Holly Barcus is a DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography at Macalester College (USA). Her interests reside at the intersection of migration, ethnicity, and rural peripheries. For the past 15 years she has been working in western Mongolia amongst the Kazakh population considering questions of identity, environment, and changing migration trajectories. She holds positions on the editorial board for the Journal of Rural Studies and as a co-chair of the International Geographical Union's Commission on the Sustainability of Rural Systems (IGU-CSRS). Roy Jones is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, where he has worked since moving to Australia in 1970. He is an historical geographer with particular interest in the areas of rural and regional change. In 2013, he was awarded a Distinguished Fellowship of the Institute of Australian Geographers.Professor Serge Schmitz teaches rural geography, tourism strategy, regional development, and landscape planning at the University of Liège (Belgium) and leads the Laboratory for the Analysis of Places, Landscapes and European countryside (Laplec), since 2007. Early work focused on land consolidations, natural parks, and landscape analyses. Today, his research focuses on multifunctional countryside, in Wallonia and around the world, with a special interest for heritage landscapes, rural tourism, and ways of dwelling.

• 1.Introduction. Part I: Agricultural and Land Use Transitions. 2.Agribusiness Towns, Globalization and Development in Rural Australia and Brazil. 3.A Change in the Role of Women in the Rural Area of Southeastern Anatolia, Turkey. 4.Agricultural Transition in Rural China: Intersections of the Global, National and Local. 5.A Checkered Pathway to Prosperity: The Institutional Challenges of Smallholder Tobacco Production in Zimbabwe. Part II: Demographic Diversity. 6.The Changing Rural Periphery: Contested Landscape, Agricultural Preservation, and New Rural Residents in Dakota County, Minnesota, U.S.A. 7.Labour Immigration and Demographic Transformation: Lithuanian and Polish Nationals in Rural Ireland. 8.Shaping Public Spaces in Rural Areas: Lessons from Villages in the Gmina of Krobia, Poland. 9.Mother’s Little Helper: A Feminist Political Ecology of West Africa’s Herbicide Revolution. Part III: Rural Innovations and Urban-Rural Partnerships. 10.Towards a Strategic Model for Sustainable Agriculture in Mediterranean Countries: A Case Study of the Cooperativa Hortec (Catalonia, Spain). 11.Rural Innovation and the Valorization of Local Resources in the High Atlas of Marrakesh. 12.Does an Agricultural Products’ Certification System Reorganize Vegetable Farmers? A Case of the VietGAP Program in Lam Dong Province, Vietnam. 13.Relocalizing Food Systems for Everyone, Everywhere? Reflections on Walloon Initiatives (Belgium). 14.Conclusion