Sammendrag
Agricultural production patterns are a result of spatial features, which have natural as well as societal aspects. This study compares spatial configuration and policy of agriculture in three countries: Austria, New Zealand and Norway. The study analyses how the issue of spatial development is expressed in political documents on agriculture, reflected in societal arguments, goals and policy instruments. The main finding is that policy on agricultural spatial development is affected by the role the actual country (regime) ascribes to agriculture (societal basis). In New Zealand agriculture is expected to focus on efficient production of food for a world market (“productivism”), while an explicit policy on spatial distribution of agriculture is absent. However, we can observe more indirect ways of influencing spatial development of agriculture within the bioeconomy. In Norway and Austria the “societal mission” of agriculture is multifunctional: contributing to domestic food security and simultaneously to other ends such as rural settlement, farm income, environmental qualities and preservation of cultural landscapes. As a consequence, these two countries have explicit policies on spatial development and support specific measures for spatial development of agriculture. A difference though, is that in Norway, the policy is national, while in Austria the spatial dimension is strongly linked to a supra-national agricultural policy (CAP).
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