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Societal expectations from rural lands have traditionally been focussed on the production of food andfibre. Yet the perception of rural areas is changing and they are now seen in many instances to becapable of delivering multiple functions or non-commodity outputs including land conservation andthe preservation of biodiversity, contributing to the sustainable management of renewable naturalresources and enhancing the socio-economic viability of many areas (OECD, 2001). The overallmultifunctionality is constrained or favoured by biophysical and socio-economic drivers. As thesetypes of drivers vary spatially and temporally, so does the functionality of the landscape andheterogeneous patterns emerge. Associated with multiple functions at a single location are a variety ofpressures which can manifest themselves as conflict between interacting land uses (Gimona and vander Horst, 2007; Willemen et al., 2010). One such conflict in rural zones is that between agriculturaluse and residential use.
