ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Europe and more specifically on the Netherlands and Italy. European farmers' adoption of rural development practices represent a response to these threats. Rural development practices aim to increase value added by enlarging the gross value of production by producing new products and services and by inducing a downwards shift in costs through the introduction of new forms of cost reduction. In the European survey of farmers involved in 'deepening' and 'broadening' strategies, some 69 and 61 per cent of farmers, respectively, indicated that 'restrictive regulations' constituted the major constraint to realizing their new activities. Regrounding agriculture on available ecological capital, while also upgrading the quality and use-efficiency of the resources used, is an important, indispensable and strategic part of repeasantization in Europe. The squeeze on agriculture has been noted throughout Europe and impacts on individual farms, although the effects can differ considerably between different sectors and regions.
