H2020 RURALIZATION Project: Opening up rural areas to renew generations, jobs, and rural farms
- Type Project
- Status Filled
- Execution 2019 -2023
- Assigned Budget 5.995.904,00 €
- Scope Europeo
- Main source of financing H2020
- Project website Proyecto RURALIZATION
European territorial cohesion is threatened by the uneven development of urban and rural areas. The EU-funded RURALIZATION project seeks to promote a process of ruralization, i.e., development toward a new rural frontier where younger generations can find economic and social opportunities. It will analyze trends, compile an inventory of young people's future rural ideals, study promising practices that benefit newcomers to the countryside, new farmers, and farm successors, and analyze regulations, policies, and actions to facilitate access to land.
The results will be discussed with stakeholders in regional rural contexts to leverage positive experiences and jointly develop innovative options for policymakers and practical tools for rural actors.
RURALIZATION developed conceptual guidelines and an assessment framework. Key concepts are regeneration, resilience, innovation, and capital frameworks. Gender issues are addressed. A practitioner's guide has been developed. More than 1,500 observations of relevant megatrends, trends, and weak signals have been analyzed, including estimates of their impacts, to produce trend maps for 10 megatrends, 20 trends, and 30 weak signals (www.ruraltrends.eu).
The dream futures of over 2,000 young people (18-30 years old) were analyzed, including their dream future location, preferred livelihoods, lifestyle, and accommodation, and any major barriers they foresee between dream and reality, including the impact of COVID-19. All types of (rural) regions are the subject of future dreams, but they differ in lifestyle, livelihood, and barriers anticipated for specific types of regions. The dreams and trends were discussed in 20 regional stakeholder workshops to explore the potential for realizing these dreams and enabling rural regeneration. Interviews were conducted in these regions to explore the key factors driving policy proposals. The diversity of contexts across 10 EU Member States was analyzed. Key challenges for those new to farming include access to land, openness and integration into rural communities, compatibility with existing farmers, lack of targeted policies, and access to training.
Some of these aspects are also relevant to newcomers to the countryside. Promising practices to facilitate the incorporation of newcomers to the countryside, new entrants to agriculture, and farm succession were studied and comparatively analyzed through 30 case studies in 11 countries. Regional workshops in 20 rural contexts discussed the adoption of promising practices in other regions. For many members of the new generations, access to land is a major obstacle to entering agriculture or forestry. RURALIZATION addresses the legal and policy context in all EU Member States and eight specific activities, the evolution of land markets and tenure, and three bottom-up innovative practices, by analyzing 64 existing practices and developing ten pilot actions in five land uses. Both policies and markets are unfavorable for new entrants in agriculture.
Innovative practices address access to land. RURALIZATION has developed a handbook for local authorities on supporting access to land and a good practice guide for newcomers to rural areas and those new to agriculture. National proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy regarding generational renewal are analyzed, and improvements have been proposed. Policy advocacy activities have been carried out. Various dissemination and communication activities have been implemented, including national and international conferences and a social media campaign.
There is a trend of uneven development between urban and rural areas. Economic activity is stronger in urban areas than in rural areas. At the same time, rural areas face challenges such as concentrated land ownership and an aging population. The lack of rural regeneration contributes to labor force reduction and isolation, a lack of local food supplies, the disappearance of small farms, and the degradation of landscapes and the environment. Eurostat (2020) projects that the population of European urban regions will increase by 8.6 million people, while that of predominantly rural regions will decrease by 6.8 million. RURALIZATION is based on the premise that rural regeneration is necessary to generate opportunities for new generations of rural inhabitants, both current and potential. Newcomers and entrants into agriculture are key players in bringing innovation to rural areas. RURALIZATION examines how agriculture can be part of this new rural reality created by ruralization, paying particular attention to access to land, as well as broader issues related to facilitating new entrants and succession.
The main policy recommendations are as follows:
- Welcoming change: new generations make a difference.
- Look for weak signals: Finding place-based strategies.
- Concerted action is needed.
- Focus on cultural and social capital.
- Support agroecology and multifunctional agriculture
The RURALIZATION project has filled a research gap in rural development. The specific impact of new generations in their role as agents of change in rural areas has been identified, and their dynamics have been clarified. Newcomers, new entrants to agriculture, and successors to innovative farms contribute to the development of innovations, the enhancement of social and cultural capital, and the emergence of cooperation and networks. RURALIZATION shows how they impact rural development and can lead to reversing the virtuous cycle of decline toward one of positive rural dynamics. A new understanding of these dynamics can help policymakers and change agents engage in practical action and can support legislation, including at the EU level, to make the CAP more favorable to rural regeneration.
The dynamics of rural renewal among new generations, described in the RURALIZATION project, are expected to be used for practical policy action in a broader context. The consortium partners working on land access have already begun to incorporate the results into their policy communication and cooperation with local municipalities, which for some of them represents a new area of activity.
The scientific partners have already published a considerable number of articles based on the empirical work of RURALIZATION and will continue to do so, as the empirical material is far from being exhaustively exploited. However, the main impact of the RURALIZATION project is expected to lie in the progress made in the overall improvement of rural development policies. To this end, the RURALIZATION results and the website offer practical material for a wide variety of situations and types of action.
European economic, social, and territorial cohesion is threatened by the uneven development of growing urban areas and declining rural areas. RURALIZATION develops a novel perspective for rural areas to trigger a process of ruralization as a counterforce to urbanization, i.e., a development toward a new rural frontier that offers new generations stimulating opportunities for economic and social sustainability within a rural context. These opportunities will serve both existing rural inhabitants, who overcome the dilemma between place attachment and lack of economic opportunities, and rural newcomers who bring novel and innovative perspectives and relational networks to rural areas. RURALIZATION will use both quantitative and qualitative methods to develop innovations and make them transferable to other contexts.
Innovative practices will be selected using two methods:
- First, by using statistical data and foresight analysis to identify areas that deviate from the general trend of rural decline and, using a multi-stakeholder approach, to identify the instruments and approaches that may contribute to these trend breaks.
- Second, by studying new approaches and tools in practice and developing them in a multi-stakeholder context, for their application in new contexts. According to the call, innovations will focus on facilitating newcomers to rural areas, rural employment, new entrants into agriculture, and access to land for new generations. The foresight analysis will investigate the rural dreams of new generations, and alternative rural futures will be designed and reflected upon with rural stakeholders and focus groups in terms of possibility, probability, and preference.
Actions will be developed to make positive futures a reality. The project's results will generate innovative options for policymakers and practical tools for rural stakeholders. A broad communications campaign will disseminate the project and its results.
To reverse the trend of rural depopulation, RURALIZATION is exploring the creation of a virtuous cycle supported by policies that allows young people to thrive in rural areas. European rural areas are in decline as younger generations are drawn to urban areas. The EU-funded RURALIZATION (Opening Rural Areas to Renew Rural Generations, Jobs and Farms) project works with young people across Europe to better understand their life aspirations and how they might achieve them in rural settings. “It is not true that most young people only dream of urban life, and while some trends have harmed rural areas, we see new opportunities that can be boosted with the right policies and incentives,” says Willem Korthals Altes, project coordinator and professor of Territorial Development at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Dreams, Trends, and Promising Practices The project team asked more than 2,000 young people from 20 European regions about their dream futures: Where would they like to live, what would they do for a living, what lifestyle choices they had, and what obstacles would they face? “When comparing respondents’ current locations with their ideal locations, there is a clear trend toward aspirational ruralization,” adds Altes. “For example, while 21% currently lived in a city center, only 10% wanted to be there in 15 years.” Within the scope of the project, they identified 10 megatrends affecting most areas, 20 trends specific to some regions, and 30 localized signals of change, which they called weak signals. While some megatrends, such as the impact of climate change and population aging, are fairly well established, of particular interest were the trajectories of emerging weak signals and trends. "For example, there has been talk that COVID is creating a greater appreciation for rural life, driven by remote working and an interest in sustainability, but to become a megatrend or even a trend, enabling policies would be needed," explains Altes. To address the issue of land access, after investigating legal and policy arrangements across EU Member States, it was found that few focused on generational renewal, with little emphasis on attracting new farming entrants and more on land consolidation. "The EU farmland market is not functioning equitably, with 52.6% of land controlled by 3.4% of farms. The majority of farmers are over 55 years old, and with farm succession generally based on patriarchal inheritance, gender inequality is stark," notes Altes. To address these challenges, 30 case studies were conducted to identify promising land access practices: 10 involving rural newcomers, 10 involving new agricultural entrants, and 10 involving farm heirs.
Sixty-four innovative practices were selected, including support for new entrants before land is identified, accessibility to agricultural land, prioritizing sustainable and multifunctional land use, and ensuring access for individual farmers. “We defined four pillars for change: better promotion of innovation; adaptation of territorial regulations to benefit new entrants; greater empowerment of local authorities; and a revamped CAP to facilitate access to land,” adds Altes. “We are currently integrating these elements into advisory materials for local authorities and rural changemakers.” Turning the Tide Urban populations are forecast to grow by 12% between 2014 and 2050, but rural regions will decline by 8%.
Meanwhile, urban gross domestic product per capita has been estimated at €34,179 compared to €19,104 in rural regions. Such discrepancies threaten social and economic cohesion across the EU. While the EU allocated €9.6 billion between 2007 and 2020 to support young farmers, in its 2017 special report, the Court of Auditors concluded that this was based "on an ill-defined intervention logic" and "should be better targeted at fostering effective generational renewal." "We need a novel approach to counteract the long-term trend of urbanization, one that fits with the regions' strategies while contributing to the Cork 2.0 Declaration 'A Better Life in Rural Areas,'" says Altes. To this end, the project team has launched 10 pilot actions related to land access and territorial management, along with the development of a Massive Open Online Course designed for rural development professionals.
Greater emphasis is placed on generational renewal in rural areas, as reflected in the EU's long-term vision for rural areas. RURALIZATION provides stakeholders with tools to take on this challenge. Understanding young people's dream futures is a novel approach that generates key insights on how local stakeholders can act to attract new generations and remove the barriers between dreams and current reality. Workshops with local stakeholders have put this topic on the agenda in 20 regions, followed by additional interviews and analyses. Analysis of case studies on promising practices has served as inspiration for other regions that offer potential for impact through promising practices beyond their original contexts. In addition to providing information on current innovative practices, RURALIZATION has developed novel practices to facilitate access to land.
This has been discussed in 10 regional contexts to promote the impact of new ways of facilitating access to land. RURALIZATION targeted policymakers, particularly to highlight the lack of adequate legal and policy mechanisms addressing land access. Policy design and evaluation activities included the development of a good practice guide for newcomers to rural areas and for those entering agriculture, a handbook for policymakers, policy approaches to support the ideal future of rural youth, and policy evaluation and communication of lessons learned. Dissemination and communication included grassroots events and conferences for policymakers and two international conferences. A massive open online course was developed.
- TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITEIT DELFT (TU Delft)
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