Social farms: an implement for keeping social, economic, and environmental cohesion in rural areas in the Czech Republic
Abstrakt
The discourse on Social Farming, or other equivalents such as "Social Agriculture", "Green Care Farming", "Farming Therapy" usually refers to social work and social integration, or more widely to human wellbeing. In this content, all activities of interaction with animals and plants are used in farm surroundings to increase the quality of life of people who have health and intellectual disabilities or are at a risk of social exclusion.
This approach works on the assumption that natural elements have restorative effects on human beings and are generally explained by theories from the world of psychology. Quite a different perspective on the same Social Farming concept is offered by the agrarian sector and its new grounds for multifunctional agriculture (MFA) and sustainability in rural areas.
This contribution presents an alternative point of view on Social Farming, that of the third sector and social and solidarity entrepreneurship. Social enterprises are organizations or firms that successfully answer the practical and actual needs of present society in approval of entrepreneurial approaches and specific type of governance.
Simultaneously and in accordance with heterodox economical thought represented by Karl Polanyi, they do not focus on the economic growth, but it presents rather economical sustainable perspective. Social enterprise is thus characterized by a continuous activity producing goods and/or selling services, a high degree of autonomy toward a public sphere, a significant level of economic risk, an explicit aim to benefit the community, a limited profit distribution, and a participatory governance of social enterprise, which involves various parties affected by the activity.