Agricultural change and restructuring: recent evidence from a survey of agricultural households in England

Adjustment strategies revisited: Agricultural change in the Welsh Marches

“…First, it captures something of the complexity and inter-relatedness of farm business change. In so doing, it also goes some way to relieving Lobley and Potter's (2004) the case study evidence presented shows that reference to the number of elements adjusted cannot alone deliver a consistent conclusion. Herein lies one possibility to why as yet inaccurate predictions have been made about the imminent demise of the family farmstudies have paid insufficient attention to the intricacies of the structural-cultural interface of adjustment.…”

“…Just recently, as a range of articles in the Journal of Rural Studies would attest, there seems to be something of a revival in the general use of the term strategy to describe farm adjustment and particularly the 'survival' of family labour forms of farm business (Kinsella et al, 2000;Daskalopoulou and Petrou, 2002;Chaplin et al, 2004;Johnsen, 2004;Lobley and Potter, 2004;Meert et al, 2005). This seems to constitute a universal trend for describing agrarian change amongst farm businesses in developed market economies despite significant variations in the speed and extent of the political and economic drivers of that change, ranging from de-regulation in New Zealand through to (until 2003) conservative incrementalism in the European Union (EU).…”

“…For example, Morris and Potter (1995) developed an 'adoption spectrum' to summarise farmer behaviour towards agri-environmental schemes. Interestingly, 'spectral' thinking has now been applied by Lobley and Potter (2004) to identify 'dominant trajectories of change' and so achieve greater sensitivity in the exploration of the agricultural restructuring process.…”

“…An analysis using elements of adjustment therefore provides a timely, detailed assessment of the condition of farm businesses beyond general observations such as those relating to their disappearance, greater engagement with pluriactivity and continued shedding of labour. Whereas Lobley and Potter (2004) provide a broad sketch across a sample of farming situations in England, the evidence in this paper is drawn from detailed studies of two English counties in the Welsh Marches; Herefordshire and Shropshire. It is anticipated that, in this way, the true magnitude and complexity of change undertaken by family forms of farm business in this part of the UK will be revealed, adding to insights already gained from earlier qualitative work in Australia and New Zealand (Wilson, 1994;Argent, 1995;Smith and Saunders, 1995;Johnsen, 1999).…”

Farming and tourism enterprise: Experiential authenticity in the diversification of independent small-scale family farming

“…Such individuals use their new businesses in order to support, and to try to maintain, their traditional farming activities. They are often labelled as "pluriactive farmers" (Burton, 2004;Carter, 1998;Lobley & Potter, 2004). Modification to the farm may take the form of a separation of the tourism and farming activities and so the experiential authenticity (for the farmers at least) of the farm can be retained while the tourism attraction is there because they seek to earn the income necessary to support the farm.…”