Agricultural Adaptation to Real Regulation on the Urban Fringe: The Chicken Meat Industry's Response to Land‐use Conflict in the Western Port Region of Victoria,Australia

Research theorising the rural‐urban fringe has not focussed in detail on the regulatory system managing land‐use conflict, including disputes arising between agricultural enterprises and residential property owners. To explore local forms of regulation the need to identify relevant actors, their interrelationships and the way that they compete to influence decision‐makers is widely recognised in the literature. Moran et al.'s (1996) conceptualisation of ‘real regulation’, with its emphasis on lobbying by social actors and the (re)formulation of legislation, is identified as a theoretical perspective that can help to explain local forms of regulation. The understanding of patterns of regulation on the urban fringe requires a more detailed conceptualisation of non‐legislative forms of policy, and a greater appreciation of the different strategies adopted by farmers to influence government. This paper investigates how urban fringe agricultural industries have attempted to influence decision‐making within the development approval process. Evidence is presented from the Western Port region in the urban fringe of Melbourne, Victoria, where refusal for the construction of broiler sheds by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has resulted in the chicken meat industry adopting a more scientific siting strategy. It is concluded that, whilst this provides an example of agricultural adaptation and reinforces the importance of adopting a temporal dimension to investigate the land development process, the possibility that government will assess environmental harm differently in the future leaves urban fringe broiler farming in a precarious position.     

Human impacts on ancient shellfish: a 10,000 year record from San Miguel Island,California

We use measurements of more than 11,000 marine shells from 41 archaeological components to construct a 10,000 year record of human impacts on ancient mussel and abalone stocks on San Miguel Island, California. General reductions in the mean size of mussel and abalone shells gathered through time are attributed to growing human population and predation pressure. Based on comparison with historically documented changes in shellfish communities caused by the local extinction of sea otters in the 19th century, changes in mean shell size and the abundance of other shellfish species may have been facilitated by Native American predation on sea otters as early as 7500 years ago. Despite having measurable impacts on local ecosystems, Native Americans on San Miguel harvested huge quantities of shellfish throughout the Holocene. Such long-term harvests appear to have been sustained by an early emphasis on fishing at lower trophic levels, by periodically shifting village locations, and by intensifying the use of finfish and sea mammals through time. This pattern of “fishing up the food web” contrasts with many modern fisheries, suggesting that the study of ancient fisheries can help us better manage our own endangered coastal ecosystems.     

The effect of community on migration: three Minnesota townships 1885–1905

For a long time European immigrant settlements were considered more community-oriented than those of Old Americans. In recent years, however, historians have asserted that there was little difference in observable behaviour between immigrants and Old Americans. Using geographical mobility as one type of observable behaviour, this revision was tested in three Minnesota townships of largely immigrant populations between 1885 and 1905. The unit of analysis was the community defined by membership in the parish church and consisted of populations with largely common origins in Europe. The economic functions of land giving, land taking and labour supply occurred largely within the community as did such social functions as socialization of youth, marriage and care for the aged. The community thus provided pecuniary as well as non-pecuniary utilities that allowed for a stabilization of the lives of the immigrants. Probably because of these utilities, the mobility rates of community members, independent of age or wealth, were noticeably lower than those who are termed non-community members. Due to a combination of weakening ties among second generation community members and worsening economic conditions in the area, community mobility increased in the second decade of analysis. Nevertheless, the mobility rates of the community remained lower than those not in a community suggesting that the revisionist position needs careful re-evaluation.