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With this paper we aim to analyse how new entrepreneurial strategies are emerging in the field of agricultural cooperatives within the Region of Valencia (Spain), and how these strategies are characterised through the lens of the agrarian-based rural development model. Initial results show that these strategies have the potential to strengthen the role of cooperatives in rural economic development as they add value to specific territorial resources, create new ties with other local and nonlocal actors, and diversify the economy of rural areas. Nevertheless, the cooperative (collective) nature of these organisations can also create decision-making and investment problems, as they can divide the interests of their social base.

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Despite a longstanding literature on small farm-households, there is limited consideration of small farms' role in food and nutrition security (FNS) at territorial level. The purpose of this study is to provide insights about how small farms contribute to FNS at different territorial scales, by focusing on farmers' strategies and consequential FNS outcomes. Analysis is based on two years (2017-2019) of field work done with farmers and food system actors in SALSA reference regions culminating in a workshop done with research partners. We find that small farms deliver food and nutrition security and other socioeconomic and environmental outcomes for the farmhousehold, at local, regional and global levels. The regional level is shown to be critical for small farms, as it provides the scale at which their diversity is realised. Understanding this diversity is a goal for both research and for effective support mechanisms for small farm integration, and the multiple public and private functions small farms can deliver should be higher on the policy agenda.

This article endeavours to illuminate a largely underexplored area of family farming research; that of multiple‐household arrangements at the farm level. The investigation focused on an agricultural area of south‐east Spain where family‐based farms specialising in export‐oriented horticulture have undergone profound transformations over the last decades. In‐depth interviews were undertaken with 20 informants complemented by a face‐to‐face survey of 135 farmers. A closer look at the farm–family interplay unveiled the existence of holdings jointly managed by several kindred households. These farm governance structures are associated with a greater ability to cope with the managerial complexity of this agricultural system and provide a sound basis for farm expansion, thus emerging as an important element of farm differentiation. Micro‐level information allowed us to explore, for the first time, the variable morphology of the organisational forms that were often found to lie behind different legal arrangements and their role in the intergenerational transfer process. These findings have far‐reaching implications for research, since they take us considerably beyond the picture portrayed by conventional agricultural statistics and challenge many of the traditional assumptions and categories of the existing literature on family farming.