ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that identifying a successor prompts significant changes in farm management, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the succession effect. Based on a survey of Polish and Italian farmers and the use of count data regressions, we investigate whether the successor's gender and involvement in farm operations influence the succession effect. We find that the identification of a successor has a significant effect on all types of management practices. The identification of a female successor favours the adoption of innovation and diversification practices. Conversely, identifying a male successor favours integration practices. However, the effect emerges only when the successor is already involved in farm management, indicating that both certainty of succession and the successor's direct engagement are decisive. This evidence helps better outline the succession effect theory. To leverage the succession effect, policymakers could incentivise successors’ early involvement in farm management and make the existing post‐installation support for young farmers available prior to succession.

ABSTRACT This article contributes new insights into farming women's experiences of isolation and how they imagine and create socio‐spatial formations for affective connections in their socio‐cultural and material environments. We draw on in‐depth interviews with farming women and participatory co‐design research in a sparsely populated region of South Australia to explore gendered experience of isolation. We show that women experienced ‘the farm’ as generating disconnection from sites of community connection, family of origin and established social relationships, including their husbands. Opportunities for meaningful connection between women seeking engagement with creative and non‐human materiality were also limited. Women's narratives offered insights into the entanglements of intra‐action in which they experienced themeselves, the company of other rural women, the natural environments and creative practice. Our conceptualisation of isolation expands current policy to suggest that initiatives should attend to place‐based entanglements that farming women desire to ameliorate social isolation.

ABSTRACT Financial incentives go a long way in securing land manager participation in environmental programmes. They are nevertheless limited in their capacity to influence the quality of engagement with nature recovery actions. Drawing on responses from members of organisations active in nature conservation and restoration across four UK study sites—Devon and Cornwall, Peak District, East of England and the Scottish Highlands—we emphasise the importance of examining the conditions for high‐quality engagement in environmental programmes. We do so through a focus on land managers’ own relationships with the actions they take to recover nature, particularly the extent to which those actions are reified: treated as ends in themselves, rather than as means to the end (i.e., enhanced nature conservation and recovery). Using the concept of reification, we aim to show that the manner in which economic incentives are deployed in environmental programmes does not only influence participation but also the quality of land managers’ engagement in nature recovery. Reification therefore invites us to carefully consider how those incentives mediate the actions of land managers.

ABSTRACT Based on qualitative interviews with youth active in civic, political and social engagement in rural Sweden, this study explores rural young people's experiences of meaningful community engagement, the challenges they face and their connection to mobility processes. While the analysis draws on the full dataset, the paper draws heavily on the experiences of two respondents, Malin and Mohamed, whose narratives are used to illustrate and deepen the understanding of these themes. Using a Bourdieusian lens, particularly the concepts of habitus, capital, fields and illusio, the analysis shows that engagement becomes meaningful in relation to young people's sense of belonging to place, community and rural values. It also highlights how power structures, especially those related to age, gender and racialisation, shape young people's experiences of engagement. Ultimately, the article argues that engagement and mobility are not necessarily in conflict but may coexist within young people's life projects and aspirations.

ABSTRACT This article examines how agricultural rituals can serve as methodological tools to uncover migrant workers’ voices and facilitate dialogue in agro‐industrial regions under pressure. On the basis of 2 years of ethnographic fieldwork in Haspengouw, Belgium, and Westland, the Netherlands, the research combined participant observation in agricultural workplaces with the co‐creation of the exhibition Picking Fruit, Sowing Stories and the organisation of community dialogues. The article highlights how rituals can ground an engaged research positionality by creating spaces of encounter and unexpected, constructive conversations between otherwise disconnected communities. Analysis of both the process of co‐creation and the community dialogues suggests that creative methodologies and performance‐based frames such as rituals can help bridge social divides. At the same time, transformative research in this field requires critical reflexivity on researcher positionality, broader local mobilisation, political willingness and more inclusive co‐creation processes.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Forney, Bentia and Dwiartama's Everyday Agri-Environmental Governance takes a materialist, assemblage-driven approach to explore the local, micro-and practical underpinnings of agrienvironmental governance (AEG) in action.Drawing on their different international research, the collaborators use AEG case examples ranging from EU soy(a) production to Indonesian environmental management planning to Swiss integrated production (IP) schemes.By mobilizing local case examples, they highlight how assemblage approaches usefully help scholars think across scales and geographies to consider the way differing communities (assemblages) converge, interact and create friction in the process of governing agri-food.Describing how historic and contemporary AEG schemes' effectiveness hinges on complex interactions with a vast socio-material world.The authors' use assemblage (as rooted in the theoretical tradition of Deleuze and Guattari 1987) is, in my view, mobilized in a like spirit to Dewey's (1999) pragmatism: specifically as the authors use assemblage thinking to map multiple organs of planning in a way that creates space to see experimentation in AEG schemes and in the everyday making of governance.The resulting book offers a theoretically rich exploration of the interplay between the imaginaries of AEG schemes and the complex assemblages from which these schemes emerge and over which they govern.It has the capacity to usefully inform a broad range of scholarship in Rural Studies, but also any scholar at the intersection of environment, technology, society and/or policy as they deal with the complexities of a broad range of actors governed in our everyday lives.

ABSTRACTAs regards alternative agricultural practices today, it is worth noticing the increase in the use of animal traction (AT) in France. Yet, the reasons for this reappropriation remain unclear. The life paths and motivations of users are the focus of this article. The study is based on 33 qualitative interviews with French farmers. It uses Gasson's theoretical framework and a life course analysis. Findings show that farmers who have chosen AT first tend to question the agricultural model. They can be described as neo‐rurals motivated by their political opinions, a desire for greater autonomy and their passion for horses. These neo‐peasants have opted for animal‐drawn cultivation because they reject the main agricultural system and wish to create a new connection with nature. This study is also addressed to policymakers and people advocating more sustainable agricultural practices in general.