This article pursues an innovative dimension of social entrepreneurship in the agricultural sector that keeps rural areas viable, so-called social farming. Social entrepreneurship appears as an essential driver in the European economy and it heads toward new opportunities mainly through its impact on social integration, economic sustainability, and fair society. Social farming and social farms can successfully respond to the challenge of social exclusion and lack of social services provision and other opportunities in rural areas through alternative therapeutic activities, sheltered working places or integrative educational activities in a farm environment. From this perspective, a social farm should correspond to the definition of a social enterprise. By introducing the basic frames of social entrepreneurship and social farming in general and in the Czech Republic, and by concentrating on fifteen Czech social farms, this paper presents an insight into this retro-innovative practice of social integration systems in the countryside. It mainly answers the question, whether social farming complies fully with social entrepreneurship stream, and it explores the role of the social farm in rural development by using semi-structured and in-depth interviews.

Historically, agriculture always fulfilled a social function as well. However, its intensification taking place in the 20th century brought about a number of changes accompanied by putting this and a number of other non-productive functions in the shade. However, recent years have seen the establishment of agricultural directions that contribute to their renewal. This also includes social farming. Social farming is the most complex component of the concept “green care”. In its current form, it creates room for providing for the people who have hardly any chances on the labour market and for their involving in farming activities. While in a number of European countries this concept has been used for many years, in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe it has still been in the early stages and has not been formally defined in many countries yet. In the Czech Republic, the concept of social farming has been developed approximately since 2013, growing and gaining in importance continuously. The article introduces the concept of social farming and describes its current situation in the Czech Republic. The data were obtained through questionnaire surveys and directed interviews in the field. As part of the analysis of the structure of social farming in the Czech Republic, the selected set of thirty entities involved in social farming is described in terms of the structure of the farming production, the main target groups of clients and the funding sources.

Social farming (SF) has been developing dynamically in the Czech Republic in the last 10 years and enterprises are emerging and operating where the necessary conditions and environment are created for various people from target groups. The practice in the Czech Republic is to a large extent based on international practice and follows the basic outlines of the practice of mainly European countries. In these facilities, these persons often find employment or engage in various occupational therapy programmes in the provision of social services. Thus, in this analysis, we qualitatively focus on the identification of the basic factors why these farms come into existence and what are the main determining aspects for their functioning, which are based on the long-term experience of running a farm under the social farming concept. A guided qualitative interview method was chosen with respondents who have been operating in the country for a long time in the framework of the analysis, thus bringing in stimulating experiences that accompany them in their activities. The analysis is thus essentially a first experience in this field and raises a number of further questions that could be further deepened and refined, including in an international context.

This article aims to present social farming from the perspective of social work; it, therefore, explores the added value of agriculture. More specifically, it adapts the concept of empowerment to the conditions of working with participants with disabilities on social farms. In general, the concept of empowerment is described as the acquisition and use of skills to meet one's own needs and gain control over one's own life. Further, the empowerment of groups and communities is understood as gaining rights and straightening the system. It is a systematic method of work used with people with health or social disadvantage, fragile groups and communities. Using participant observation protocols from the stays on different social farms gathered within the project led in four European countries, the form, benefits, and limits of the concept of empowerment are investigated in this alternative agricultural environment. The paper summarises that the process of empowerment on social farms takes several forms at the individual level. Still, when it comes to the acquisition of power by a group or community in conjunction with participation, the use of the concept is limited.