Spectrum of Social Innovation Activities in Austrian Rural Areas

The Horizon 2020 project SIMRA (running from 2016-2020) seeks to advance understanding of social innovation and innovative governance in agriculture, forestry and rural development. Its objective is to show how to boost them, particularly in marginalised rural areas across Europe. It encompasses the complexities and various dimensions and understanding of how to support enhanced governance and social innovation, addressing specificities and priorities of social needs and new social relationships and collaborations. A first step in the project is to collect examples of innovative activities in rural regions and to show their wide range and diverse characteristics.

In the recent years numerous innovative activities in rural regions developed Austria. They differ from each other with regard to their shaping of profit orientation, social aspects and objectives, public participation and local or regional, direct or indirect impacts.

Community Supported Agriculture usually is a partnership between a farm holding and a group of consumers (“harvest-sharers“).  The consumers cover the expenses of food production and (to a varying degree) of investments and get a share of the harvest in free periodic takeouts. In this way, farmers may face lower marketing risks and costs and may benefit from an increased financial stability of their farm. In turn, CSA members are more actively involved in food production and are more aware of the production standards and quality of the food. Farmers and consumers share the risks, responsibilities and rewards of farming (https://communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/; http://laszlo-zsolnai.net/content/collaborative-enterprise-creating-values-sustainable-world).

Crowd funding or voucher based projects are often designed as marketing instruments but have also  indirect effects as there are the reduction of risks for the entrepreneurs, raising of customer loyalty and awareness of specific food production and mutual understanding among customers and producers.

Food cooperatives are self-organised cooperations of persons and households who get their food (in most cases organic) directly from local farm enterprises. They attach greatest value to the quality and sovereignty of food, sustainable production and avoid intermediate trade and negative environmental effects caused by long distance transports.

 Land management projects can be designed to maintain cultural landscapes which often are esteemed from public but their maintenance has no sufficient value on the market for long term preservation. People who volunteer for work for example to maintain alpine meadows or infrastructure gain in experience of common work in the countryside, counterbalance office-work and get aware of relations of landscape and food production.

Innovation platforms aim at connecting individuals with different backgrounds and interests to share and further develop solutions to common problems and to achieve common goals. Innovation platforms may address challenges and opportunities at different levels: at a territorial level or throughout a value chain. Regional management agencies, for instance, may link with and involve broad sections of the population by providing and hosting an online innovation platform and accompanying participatory events.

 (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/57a08a2840f0b652dd0005bc/Brief1.pdf)

Green Care projects combine the social, agricultural, health and education sectors and tries to strengthen the general well-being and the health of people. Green Care includes all activities that use agricultural resources, both from plants and animals, in order to promote (or to generate) therapy, rehabilitation, social inclusion, education and social services in rural areas. It is related to farm activities where groups of people can stay and work together with family farmers and social practitioners. In Austria, Green Care is relatively new and therefore offers a lot of opportunities.