
Markus SchermerUniversity of Innsbruck | UIBK · Department of Sociology
Markus Schermer
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About
99
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Introduction
Markus Schermer graduated in Agricultural Economics in 1983 and worked for several years in rural development abroad, in the agricultural advisory system in Austria and in spatial planning. Since 1999 he is employed at the University of Innsbruck, since 2015 he was Professor for Rural Sociology. He officially retired in 2022.
His research interests are:
- social aspects of agri-food research
- territorial aspects of regional development
- changing relations between farmers and wider society
Additional affiliations
September 2015 - present
Publications
Publications (99)
In the search for geographical and historical distinctiveness, the issue of culinary heritage has taken an important role in agri-food studies for safeguarding local culinary knowledge and traditions of food cultivation and production practices. However, it remains unclear how salient culinary heritage emphasizes the intertwining of tangible and in...
Zusammenfassung
Die Ankündigung eines österreichischen Lebensmitteldiskonters im Herbst 2018, dass Lieferantinnen und Lieferanten seiner Biomarke ab sofort allen Tieren ganzjährig mindestens zwei Stunden Auslauf pro Tag gewähren müssten und zudem ab 2021 nur noch Milch aus Laufstallhaltung angenommen würde, führte zu Protesten der betroffenen Betri...
The current shift of regulations for animal welfare from public to private standards allows dairies and retailers to improve their position on the market. However, for easy communication and control they tend to reduce the multifaceted societal demands for animal welfare to freedom of movement, that is, to free stalls with or without access to past...
In the Brazilian Cerrado, the land-use change caused by the expansion and intensification of agribusiness farming has led to dramatic socio-environmental problems. To foster sustainable development, Brazilian farming students have to learn about land use according to the Sustainable Development Goals and how to implement them on their home farm and...
This paper explores how locally oriented organic businesses adapt to handle crises during a growth process to build resilience, how these businesses maintain the local orientation when growing, and what the implications are for the relationship between territoriality and organic production. We explored four cases of organic businesses in Sweden, No...
Brands hold a promising contribution to align the food system with sustainable farm development. The food system consists of a myriad of, generally small-scale, producers and consumers and retail chains provide the link between the two. As such, their brands determine to a large extend what is understood by sustainability. This article focuses on b...
Tourism, especially in the European Alps, contributes to rural livelihood and depends on farming to preserve the landscape. The symbiosis is also expected to strengthen community resilience, conceptualized as a combination of economic, social, cultural, political and natural domains. The interplay of these domains may result in path dependencies dr...
Today, insect applications for food and feed are of strong economic, ecological and social interest. Despite their tremendous potential, insects still elicit negative associations in the mindset of Western consumers, which is attributed to a lack of knowledge and scarce opportunities for engagement in this topic. The citizen science project ‘six-le...
Over the last 30 years, extensive areas of Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, have been converted to export-oriented agribusinesses. The social, environmental and economic impact of such large-scale land-use conversion is massive. To understand whether the current farming development in the Cerrado is sustainable, this study analyzes the sustainabili...
Over the last 30 years, extensive areas of Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, have been converted to export-oriented agribusinesses. The social, environmental and economic impact of such large-scale land-use conversion is massive. To understand whether the current farming development in the Cerrado is sustainable, this study analyzes the sustainabili...
Globalised and production-oriented agriculture often leads to the exclusion of rural mountain areas and to the marginalisation of their traditional food value chains, of which cheese is particularly interesting. Important elements for such value chains are the valorisation of the product quality and of traditional know-how. Territorial innovations,...
This article discusses the economic dimensions of agroecological farming systems in Europe. It firstly theoretically elaborates the reasons why, and under what conditions, agroecological farming systems have the potential to produce higher incomes than farms that follow the conventional logic. This theoretical exposition is then followed by a prese...
The general decline of mountain farming all over Europe suggests encouraging farmers to adapt their farm management and to diversify their activities into tourism. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impact of different types of farmer-based provision of accommodation on the preservation of the farm and the identification of farmers with...
Agricultural land abandonment and transformation of the rural mountain landscapes have been of widespread occurrence in the European mountains. Such changes have strongly affected agricultural land, particularly traditionally used grasslands, which are hotspots of biological and cultural diversity in Alpine countries. We investigated the land use/c...
The major aim of the study is to analyse six Austrian value chains of regionally labelled cheese along the whole food value chain concerning their potential socio-economic benefit for the labelled region. Twenty-eight quantitative as well as qualitative indicators, with a potentially positive impact on the region, were used to assess these value ch...
In this paper, the hydrological impacts of future socio-economic and climatic development are assessed for a regional-scale Alpine catchment (Brixental, Tyrol, Austria). Therefore, coupled storylines of future land use and climate scenarios were developed in a transdisciplinary stakeholder process by means of questionnaire analyses and interviews w...
While science widely acknowledges the necessity of climate change adaptation (CCA), concrete strategies for CCA by major land-use actor groups at a local level are largely missing. Immediate economic challenges often prevent the establishment of long-term collective strategies. However, collective decisions on a communal level regarding land use ar...
Impacts of climate change have become more and more evident and can be observed in ecosystems, societies and economies worldwide. Mountain agriculture is especially vulnerable to climate change, and adaptation seems crucial. Thus, certain adaptation activities, such as installing irrigation technology, switching to drought-resistant crop varieties...
For the elaboration of adaption strategies to long-term developments, socio-economic changes need to be included. Participatory scenario methods are a creative and flexible approach to consider uncertainties and serve as a transdisciplinary tool for mutual learning. Therefore, socio-economic scenarios provide comprehensive descriptions of future tr...
Der vorliegende Beitrag fasst die Ergebnisse eines transdisziplinären Forschungsprojekts zusammen, welches die komplexen Wechselwirkungen von Klima, Gesellschaft und Landnutzung integrativ unter-sucht und quantifiziert. Das Untersuchungsgebiet ist das 322 km² große Brixental in Tirol (Österreich). Im Rahmen des Projekts wurden hydrologische Simulat...
Building on critical community resilience studies, this study analyses the resilience of the village of Vent, a remote mountain community in the Austrian Ötztal valley challenged by slow-onset disturbances such as climate change, outmigration of young people and the repercussions of the post-2008 recession. A conceptual framework which focuses on h...
Die Agro-Food Studies setzen sich integrativ und
kritisch mit der Produktion und dem Konsum von
Nahrung auseinander. Der Band behandelt die
Spannungsfelder Tradition und Moderne, Globalisierung
und Regionalisierung, Gesellschaft und Umwelt,
Natur und Technik, Kopf und Bauch, Mangel und
Überfluss, Verbindendes und Trennendes sowie
Stabilität und Ver...
Agro-Food Studies setzen sich integrativ und kritisch mit der Produktion und dem Konsum von Nahrung auseinander. Der Band behandelt die Spannungsfelder Tradition und Moderne, Globalisierung und Regionalisierung, Gesellschaft und Umwelt, Natur und Technik, Kopf und Bauch, Mangel und Überfluss. Die interdisziplinäre Einführung richtet sich an Studier...
Growing demand for local and organic food sourcing in the EU and the US has inspired inquiry into mid-level food supply chains that can distribute differentiated foods at a regional level in the relational and market space between large-scale commodity markets and direct markets. Values-based food chains (VBFCs) have been identified as a particular...
To protect grasslands and maintain the ecosystem services they provide, many European countries have been offering agri-environment measures aimed at maintaining extensive grazing by cattle, sheep or goats. Yet, despite more than two decades of agri-environment measures, semi-natural mountain pastures are still seen as threatened by abandonment and...
Food distribution systems referred to as box schemes have gained a foothold in organic markets across Europe and North America. This model has the potential to scale up direct-marketing strategies by aggregating products from multiple producers and efficiently assembling and delivering them on a regular basis to large networks of consumers. Box sch...
Growth processes are uniquely problematic for small-scale farms due to their impacts on a delicate balance of basic internal resources. Most of these resources , such as permanent labour, machinery, structures, and livestock cannot be increased incrementally in linear processes. Additionally, farms with the lowest levels of production have the most...
Land use and land cover patterns are shaped by the interplay of human and ecological processes. Thus, heterogeneous cultural landscapes have developed, delivering multiple ecosystem services. To guarantee human well-being, the development of land use types has to be evaluated. Scenario development and land use and land cover change models are well-...
South Korea witnessed an increase in the average size of dairy farms over the past decade, probably because of high production costs especially relevant for farms with less than 40 heads. Korean dairy farms have production costs that are 63.9% higher than the international milk price, and the producer support by the Korean government is 2.5 times h...
Eine Auftragsforschung für das Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Wirtschaft. Expertenbefragung zum Wandel des Tourismus
Im Rahmen des interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekts STELLA (STorylines of socio-Economic and climatic drivers for Land use and their hydrologicaL impacts in Alpine catchments) wird ein interdisziplinärer Ansatz verfolgt, um die komplexen Wechselwirkungen von Klima, Gesellschaft und Landnutzungsänderung integrativ zu untersuchen und zu quantifiziere...
Recently established organic regions aim to be model regions of sustainability. In the frame of this article we understand organic regions as territories that aim at the sustainable management of local resources, based on the principles of organic farming and agroecology. The contribution focuses especially on the role and configurations of values-...
The ”smart city” urban transformation model aims at a development (or regeneration) of settlements introducing outstanding technological innovation. However, technological innovation should be considered not the final goal, but instrumental in achieving complex and relevant targets, such as an improved quality of life for citizens, higher urban com...
Over the centuries, specific farming practices shaped permanent grasslands in mountains. With socio-economic change, farming practices have changed and with them the landscape. Over time, food production has been increasingly decoupled from the preservation of permanent grassland, endangering the delivery of crucial ecosystem services. This contrib...
Zwischen 1985 und 1995 fand ein weitgehender Umbau des österreichischen Milchwirtschaftssystems, von einer Versorgungswirtschaft zur liberalen Marktwirtschaft, statt. Dies stand in engem Zusammenhang mit dem Beitritt Österreichs zur EU. Über Diversifizierungsstrategien der ökosozialen Agrarpolitik konnte sich die Österreichische Milchwirtschaft mit...
Abstract The notion of a ‘‘third food regime’’ implies
simultaneous processes of further global concentration and
integration and at the same time resistance through new
emerging producer–consumer relations. This paper examines
these processes by looking at Austria over the last
30 years. While direct producer–consumer cooperatives
established at a...
http://epub.oeaw.ac.at/?arp=0x00246f2b
The impact of social stability and cohesion on the sustainability of cities gains importance as changing relations between societal groups of different cultural background increasingly shape life in urban environments due to global migration. Urban gardening initiatives and intercultural gardens are receiving growing public attention, especially wi...
In mountain regions, ecosystem services provision is strongly linked to land use, topography and climate, where impacts can be expected under global change. For our study site in the Austrian Alps, we examined the relationship between agricultural activities and multiple ecosystem services on landscape scale from past to future. Modelling of future...
In mountain regions, ecosystem services provision is strongly linked to land use, topography and climate, where impacts can be expected under global change. For our study site in the Austrian Alps, we examined the relationship between agricultural activities and multiple ecosystem services on landscape scale from past to future. Modelling of future...
Products, collective organization and institutions are factors that shape farm tourism. The aim of this paper is to present new knowledge of the way these factors are designed and provide lessons for management in the sector. Research findings to date suggest these factors are varied but similarities within findings exist. However, while there have...
In recent years new types of consumer–producer cooperation in food networks have emerged in which consumers play an active role in the operation and thereby clearly go beyond food provisioning as such. Examples include con-sumer co-ops and solidarity buying groups of local and organic food, community-supported agriculture and collective urban garde...
An intact landscape has not only an esthetic value; it also increases the quality of life for the resident population and the attractiveness for tourists. The landscape also provides essential ecological services for the society, such as soil conservation, preservation of biodiversity, and provision of clean water. The typical cultural landscape in...
The concept of ecosystem services is increasingly being used by scientists and policy makers. However, most studies in this
area have focussed on factors that regulate ecosystem functions (i.e. the potential to deliver ecosystem services) or the
supply of ecosystem services. In contrast, demand for ecosystem services (i.e. the needs of beneficiarie...
Collective action by farmers has played an important role in the history of European agriculture. During the twentieth century, the foundation of agricultural marketing co-operatives contributed in many countries to better market access, increased farm incomes and rural employment. However, European agriculture is facing a range of new challenges n...
This study aims at uncovering how social capital at micro and macro levels contributes to the success of farmers’ co-operation and how imbalances between the different forms of social capital can hamper collective action among farmers. Using a case-study approach, we analyse two collective farmers marketing initiatives from Austria and Hungary, whi...
Collective action by farmers has played an important role in the history of European agriculture. During the twentieth century, the foundation of agri-cultural marketing co-operatives contributed in many countries to better market access, increased farm incomes and rural employment. However, European agri-culture is facing a range of new challenges...
An intact landscape has not only an esthetic value, but it also increases the quality of life for the resident population and attractiveness for tourists. The landscape also provides essential ecological services for society, such as soil conservation, preservation of biodiversity, and provision of clean water. The typical cultural landscape in Tyr...
The paper explores the difficulties and challenges in mobilizing and managing social capital in concrete local and territorial directed rural development project activities. The main focus is put on the roles of local facilitators working with farmers and other local stakeholders during project implementation. The EU 5th framework project IMALP inc...
Results of the European 6th framework project EUROpean Mountain Agrofood products, Retailing and Consumers (EuroMARC) suggest that most consumers expect mountain products to be from small scale farms produced under extensive farming conditions, but buy them in general in supermarket stores as part of their daily shopping routine. The paper assesses...
Given the broad range of products in food retailing, actors are increasingly aiming to differentiate their products by promoting certain features as added benefits. This means that any added (emotional) benefit, whichever way it is communicated, becomes significant. In this article we investigate inhowfar the fact that a product originates from a m...
Risk assessment of new technologies such as the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agricultural production is enormously complex. It cannot be limited to analysis only from the perspective of the natural sciences; socio economic factors need to be considered as well. Active promotion of GMO-free areas is discussed here as an alternativ...
The article describes how social capital is contributing to the successful establishment of collective farmers marketing initiatives. By analysing two case studies ("Holidays on Farm" in Tyrol and "Walserstolz" in Vorarlberg) the impact of different forms of social capital (bonding, bridging and linking) is presented. The results indicate that espe...
In current scientific and political discourses there is common agreement that the future of Alpine agriculture is a challenge not only for farmers, but also for society at large. What remains unclear is the question of how to adapt agriculture towards sustainable development of the Alpine territory in a manner that takes sufficient account of local...
In current scientific and political discourses there is common agreement that the future of Alpine agriculture is a challenge not only for farmers, but also for society at large. What remains unclear is the question of how to adapt agriculture towards sustainable development of the Alpine territory in a manner that takes sufficient account of local...
"Parts of the agricultural and forest areas in Tyrol have always been used communally, meaning their use had been open for all members of a community. Since the beginning of feudalism the sovereigns (nobility or clergy) were the owners of the land, but without having a serious impact on the exertion of user rights. Between the mid 19th century and...
Within the EU Austria is in the vanguard of the development of organic farming, with more than 10% of farms and land under organic management. Austria therefore provides an excellent example of what happens when organic production becomes an accepted mainstream mode of farming. This raises key questions about how agricultural policy actors and mark...
Contrary to many other European countries where direct marketing is still promoted as a new marketing channel with promising prospects, Austria is experiencing a decline of farmers direct marketing since 1988. Data from a household panel conducted regularly by the Austrian agricultural marketing board (AMA), comparing sales of 2001 up to 2006 show...
there is evidence that the decline of farms is even smaller in mountain regions than in more advantaged low land areas. The forms of agriculture, however, are expected to change. A growing polarisation between intensification of land use in relatively advantaged regions and extensifica - tion of marginal areas is anticipated. This contribution disc...
This book focuses on the contributions that organic farming offers to wider social change. It considers the role of all those involved in creating an organic sector. By providing a range of quantitative and qualitative analyses of organic 'farm-to-fork' networks, the book shows how the way organic farming is practiced holds the potential for change...
The ongoing changes from an agricultural to a rural society require from farmers to define their position new. Organic agriculture provides a value system which is well accepted by non-agricultural rural stakeholders and can therefore be a potential starting point for territorial sustainable development. In Austria the approach of eco-regions (Bior...
Zusammenfassung In Tirol sind mit Anfang 2000 über 700 Bauern aus der ÖPUL Maßnahme "biologische Wirtschaftsweise" ausgestiegen. Modelle der Arbeitsmotivation werden verwendet um die Ergebnisse zweier quan-titativer Studien dazu zu interpretieren. Die Motivation zur Teilnahme an Förderungsprogrammen im Umweltbereich kann als Indiz für die Motivatio...
This paper provides a closer look into the concept of eco-regions in Austria. The idea behind the eco-region is to merge organic farming and rural development into a territorial strategy. The actors proposing this are farmers as well as various stakeholders in regional development. A survey of current manifestations of eco-regions in Austria provid...
The risk assessment for new technologies, like the use of GMO in the agricultural production, becomes enormously complex. It cannot be limited to purely natural–scientific analysis. Socio-economic factors need to be considered as well. The active promotion of GMO-free areas is discussed as a means for an alternative path of development. Economicall...