Keywords

5.1 Introduction

Rural areas cover 44.6% of the total European Union (EU) territory, accounting for almost 30% of its population. These territories play an important role in economic growth, social pluralism, and the well-being of the population while promoting environmental aesthetics (EU 2021). In line with developments in other parts of the world, the EU has experienced a rural decline reflected in relatively high rates of youth migration and social exclusion (Farrugia, 2016). However, economic and social conditions are more favorable in urban areas and have resulted in improved youth development trajectories, which ultimately results in a shrinkage of rural economies, and adverse social consequences, in particular for rural youth (Bæck, 2016; Farrugia, 2016). Currently, global challenges and a rapidly evolving societal landscape require a concerted effort to support different and diverse community-led interventions that can result in resilient, flexible, and adaptive communities, especially in rural areas (Simões et al., 2021). Within such a movement, one that seeks to find a sustainable development pathway for rural areas, young people must play an important role in the design and implementation of innovative solutions if they are to benefit from the resultant opportunities which are intended to shape their development trajectories. Therefore, it is important to ignite discussion about the conditions to promote the capacity of young people to take a more central role in the social transformation of rural areas in order to inform and improve public policies that can ensure potent youth development trajectories (Simões et al., 2023).

Thus, in this chapter, we aim to develop a conceptual model around pathways for young farmers’ entrepreneurship and its contribution to sustainable rural development, including for vulnerable groups of rural young people such as those Not in Employment Nor in Education or Training (NEET) and young women. Our approach touches all levels of the bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000) from policies to practices of rural young people. Therefore, an ecological approach is applied to multifunctional and sustainable rural development. Our goal is justified by four arguments. Firstly, to capture the complexity of rural development and the formation of youth development trajectories it is critical to understand the multi-functionality and heterogeneity of rural areas, and the need to make them more sustainable and resilient. Secondly, new approaches based on the use of new technologies, from the so-called Industry 4.0, can lead to the identification of visible and less visible factors upholding the potential of young farmers to benefit from existing social and economic opportunities. In other words, Industry 4.0 can stimulate innovation in rural economies/agribusiness, thus transforming it into a modern ecosystem within the digital landscape of the rural-urban continuum. Thirdly, there is a need to discuss and coordinate a set of diverse current policy options in order to improve young farmers’ entrepreneurship. These policies focus on rural development and entrepreneurship, aiming to foster social and economic opportunities, with a particular emphasis on rural youth and female entrepreneurship aiming to overcome the negative representation of farming among these groups. With this in mind, our approach combines a series of case studies describing public interventions that are relevant in the rural development field (Mujčinović & Bojnec, 2023). Finally, our chapter focuses on social initiatives that can help facilitate the transition towards sustainable rural development, including improved future prospects for rural youth. In conclusion, the need to innovate in all aspects of rural life is underlined while explaining the multi-faceted problem of innovation diffusion.

After undertaking our theoretical exploration, we offer a set of recommendations to shed some light on the urgent need for policy interventions supporting rural youth entrepreneurship. These interventions should be more focused on real-world impact, more inclusive, and reflect the multi-faceted challenges of building prosperous rural ecosystems connected with urban areas in both physical and digital landscapes. Our recommendations follow the principle that all public policies should promote the concept of neo-endogenous development aiming to strengthen the integral development of the local community. This can be achieved by making the best use of local human and natural resources, including local customs or culture, heritage, and geography. Moreover, our recommendations rely on typical endogenous resources and on the cooperation of residents, local stakeholders, and governmental organizations for strengthening the common will and cultural self-confidence of the local residents, including marginalized groups such as NEETs or rural women.

5.2 Sustainability, Resilience, and Multi-functionality Towards Diverse Rural Areas: Creating a Rural-Urban Continuum

To capture how young farmers’ trajectories can be better supported in contemporary rural areas, it is important to understand three interconnected concepts which are key for these territories: sustainability, resilience, and multifunctionality. From our point of view, such concepts are inseparable and indispensable. Sustainability is defined as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (UN, 1987). It is a holistic approach that considers ecological, social, and economic dimensions, needed to assure wellbeing for all. In turn, resilience is the capacity of a system to resist, absorb, adapt, transform, and recover from shocks (Walker & Pearson, 2007). Building upon sustainability and resilience notions, multifunctionality essentially ‘maps’ the functional relationships underlying rural development processes and provides insight into the specific reconfigurations in the use of resources such as land, labor, knowledge, and nature (Knickel & Renting, 2000).

Rural areas are complex units, consisting of many elements and several interactions between those elements inside and outside their ecosystem. These interactions also involve interactions between sustainability, resilience, and multifunctionality which can take many forms. For instance, the resilience of rural communities depends on the sustainability of many elements such as the economy, population, social networks, spatial factors, public policies, etc. (Roberts et al., 2017). Moreover, the levels of policy responses have paid limited attention to the diverse, multi-sectoral, and multi-functional attributes of rural areas further shaping the resilience and sustainability levels of each rural community (Knickel & Renting, 2000). These two examples illustrate that there is no single “model” for achieving sustainable rural development. Indeed, many rural areas struggle to be perceived as attractive and stimulating environments resulting in a vast number of policy interventions, measures, and action plans being introduced to mitigate and reverse negative trends associated with rural areas.

Recent research suggests a need to change the perception of rural areas as “agricultural dominant”, “isolated”, and “traditional” in terms of doing business. Policy interventions focused on understanding rural areas have been and will continue to be important, if not critical, in preserving the landscape and promoting a shift towards sustainable development and well-being for all (IFAD, 2019). However, at the same time, up-trending elements such as the so-called Industry 4.0, must be taken into account in the process of changing the representation and livelihoods of rural areas. By Industry 4.0 we mean cutting-edge technologies (Zareiyan & Korjani, 2018) that connect cyber and physical objects with the main agenda to enhance the level of data generation, usage, and information integration across the supply chain (Esmaeilian et al., 2020). These processes result in creating an engaging interactive automated activities (Sestino et al., 2020) focused on intelligent, anticipative, self-organizing, self-structuring business processes allowing value generation and innovative services (Esmaeilian et al., 2020) which ultimately improve quality of life for all, including in rural areas (Nikolić et al., 2022a, 2022b). According to the European Commission (2023), Industry 4.0 and the digital technologies underpinning it have “the potential to revolutionize the industry, promoting efficiency, sustainability, and competitiveness.” The benefits of digital technologies coming from Industry 4.0 are expected to make farming jobs more attractive to young people (Alarcón-Ferrari et al., 2023), providing role models with risk-taking values and agency in rural areas for vulnerable young (rural NEETs, female ones in particular) (Simões, 2018; Simões & Rio, 2020), but also to offer them the possibility of finding attractive “urban” jobs without having to leave rural areas. Still, digital inequality, which is the digital under-serving of certain areas, affects young rural people by reducing the availability of access to the necessary information and therefore to seize the employment opportunities provided by digitalization (Philip & Williams, 2019). The severity of the digital divide was highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in a deepening of pre-existing social gaps between rural and urban areas (Lai & Widmar, 2021). Likewise, the pandemic also demonstrated the importance of resilient rural communities and food supply chains (Aday & Aday, 2020).

Our holistic approach to the rural economy, combining sustainability, resilience, and multifunctionality, in a period of intense technological changes, is graphically depicted in Fig. 5.1. Our proposal can build a new rural environment in which the cyber, physical, and social environments are integrated. Such an environment is attractive and is characterized by multiple outcomes also listed in Fig. 5.1. These outcomes can be located at the environmental (e.g., reducing carbon footprint), social (e.g., food security), or economic (e.g., new jobs) levels, bringing value to both the market and the society, thus generating well-being for all. Moreover, our proposed approach for value creation in rural areas has the potential to generate a new ecosystem for reducing the importance of location while building a new urban-rural continuum (Nikolić et al., 2022a, 2022b). Moreover, our holistic view of rural areas has also been advanced in the literature focused on alternative food systems such as research on business model “care farms” that combine agricultural production with healthcare and social services (Hassink et al., 2016). Thus, in a nutshell, and in light of the current challenges to increase the sustainability of rural communities, it appears reasonable to develop a single integrated socio-economic system (“ecosystem”) that bridges the existing urban-rural divide and emphasizes economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Fig. 5.1
A Venn diagram of overlapping social, economic, and environmental ...circles between vertical axes of traditional to modern, and multifunctionality basic to advanced, and horizontal axis from traditional to alternative. Union chart of values in cultural and institutional lies at the intersection.

Sustainability and Multi-functionality—creating value for all (Nikolić et al., 2022a, 2022b)

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How are policies supporting our holistic vision? While the EU’s strategies and initiatives for rural transformation include several elements that can potentially facilitate more sustainable, resilient, and multifunctional communities in which young people can become entrepreneurs in different business and social activities, there are also barriers that can potentially block that process. These include (a) poor investment and development of infrastructure (not only digital); (b) underdeveloped and weak social capital in rural areas; and (c) the lack of consistent public policies and high-level institutional settings. The latter is particularly important since individuals are unlikely to take action by themselves in complex and high-risk situations unless they are guided by public policy (Li et al., 2019). Therefore, the mix of public policies addressing rural areas has to work well together, that is, these policies have to be either coherent, consistent, or congruent (Bazzan et al., 2023) as visually presented in Fig. 5.2. In line with our holistic proposal transition to a well-designed mix of public policies is illustrated on the right side of Fig. 5.2. This sort of mix, combining and overlapping economic potential, innovative potential, societal challenges, scientific potential, and environmental challenges, driven by the Green Deal at the heart of the coordination efforts, is the ideal policy coordination framework for overcoming the urban-rural divide and creating a seedbed for social innovations and creative business ideas led by young farmers and entrepreneurs, which can contribute to sustainable and resilient rural communities.

Fig. 5.2
A Venn diagram. Public policies of economic, scientific, and innovative potentials and societal challenges lead to well-designed and overlapping policies of societal and environmental challenges, and economic, scientific, and innovative potentials of green deal, with corresponding key points.

Framework for public policies and interventions in youth development (Gnamus, 2021)

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5.3 Challenges and Barriers for Young Farmers’ Entrepreneurship

Farming is a complex, unpredictable, and often individual business where farmers must meet the changing needs of our planet as well as the expectations of regulators, environmentalists, consumers, food processors, and retailers. Young farmers also face increasing pressures of climate change, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss. In addition, young farmers must consider consumers’ changing tastes in food and concerns about how it is produced. All of the aforementioned considerations require different approaches and innovative responses that are either product, process, or management-related/oriented. Multi-functional attributes of agriculture can be seen as a solution to support young farmers, but multi-functionality in rural areas is not easy to achieve (Hassinik et al., 2016). There is a need for changing the approach of the involved stakeholders for supporting young farmers’ entrepreneurship, in order to redefine capacities, strategies, practices, interrelations, and networks (Van der Ploeg et al., 2000). New institutional arrangements and professional structures are needed (Renting et al., 2008) with the establishment of new forms and mechanisms of communication, collaboration, and coordination between young farmers and the wider society (Hassinik et al., 2016).

However, the traditional way of doing business in rural areas is difficult to abandon (Burton & Wilson, 2006) as it requires new skills and knowledge, which are often not readily provided by traditional support systems (Renting et al., 2008). Strong bonds in rural areas cannot be seen as a disadvantage in stimulating the development of new and innovative business practices. In turn, they need to be enriched with entrepreneurial training/programs/interventions (Seuneke et al., 2013) followed by the creation of new types of networks (bridging and linking), rules, and regulations (Ruvio & Shoham, 2011). Networking is seen as especially important to discover opportunities for increasing economies of scale, securing resources, developing knowledge, and gaining legitimacy (Hekkert et al., 2007), especially for young people from non-farming backgrounds or young newcomers (McGreevy et al., 2019; Simões, 2018; Simões et al., 2021).

In addition, family succession is still the dominant pathway into the farming sector but with ever-decreasing importance. Indeed, the existing literature suggests that the number of young newcomers with no background in agriculture is increasing significantly (EIP-AGRI, 2016). Part of the reason for the decreasing importance of family succession in farming lies behind the uncertain trajectory of conventional agriculture that discourages succession, coupled with a growing interest in multi-functional agriculture (Berti, 2020) and greater openness to different approaches to farming and off-farm activities i.e. the combination of agricultural production with healthcare and social services of the newcomers (Dessein et al., 2013). This combination of factors with the intention to provide added-value products is more usually seen among young farmers. Figure 5.3 provides an example of this approach with a case study of medicinal and aromatic plant producers in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mujčinović, 2020).

Fig. 5.3
A pyramid diagram. It presents souvenirs or gifts tourism offer, phytomedicine, standardized extracts, extracts, tinctures, dry herbs or essential oils, and fresh herbs, with a decrease in the number of producers, and an increase in technological advancements, value, and market-oriented philosophy.

Value pyramid and current production capacity in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Mujčinović, 2020)

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According to Fig. 5.3, traditionally, farmers tend to produce minimum value-added products, because of low interest in innovating production techniques as well as generally lower skills that would allow them technological and business advancements. So in this case, traditional farmers are more inclined to produce fresh/dry herbs or essential oils. On the contrary, newcomers are more prone to experiment and innovate and more willing to start sustainable farming practices (Padel, 2001; EIP-AGRI, 2016), including orientation toward alternative food networks as a new market opportunity (Laforge & Levkoe, 2018). In the illustrated case they are more inclined to produce souvenirs and gifts for tourists.

5.4 Opportunities in Policy Options

Facing the potential negative consequences of rural depopulation and the importance of balanced regional development in European countries, there is an increasing willingness to invest in more opportunities targeting the rural youth population. Policy options that can facilitate sustainable, resilient, and multifunctional rural areas are aiming to support alternative marketing channels to strengthen the role of short food supply chains (SFSCs), rural women empowerment and entrepreneurship, and young farmers (Ball, 2020; Laforge & Levkoe, 2018). We systematize the existing policy opportunities in four domains: EU policy framework, territorial development, synergy and networking, and creativity and social innovation.

5.4.1 EU Policy Framework for Rural Development

Different EU strategic documents such as the Long Term Vision for Rural Areas and more recently a Rural Pact and Rural Action Plan have addressed challenges in rural development (EC, 2021a). At the core of EU policies for rural development and of other more transversal EU policies such as the Green Deal, is innovation and support for innovation and entrepreneurship (EC, 2019). Indeed, within the Youth Strategy 2019–2027, the EU has acknowledged the importance of gender equality and support for young people living in rural areas (EU, 2018). Furthermore, the Commission emphasizes green and digital transition as the basis of youth employment policies in the future. The Digital Agenda for Europe 2020–2030, focuses on the changes taking place under the influence of digital technologies, especially in the business field (EC, 2021b). The 2030 Digital Compass, proposed by the EU in 2021, represents a set of goals to be met by 2030 with the potential to empower people and businesses in the direction of a sustainable society in the future (EC, 2021c).

5.4.2 Territorial Development: Funding Mechanisms

The successful absorption of EU funds can depend on different factors such as the ability to co-finance and refund human resources required in project preparation, the level of skills of project developers to comply with the complexity of procedures or the actual implementation of funded projects. Agricultural economics literature focuses particularly on instruments and measures of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and its two pillars: Pillar I for direct payments to farmers and Pillar II for rural development with support for farming in more vulnerable areas, support for voluntary adoption of agri-environmental farming practices (i.e. Agri-Environmental Schemes—AESs), support for farms undergoing restructuring, including diversification into non-agricultural activities, and restructuring in rural development (Unay-Gailhard & Bojnec, 2019). The renewal of farms, the empowerment of highly qualified young farmers, and the creation of jobs can be an important set of measures of CAP Pillar II for bringing in more young farmers to the sector who are often more educated, and more in line with the sustainable, resilient and multifunctional perspective for rural areas.

5.4.3 Synergy and Networking: Success Factors of the Policy Interventions

There are examples of successful practices where rural areas were in a disadvantaged position and managed to turn around their socioeconomic situation by boosting development actors’ synergies. There is a consensus that those regions realize that success cannot be generated exclusively at the local level or imposed by the regional and/or national and international (EU) level policies. Instead, local synergies, making the most of natural and human resources, and meeting bottom-up initiatives with top-down approaches are key to achieving desirable outcomes, including in terms of promoting younger farmers’ entrepreneurship. The Neo-Endogenous Development (NED) perspective is considered a promising bottom-up, participatory, or joint development approach to promote local synergies and networking (Ray, 2001). This conceptual standpoint, potentially applicable to any sub-national (both rural and urban) geographical area, is shaped through three basic assumptions. First, NED suggests that local development is better stimulated by focusing on the particular needs of specific rural territories and their communities, including a shift from the classical analysis of needs to targeting individual sectors of the economy. Second, NED postulates that development and overall economic activities are reorganized to valorize and use endogenous resources, both natural and human, thus retaining as many potential benefits as possible in the local area. Third, development is contextualized by focusing on the needs, capacities, and perspectives of the local population. Namely, this development model also assumes an ethical dimension by emphasizing the principles and processes of local participation in the design and implementation of a particular action, especially through the adoption of cultural, environmental, and common values as part of a particular development intervention (Ray, 2001). This includes young people and local citizens (bottom-up approach), i.e., their needs (in economic, social, and cultural terms), and integrating the visions of the key local, regional, and state developmental actors (top-down approach). This is the space where the bottom-up and top-down approaches should meet. Thus, the human, social, cultural, and especially natural capital of a certain community in a specific rural area and how these resources are connected with each other is considered a key element of development that can foster youth farming entrepreneurship.

5.4.4 Creativity and Social Innovation: “New” Agrifood Opportunities

The agri-food sector is very competitive and characterized by unsustainable practices aiming strongly for innovations as a source of continuous growth and competitive advantage for companies (De Medeiros et al., 2014). Sustainability and multi-functionality of rural areas involving on-farm and off-farm employment activities are desirable and constitute a “must” approach in the twenty-first century (Knickel & Renting, 2000). The multi-functionality of the sector is explained through the service sector activities in rural areas that have expanded very rapidly. As agriculture and industry shrink, a rise of on- and off-farm non-farming employment activities and incomes in areas such as farm tourism or the integration of care services into farms become more prominent, representing an opportunity for rural young people—from entrepreneurs to rural youth in greater need (Hassink et al., 2016).

Over the last four decades, the importance of AESs as voluntary tools to enhance the rural environment beyond legal requirements has greatly increased, in terms of expenditure and participation (Riley, 2016). AESs sometimes need a long period to produce the desired environmental benefits, often beyond the ordinary contract duration (Swetnam et al., 2004). In addition, they may require relevant changes to farming practices, resulting in more complex and lengthy decision-making patterns (Defrancesco et al., 2018). Once accomplished, adoption should then be accompanied by steady behavioral changes (Reimer et al., 2014), while early withdrawals from the schemes may jeopardize or even nullify the AESs’ long-term success (Riley, 2016). Because of a significant decrease in the number of farmers across the world, there is an urgent need to diversify rural livelihoods. Rural livelihood diversification indicates the process by which rural households construct an increasingly diverse portfolio of activities and assets to survive and improve their standard of living (Ellis, 2000). In developed countries, rural diversification is not only about complementing on-farm activities but also with new, off-farm, non-agricultural activities. It is also the case that creating a new foundation for the local rural economy, in which local agriculture merely is part of the mix, driven by responsible consumption and customers’ need to support the health and well-being of the individual, family, and community.

For example, 96% of EU farms in agriculture are family-run, but women manage only 28% of them (EU, 2021). To support gender equality in rural areas, greater rural women empowerment is needed with more knowledge insights to be produced through the provision of more comprehensive gender-disaggregated data on the participation of women in agricultural and other rural entrepreneurial activities and on the factors inhibiting or hampering wider participation. As observed in other sectors, education, gender stereotyping, lack of confidence, and difficulties in reconciling work and family obligations are at the root of lower female participation. When it comes to rural areas, problems accessing resources (e.g., land, finance, and business networks) along with patriarchal inheritance practices, are the key barriers to women-led agriculture and enterprise. There is also a need to improve our understanding and recognition of women’s role in contributing to environmental protection due to their more sustainable attitudes and behaviors as well as more socially inclusive practices. Women can be at the forefront of environmentally sustainable farming practices, such as organic farming, small-scale extensive farming, and localized supply chains (Ball, 2020). Based on research results, more effective policy and governance frameworks can be formulated both to support and build female participation in rural areas and to exploit women’s potential and contribution to rural regeneration. Despite the requirement for gender mainstreaming in EU policy, gaps still exist. Shortall (2015) analyses this in the CAP context showing that policy advances focus on gender inequality symptoms rather than the causes. The targeting of policy measures towards creating a supporting infrastructure for innovative female-led sustainable and climate-resilient farming and food production is a necessary action.

5.5 Conclusion

Global challenges and dramatic social changes call attention to the need for new and viable business and social activities in rural areas while breaking down the locked-in pattern of existing socio-economic relations and traditional ways of “doing business”. Young farmers and their development trajectory are seen as key ingredients of this process of radical change for this to happen. With this chapter, we aim to develop a conceptual model around pathways for young farmers’ entrepreneurship in multi-functional, diverse, and resilient sustainable rural development. Our approach was based on all levels of the bioecological model—from policies to rural young people. Such an approach shed light on the holistic characteristics of rural areas where sustainable and multifunctional rural areas can stimulate transformation, boost young farmers’ entrepreneurship, and build a new environment in which cyber, physical, and social environments are integrated through the radical changes based on new technologies (Industry 4.0).

To enable young people to be actors in a radical transformation of the rural ecosystem, it is important to take care of the typical mismatch between youth aspirations and available opportunities as well as the mismatch between youth skills and available jobs. This is typically driven by young people’s (rural NEETs and women in particular) negative perception of rural areas as being marginalised, obsolete and unattractive territories. Therefore, capacity building of rural youth entrepreneurship must consider that all rural interventions have to touch and positively influence the agricultural perceptions and attitudes of youth throughout their whole life especially through early exposure to agricultural experiences and career paths during the middle and high school years (Jean-Philippe et al., 2017). Our holistic approach for upholding young farmers’ entrepreneurship that can represent opportunities for vulnerable, rural young people as well should be based on the strong promotion of a positive image of rural areas: nature, the culture of life—“everyone knows everyone”, peace, solidarity, and spirit of cooperation, beautiful, cosy, quiet, and pleasant by part of the local youth, cultural heritage, clean and ethical food, space and peace and experiences. The development of young farmers’ entrepreneurship and rural community capacity to innovate requires mechanisms to expose all actors to a broad range of new ideas and opportunities provided by the policies that we have listed. These include, for instance, synergies and networking between local actors or creativity and innovation in many different ways such as the promotion of alternative marketing channels such as short food supply chains (including new business models). Altogether, these factors can uphold rural entrepreneurship, including among specific youth groups such as rural women and or NEETs.

5.5.1 New Research Developments

To sum up, we suggest some ideas contributing to new research agendas that can contribute to young farmer’s entrepreneurship trajectories, based on relevant insights for NGOs, policymakers, and communities collected under the COST Action Rural NEET Youth Network (Mujčinović & Bojnec, 2023).

  • Better understanding of the alternative marketing channels and the role of Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) in youth empowerment/engagement. Communication with consumers and building trust through precise rules of conduct (good agricultural practices), certification, and the communication of strategically important information (about cultivation methods, technology, processing/finishing) places SFSCs at the centre of business, and guarantees business sustainability (Kneafsey et al., 2013). SFSCs have numerous positive impacts on economic, environmental, and social sustainability, or health (product quality and general well-being). SFSCs contribute to the reconnection of producers and consumers which results in a higher level of trust, and subsequently influences the decision to purchase products from short chains (Holloway & Kneafsey, 2000). SFSC can catalyse rural development by providing added value to local environments, and creating new economic systems (Van der Ploeg et al., 2000), and also preventing the loss of ecosystem services and agricultural infrastructure (Canfora, 2016). However, all of these effects still need to be better addressed in the context of young farmers’ entrepreneurship.

  • Understanding rural female empowerment and rural entrepreneurship is critical. Female entrepreneurs, and female entrepreneurship in general, are gaining importance year by year, and have been recognized as a source of new business opportunities, as well as a means to achieving economic growth and development. In addition to the basic creation of new business opportunities, economic growth, and development. Female entrepreneurs also contribute to the diversification of business activities within economic systems giving them the opportunity to express and realize their full potential (Verheul et al., 2006). Numerous factors influencing female entrepreneurship have been identified in the literature, such as human capital (education and work experience) (Carter et al., 2003); cultural problems (Ufuk & Özgen, 2001); a lack of funds (Manolova et al., 2007); and, belonging to different formal and informal networks (Manolova et al., 2007). A detailed overview of why females may have been neglected, and how their approaches to farming may differ, is presented by Schmidt et al. (2021) and should be used to build up solutions and interventions to activate women’s potential while promoting new business models such as green, circular, shared economy or services connected to access infrastructure (ICT and other types). We suggest that the Green Deal and agri-environmental measures should be more strategically used to promote women’s entrepreneurship because recent review studies (i.e., Ball, 2020) conclude that women farmers demonstrate greater sensitivity towards agri-environmental farming practices and are more involved with sustainable farming practices, such as organic farming, and alternative agriculture practices compared to male farmers. This is highlighted in many articles and policy briefs, but agriculture remains seen as a “male” dominant activity, contributing to the subsequent masculinization of rural areas across many European countries. Adding to this, most of the research is focused on female entrepreneurship in general, but not in rural areas. In addition to that, because of the growing interest in female entrepreneurship, new approaches/methodological perspectives should be used to better understand and capture this issue.

  • Understanding challenges and obstacles of the young farmers and NEETs and their ability to modernize rural areas. Previous studies have documented that younger farmers are usually more progressive and flexible in the adoption of new sustainable technologies compared to their older counterparts who tend to be more comfortable with traditional practices (Salazar et al., 2019). Moreover, older farmers are more risk-averse, use fewer sources of information than their younger colleagues, are less willing to experiment, have shorter planning windows, and are more focused on the financial performance of their farms (Brown et al., 2019). At the same time, young farmers may be more familiar with new technologies as they have better knowledge to optimally operate information-intensive technologies and, therefore, are more willing to adopt new technology (Barnes et al., 2019). Therefore, the support of young farmers is at the heart of agribusiness transformation and development of a new digital landscape that diminishes the role of location building rural-urban continuum offering attractive jobs on and off farms and within rural and urban areas. It is important to understand, then, how young farmers’ entrepreneurship is contributing to greater social inclusion in rural areas by, for instance, creating new job opportunities in farming for vulnerable people, including rural NEETs.

5.5.2 Policy Recommendations

Our policy recommendations take into consideration the scope and objectives of the paper and keep in mind the complexity and heterogeneity of the rural areas which requires tailor-made policy options/actions. Policies in this domain have to be long-term, coherent, and well-promoted, including the mechanisms to support networking, the development of trust and reciprocity, and the build-up of local social networks. Social innovations upholding young farmers’ entrepreneurship have to be developed based on technological innovations leading to new social relationships covering all actors, public policies, and resources embedded within the socioeconomic relations of rural areas. In this context, two pathways for policy interventions are offered to induce the development of rural, community-based food systems within the digital landscape of the future.

  • Foster and promote sustainable economic growth in rural areas. This line of action requires in-depth assessing of the current measures/policies/action plans and raising awareness of the need to use mixed approaches in designing and implementing public policies and aligning with youth needs and capabilities in rural areas. This also implies investments into the rural infrastructure for improving the quality of life and in particular to digital infrastructure in rural areas while at the same time improving the digital skills among the rural youth and rural population in general to induce digital transformation.

  • Promotions and diffusion of new, modern, and innovative activities (business models). Here we consider measures for the production of high-quality and region-specific products, product brand development, nature conservation and landscape management, agritourism, and the development of short-supply chains. Such activities should also be followed by a strong promotion of a positive image of rural areas aiming to attract new technology/practice adopters (newcomers) along the value chain. This goal can be achieved through applying networked rural development models that are locally established focusing on local capacity-building or early childhood exposure to agricultural experiences, among other complementary activities in rural areas.