Over thousands of years, farming was the usual means to sustain the necessary food supply. Since the invention of social sciences, agriculture has been regarded as an economic sector that should provide a sufficient income for farming families. On September 5/6 2019, a seminar on agricultural incomes will be held in Tänikon (https://eaae-seminar-171-switzerland.org/).

In a socioeconomic approach, we would like to use the day before the seminar to ask questions that are more basic. What are the important characteristics of farming regarding lifestyle? What drives persons to invest time in food production except income? Could agriculture also be regarded as a hobby activity? May agricultural labour cover some needs for which certain segments in the population may even be willing to pay? Are movements like urban gardening and community-supported agriculture indicators for a growing willingness of individuals to link with the dynamics of food production, even without the motivation of making money? And how far can all this go? Will it always be a small segment on the fringe of land-use ranges? Or could we conceptualize our entire future food supply on a voluntary base of cooperation? We expect a range of contributions on that day that offers answers to some of the questions.

Invited guest speakers
Noa Lincoln (University of Hawaii), Imre Kovach (Hungarian Academy of Science), and Anne Cassidy (MIT Sloan School of Management), Moritz Boddenberg (University of Hamburg), Gudula Madsen (Technical University Berlin), Terresa Pinto Correia, (University of Evora), Stefanie Düsberg (Bavarian Ministry of Agriculture)

Application
If you would like to participate with a contribution, please submit an abstract of not more than two pages length to Stefan Mann at Agroscope: stefan.mann@agroscope.admin.ch

Abstracts must be submitted by the deadline of February 22, 2019. Notifications of acceptance will be given by mid-March.