Social Farming: An Inclusive Environment Conducive to Participant Personal Growth (original) (raw)

Social Farming in Italy. Analysis of an «inclusive model»

2018

The growing understanding of potential role of agricultural and rural resources to enhance the social, physical, mental and economic well-being draw the attention of an increasing range of stakeholders on Social Farming. The contribute discloses the main results of a study focusing Social farming in Italy: actors, activity, networks of relationships within which the initiatives are implemented, agreements among heterogeneous actors, etc. The main aim is to provide a whole analysis of the possible processes of social and working inclusion in agriculture activities, including purposes and methods, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses in the framework of the current welfare and rural development systems.

Challenges and Perspectives of Social Farming in North-Eastern Italy: The Farmers’ View

Sustainability

In the European framework of multifunctional agriculture, Social Farming (SF) has constantly been spreading. In Italy, these practices are legally connected to Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI), creating new perspectives and challenges for farmers and their territories. In this paper, we report the results of a pilot study conducted in the Veneto Region to understand farmers’ opinions about the opportunities and challenges of SF and AAI. Participants were convened by the Italian farmers’ trade organization Coldiretti. All of them provide social/healthcare services on their farms, including human–animal interaction, and have attended the regional training courses for Social Farming providers. Data were collected during two focus groups that were videotaped and subsequently analyzed by two researchers to categorize and dope out relevant topics. Results show a mismatch between what is stated by national and regional laws and the current situation reported by farmers. They are faced w...

The development of social farming in Italy: A qualitative inquiry across four regions

Journal of Rural Studies

In Italy, social farming (SF) did not develop homogeneously across the national territory. In this context, actors with SF aspirations may benefit from knowledge of the factors that fostered the development of SF in the areas in which it showed more remarkable progress. This study adopted a multi-level perspective in order to understand how SF developed in Italy, and to examine its evolution across regions at different stages of development. In order to achieve such aim, a literature study about the development of SF in Italy was carried out, and was followed by in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 29 stakeholders coming from four Italian regions (Tuscany, Latium, Abruzzo and Molise). The findings indicate SF practices at the niches level managed to establish connections with the regime as positive results emerged, networks and support organizations were set up, universities became interested in SF, and policymakers started recognizing and funding SF. The different degrees of support coming from the public sector, SF and agricultural organizations, universities, and policymakers, contributed to the differences between the SF practices in the four regions under study. In particular, in the southernmost regions, several SF's stakeholders showed less entrepreneurial skills, while the public authorities tended to have less knowledge about SF, and sometimes diffidence towards it. In conclusion, some recommendations to foster the development of SF are to make SF practices' success visible, to cultivate entrepreneurial skills, and to build and support networks between actors with different backgrounds, thus facilitating knowledge exchange.

A pilot programme evaluation of social farming horticultural and occupational activities for older people in Italy

Health & Social Care in The Community, 2018

This paper aimed to report the results of a pilot study evaluating a social farming programme funded by the Marche Region, Italy, to support development in social agriculture. The programme implemented several farming, social, and educational activities that allowed participants to be in close contact with the farm environment, targeting older people in good general health living in the community. Loneliness, social isolation, and social exclusion are important disease and mortality risk factors in older people, as well as lack of engagement and low levels of physical activity. It is therefore important to give evidence to the potential benefits of the therapeutic activities of social farming, giving new perspectives for occupational therapists who can gain substantial insight from gardening and social farming for application in their practices. The aim of this study was to document changes in selected outcome measures including quality of life, social relationships, activity participation, and physical activity. 2 | BACKG ROU N D 2.1 | Healthy ageing promotion The ageing population is one of the most significant demographic phenomena in Europe. The percentage of elderly individuals in the total EU-28 population is projected to increase from 18.5% (93.9 million elderly persons) in 2014 to 28.7% (149.1 million elderly persons) by 2,080 (Eurostat, 2015). A high percentage of older people in a population leads to serious consequences such as a growing expectation for families to care for elderly people and increasing pressure on healthcare systems (Colombo, Nozal, Mercier, & Tjadens, 2011).

Social agriculture: experimentation of a sustainable inclusion laboratory

2018

Social agriculture: experimentation of a sustainable inclusion laboratory Florence, 21st September 2018 The first social farms were born in the Netherlands in the 1990s and developed rapidly thanks to social policies supporting agricultural production integrated with structured activities of social nature, addressed to vulnerable groups of people, to improve the physical and mental wellbeing through viticulture, horticulture, contact with animals, dairy and vegetable products processing and sale to the public. With the new millennium even in Italy we have started to speak formally of social agriculture thanks to the Decree, no. 228/2001, which raises the rural enterprise and provides the possibility of educational initiatives to broaden the functions of the agriculture farms and help the growth of these organizations. It will take more than a decade to see the approval of law No 141/2015 with the provisions on social agriculture. Among the activities of the social agricultural enter...

Italian Social Farming: the Network of Coldiretti and Campagna Amica

Sustainability

For the last ten years, Social farming (SF) has become an innovative practice able to connect multifunctional agriculture and novel social services for urban and rural areas in Italy and the EU. By looking at the experience from Italy, it is possible to note that SF has not developed homogeneously along the national territory. It is characterized by a wide range of practices and activities related to the development of a welfare in which several topics such as subsidiarity, the value of relationship, and co-production find multiple meanings and applications. This paper provides a further contribution to the knowledge on this type of activity and opens the way to deeper considerations on the topic. The information reported in this study refers to a project born in 2018 and carried out by Fondazione Campagna Amica, a foundation promoted by Coldiretti, the main organization of agricultural entrepreneurs in Italy. This paper focuses on the analysis of data collected during this project,...

Creating community at the farm: A contested concept

Journal of Leisure Research, 2010

This ethnography expiores the Competing concepts of community that are deployed within the context of a communal farm. Residents of the Farm articulate oppositionai concepts of community that are based on familial and instrumental relationships. The concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are utiiized to better understand the manner in which these discourses manifest themseives in the iived experiences of Farm residents. The contradictory nature of these conceptuaiizations suggests that the concept of community cannot be treated as a monoiithic reaiity within schoiarly inquiry.

Social Farming: Heterogeneity in Social and Agricultural Relationships

Sustainability

Social farming (SF) has emerged as a social innovation practice shaping heterogeneous approaches and results. This study discusses the complexity of SF policy and practices, and it is led by the main hypothesis that the relationship between agricultural and social dimensions might be very heterogeneous, not only in different national contexts but also within the same national and local level. SF policy and practices are investigated testing the hypothesis of three main different modalities of interaction according to how the social and the agricultural perspectives interact. In the first, social target is not involved in the production system of the farm and the farm is the context where actions and measures of a social nature take place. In the second type of interaction, the farm employs the beneficiaries in some of its production activities collaborating with the social services. The third is where the farm organizes its activities to actively employ targeted people to enhance th...

Benefits for all: How learning for farming can build social capital in communities

1999

Abstract: Social capital helps communities respond positively to change. This research into managing change through learning in communities and in small businesses, particularly farm businesses, has highlighted the importance of relationships between people and the formal and informal infrastructure of communities to the quality of outcomes experienced by communities, businesses and individuals. This research presents a model of simultaneous building and use of social capital and explores the ways in which learning, as part of an ...