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A-10/21 Work demands, independence, valuationas a farmer, and mental health in farming. A study of mental health among dairy farmers and vegetable-and potato farmers in Norway

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Summary

In this study, the aim was to advance the knowledge about mental health status in the Norwegian farming population. Based on the dimensions in the Job Demand and Control model (Karasek, 1979); work demands and control, and the importance of recognition and dignity (Andrew Sayer, 2011), the aim was to study the effects of work demands, sense of independence and valuation on mental health status among farmers. It included an assessment of how the sectorial level, the sectors of dairy production and vegetable- and potato production, explains farmers` mental health status. A postal survey was conducted in 2012 using a structured questionnaire, and I included farmers from two sectors in the Norwegian agriculture: dairy farming (n = 493) and vegetable and potato farming (n = 122). The analyses were carried out by multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM). This study concludes that low work demands in farming, strong sense of independence as a farmer, and farmers` perception of valuation associate with good mental health. The mental health status in dairy farmers and vegetable and potato farmers and the effects of work demands, sense of independence and valuation on mental health status, were equal across groups.

A-9/21 The invisible (woman) entrepreneur? Shifting the discourse from fisheries diversification to entrepreneurship

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In response to ongoing economic downturns in the small-scale fishing sector, there have been calls for fishing businesses to add value to fishing catches. Whilst such activities would have gendered implications, such proposals often do not consider the gendered contexts in which entrepreneurship is placed, nor how this form of entrepreneurship works for the women involved. The paper draws on in-depth narrative interviews with women in fishing families in England and Wales who have started, initiated or explored entrepreneurial opportunities to examine i) whether entrepreneurship enables a (re)negotiation of gender relations within families and ii) how entrepreneurship develops over the lifecourse. The research is conceptually framed through the literature on women’s ‘entrepreneurship’, family embedded perspectives of entrepreneurship, ‘Mumpreneurship’ combined with a lifecourse approach. I found that although women’s traditional invisibility often became reproduced through their entrepreneurship in fishing family contexts, women’s fisheries entrepreneurship challenged traditional gender relations. In becoming entrepreneurs women negotiated their entrepreneurship with other gendered roles, such as motherhood, over the lifecourse. I argue that shifting the discourse from fisheries diversification to entrepreneurship make it possible to take women seriously by fully viewing them as fisheries workers in their own right in both research and policy. Sociologia Ruralis, doi:10.1111/soru.12343

R-2/21 COOLCROWD – en veiledning for lokal folkefinansiering av klimatiltak i landbruket

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Rapporten retter seg mot personer, organisasjoner eller bedrifter, som kan kommersialisere og implementere forskningsfunnene. Målgruppen er bred og omfatter blant annet landbruksorganisasjoner, banker, folkefinansieringplattformer, og reiseselskap. Rapporten inneholder en oppsummering av utvikling og design av konseptet COOLCROWD for implementeringen i det norske samfunnet.

Researching People and the Sea: Methodologies and Traditions

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In this unique edited collection, social scientists reflect upon and openly share insights gathered from researching people and the sea. Understanding how people use, relate to and interact with coastal and marine environments has never been more important, with social scientists having an increasingly vital contribution to make. Yet practical experiences in deploying social science approaches in this field are typically hidden away in field notes and unpublished doctoral manuscripts, with the opportunity for shared learning that comes from doing research often missed. There is a need for reflection on how social science knowledge is produced. This collection presents experiences from the field, its necessary reflexivity and innovation in methods, and the challenges and opportunities of translating across disciplines and policy. It brings to light the tacit expertise needed to study people and the sea and offers lessons which readers could employ in their own research. With a focus on the future direction of marine social sciences, the volume is highly relevant to masters and doctoral students and more experienced researchers engaged in studying people and the sea, as well as policy makers, practitioners and scientists wishing to understand the social dimension of marine and coastal environments. Forlag: Palgrave Macmillan

A-5/21 Farm-based day care on the market: The case of dementia care services in Norway

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In line with the multifunctional agriculture discourse, care farming is highlighted by governments as a promising service—as an additional source of income for farmers and as a current alternative or supplement to ordinary public care services. Based on the rather modest number of care farming services and their often unstable existence, this paper examines critical aspects of the market relation between providers and buyers when it comes to ensuring sustainable and persistent farm-based day care services. Our analysis is based on interviews with farmers as providers of farm-based day care services for people with dementia living in their own homes and with representatives from the municipal health sector as buyers of these services. One of the findings is that the askew, yet harmony-characterised, power structure between the market actors makes professional ordering of care farming services critical to the providers’ endurance and wellbeing. The paper concludes that the market relation between providers and buyers could be strengthened, but vulnerabilities related to such a relationship are inevitable. Journal of Rural Studies, Volume 82, February 2021

A-3/21 Path-dependencies in Norwegian dairy and beef farming communities: Implications for climate mitigation

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Within Norwegian agriculture, combined dairy and beef production has been identified as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and thus targeted for significant reductions. The article examines the path dependency of the dairy and beef production system in Norway and focuses on identifying lock-ins. The authors used qualitative methods to gather information from stakeholder meetings in Trøndelag and Rogaland counties. They explored the stakeholders’ responses to two different visions of agriculture in the future: the improved utilisation of outfields using Norwegian Red cattle and increasing production per animal by using feed concentrates. Six key areas of lock-in were identified: technology investment, culture, feeding strategy, policy, access to new farmland through moorland conversion, and ownership of the climate issue. The findings suggest that the current pathway in agriculture is strongly locked into production orientation through these lock-ins, making a production reduction option difficult to implement. There was also widespread belief among the stakeholders that the system of combined dairy and beef production was a climate-friendly option, suggesting that farmers are not convinced that a change in this direction is required. The authors conclude that the option of reducing production would be difficult to implement without addressing the multiple lock-in effects.

A-1/21 Women’s belongings in UK fisheries

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Research on gender in fisheries often argue that women’s contributions are important to the functioning of fisheries and are worthy of recognition. However, this has so far failed to consider how women experience and practice belonging to fisheries. This paper structures the analysis of women’s narratives around three conceptualisations of belonging: i) how women perform place-belongingness; ii) the politics of belonging; and iii) more-than-human co-constructions of belongings. To develop the conceptual approach, the paper synthesises these three concepts with an understanding of belonging as fluid and adaptable to particular situated relationships. In doing so, the paper explores how women’s gendered belongings are co-constructed and performed in the male-oriented UK fisheries contexts. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews, the paper finds that women’s practices of belonging make and maintain fishing communities and places, and that women’s practices of belonging both confirm and challenge longstanding notions of who belongs in the fishery – with women fishers challenging socio-spatial exclusions in fishing. Women’s belongings in fishing were further co-constructed in relation to the more-than-human such as fishing materialities, smells, non-human animals and the ocean. The concept of belonging helps to highlight the processes of becoming with fish, fishing and the fishery – even when there are no clear identities and identifications available for the women involved. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2021.1873748