Zukunft Landwirtschaft 2030: Ein partizipativer Strategieprozess für die oberösterreichische Landwirtschaft

The multifunctional services of agriculture and forestry represent indispensable goods for society. To sustain them for the future, the government of Upper Austria initiated the strategic process “Future of Agriculture 2030”.

The mix of methods aimed at developing a desirable vision for farmers and foresters, along-side the required implementation steps, comprised 5 dialogue platforms, 2 world cafés and 9 focus group discussions. More than 1000 people were involved in the participative process, among them farmers, officials, media agents and civic representatives.

Qualitative content analysis of the material resulted in a characterization of the self-conception and the aspired development of participants, and in a compendium of missions, goals and measures. The strategy identifies four “partners” as crucial cooperative actors to implement the “Future of Agriculture 2030”. Besides farmers and foresters, those are the media, politicians, and consumers, whose mutual engagement was perceived to be decisive for the future development of agriculture by the participants.

The discussion shows that the missions, goals and measures are widely conforming with recent publications addressing the same topic. Concluding, the results inspire actors to communicate the missions to the mentioned partners of the “Future of Agriculture 2030”, and to assess, improve and put them into practice in mutual efforts.