Politics for rural development are prepared insufficiently for global shocks like climate change, ageing population and migration. With the concept of multifunctionality EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) pursues an approach to solve these problems. As a political and economic concept multifunctionality aims to integrate the priorities of the CAP: competitiveness and sustainability.
Therefore multifunctionality focuses a broader basis for rural development by creating new perspectives and more income opportunities than just focusing on agriculture and food production.
We assume that sustainable rural development needs an understanding of sustainable economy which preserves and regenerates society´s ecological and social functions. This assumption leads us to the question which understandings of economy are parts of the CAP and its national implementations and
how these understandings are related to sustainable development.
In our paper we will present the results of a discourse analysis of main political documents of the CAP and its implementations in Germany and Poland. We will work out the persistence of a neo-liberal economy with its primary orientation towards competitiveness as an immanent element. We will demonstrate different aspects of this neo-liberal economy (e. g. growth, innovation and efficiency) and
illustrate contradictions and conflicts of interests regarding the aim of sustainable development.
Finally we ask which modes of economy are needed to shape multifunctionality in a sustainable way. The study is conducted in the research project “PoNa – Shaping nature: Policy, Politics and Polity. Rural development and agricultural biotechnology between criticism and vision“ which focuses on the question how nature and the various relationships between nature and society are shaped by politics.

organisiert durch ESRS, Vortrag gemeinsam mit Tanja Mölders und Annemarie Burandt