Exploring multifunctional agriculture. A review of conceptual approaches and prospects for an integrative transitional framework H. Renting a, * , W.A.H. Rossing b , J.C.J. Groot b , J.D. Van der Ploeg a , C. Laurent c , D. Perraud d , D.J. Stobbelaar e , M.K. Van Ittersum f a Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University, Hollandseweg 1, 6706 KN Wageningen, the Netherlands b Biological Farming Systems Group, Wageningen University, Marijkeweg 22, 6709 PG Wageningen, the Netherlands c National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA), Research Unit for Agrarian Systems and Development (SAD), 16 Rue Claude Bernard, 75231 Paris Cedex 5, France d National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA), Research Unit for Rural Economy and Sociology (ESR), 65 Boulevard de Brandebourg, 94205 Ivry-sur-Seine Cedex, France e Van Hall Larenstein, Wageningen University and Research Centre, P.O. Box 9001, 6880 GB Velp, the Netherlands f Plant Production Systems Group, Wageningen University, Haarweg 333, 6709 RZ Wageningen, the Netherlands article info Article history: Received 15 May 2008 Received in revised form 12 August 2008 Accepted 9 November 2008 Available online 3 January 2009 Keywords: Multifunctional agriculture Sustainability Farm household strategies Land-use change Governance Interdisciplinarity abstract In the last decade the multifunctional agriculture (MFA) concept has emerged as a key notion in scientific and policy debates on the future of agriculture and rural development. Broadly speaking, MFA refers to the fact that agricultural activity beyond its role of producing food and fibre may also have several other functions such as renewable natural resources management, landscape and biodiversity conservation and contribution to the socio-economic viability of rural areas. The use of the concept can be traced to a number of wider societal and political transformation processes, which have influenced scientific and policy approaches in different ways amongst countries and disciplines. This paper critically discusses various existing research approaches to MFA, both from natural and social sciences. To this aim different strands of literature are classified according to their focus on specific governance mechanisms and levels of analysis into four main categories of research approaches (market regulation, land-use approaches, actor-oriented and public regulation approaches). For each category an overview of the state-of-the-art of research is given and an assessment is made of its strengths and weaknesses. The review demonstrates that the multifunctionality concept has attracted a wealth of scientific contributions, which have considerably improved our understanding of key aspects of MFA. At the same time approaches in the four categories have remained fragmented and each has limitations to understand MFA in all its complexity due to inherent constraints of applied conceptualizations and associated disciplinary backgrounds. To go beyond these limitations, we contend, new meta-level frameworks of analysis are to be developed that enable a more integrated approach. The paper concludes by presenting the main lines of an integrative, transitional framework for the study of MFA, which analyses multifunctional agriculture against the background of wider societal change processes towards sustainability and identifies a number of key elements and research challenges for this. Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction After being addressed in the Agenda 21 documents of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 (UNCED, 1992), the multifunctional agricul- ture (MFA) concept has obtained an increasingly important role in scientific and policy debates on the future of agriculture and rural development. Broadly speaking, MFA refers to the fact that agri- cultural activity beyond its role of producing food and fibre may also have several other functions such as the management of renewable natural resources, landscape, conservation of biodiver- sity and contribution to the socio-economic viability of rural areas. However, the meaning attributed to multifunctionality in interna- tional debates is ambiguous, as various institutions have adopted the term with slightly different interpretations and in relation to different policy agendas. The use of the concept in scientific debates has probably been most clearly spurred by the work of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2001; 2003) whichdin reference to concerns over the legitimacy of policy support to agriculture and the liberalization of commodity marketsdadopted * Corresponding author. E-mail address: henk.renting@wur.nl (H. Renting). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman 0301-4797/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jenvman.2008.11.014 Journal of Environmental Management 90 (2009) S112–S123