Revitalizing Agriculture: Farming Economically as Starting Ground for Rural Development

Many of the attempts to construct sustainable rural livelihoods involve a shift away from agriculture’s traditional ‘core’ activities by means of a diversification with new on‐farm activities or ‘conversion’ to quality modes of production. This raises the question of how we should conceptualize the role of those enterprises that fall into the vast category of ‘main‐stream’ farms within the process of rural development. By discussing the style of ‘farming economically’ in Friesian dairy farming, this paper argues that rural development should not be seen as a contradiction between conventional and alternative farming systems. Farming economically is considered an integral part of the newly emerging model of rural development, since it entails a particular model for the mobilization, combination and utilization of resources at farm level that contrasts sharply with the modernization paradigm. At the level of the rural region, farming economically allows for higher income and employment levels, factors that are fundamental for a healthy, rural social fabric. The paper concludes that for the rural development potential of farming economically to be developed further,a favourable ‘rural district’ is needed that strengthens the innovativeness and specific developmental trajectory embedded in the practice.