Nature and landscape are increasingly appreciated as public goods and community assets in need of protection. Policy schemes aiming to protect vulnerable nature and landscape assets affect options for farm development and thus the opportunities for farm income strategies. Farmers as small business owners need to counter an ongoing income squeeze in their strategic decision. Farmers’ perception of the options affects strategic decision making. In a case study with dairy farmers operating in a highly comparable biophysical and socio-economic context, farmers differed in the perception leading to three main income strategies: ‘maximising’ or ‘ending’ of milk production and ‘diversification of farm business’ with the most dominant strategy being ‘maximising’. Multiple regression analysis was used to explore the significance of seven drivers for the differences between farmers’ perception of farm development options. The ‘personal views and preference’ is the most significant explanatory driver for all three income strategies. ‘View on markets’ is of less significance and ‘view on urban-rural relation’ is not significant in explaining differences between farmers. ‘Maximising’ and ‘diversifying’ are opposites in their drivers. To increase the effectiveness of policy schemes and support programmes, personal views and preferences of farmers need to be taken into account.
A critical yet timely commentary is offered on the nature of sustainability narratives in reference to current small business enterprise in remote Scotland with a key focus on ‘place context’ and the complex interplay of social and material resources. A review of the academic and policy literature supports an interpretative, qualitative approach to examining the digital media texts of various small island small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Scotland that are most especially championing the localness and placeness of their product, and most especially using this as a coded referencing of sustainability, localness, community ethics and trust. The extent of ‘co-production’ narratives of sustainability informed by ‘localness’ in areas that are typically ‘rural’ yet particularly ‘remote’ – where ‘margin’ as an idea and as practice is appropriated and deployed to entrepreneurial effect – are demonstrated. ‘Survival’ is revisited and reflections on its place within enterprise narrative as ‘margins’ are redefined; remoteness is increasingly celebrated as a sustainable reality.
This article updates previous research published in Local Economy in 2011 that examined the changing context of neighbourhood regeneration policy and practice in the first year of the UK Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government. At that juncture, based on early signs of political and policy direction, we set out what the policy and practice landscape might ‘look like’ for neighbourhood regeneration organisations over the next few years, given that the emerging policy framework appeared barren. For this new article, we reappraise our previous propositions by exploring where neighbourhood regeneration appears to be heading in 2013, identifying new challenges and opportunities along the way. The article does this by examining the impact that current government policy is now having ‘on the ground’ for those neighbourhood regeneration organisations trying to survive. Primarily, it centres on the changing relationships between these organisations and the local and central state, local communities and the third sector, with a particular focus on Neighbourhood Planning. Informed by this review, some examples of good practice are highlighted which might assist similar organisations to navigate this period of fiscal austerity. The article concludes that neighbourhood regeneration is certainly not dead, but only forward-thinking and inventive neighbourhood regeneration organisations and communities are likely to successfully navigate the policy landscape they now face.