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Abstract
Historically, perspectives on the economic development of rural regions have been dominated
by the modernization model of agriculture (van der Ploeg and Van Dijk, 1995). During the last
decades this model has increasingly been abandoned in an effort to reduce the negative outcomes
associated with that model, driven by the changing concerns of consumers and society in
response to these outcomes (van der Ploeg, 1999, Weatherell et al., 2003). Parallel to this socioeconomic
evolution the theoretical perspectives on rural development altered. Discourses about
the evolution of rural development describe the succession of an exogenous, modernist model
of rural development by an endogenous model and in the end leading to an integrated model of
rural development, combining the best of both worlds (Lowe et al., 1999, Ray, 1999, Murdoch,
2000, Siôn, 2002, Nemes, 2005, Vázquez-Barquero, 2006). Thereby it is argued that contemporary
rural development should stress “the interplay between local and external forces in the
control of development processes” (Lowe et al., 1995). This integrated perspective is also reflected
in policy models, aiming at the creation of the conditions under which family farming,
rural landscapes and society as a whole can flourish. This was formulated at the EU-level in the
Cork Declaration on Rural Development in 1996 and since then became a pillar of the EU’s
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (Potter and Tilzey, 2005). This will persist during the coming
Rural Development programming period 2007-2013 (EC, 2005).