The ‘New Associationalism’ in agriculture: agro-food diversification and multifunctional production logics

The negative externalities of the agro-industrial production model are well documented. In the European Union, agro-food diversification is currently hailed as the means of delivering a new production logic, multifunctional agriculture, that advocates utilisation of territorially embedded assets to create public goods and quality foodstuffs. However, while an extensive economic geography literature exists on agro-food diversification, little work has examined how actors within businesses construct networks of relations to initiate this process and, hence, whether diversifying businesses can realistically deliver multifunctional outcomes. Building on the 'relational turn' in economic geography, I address this issue using fieldwork derived from agricultural businesses in the English east Midlands. Copyright 2005, Oxford University Press.