Socioeconomics of Agriculture (SpringerBriefs in Economics)

Annotation This open access book applies for the first time emerging concepts of socioeconomics to analyse an economic sector, namely agriculture. It considers the rational choices of all actors in the system (just as agricultural economists do) and their cultural preferences and constraints (just as rural sociologists do). Socioeconomic concepts are subsequently used to structure agricultural issues with regard to the three governance mechanisms (hierarchy, markets, and cooperation), and different agricultural systems are presented and compared. The book will be of interest to social scientists with various backgrounds, and seeks to break down the barriers of single-disciplinary thinking Contents 6 1 What Is This Book Good for? 9 1.1 Approaches Towards Socioeconomics 9 1.2 The Interaction Approach 11 1.3 The Diversity Approach 16 1.4 Why Agriculture? 18 1.5 And Why Socioeconomics? 19 References 20 2 Agricultural Hierarchies 23 2.1 Public: The Agricultural Administration 23 2.1.1 Weber’s Iron Cage 24 2.1.2 Niskanen’s Bureaucrat 25 2.1.3 Principal-Agent Issues 26 2.1.4 New Public Management (NPM) 29 2.1.5 Production Economics 29 2.2 Commercial: Power in the Chain 31 2.2.1 Getting Started: Price Transmission 31 2.2.2 The Special Case of Land Grabbing 32 2.2.3 Vertical Integration 34 2.3 Private: Powerful Families 36 2.3.1 Inter-gender Relationships 37 2.3.2 Inter-generation Relationships 39 2.4 Concluding Thoughts on Hierarchy 45 References 45 3 Agricultural Markets 49 3.1 Occupational Choices 49 3.1.1 Identity and Environment 50 3.1.2 Part-Time Farming 51 3.1.3 Employed on a Farm 52 3.1.4 Alpine Summers 53 3.1.5 The Activity Choice Model 54 3.2 Residential Choices 57 3.2.1 The Tiebout Model and Its Limits 58 3.2.2 Policy and Politics of Rural Development 59 3.2.3 Turning Points in Village Developments 60 3.2.4 Core Factors for Rural Areas 61 3.3 Production and Consumption Choices 63 3.3.1 Organic Production and Consumption 63 3.3.2 Genetically Modified Organisms 65 3.3.3 More on Non-consumption 69 References 70 4 Agricultural Cooperation 73 4.1 Producing Jointly 73 4.1.1 Alpine Grassland 74 4.1.2 African Pastoralism 76 4.1.3 The Kibbutzim 78 4.1.4 Water Management 79 4.2 Linking with Consumers 80 4.2.1 Cooperatives 80 4.2.2 Fair Trade 83 4.2.3 Community-Supported Agriculture 84 4.3 Governing Sustainability 85 4.3.1 The History of the Concept 86 4.3.2 Roundtables and the like 87 4.3.3 Socioeconomic Sustainability Revisited 89 4.4 Concluding Thoughts on Cooperation 91 References 91 5 Agricultural System 94 5.1 Producer Perspectives 94 5.1.1 The Changing Environments of Farmers 95 5.1.2 Empirical Results About Self-perception 97 5.2 Population Perspectives 99 5.2.1 The Role as Residents 99 5.2.2 The Role as Consumers 100 5.2.3 The Role as Citizens 102 5.3 Varieties of Capitalist Agriculture 103 5.3.1 Selection of Variables 104 5.3.2 Processing of Variables 106 5.3.3 Results 107 5.3.4 Discussion and Conclusion 108 5.4 Concluding Thoughts on Agricultural Systems 109 References 110 Front Matter ....Pages i-vii What Is This Book Good for? (Stefan Mann)....Pages 1-14 Agricultural Hierarchies (Stefan Mann)....Pages 15-40 Agricultural Markets (Stefan Mann)....Pages 41-64 Agricultural Cooperation (Stefan Mann)....Pages 65-85 Agricultural System (Stefan Mann)....Pages 87-106

Hierarchy; Cooperation; Agricultural systems; Governance; Primary sector; Socioeconomics; Agri-food chain; Agricultural economics