The Potential for Joint Farming Ventures in Irish Agriculture: A Sociological Review

Abstract

Joint farming ventures (JFVs) are promoted within Irish and EU policy discourses as strategies that can enhance the economic and social sustainability of family farming.Research has shown that JFVs, including arrangements such as farm partnerships, contract rearing and share farming, can potentially enable farmers to work cooperatively to improve farm productivity, reduce working hours, facilitate succession, develop skills and improve relationships within the farm household. In the context of increasing policy promotion of JFVs, there is a need to make some attempt at understanding the macro socio-cultural disposition of family farming to cooperation. Reviewing sociological studies of agricultural cooperation and taking a specific focus on the Irish contextual backdrop, this paper draws the reader's attention to the importance of historical legacy, pragmatic economic and social concerns, communicative norms, inter-personal relationships, individualism and, policy and extension stimuli, all of which shape farmers' dispositions to cooperation and to JFVs specifically.

Social Relationships: The Secret Ingredient of Synergistic Venture Cooperation

“…Researchers in the field of economics or management more and more often use achievements of their own and other disciplines (e.g., sociology or psychology) to analyze the importance of SR for economic activities, including organizational entrepreneurship. This is confirmed by many studies, in which the importance of SR is examined in the context of various sectors, for example, the biotech sector (Pina-Stranger & Lazega, 2011;Rank, 2014), tourism (Czernek-Marszałek, 2020a, 2020bGhazali, 2005), wine production (Lewis, Byrom, & Grimmer, 2015), agriculture (Cush & Macken-Walsh, 2016), clothing sector (Uzzi, 1996), etc. Generally, business relationships are acknowledged as embedded in a wide range of SR (Casanueva & González, 2004;Ekanayake, Childerhouse, & Sun, 2017;Granovetter, 2005) and this concerns especially entrepreneurs' SR (Shu, Ren, & Zheng, 2018).…”

The effect of farmer attitudes on openness to land transactions: evidence for Ireland

“…This can be done by policymakers engaging with farming organisations, through the organisation of information events and by aiding organisations such as the Land Mobility Service that facilitate land mobility (Macra na Feirme, 2019). Additionally, the promotion of joint farm ventures (JFVs) such as cooperatives, farm partnerships, share farming and contract rearing must be maintained (Cush & Macken-Walsh, 2016).…”

Farming and agricultural consumers’ cooperative: challenges and opportunities

“…Indeed, the establishment of agricultural consumers' cooperatives faces problems caused by communication issues, interpersonal relations, individualism, that form the tendency to cooperate among farmers [13].…”