City adjustments as the main factor of success of urban and peri-urban farms–empirical evidence from the Ruhr metropolis

Publication date: Available online 1 May 2019Source: NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life SciencesAuthor(s): Wojciech Sroka, Bernd Pölling, Marcus MergenthalerAbstractEconomic viability of urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) is the key requirement for additional social, environmental, and landscape functions within urban and peri-urban areas. However the rapid progress of urbanization drives the loss of farmlands to industrial, residential and other urban uses, and the decline of farms and population working in agriculture. Hence, the literature highlights the need to popularize new ideas and strategies of preserving and developing farms in urbanized areas.The main aim of this research is both to identify and assess determinants of success of farms located in urban and peri-urban areas. The key question that has arisen is: how do different adjustment strategies, locations and farm resources affect the success of farms? For this purpose a web survey was conducted among 199 professional urban and peri-urban farms in the Ruhr Metropolis (Germany). It is an old-industrialized polycentric urban agglomeration where agriculture has a comparably high level of significance in current land use. Analyses were conducted taking a resource-based view and using the classification tree method. The data indicate that farms which use various adjustment strategies are more successful. Elements of successful strategies, are include tourism services (mainly horse-riding) and direct marketing. Re...
Source: NJAS Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences - Category: Biology Source Type: research