Towards Sustainable Rural Regions in Europe — Exploring Inter-relationships Between Rural Policies, Farming, Environment, Demographics, Regional Economies and Quality of Life Using System Dynamics

This book presents the methodology and results of a three-year, eleven-country science-to-policy research project – Toward a Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development – undertaken between 2005 and 2008 and financed under the European Union's Sixth Framework program. It deals with an important contemporary policy issue: how best to ensure that an agriculturally-based policy can contribute to the development of rural regions. It tackles this problem in a number of different but complementary ways, primarily by the development of a unique and innovative dynamic systems model, POMMARD (a Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development).

John M. Bryden is Research Professor with the Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute (NILF) in Oslo, President of the International Rural Network, and founding member of the International Comparative Rural Policy research consortium. He is Emeritus Professor of Human Geography at the University of Aberdeen where he formerly co-Directed the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research and held the Chair of Human Geography from 1995 to 2004.

Sophia Efstratoglou is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece.

Tibor Ferenczi was Jean Monnet Professor, and recently independent expert, at Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary, in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development.

Karlheinz Knickel was Managing Director of the Institute for Rural Development Research at J W Goethe University Frankfurt and Head of the Department of Sustainable Development, Global Change and Multifunctionality of Rural Areas before joining the Information Directorate in the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment in 2008.

Thomas G. Johnson is the Frank Miller Professor of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Missouri, Columbia, USA. He is also professor in the Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs and a founding member of the International Comparative Rural Policy research consortium.

Karen Refsgaard is a senior researcher at the Norwegian Agricultural Economics Research Institute in Norway.

Kenneth J. Thomson is Professor Emeritus, University of Aberdeen, UK and Visiting Professor, Countryside & Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, UK.