organisation of future farm-succession. As noticed, representatives of stronger multifunctional pathways, especially, assess future farm succession as problematic. Hence, it is particularly these farmers that most actively search for novel ways to facilitate farm- succession, which may include the breakdown of overall activities into a number of formally independent ‘micro-enterprises’. In addition to other objectives, such as the transcendence of conventional employer-employee relationships, this clearly also facilitates a more flexible, tailor made and step-by-step farm-succession of closely cooperating business units that accept their mutual interdepencies and their overarching multifunctional rural resource use principles.
3.12 Conclusions
This chapter started with an impression of the broad spectrum of relevant farm types that needs to be taken into account in the analysis of agriculture’s multifunc- tionality as defined within the rural development model. Subsequently, the analyti- cal focus shifted to the dynamics of multifunctional pathways among professional farm-enterprises in the Netherlands. Overall, the presented empirical material identified a broad spectrum of drivers that explains the uptake of new rural devel- opment by professional farm-enterprises. As further concluded, especially through specific sets of combinations, these new rural development activities contribute sig- nificantly to overall farm-income generation. Their positive interaction with further
agricultural development clearly contradicts the dominant and persistent perception among Dutch agricultural modernisation advocates that multifunctional agricultural pathways lack longer term perspectives.
This general picture has been complemented by an in-depth analysis of differentiat- ing farm-level pathways which underscores the complex interrelations between 1) the driving forces of new rural development activities; 2) the lifespan of new activi- ties; 3) farm organisational features; and 4) the interconnectedness of overall farm activities. In accordance with transition theory, overall outcomes of these inter- relations reflect to different degrees co-evolutionary farm-development pathways. Farming style theory enables to interlink these pathways to following specificities of family-based farming: 1) multiple drivers for the uptake of new rural development activities; 2) differences in internalisation of multifunctionality as a guiding principle for farm-development; 3) differences in attention for the creation of synergy-effects between agricultural and non-agricultural activities and 4) differences in attitudes towards external labour mobilisation and internal labour distribution. Particularly this integration of insights from transition theory and farming style approaches re- sulted in a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics in farm-level multi- functionality and its specific features, strengths and vulnerabilities.
Finally, the presented Dutch empirical findings point in this respect to some interest- ing recent dynamics. The national emergence of an accelerated trajectory towards strong multifunctionality may be related to a variety of factors, such as loss of space for co-evolutionary pathways in a setting already for decades characterized by domi- nant agricultural modernisation forces, newly emerging rural markets as a conse- quence of changing societal demands in this same setting and a growing necessity to make unambiguous strategic choices in contemporary agriculture. In any case, this trajectory underpins Dutch family-farms’ resistance against marginalization tenden- cies and their openness, willingness and capacity to adapt and transform their farm- ing strategies. As such it is particularly this trajectory that symbolizes Dutch family farms’ resilience as the outcome of resistance (the wish to ‘farm differently’) and the active redesign of multifunctional agricultural pathways through 1) strong interlink- ages between economic and socio-cultural values as integrating forces for produc- tive, as well as consumptive, rural functions; 2) changing gender relations that go along with new patterns of labour division and distribution of responsibilities; 3) new professional identities with alternative strategic meanings of agricultural activ- ity; and 4) the preservation of a certain flexibility in overall resource use.
Table 3.1 General and path-specific features of Dutch multifunctional farm- enterprises.
1. General business