Diversification as a Survival Strategy for Marginal Farms an Exploratory Research

Tom Vernimmen, Marie Bourgeois, Guido Van Huylenbroeck, Henk Meert and Etienne van Hecke

No 24824, 2002 International Congress, August 28-31, 2002, Zaragoza, Spain from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: One of the common strategies in rural development programmes is to support the adoption of new on-farm activities. The rationale behind this is that farm diversification is a way to assure an appropriate level of income for the farmers. Through interviews with 49 relatively small farmers, the possibilities for diversification as a survival strategy are assessed. The analysis is mainly based on a classification of development pathways by Bowler (1992). Few forms of diversification appear to be successful as a survival strategy in case of economic problems. Only off-farm employment seems to be effective in this respect. The introduction of new activities on marginal farms is hampered by lack of financial and human capital. On the other hand, diversification is often found on small farms without financial problems. This is an indication that on-farm diversification is able to stabilize the household income and to avoid financial problems when it is used as a preventive strategy.

Keywords: Farm; Management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 15
Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/24824/files/cp02ve24.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:eaae02:24824

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.24824

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2002 International Congress, August 28-31, 2002, Zaragoza, Spain from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().