Brazilian agriculture has grown enormously during the past three decades. An interesting aspect of this growth is the respective roles of family and non-family farming, and the seeming importance of this distinction to Brazilian agricultural policy, reflected in the existence of separate...

The European Union has a common rural development policy, motivated by the fact that more than 90% of the entire European territory can be classified as rural and 56% of European citizens live in rural areas. Each Member State sets out a Rural Development Programme (RDP) focused on three main...

The countryside, the rural area, the open space, ... many definitions are used for rural Flanders. Everyone makes its own interpretation of the countryside, considering it as a place for living, working or recreating. The countryside is more than just a geographical area: it is an aggregate of...

This article deals with the Local Agri-Environmental Schemes (LAES), the French contractual policy instrument within the European Rural Development Regulation (2007-2013), designed to improve water quality within priority watersheds. The paper is structured in three parts. The first one focuses...

Allocation of transboundary water resources involves not only the competing parties divided by geographic and administrative boundaries (regional, national and local boundaries) but also takes place among various sectors (agricultural, urban, and industrial etc.) and various time periods...

Since 2007, the organic farming is becoming a part of the European and French agricultural policies, It is display in local and national programs as a factor of territorial development, in particular for the new form of periurban areas. The politicians use this argument to boost the emancipation...

"Flowering Meadows" is the name of a new style of agri-environmental contract which has been included into the French Rural Development Plan 2007-2013. This contract is unusual in all respects. Management prescriptions are given up: the farmer is free to tend his meadow as he wants as long as he...