Towards Sustainable Rural Regions in Europe : Exploring Inter-Relationships Between Rural Policies, Farming, Environment, Demographics, Regional Economies and Quality of Life Using System Dynamics

This book presents the methodology and results of a three-year, eleven-country science-to-policy research project - Toward a Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development - undertaken between 2005 and 2008 and financed under the European Union's Sixth Framework program. It deals with an important contemporary policy issue: how best to ensure that an agriculturally-based policy can contribute to the development of rural regions. It tackles this problem in a number of different but complementary ways, primarily by the development of a unique and innovative dynamic systems model, POMMARD (a Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development).