‘Because they can do the work’: women farmers in sustainable agriculture in Pennsylvania,USA

Women throughout the West are up to three times more likely to be the operator of a farm in sustainable agricultural models than in productivist models. When women assume the role of farmer they transgress traditional gender identities on farms, which dictate that women are ‘farmwives’ and men are ‘farmers’; these gender identities intersect with spaces in the agricultural community to imply appropriate behavior for women as farmwives. This research demonstrates that the sustainable agriculture community provides spaces that promote and are compatible with women's identities as farmers. Feminist analyses of space and agriculture suggest that productivist agricultural models marginalize women from spaces of knowledge, while sustainable agriculture provides spaces of empowerment for women farmers. The fieldwork for this project involved a purposive survey, in‐depth interviews and participant observation with twenty women farmers over an 18‐month period in the sustainable agriculture community of Central Pennsylvania.     

Do rural development programmes promote gender equality on farms? The case of Slovenia

The necessity of gender equality in agriculture has been identified as a relevant political issue and incorporated into strategic documents and programmes of the EU. However, until now, not much has been examined about the actual contribution of these policy actions and programmes to the everyday life of farm women; there is a considerable gap in the data about women in farming across Europe, particularly for new member states. The article addresses this issue by focusing on the situation of gender equality on farms in Slovenia. Pertaining to two measures of The Rural Development Programme 2004–2006 – the Setting Up of Young Farmers and the Early Retirement of Farmers – the aim of the analysis is to compare the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of these two measures at family farms in terms of their development capacities and their inclination towards gender equality. Results based on the survey data ‘Generations and Gender Relations on Slovenian Farms 2007’ revealed the above-mentioned measures did indeed reach those family farms that showed better development capacities in terms of economic and demographic conditions. However, the farms did not show significant development in terms of gender equality as examined through division of work and decision-making on family farms. The rigidity in gender statuses and roles on family farms is explained and discussed through the issue of unequal access of women to farmland ownership and agricultural education, and through persistently weak institutional support to increase political participation and power for farm women.     

Counting them in,not out: Surveying Farm Women about Agricultural Leadership

This paper examines the efficacy of the survey method to investigate questions relating to women and agricultural leadership. I begin by reviewing the feminist critique of the survey using examples from the literature on farming women. I then describe two particular difficulties I encountered in surveying farm women about agricultural leadership in the Australian sugar industry. The first difficulty is the problem of constructing a sample of farm women using official data sources that is representative of the diversity of women in agriculture. The second difficulty is the impact that gendered agricultural identities may have on survey completion rates. The paper argues that, if we are to count farming women ‘in’, rather than ‘out’ when studying agricultural politics, we need to engage with methods which will be inclusive of the diversity of women in farming and which will also give consideration to the construction of gendered identities in agriculture.     

An emerging anti-reform green front? Farm interest groups fighting the ‘Agriculture 1980’ project, 1968–72

Ten years after the creation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the so-called Mansholt Plan was the first attempt at radically transforming European agriculture and modernising agricultural structures. Drawing upon archives of national and Community-level farm interest groups as well as records of the European Commission, this article analyses the reactions of farm interest groups to the Mansholt Plan and their strategies to oppose it between 1968 and 1972. It explores the resistance of farmers and their professional organisations to agricultural change. In particular, the article sheds new light on the reasons behind the spectacular failure of the plan and examines the long-term consequences of that failure for farm interest groups, the Commission and the member-states. It scrutinises initial reactions from farm organisations, examines the debates over the family farm (a core economic and cultural element of European agriculture), and discusses the national and transnational lobbying and protest strategies used by farmers to oppose the plan. The article contributes to a deeper understanding of the origins of transnational societal mobilisation in post-war Western Europe and highlights the impact of national and European interest groups in EC-level policy-making.     

Conditional Belonging: Farm Workers and the Cultural Politics of Recognition in Zimbabwe

This article examines Zimbabwean land politics and the study of rural interventions, including agrarian reform, more broadly, using the analytical framework of territorialized ‘modes of belonging’ and their ‘cultural politics of recognition’. Modes of belonging are the routinized discourses, social practices and institutional arrangements through which people make claims for resources and rights, the ways through which they become ‘incorporated’ in particular places. In these spatialized forms of power and authority, particular cultural politics of recognition operate; these are the cultural styles of interaction that become privileged as proper forms of decorum and morality informing dependencies and interdependencies. The author traces a hegemonic mode of belonging identified as ‘domestic government’, put in place on European farms in Zimbabwe's colonial period, and shows how it was shaped by particular political and economic conjunctures in the first twenty years of Independence after 1980. Domestic government provided a conditional belonging for farm workers in terms of claims to limited resources on commercial farms while positioning them in a way that made them marginal citizens in the nation at large. This is the context for the behaviour of land‐giving authorities which have actively discriminated against farm workers during the politicized and violent land redistribution processes that began in 2000. Most former farm workers are now seeking other forms of dependencies, typically more precarious and generating fewer resources and services than they had accessed on commercial farms, with their own particular cultural politics of recognition, often tied to demonstrating support to the ruling political party.     

Exploring Cambodian schoolgirls’ educational persistence: a community cultural wealth perspective

This study draws on a community cultural wealth framework to discuss how materially and socially disadvantaged girls in rural Cambodia negotiate barriers to attending secondary school. The study explored the schooling experiences of 43 secondary schoolgirls and 23 young women in higher education, using a variety of art-based activities and more traditional qualitative methods, including interviews and questionnaires. The girls’ and young women’s narratives about persisting in education revealed the agentic ways in which they drew on manifold resources in order to stay in school. We argue that strong relational ties, particularly friendships, foster Cambodian schoolgirls’ resistant identities, expanding their mobilities and possibilities for action in relation to educational persistence. We examine how supportive family members, resourceful friends, caring teachers, and knowledgeable staff from non-governmental organisations, enabled schoolgirls and young women to develop aspirations, resilience, and coping strategies that allowed them to overcome barriers to education. We consider girls’ educational persistence in relation to Yosso’s familial, social, navigational, aspirational, and resistant capitals, and identify altruistic capital as an additional resource that the girls and young women referred to when describing their schooling experiences.     

The integration of action research and traditional field research to provide sustainable solutions to maintaining periurban agriculture

Maintaining periurban agriculture and prime periurban farmland has become a leitmotiv in land use planning and management around many cities in North America and Western Europe since the 1960s. This article focuses on the changing perspectives associated with these planning and management initiatives as well as changing research approaches. Initially, periurban farmland was often seen by planners as a land reserve for urban development. Subsequently, concern was expressed about maintaining the prime agricultural land resource via farmland protection programmes, especially in North America in the 1960s and 1970s. Early research into periurban agriculture involved statistical analyses of farmland losses and changing agricultural production systems, and farmer interviews to identify pressures and opportunities facing periurban agriculture. Gradually, it became clear that maintaining farmland resources and farm activities required more than just ‘protecting’ them from urbanisation. Two types of initiatives developed: (1) the construction of agricultural development plans to ensure sustainable farm development, e.g. in Quebec since 2008, in France since the mid‐1970s and more recently in Wallonia (Belgium) in 2014; and (2) a change in the research approach to support periurban agricultural sustainability. While still using interviews with farmers and other actors, more important is the emergence of action research to provide support to farmers, their neighbours, elected officials and professionals in developing agricultural development plans, with the aim of achieving a better integration of periurban agriculture into the regional urban system. This paper develops this reasoning using research in Canada, France, and principally Belgium to illustrate the argument.     

The dynamics of family farming in North Huron County, Ontario. Part II. Farm–community interactions

In Canada and elsewhere, there is a growing belief that farming and rural communities have become effectively disconnected from one another. While attention to recent media reporting suggests that incidences of conflict are now as common as examples of support and collaboration, it is suggested that many examples of complementarity remain. These evolving relationships may, however, be linked to the nature of specific farm development trajectories. Such possibilities warrant empirical examination, with attention to known diversity in the family farm sector. This paper reports on an empirical investigation of farm and community linkages in North Huron County, Ontario. The paper builds upon a recent investigation of change in family farming in this region and seeks to document the ways in which local farmers continue to look to their rural communities for support of various kinds. Data are drawn from a survey of farmers in Ashfield and Colborne Townships in 1999. The research explores community linkages around three dominant themes: participation in organisations, purchasing and perceptions and experiences of community support for farming. The findings indicate the persistence of strong linkages between farms and local communities in the study region but point to a potential tendency for disconnection between farms pursuing aggressive expansion and local community organisations and businesses. There is some evidence that jobs and a variety of farm household considerations may form key linkage points between the two sectors, with the importance of these mediated by farm business trajectories and the family life course.     

Estonian family farms in transition: a study of intangible assets and gender issues in generational succession

This paper, based on interviews, highlights intangible assets in the intergenerational transfer of farms in two Estonian municipalities from a long-term and gender perspective. The study stretches from the interwar period in the twentieth century up to the present. It has been shown that emotional bonds to the land are generally strong in Estonia. This paper aims to highlight how such bonds and feelings may influence decisions on generational succession. The results of the study indicate that family farming and land transfer have had a significant and persistent role in Estonian society, even during the Soviet period under its collectivised system of agriculture. Transfers of intangible assets were important during Soviet rule, for example, the transfer of knowledge about the pre-Soviet property and the value and importance of the farmhouse. Today, family farming is gradually declining in importance, but older traditions of farm and farmhouse transfer can still be found, such as early decisions on who is to be the successor. This is evident among active farmers but also among former farmers with strong emotional bonds to the land. Traditional gender roles tend towards men’s knowledge still generally being more highly valued in the decision about who is to be the successor to the family land.     

资本主义还是后封建主义——论近代英国租佃农场制的性质

把英国19世纪的租地农场视为资本主义农场,认为租地农场主和工厂主一样是资本家,进而认为19世纪英国的农业是典型的资本主义农业,这一观点是马克思在《资本论》中提出的。它成为迄今我国史学界对英国农业史的一个基本认识。这种认识有违学界对经济制度的分析。从农业史来看,租佃农场不仅在英国近代存在过,在英国封建社会也长期存在。租佃制是各国封建社会常见的农业经济组织形式。英国19世纪的大土地经营不是直接雇佣劳动者耕作,而是分级出租。相当一部分租地农场面积不大,属于家庭农场,不使用或只是部分使用雇佣劳动力生产。一些地区庄园制仍然残存,通过租佃制持有土地的公簿持有农还受到封建领有制残余的束缚。因此,19世纪英国的租佃农场制夹杂着封建残余。19世纪英国农业的性质是资本主义与后封建主义的混合。     

A critical physical geography of no-till agriculture: Linking degraded environmental quality to conservation policies in an Oregon watershed

A variety of agricultural conservation trends have gained and lost favour throughout the years, with farm bills in the United States often influencing which conservation practices are implemented. This paper explores the consequences of a set of conservation techniques loosely defined as “no-till agriculture,” focusing on their implementation and adoption since 1985, at which point such approaches began to be explicitly encouraged under US Farm Bill soil conservation mandates. We begin by noting a core contradiction that has characterized these approaches in the Fifteenmile Watershed of Wasco County, Oregon, where despite high rates of farmer enrollment in no-till programs, both no-till agriculture and sustained tillage have led to the increased use of herbicides and sustained sediment runoff. Using a critical physical geography framework that integrates intensive physical field data collection, spatial analysis, social surveys, and interviews, we address the biophysical and social factors collectively driving changes in herbicide use and variable erosion estimates. We draw particular attention to how farm bill support for no-till has enrolled farmers in a vaguely defined and underregulated conservation practice that may ultimately undermine environmental quality.     

The landscapes of professional farms in mid‐sized cities,France

In this paper, we provide a spatial analysis of agriculture in three mid‐sized French cities, with a particular focus on professional farms. The existence of important agricultural spaces inside the cities is confirmed. We reveal the persistence of a field‐based, market‐oriented agriculture in French mid‐sized cities, often ignored in studies on urban agriculture, and usually made invisible. Our results highlight the farms' diversity, as well as a diversity of farmers' viewpoints on the relations between urban and agricultural places. We emphasise the importance of three main determinants in the observed dynamics: the cities' geographies; the impact on farmers of land speculation and urbanisation; and the implementation of resistance and adaptation processes by some farmers. These results are discussed in relation to the literature on urban and peri‐urban agriculture.     

Modeling the state of agritourism in the Malopolska region of Poland

ABSTRACT

The Malopolska region of Poland is highly representative of the current state of agritourism in Poland. The level of agritourism services in this region is very high relative to the national average, the result of environmental and cultural values being incorporated into social and economic development practices. Based on evidence from 1259 agritourism-oriented farms collected from municipal and regional government bureaus, web-published data, and survey data from 575 farm owners in the Malopolska, this paper analyzes the spatial distribution of such farms and the relationship between agritourism and ‘regular’ rural tourism. The Malopolska Voivodeship is strongly diversified in terms of agritourism development. The largest number of agritourism farms is in mountain, piedmont, and upland areas. Research has shown that agritourism is pursued by farmers who own small farms and produce food only for their own use. However, 60% of agritourism farms were found not to engage in any agricultural production. The research also identified basic tendencies of agritourism development in the region. The following basic trends were observed – a shift from agritourism to rural tourism, an increase in the number of agritourist farms offering 10 or more beds, and an expanded service offering – yielding a targeted offering for a specific customer and an increase in the quality of services. This indicates that agritourism owners engaging in this form of business are investing to create more usable space for tourists. The authors’ findings and conclusions also cover the concept of a functional model of agritourism in the Malopolska region. This model shows the relationship between environmental value and the nature of agricultural production and type of tourism in rural areas as well as the diversity of tourist offerings. The model also shows the transition from agriculture and its close relative, agritourism, to regular tourism in rural areas.     

A past and a future for diversification on farms? Some evidence from large-scale,commercial farms in South East England

Diversification has been identified as a common response to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s and to the changing ethos of agricultural policy in the closing decade of the twentieth century. In particular, farmers operating large-scale farms have been prominent in adopting this approach, just as they were innovative across a range of farming practices in the expansion and modernisation of their agricultural production in earlier decades. Can we identify serial diversifiers within this sector of the farming community, who are disposed to react in an entrepreneurial fashion to the changing fortunes of agriculture? The paper draws on results from a survey of large-scale commercial farmers in South East England and, by examining the sequence in which various forms of diversification were adopted, identifies a temporal pattern as farmers responded to the fluctuating fortunes of the agricultural industry over the past thirty years. But has the potential for diversification been exhausted? The paper also considers future prospects for diversification within the large-scale, commercially oriented sector of the agricultural industry.     

Ancient Maya Agricultural Installations and the Development of Intensive Agriculture in NW Belize

Abstract

Archaeological study of the spatial arrangement of agricultural features such as terraces and berms yields insight into the scale, mode, and tempo of farm production and the social organization of farming communities. Data from five regions of the Maya lowlands where such features have been extensively documented demonstrate the range of strategies employed by the ancient Maya to organize agricultural production. In some previously studied regions of the lowlands, spatial patterns suggest centralized management of farmland by state institutions, while in others a smallholder strategy seems evident. In the Río Bravo region of NW Belize, the organization of agricultural labor centered neither on the state nor on the individual farm family, but on the farm community. Moreover, the incremental conversion of open lands to terraced agricultural fields was part of a long-term interactive sequence of environmental change and human response over centuries of occupation. This sequence demonstrates that the ancient Maya not only adapted to a degraded environment but used it to their advantage, developing new technologies that were successful for several centuries prior to their ultimate failure. The agricultural history of the lowland Maya demonstrates that indigenous systems of resource management in fragile environments such as the tropics were not always deleterious. The innovations and successful adaptations of ancient farmers should also be recognized.     

The Writing on the Wall: The Concealed Communities of the East Yorkshire Horselads

This paper examines the graffiti found within late 19th and early 20th century farm buildings in the Wolds of East Yorkshire. It suggests that the graffiti were created by a group of young men at the bottom of the social hierarchy—the horselads—and was one of the ways in which they constructed a distinctive sense of communal identity, at a particular stage in their lives. Whilst it tells us much about changing agricultural regimes and social structures, it also informs us about experiences and attitudes often hidden from official histories and biographies. In this way, the graffiti are argued to inform our understanding, not only of a concealed community, but also about their hidden history.     

Small Towns and Agriculture: Understanding the Spatial Pattern of Farm Linkages

Agricultural policy and farm lobby groups often stress the role of farm production in sustaining local economies. This paper considers the spatial pattern of upstream and downstream agricultural transactions of farms in North East Scotland and, in particular, the extent to which they take place within the locality of the farm holding. Three alternative definitions of “local” are considered: a distance-based measure; a measure which takes into account the location of the farm in relation to the nearest town; and a measure which takes into account the location of agribusinesses, defining a transaction as local if the farmer buys from (sells to) the nearest available input supplier (output purchaser). The results highlight the importance of allowing for context when explaining farmer purchasing and sales decisions. They also reveal a highly complex pattern of production-related linkages in the region, with many farmers choosing to bypass their most proximate agribusinesses. Certain towns are found to dominate agriculture-related transactions in the region, reflecting the spatial concentration of upstream and downstream agribusinesses. The findings provide new insights into theoretical debates on the role of small towns in the urban system and the changing importance of geographical distance in determining business transactions.     

FEMALE FARMERS IN CANADA AND THE GENDER RELATIONS OF A RESTRUCTURING AGRICULTURAL SYSTEM*

Most authors who have studied family farming would agree that the role of women in agricultural production has been largely invisible. As the process of agricultural restructuring continues, the contributions made by farm women to the farming enterprise have gained greater prominence, but there are still specific groups of farming women who have been relatively under-studied. The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding of the characteristics and occupational experiences of Canadian female farm operators, who represent a non-traditional role for women in agricultural production. As background, the paper provides a brief overview of female farm operators and their farms, using data from the 1971, 1981, and 1986 censuses of Agriculture and Population. However, the research goes beyond the census data to examine the socially constructed realities of daily life for female farmers, using interviews with a sample of Ontario female farm operators. In particular, the contexts prompting women's entrance to this occupation are examined, as are the reasons for entrance. Furthermore, mechanisms by which the traditional gender relations of farming are maintained and reproduced are identified. Central to this is the constraint of women's access to key agricultural resources through issues related to occupational inheritance, the perceived legitimacy of women in this non-traditional role, and the ongoing processes of agrarian myth making. La plupart des auteurs qui ont étudié les fermes familiales s'accorderaient à dire que le rôle de la femme dans la production agricole a été largement passé sous silence. Avec ?on; évolution de la restructuration agricole, la contribution des femmes aux entreprises agricoles a été mise en relief. Toutefois, certains groupes spécifiques de femmes dans la production agricole sont peu eatudieas. ?on; objet de la presénte étude est ?on; améliorer notre compréhension des caractéristiques et de ?on; experience de travail des agricultrices canadiennes. Ces agricultrices tiennent un rôle non traditionnel pour des femmes impliquées dans la production agricole. De plus, la recherche fait une revue des données recueillies lors des recensements dagriculture et popula- tion en 1971, 1987 et 1986 sur les agricultrices et leurs fermes. ?on; étude va au-delà des données statistiques. Des interviews, dont une partie porte sur des agricultrices ontariennes, sont utilisées afin ?on; examiner les réalités sociales de ?on; activité quotidienne des agricultrices. Plus particulièrement, les contextes et les raisons poussant les agricultrices à choisir cette occupation sont etudiés. Les mécanismes qui engendrent et maintiennent la sociosexuation traditionnelle sont identifyées. La difficulté?on; accés des agricultrices aux ressources agricoles clés est un aspect central déterminé par la tradition farniliale, la perception de la légitimité des femmes dans cette occupation non traditionnelle, et les processus de con- struction des mythes agraires.     

Bringing the ‘invisible farmer’ into sharper focus: gender relations and agricultural practices in the Peak District (UK)

Women's farm work and the gendered nature of the farm space and farm practices have been important intersecting themes within feminist enquiry over the last 30 years. Much research has tended to underplay the wider evolution of these gender relations – leaving under-explored the longer-term formation and contestation of the gendered activities, spaces and identities observed in the present. This article draws on research on 64 farms in the Peak District (UK) to take a wider temporal view of farm gender relations. Utilising a farm life history approach the article considers three key moments within farming histories to explore the active role(s) played by women in shaping farms and farming practices. In doing so the article adds complexity and nuance to understandings of both processes, such as the ‘masculinisation’ of agriculture, and to the gendered geographies of the farm space.     

Consider the daughters,they are important to family farms and rural communities too: family-farm succession

Over the last 25 years, researchers have engaged extensively with members of farming families on issues of farm succession. Farmers, their spouses, sons of farmers and daughters-in-law who move into the farming family have been the focus of much of this research. Daughters of farmers (hereafter daughters), except in the unusual cases of being inheritors or successors to the farm enterprise, are for the most part ignored as subjects who may have something to contribute to sociological understanding and theory of farm succession and practice, and also of rural population decline. This article presents the results of a qualitative pilot research project undertaken in 2012 in the Western District of Victoria, Australia, to explore daughters’ perceptions of their families’ decisions about and management of intergenerational family-farm transfer. The results show that many daughters have a keen interest in farming, have developed farm skills and would consider the occupation of farming if given the opportunity. However, daughters are commonly overlooked when it comes to decisions about family-farm succession and/or inheritance; hence, indicating patriarchy remains strongly influential in determining family-farm succession. This article provides a different perspective from previous discussions of the dynamics within farming families and farming communities, and it contributes to wider discussion of changes in and sustainability of rural society. It recommends further research on rural social issues attributable to patrilineal intergenerational farm transfer.