This article investigates the roles that locally produced, processed and marketed food (Local Food System) play in rural tourism and local socio-economic development. It is the first account of a 3 years’ research project (LO-KÁLI) exploring a successful Hungarian rural tourism destination, investigating both the demand side (what attracts tourists to pay for premium products/services); and the supply side (what attitudes, norms, values keep producers in their business). We contrast the externally perceived image (‘genius loci’) of the region (‘Hungarian Provence’, together with its cultural landscape, gastronomy, and social and environmental sustainability) with the impacts of the current development process on the environment and the general wellbeing of the local economy and society in reality. This article presents some of the theories and the analytical framework underpinning our project, alongside preliminary results on how the elements contributing to tourist attraction are perceived by locals and by visitors to the region.

In recent years, social innovation has been gaining more attention, not only in the scholarly literature and in public discourse but in rural development practice as well. An important reason for this is the greater involvement of civil society in this form of innovation. In this paper, building on definitions of social innovation found in the literature, we focus on the actual processes of social innovation in rural Hungary. The hypothesis behind our research was that a better understanding of how social innovation takes place in practice could increase its presence and efficiency in rural development. To explore these issues, we analysed four different cases of social innovation situated in rural Hungary. Our research shows that, despite common patterns, social innovation is highly dependent on its actual context and on the individual, the agentic engine, who initiates and carries out the innovation. For the capitalisation and the long-term sustainability of an innovative development project the institutionalisation of social networks gathering around it seems to be another crucial factor. Thus, creating an appropriate frame to drive the process all the way from the innovative idea through product development to institutionalisation, possibly in the form of a social enterprise, can be considered...

This paper presents a comparative perspective on Europeanisation of rural policies in Poland and Hungary. We focus on developments in these two countries in the last decade and situate them in a broader European Union (EU) narrative. This exercise shows that Europeanisation in rural development has been mostly a one-way process of transferring the EU-15 policy models into the post-socialist realm. The policy system has lacked contextual sensitivity and recognition of the significant differences in political and institutional cultures both within the Central and Eastern European countries and between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ EU Member States. The results are low effectiveness of development aid, coupled with the lack of policy learning and the possibility for gradual improvements of the system. We look here especially at the delivery of LEADER and how its transformation from being an experimental bottom-up innovation into a mainstream delivery mechanism of rural policy has affected its transfer to Hungary and Poland. We conclude with some recommendations for improvements in rural policy delivery and with some research questions to encourage further research.

This paper explores and analyses the Hungarian institutional system for the creation and the transfer of knowledge in the field of agriculture and rural development. We consider the constitution and operation of the Agricultural Knowledge System (AKS) in Hungary, focussing on the formally organised aspects, and suggest that both the structure and content of the knowledge needed in the sector have significantly changed during the past decades. These changes, especially in relation to the sustainability of agriculture, pose significant challenges to traditional AKS institutions, which often have failed to change in line with the new requirements. Based on a literature review, interviews and a national stakeholder workshop, we offer an analysis of Hungarian AKS institutions, their co-ordination, co-operation and communication with each other and with Hungarian rurality, and of the arising issues and problems concerning the creation and the flow of knowledge needed for sustainable agriculture. We also briefly explore characteristics of emerging bottom-up structures, called LINSAS (learning and innovation networks for sustainable agriculture), and explore the significance of the findings in this article for the study of AKS in Europe. This article is based on preliminary results of the SOLINSA research project, supported by the European Union’s Seventh Framework...