Sustaining Farming on Marginal Land: Farmers’ Convictions, Motivations and Strategies in Northeastern Germany

Abstract

Contrary to a scholarly debate that anticipated a trend towards the marginalisation of agriculture in many rural areas of Europe, farmers have continued to utilise agro-economically marginal land, especially in a variety of areas in Europe's northwest. We explore why and how farmers secure the development of their farms while cultivating crops on the margins, based on qualitative empirical research in Brandenburg, Germany. By bringing together farmers’ motivations and convictions with their agricultural and agronomical practices, the study identifies three farming strategies for managing farms on marginal land, focused on independence, balancing multiple aims, or optimising land productivity. We develop a concept of farming strategy as an expression of personal motivations and convictions in a coherent, targeted, long-term plan for farming. We discuss the implications of such an understanding for system-oriented, micro-sociological research and for the perpetuation of agriculture in marginalised rural areas.