Knaus Florian

Netzwerkanalyse Landwirtschaft

Project Number: CH-7686

Project Type:	Research_Project
Project Duration:	01/01/2017 - ?
Funding Source:	other ,
Project Leader:	Herr Florian Knaus Senior lecturer / scientific coordinator Ecosystem Management Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems ETH Zürich / UNESCO Biosphäre Entlebuch Universtitätstr. 16, CHN G75.1 8092 Zürich Phone: +41 (0) 41 485 42 57 ; +41 (0) 44 632 39 87 e-Mail: f.knaus(at)biosphaere.ch http://www.ecology.ethz.ch

related to this project.

for which the project has a relevance.

Research Areas:

Living Space

Disciplines:

Legal and Social sciences, Economics

Abstract:
Agriculture has undergone large structural changes in recent decades, affecting farm structures and farmers’ social contacts. As an example, the rationalization of the milk supply chain eliminated daily encounters of dairy farmers at milk collection points. Social contacts are relevant to farmers’ mental well-being and important for the exchange of information, which influences farming decisions—e.g., whether to expand, intensify, or adopt sustainability labels or agro-environmental practices—which in turn affect the targets of natural park areas. In this work, we explore the relationship between (changing) social contacts and farm-level structures and the connection between social contacts and feelings of social isolation in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve Entlebuch, a region with a large agricultural sector. We conduct a survey of 100 farming households to assess contact frequencies across 67 social contact categories and changes over the last two decades. Results show that farmers most frequently meet with colleagues, family and friends, who are also most important in influencing their farming decisions. Precisely these contacts, and the frequentation of social events, have decreased most in the last twenty years, and administrative and professional contacts have increased. The most-cited reasons for changes in social contacts are higher workloads, changes in family composition, and having less time. Higher workloads are correlated with less frequent contacts with friends and family, and both high workloads and low personal contacts correlate with higher feelings of loneliness. Despite this, a large majority of farmers is satisfied with their current amount of social contacts. Higher farming intensity is correlated with more commercial contacts and contacts with colleagues. A cluster analysis reveals a group (~20%) of professionally well-connected farms that are larger, more intensive, less reliant on non-agricultural income, and have larger households than farms with a predominance of personal contacts. Farmers with the local Echt Entlebuch label are more locally connected than organic farmers. Overall, our results point at parallel processes of intensification and erosion of social capital in agriculture. Further work is necessary to assess whether farmers perceive this or related phenomena to be a problem and how participatory research between the Park management, research institutions, and local farming associations may help identify solutions.

Publications:
Victoria Junquera, Daniel I. Rubenstein, Adrienne Grêt-Regamey, Florian Knaus (2022). Structural change in agriculture and farmers' social contacts: Insights from a Swiss mountain region. Agricultural Systems 200, 103435. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2022.103435
pdf article

Präsentation Tagung Parkforschung 2019


Last update: 9/15/26
Source of data: ProClim- Research InfoSystem (1993-2024)
Update the data of project: CH-7686

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