ABSTRACT
Hordaland is one of Norway’s 19 counties and is a NUTS III area (NO-051). The county was selected as a case study region because of its rural character and large proportion of small and medium sized part time farms, but also because of the close linkage to the Bergen urban area. According to the OECD typology Hordaland is classified as an intermediate region, and to the EDORA typology an ‘Intermediate Access, Consumption Countryside with Performance Below Average’ region (see Chapter 3). The economy (agriculture, employees, environment, and tourists) of rural Hordaland is closely inter-woven by a complex web of daily and recreational interactions. The region has a long history of people diversifying their income—farmers working in for example construction, and fishermen having a small piece of land and some sheep. Thus farming is integrated into many of the region’s economic activities (Rognstad and Steinset, 2008). Although farming contributes only a small portion of the county’s income, it is still an important factor in the lives of many, including those not relying on farming as their source of income where it has settlement, recreational and cultural functions. Furthermore, tourism—Hordaland has the second largest tourist sector in Norway—is very popular because of its magnificent landscapes. The variation in landscape and farming and the interaction between farming and other economic activities that have been persistent in this region, made the county of Hordaland an ideal area to study the consequences of different agricultural and rural policies.
