Social Farming in the Promotion of Social-Ecological Sustainability in Rural and Periurban Areas

Abstract

Abstract:Rural areas are facing a spectrum of landscape changes and vulnerability as a consequence of financial and environmental crises. Innovative approaches are required to maintain the provision of social services and manage ecosystem services in these areas. We explore the capacity of social farming to create viable and sustainable rural and periurban areas according to a social-ecological perspective. We use the key elements of social-ecological systems under social farming practices to analyse (1) the role of local communities and non-formal institutions; (2) the involvement of target stakeholders; and (3) the explicit connection between agroecosystems and human wellbeing. To do so, we selected and described four cases of local social farming initiatives in terms of the key elements of social-ecological systems and conducted a literature review to provide an overview of the explicit impact of social farming on the quality of life. We found that social farming illustrates hybrid governance solutions beyond market instruments that could be applied for the governance of agroecosystems. It can also provide a range of other wellbeing and cultural ecosystem services to rural and urban inhabitants. Greater cooperation between social farming and ecosystem service science could rebound in rural landscape sustainability.

Exploring the Role of Science in Sustainable Landscape Management. An Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Landscape services (a specification of ecosystem services appropriate for use in landscape governance, [16]) play a central role in several of the contributions to this special issue. García-Llorente et al [17] consider landscape services as provided by social farming, including food production, agrobiodiversity, the preservation of local varieties, and aspects of human health. Berkowitz and Medley [18] express the values that home gardeners experience as services, for example, in terms of enjoying species, inspirational, and health benefits.…”

“…Opdam and Steingrover [19] discuss how and why companies may get involved in governance networks in their region, thus extending the formal and non-formal types of governing with a market-based mechanism. Also, Garcia-Llorente et al [17] observed that governance networks for social farming were partly based on market-based mechanisms. What the special issue illustrates is that sustainable landscape management requires innovations in the type of governance in which the traditional top-down steering by the government (based on rules and legislation) is (partly) replaced by a diversity of governance networks, with new partners and mixed governance mechanisms.…”

“…Other studies in this special issue illustrate different ways of cooperating with practitioners in landscape management, ranging from individual gardeners [18], via social farms [17], to governance networks [24] and landscape transformations [20]. In these examples, scientists play different roles.…”

Applying Place-Based Social-Ecological Research to Address Water Scarcity: Insights for Future Research

“…Historically, this region was commonly referred to as the "orchard" of Madrid due to its agriculture and freshwater availability (Table 1). To support the development of sustainable solutions that deal with emerging water scarcity issues, a participatory strategy is being implemented for agroecosystems beyond market instruments [44,45]. WaterSES is also addressing different institutional settings that govern water resources using cases in Idaho and Texas [46].…”

Community-based Social Farming (CSF) and its educational functions

“…It is generally assumed that social farming is a form of farming focused on the community, satisfying its social needs, acting for the benefit of social inclusion of people and groups at risk of exclusion. Such activities are most commonly executed in the form of care or educational farms, which constitute a part of the broadly understood social farming (Di Iacovo, 2009;Kinsella at al., 2014;García-Llorente at al., 2016).…”