Three-fold embeddedness of farm development

Farm development strategy is affected by, and affects, the biophysical and socio-economic context of the farm leading to agri-environmental challenges for farm development. For effective policies and support programmes it is important to understand the drivers for choices farm development. Three-fold embeddedness is used to study how farmers relate to the context in which they operate. Ideal-typical farms were constructed for three patterns of farm development found in a quantitative study of dairy farmers operating in highly comparable conditions. The patterns are 1) Milk Max: maximising total milk production; 2) Milk Balance: optimising milk production based on own resources; and 3) Milk Plus: diversified on-farm production. Their embeddedness in three sets of relations were conceptualised as: 1) value chain relations, 2) socio-cultural relations, and 3) resource relations. The extent of the embeddedness has been determined on a scale ranging from a Close to a Stretched set of relations. These ideal-typical farm types showed to have different sets of relations for the three dimensions. A set of relations that is stretched outside the everyday routine of dairy farming appears to be important for farmers’ perception of options for farm development