IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/agrhuv/v36y2019i3d10.1007_s10460-019-09930-5.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Beyond ‘Hobby Farming’: towards a typology of non-commercial farming

Author

Listed:
  • Lee-Ann Sutherland

    (The James Hutton Institute)

  • Carla Barlagne

    (The James Hutton Institute)

  • Andrew P. Barnes

    (Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC))

Abstract

In this paper we develop a typology of ‘non-commercial’ approaches to farming, based on a survey of a representative sample of farmers in Scotland, United Kingdom. In total, 395 (16.6% of the sample) farmers indicated that they do not seek to make a profit on their farms. We estimate that these non-commercial approaches to farming are utilised on at least 13% of agricultural land in Scotland. As such, non-commercial farming (NCF) is not a marginal practice, nor are NCF limited to small-scale ‘hobby’ farms: NCF exist across the scale of agricultural holding sizes and are operated by a wide range of socio-demographic cohorts. We identify 6 types of NCF: agricultural residences, specialist smallholdings, horsiculture holdings, mixed smallholdings, amenity mixed farms, and large farms or estates. These types were differentiated primarily by the scale of farm size, presence of diversification activities and types of animal present. The analysis demonstrates a number of emergent patterns of land management: de facto land abandonment, transition towards ‘horsiculture’, and management differences between retiring and new entrant NCF. We argue that the types identified reflect a number of intersecting issues in contemporary agrarian transitions, particularly the aging farmer population; generational renewal; and gendered implications of agricultural restructuring.

Suggested Citation

  • Lee-Ann Sutherland & Carla Barlagne & Andrew P. Barnes, 2019. "Beyond ‘Hobby Farming’: towards a typology of non-commercial farming," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 36(3), pages 475-493, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:36:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-019-09930-5
    DOI: 10.1007/s10460-019-09930-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10460-019-09930-5
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10460-019-09930-5?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lopez-Ridaura, Santiago & Frelat, Romain & van Wijk, Mark T. & Valbuena, Diego & Krupnik, Timothy J. & Jat, M.L., 2018. "Climate smart agriculture, farm household typologies and food security," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 57-68.
    2. Pannell, David J. & Wilkinson, Roger, 2009. "Policy mechanism choice for environmental management by non-commercial "lifestyle" rural landholders," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(10), pages 2679-2687, August.
    3. Tittonell, Pablo, 2014. "Livelihood strategies, resilience and transformability in African agroecosystems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 3-14.
    4. Lee-Ann Sutherland, 2013. "Can organic farmers be ‘good farmers’? Adding the ‘taste of necessity’ to the conventionalization debate," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 30(3), pages 429-441, September.
    5. Iraizoz, Belen & Gorton, Matthew & Davidova, Sophia, 2007. "Segmenting farms for analysing agricultural trajectories: A case study of the Navarra region in Spain," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 93(1-3), pages 143-169, March.
    6. Amy Trauger & Carolyn Sachs & Mary Barbercheck & Kathy Brasier & Nancy Kiernan, 2010. "“Our market is our community”: women farmers and civic agriculture in Pennsylvania, USA," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 27(1), pages 43-55, March.
    7. Hopkins, Jonathan & Sutherland, Lee-Ann & Ehlers, Melf-Hinrich & Matthews, Keith & Barnes, Andrew & Toma, Luiza, 2017. "Scottish farmers' intentions to afforest land in the context of farm diversification," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 122-132.
    8. Lewis Holloway, 2002. "Smallholding, Hobby-Farming, and Commercial Farming: Ethical Identities and the Production of Farming Spaces," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(11), pages 2055-2070, November.
    9. Jennifer Ball, 2014. "She works hard for the money: women in Kansas agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(4), pages 593-605, December.
    10. Blazy, Jean-Marc & Ozier-Lafontaine, Harry & Doré, Thierry & Thomas, Alban & Wery, Jacques, 2009. "A methodological framework that accounts for farm diversity in the prototyping of crop management systems. Application to banana-based systems in Guadeloupe," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 101(1-2), pages 30-41, June.
    11. Etienne Landais, 1996. "Typologies d'exploitations agricoles. Nouvelles questions, nouvelles méthodes," Économie rurale, Programme National Persée, vol. 236(1), pages 3-15.
    12. Keith Halfacree, 2007. "Back‐To‐The‐Land In The Twenty‐First Century – Making Connections With Rurality," Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, vol. 98(1), pages 3-8, February.
    13. Sandra Contzen & Jérémie Forney, 2017. "Family farming and gendered division of labour on the move: a typology of farming-family configurations," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 34(1), pages 27-40, March.
    14. Wickham, Hadley, 2011. "The Split-Apply-Combine Strategy for Data Analysis," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 40(i01).
    15. Mark Shucksmith & Vera Herrmann, 2002. "Future Changes in British Agriculture: Projecting Divergent Farm Household Behaviour," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(1), pages 37-50, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lee-Ann Sutherland, 2023. "Who do we want our ‘new generation’ of farmers to be? The need for demographic reform in European agriculture," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 11(1), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Shahzad, Muhammad Abid & Fischer, Christian, 2021. "The State of Other Gainful Activities in European Union-27: An Empirical Analysis of Trends and Determinant Factors," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315226, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Lee-Ann Sutherland, 2020. "Virtualizing the ‘good life’: reworking narratives of agrarianism and the rural idyll in a computer game," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(4), pages 1155-1173, December.
    4. Anthony M. Fuller & Siyuan Xu & Lee-Ann Sutherland & Fabiano Escher, 2021. "Land to the Tiller: The Sustainability of Family Farms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-24, October.
    5. Sabine Gennai-Schott & Tiziana Sabbatini & Davide Rizzo & Elisa Marraccini, 2020. "Who Remains When Professional Farmers Give up? Some Insights on Hobby Farming in an Olive Groves-Oriented Terraced Mediterranean Area," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-21, May.
    6. Simona Zollet & Keshav Lall Maharjan, 2021. "Overcoming the Barriers to Entry of Newcomer Sustainable Farmers: Insights from the Emergence of Organic Clusters in Japan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-24, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Aravindakshan, Sreejith & Krupnik, Timothy J. & Groot, Jeroen C.J. & Speelman, Erika N. & Amjath- Babu, T.S. & Tittonell, Pablo, 2020. "Multi-level socioecological drivers of agrarian change: Longitudinal evidence from mixed rice-livestock-aquaculture farming systems of Bangladesh," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 177(C).
    2. Pienaar, Louw & Traub, Lulama, 2015. "Understanding the smallholder farmer in South Africa: Towards a sustainable livelihoods classification," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 212633, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Jennifer A. Ball, 2020. "Women farmers in developed countries: a literature review," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 37(1), pages 147-160, March.
    4. Unay-Gailhard, İlkay & Bojnec, Štefan, 2021. "Gender and the environmental concerns of young farmers: Do young women farmers make a difference on family farms?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 88, pages 71-82.
    5. Mutegi, James & Adolwa, Ivan & Kiwia, Abed & Njoroge, Samuel & Gitonga, Angela & Muthamia, Joses & Nchanji, Eileen & Mairura, Franklin & Majumdar, Kaushik & Zingore, Shamie & Oberthur, Thomas & Kiremu, 2024. "Agricultural production and food security implications of Covid-19 disruption on small-scale farmer households: Lessons from Kenya," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    6. Komarek, Adam M. & Kwon, Hoyoung & Haile, Beliyou & Thierfelder, Christian & Mutenje, Munyaradzi J. & Azzarri, Carlo, 2019. "From plot to scale: ex-ante assessment of conservation agriculture in Zambia," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 504-518.
    7. Anthony M. Fuller & Siyuan Xu & Lee-Ann Sutherland & Fabiano Escher, 2021. "Land to the Tiller: The Sustainability of Family Farms," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-24, October.
    8. Monica Fisher & Paul A. Lewin & Ryanne Pilgeram, 2023. "Gender differences in the financial performance of U.S. farm businesses: A decomposition analysis using the Census of Agriculture," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(2), pages 1233-1253, June.
    9. Głębocki Benicjusz & Kacprzak Ewa & Kossowski Tomasz, 2019. "Multicriterion Typology of Agriculture: A Spatial Dependence Approach," Quaestiones Geographicae, Sciendo, vol. 38(2), pages 29-49, June.
    10. Asif Rasool & David Abler, 2023. "Heterogeneity in US Farms: A New Clustering by Production Potentials," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-14, January.
    11. Unay-Gailhard, Ilkay & Bojnec, Štefan, 2021. "Young Farmers' Attitudes Towards Agri-Environmental-Climate Measures: Do Young Women Farmers Make a Difference?," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315374, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    12. Ryanne Pilgeram & Katherine Dentzman & Paul Lewin, 2022. "Women, race and place in US Agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(4), pages 1341-1355, December.
    13. Claudia Schmidt & Steven C. Deller & Stephan J. Goetz, 2024. "Women farmers and community well‐being under modeling uncertainty," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 46(1), pages 275-299, March.
    14. Ostrom, Marcia & Goldberger, Jessica R. & Smith, Katherine Selting, 2020. "Market Makers; Exploring Gender Dynamics in Farmers Markets from Field to Booth," Western Economics Forum, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 18(2), December.
    15. Santiago Lopez-Ridaura & Luis Barba-Escoto & Cristian Reyna & Jon Hellin & Bruno Gerard & Mark Wijk, 2019. "Food security and agriculture in the Western Highlands of Guatemala," Food Security: The Science, Sociology and Economics of Food Production and Access to Food, Springer;The International Society for Plant Pathology, vol. 11(4), pages 817-833, August.
    16. Dutta, S. K & Laing, Alison M. & Kumar, S. & Gathala, Mahesh K. & Singh, Ajoy K. & Gaydon, D.S. & Poulton, P., 2020. "Improved water management practices improve cropping system profitability and smallholder farmers’ incomes," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    17. Caviedes, Julián & Ibarra, José Tomás & Calvet-Mir, Laura & Álvarez-Fernández, Santiago & Junqueira, André Braga, 2024. "Indigenous and local knowledge on social-ecological changes is positively associated with livelihood resilience in a Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    18. Dolejš Martin & Forejt Michal, 2019. "Franziscean Cadastre in Landscape Structure Research: A Systematic Review," Quaestiones Geographicae, Sciendo, vol. 38(1), pages 131-144, March.
    19. Islam, Md. Mofakkarul & Sarker, Md. Asaduzzaman & Al Mamun, Md. Abdullah & Mamun-ur-Rashid, Md. & Roy, Debashis, 2021. "Stepping Up versus Stepping Out: On the outcomes and drivers of two alternative climate change adaptation strategies of smallholders," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).
    20. George Cusworth & Jennifer Dodsworth, 2021. "Using the ‘good farmer’ concept to explore agricultural attitudes to the provision of public goods. A case study of participants in an English agri-environment scheme," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 38(4), pages 929-941, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:agrhuv:v:36:y:2019:i:3:d:10.1007_s10460-019-09930-5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.