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Keeping Matter in its Place: Pollution Regulation and the Reconfiguring of Farmers and Farming
Abstract
In this paper we examine the regulation of agricultural practice to reduce the risks of water pollution in England and Wales. We present case-study material concerning water pollution from farm livestock effluents and from agricultural pesticides, and focus on the ways in which farmers and farming practices are being reconfigured under the banner of a move towards a 'more sustainable agriculture'. Pollution policies can be seen as attempts not only to 'stabilise' nature in the rural environment, but also as a process of social ordering as farmers are recast as responsible environmental managers with newly instrumentalised self-governing properties.
... These findings emphasise, therefore, that, from a grassroots actors' perspective, the persistence of farmers' productivist identities has encouraged a conservative view towards policies perceived to be imposed by 'others' (e.g. politicians, planners, conservationists)especially those policies requiring substantial shifts in existing farm management practices and those with environmental components that may be perceived as 'threatening' to traditional pro-production farming roles (Ward et al., 1998;Curry and Winter, 2000). ...
... Further, research on farmers' environmental attitudes and decision-making also largely supports the notion of the persistence of productivist attitudes (e.g. Wilson, 1996;Fish et al., 2003), as does Ward et al.'s (1995Ward et al.'s ( , 1998 work on interactions between pollution officials and farmers, work investigating farmers' landuse decision-making processes (e.g. Ward and Lowe, 1994;Wilson, 1997c), and studies on farmers' reactions towards agricultural extension services and officials in policy implementation (e.g. Lowe et al., 1997). ...
... wildlife organisations, government grant bodies and extension services, or farmers in discussion groups with similar interests) would lead to an increase in the number of social contacts with other conservationists (e.g. Ward et al., 1998;Wilson, 2004), an increase in interactive (and eventually affective) commitment (Coughenour, 1995), and, subsequently, an increase in the salience of the 'conservationist' identity. Similarly, observations that farmers from non-agricultural backgrounds are more likely to pursue conservation-oriented or alternative farming practices (e.g. ...
Macro-scale changes to Western agricultural regimes have led to recent debates on the theoretical conceptualisation of agricultural change, particularly regarding the appropriateness of the productivist/post-productivist/multifunctionality (P/PP/MF) model. Within these debates concern has recently arisen as to whether the contemporary perspective, which derives largely from macro-level structural analyses (such as political economy), is compatible with the grassroots ‘agency’ perspective—i.e. whether our conceptualisations of agricultural change follow the Giddensian notion of structure/agency consistency. In this paper we contribute to this debate by investigating the extent to which farmers’ self-concepts and attitudes towards post-productivist approaches are compatible with the current structural changes in agriculture. By introducing the notion from social psychology of a complex self-structure comprised of multiple and hierarchically organised identities, and by investigating the structure of these identities in farmers’ idealised P/PP/MF selves, the study questions the idea that any transformation from productivism to post-productivism/multifunctionality will be in the form of a simple linear transition. Results from a survey of farmers in Bedfordshire (UK) and evidence from other studies throughout Europe and Western agricultural regimes demonstrate that—despite much talk of an increasing ‘conservationist’ component to farming—farmers’ self-concepts are still dominated by production-oriented identities. The study concludes that there is a temporal discordance between the macro- and micro-structural elements of transition implied in the P/PP/MF model, and that we are witnessing at most a partial macro-structural driven transition towards a post-productivist agricultural regime.
... Thus, motivations for participation in AESs can only be fully understood if the wider economic, social, and cultural frameworks within which European farmers operate are taken into account. Throughout this paper, therefore, we will link interpretations of farmers' AES participation motivations to the wider sociocultural context that is influencing farmers' decisionmaking in general (compare Ward, 1993;Ward and Munton, 1992;Ward et al, 1998). ...
... appreciated more by the public and may, therefore, also benefit the marketing of their products further down the line. Second, the results also suggest that farmers are acknowledging the environmental problems caused by farming (again mainly in northern EU member states), thereby echoing recent findings that highlight the gradual shift in farmers' perceptions of themselves as important (and potentially destructive) environmental actors (for example, Lobley and Potter, 1998;Ward, 1995;Ward and Lowe, 1994;Ward et al, 1998). ...
... Further, and as this study has highlighted, AES participation motivations have to be contextualised as part of a wider spectrum of constraints and opportunities confronting farm households in a rapidly changing rural Europe (for example, trade liberalisation through GATT, decoupling of agricultural support, etc). Thus, investigating in more depth economic (for example, dependency of farm on income), social (importance of successor), and cultural (different farm extension`cultures') factors in future research will help us better understand the wider sociocultural framework within which farmers reach decisions (Cloke and Goodwin, 1992;Marsden et al, 1993;Ward et al, 1998). More work is particularly needed with regard to understanding better the role and influence of the EU/national/regional institutional framework, and how this affects farmers' environmental decisionmaking in general, and motivations for AES participation in particular. ...
Based on a large transnational research project that involved questionnaires with 1000 farm households in nine EU countries and Switzerland, this paper investigates factors influencing farmers' participation in agri-environmental schemes (AESs). Analysis of motivations for AES participation highlights that complex patterns of AESs are in operation. Pronounced geographical differences in farmers' reactions towards schemes can be identified, with responses by farmers from northern member states often differing from those in Mediterranean countries, and with arable farmers often responding differently from grassland farmers. Yet, the study also highlights that much common ground exists and that conceptual frameworks for the understanding of farmers' participation in AESs developed in the United Kingdom can be successfully applied outside the British context. Common participation patterns include the importance of financial imperatives and 'goodness of fit', and the influence of similar sets of factors such as farm size, tenure, or farm type. The growing importance of conservation-oriented motivations for AES participation across Europe suggests the emergence of a 'new hypothesis' which highlights that the financial imperative for participation does not necessarily exclude an often equally important environmental concern. The paper concludes by indicating where current agri-environmental policy (AEP) may be failing adequately to address structural and socioeconomic characteristics of targeted farming populations, and by arguing that understanding participation decisionmaking is only the first step in an attempt to assess the 'effectiveness' of AEP. Further comparative research is needed to investigate in detail more complex indicators of scheme success, in particular what effects scheme participation has on farmers' incomes, farmers' environmental attitudes, and on the environmental quality of the countryside targeted by AESs.
... El desarrollo de prácticas agrarias respetuosas con el medio ambiente constituye un elemento esencial de la política agraria de los años noventa (Battershill, Gilg, 1997: 213). Su efectiva implantación, dado su carácter voluntario, depende del interés de los agricultores en participar o no participar de acuerdo a sus propios intereses instrumentales, valores y costumbres y, en consecuencia, pueden reordenar las prioridades establecidas en niveles de toma de decisión superior (Curtis, De Lacey, 1998;Ward et al, 1998;Murdoch, Ward, 1997;Ward et al, 1998). ...
... El desarrollo de prácticas agrarias respetuosas con el medio ambiente constituye un elemento esencial de la política agraria de los años noventa (Battershill, Gilg, 1997: 213). Su efectiva implantación, dado su carácter voluntario, depende del interés de los agricultores en participar o no participar de acuerdo a sus propios intereses instrumentales, valores y costumbres y, en consecuencia, pueden reordenar las prioridades establecidas en niveles de toma de decisión superior (Curtis, De Lacey, 1998;Ward et al, 1998;Murdoch, Ward, 1997;Ward et al, 1998). ...
La legislación agroambiental de la Unión Europea especifica que cada estado miembro puede determinar sus propias normas, definir estándares y designar áreas. Un resultado de esta flexibilidad es que cada Estado Miembro puede adaptar y completar la regulación básica. Ello ha producido que el modelo de implantación de las medidas agroambientales en cada país responda a intereses de distintos actores sociales. El desarrollo de la política agroambiental en España responde a las directrices de la UE y al juego de intereses de la CCAA. Con antelación a la regulación agroambiental, la experiencia española en normativa agroambiental prácticamente era inexistente. De las medidas de acompañamiento de la nueva PAC de 1992, los agroambientales son las últimas en verse introducidas en España. A nivel nacional el programa agroambiental nacional sólo utiliza dos de las siete medidas mencionadas en la regulación de la UE. Las otras cinco medidas de la regulación 2078/92 quedan recogidas en los programas regionales y son aplicadas en áreas geográficas específicas. En términos de énfasis vertical y horizontal, España queda a medio camino en el proceso de implantación de medidas agroambientales. El programa nacional toma carta de naturaleza en 1995. Pero las medidas regionales se ha desarrollado de forma desigual. Sólo seis de los 66 programas aprobados han sido desarrollados e implantados a finales de 1998. A nivel local la efectividad de las medidas regionales es reducida debido a factores relativos a la propia confección de los programas (falta de coordinación política, competencia financiera con otras medidas de la PAC) y debido a factores actitudinales (escepticismo de los agricultores y de la propia administración para su implantación).
... From this same empirical work, Ward et al. (1998) reported how dairy farmers tended to modify their practices to reduce water pollution in response to regulatory pressures, but in a rather "begrudging" (p1172) way partly because farmers perceived criticism as expression of a wider 'anti-farmer' attitude in society rather than valid comment on sources of pollution. Ward et al. suggested that farmers responded in an 'addon' and 'end-of-pipe' way rather than seriously engaging with the sources of pollution. ...
... Similarly, Ward et al. (1995;1207) reported that "the group felt that agricultural pollution was far less of a problem than industrial pollution and suspected that farmers were being more strictly regulated because they were 'easy targets'. This refusal to accept the 'pollution' framing for farming activities is not restricted to the dairy farms studied by Ward et al. (1998). Diffuse water pollution from agriculture, in particular, is often not visible and its impacts are also not visible. ...
Methane emissions from sheep and cattle production have gained increasing profile in the context of climate change. Policy and scientific research communities have suggested a number of technological approaches to mitigate these emissions. This paper uses the concept of co-production as an analytical framework to understand farmers’ evaluation of a 'good animal’. It examines how technology and sheep and beef cattle are co-produced in the context of concerns about the climate change impact of methane. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, this paper demonstrates that methane emissions are viewed as a natural and integral part of sheep and beef cattle by farmers, rather than as a pollutant. Sheep and beef cattle farmers in the UK are found to be an extremely heterogeneous group that need to be understood in their specific social, environmental and consumer contexts. Some are more amenable to appropriating methane reducing measures than others, but largely because animals are already co-constructed from the natural and the technical for reasons of increased production efficiency.
... Legislation may also provide some targets at which to aim. However, regulations are often resisted as barriers to innovation (Ward et al. 1998), better describing what is prohibited rather than what is allowed or encouraged. In addition, legislated targets frequently form the bare minimum for performance; not setting challenging objectives and so are more suited to the lower-achieving managers, not for encouraging the innovators. ...
... In short, self-reflection is crucial in allowing the paradigm shift that some farmers require before they can fully embrace the concepts involved in EMS development. Ward et al. (1998) refer to such paradigm shifts as 'alterations in interpretive frameworks' resulting from structural learning (where the original propositions held are altered and acted on to reflect learning arising from newly acquired information (see Argyris and Schon 1978). ...
Despite the availability of numerous 'sustainability indicators' (as defined by researchers and resource-management agency staff), many farmers do not routinely use these indicators for monitoring and measurement of their everyday farm management. Farmers' past experiences with such indicators have often been through their use by researchers (trying to evaluate effects of management or quantify resource condition changes) or other external bodies (usually regulatory agencies endeavouring to regulate environmental impacts). Such experiences have added little or nothing to on-farm management. Rather, farmers often rely on a diverse range of personally relevant indicators to assess the performance of their farm business. Such indicators may not be recognised by others as indicative of sustainability.
The process used in environmental management systems (EMS) implementation is predicated on the need for information to flow back to the manager to assist their management choices. In this way, the indicators of most use are those that the manager can determine and utilise. This paper describes the connection between environmental management systems, monitoring and indicators, and the importance of these linkages to the efficient and sustainable management of natural resources. It discusses a collaborative project between in New South Wales and Queensland grain farmers, and NSW Agriculture, to develop generic EMS guidelines based on the international standard for EMS, ISO 14001. While there are numerous recommended sustainability indicators, research with these farmers has found that it is more critical to determine which issues are of importance to the farmers and identify potential indicators they will utilise, rather than to recommend a prescribed suite of indicators. In some cases, these indicators may be of a larger-scale than just their property.
Different users of resource-management information will require different indicators. The use of the EMS process provides structure and guidance in determining which of the plethora of indicators might be applicable, while allowing farmers to maximise benefits in the market place or the community. Resource-management agencies and customers may require a different suite of indicators. The use of EMS assists in streamlining all these demands, while keeping the focus on the management approaches required to achieve the greatest benefit for the manager.
... Following Lefebvre, the Agri-Environmental Scheme is not only a way of regulating, but also reproducing space, aimed at changing the roles of farmers and farming by giving farmers money to make them change their farming practices by obliging them to make cultivating plans and to write down the amounts of fertilisers and pesticides they use, to join courses on environmental planning and monitoring, and by paying them for establishing riparian zones and management of special biotopes (see also Gray, 2000). Farmers are represented as responsible environmental managers when they follow the regulations of the Scheme (see also Ward et al., 1998). The Scheme and its monitoring mechanisms represent a spatial practice that Lefebvre (1991) calls domination of space. ...
... For him a real threat is that farming becomes unprofitable and farmers no longer care about the result—the quality of food they produce—but only farm with minimum inputs to get CAP or other support. Echoes of this view can be seen in the Finnish ''Code for good farming practices'' discussed earlier on pages 10 and 11 which confirms the views of Ward et al. (1998) that good farming practices are interpreted as tidy fields with high yields and no weeds and diseases. Farmers are in take-it or leave it situation: farming otherwise is deemed unprofitable. ...
Biodiversity has not only become one of the basic environmental policy objectives in both international and national political arenas but also an elementary part of the general discourse of global environmental change. Biodiversity has been claimed to give a new meaning to ‘nature’. Has it also changed the way countryside and agriculture are constructed in the context of agri-environmental policymaking?This paper explores how nature in the form of biodiversity and rurality are constructed in the context of Finnish agri-environmental policy-making and ‘biodiversity policies’. Lefebvre's (1991) theory of space is used as an analytical framework to show that rurality is produced in policy processes both as an image and as a concrete geo-social reality. Empirical results are based on interviews with members of Finnish networks in the domain of agricultural biodiversity (government officials, researchers and members of interest organisations and NGOs) and on analysis of policy documents. The key focus is on the outcomes of policy and the difficulties with scale the policymakers were facing when trying to integrate biodiversity into the Finnish Agri-Environmental Scheme.
... Moral visions are attached to the proper social ordering of the agro-environment; the 'polluter pays' principle assigns responsibility for disorderly run-off of pesticides and fertilisers [5]. Government promotes technical solutions to the overall agrochemical problem, while environmentalists criticise these remedies as unrealistic and as unable to halt the 'pesticide treadmill', given its systemic causes [6]. ...
... Indeed, fact-finding for risk knowledge became dependent upon value-laden accounts of harm, especially pollution. 6 ...
Through the European controversy over agricultural biotechnology, genetically modified (GM) crops have been evaluated for an increasingly wide range of potential effects. As the experimental phase has been extended into commercial practices, the terms for product approval have become more negotiable and contentious. To analyse the regulatory conflicts, this paper links three theoretical perspectives: issue-framing, agri-environmental discourses, and technological development as a real-world experiment.Agri-biotechnological risks have been framed by contending discourses, which attribute moral meanings to the agricultural environment. Agri-biotech proponents have emphasised eco-efficiency benefits, which can remedy past environmental damage, while critics have framed ‘uncontrollable risks’ in successively broader ways through ominous metaphors of environmental catastrophe. Regulatory authorities have translated those metaphors into measurable biophysical effects. They anticipate and design commercial use as a ‘real-world experiment’, by assigning greater moral-legal responsibility to agro-industrial operators who handle GM products.Expert-regulatory debate reflexively considers the social discipline necessary to prevent harm, now more broadly defined than before. Official procedures undergo tensions between predicting, testing and prescribing operator behaviour. In effect, GM crops have been kept continuously ‘on trial’.
... Moreover, according to the same authors, post-productivism is distinguished by a series of values linked to rural areas, including historical, scenic, and recreational value, as shown in Figure 1. Wilson (2001), while highlighting the lack of a clear definition of which activities can certainly be considered post-productive, nevertheless summarised the contributions of British rural sociologists, who include postproductivism non-intensive agricultural activity (Pretty, 1995;Potter, 1998), practices for the protection of compromised habitats (Mannion, 1995), and the partial replacement of physical inputs with technical knowledge (Winter, 1997;Ward et al., 1998). More importantly, agriculture loses its role as the central activity carried out in rural areas if it is framed solely as a set of practices aimed at the production of foodstuffs Ward, 1993). ...
This article discusses the evolutions that have taken place in agricultural and rural policy instruments since their first implementation in 1999. In particular, it will be underlined how the evolutions have been influenced by the concept of multifunctionality and the emergence of the new paradigm of rural development. Rural development represents an alternative to the agro-industrial and post-productivist paradigms. The consequence is the introduction of a territorial and multi-sectoral approach to rural development, starting from the centrality of agriculture as the main user of space, but focusing on the interrelationships between agriculture, the other socio-economic activities and the territory’s natural and environmental resources with a view to the co-production of all the actors (material and immaterial) involved. The second pillar of the CAP on rural development, introduced in 1999, has evolved from focusing primarily on economic objectives during its initial programming periods to incorporating a greater emphasis on environmental and social measures. It now serves as a bridge, linking agricultural policy with other policy areas. The second pillar remains a relevant policy today for two key reasons: the enduring importance and interest of European citizens in rural areas, and its ability to adapt to emerging economic, environmental, and social challenges.
... Regionalization, we argue, has challenged the political -economic position of these interest groups in the system of agri-environmental governance, altering their access to funds, their corporatist status with governments and their own internal sectoral politics and practices of representation. Experience in Europe and the UK has shown that national farmer unions can be effective in their efforts to obstruct, prevent or pay lipservice to agricultural development or environment programmes they believe do not meet their political goals, including ones that rely on regionalization (Trouve & Berriet-Solliec, 2010;Ward et al., 1995Ward et al., , 1998. As such, the conflicts between sectoral and regional modes of operation we explore in this paper have important implications for the prospect of effective implementation of environmental policy involving organized rural interests. ...
Investigations of agri-environmental programmes and their implementation often overlook the contribution of agri-political organizations (APOs). They focus instead upon the experiences of individual farmers, or the potential of farmers to be environmental stewards, the strategies or particular policy instruments employed by governments, or the workings of cooperative planning committees at river basin scales. Over the last decade in Australia, the influence and involvement of APOs in initiatives such as regional natural resource planning and the implementation of water quality policies has increased markedly but has remained largely under-researched. This paper indicates the ways these groups are becoming more embedded in the politics and operation of environmental governance and outlines the new and contested roles these groups are now playing in Australian rural landscapes. Using the case of the ongoing implementation of the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan, the paper explores tensions in the current arrangements and considers implications for ongoing participation of the farming sector in environmental governance. These tensions revolve around challenges to APOs’ traditional dialogic practices; interest-based models of representation; and their capacity to align with and operate within new territorial spaces of policy implementation, such as regions.
... Initially, researchers examining the response to the agri-environmental schemes and the adoption of related management practices found evidence of a shift among farmers in the United Kingdom to a post-productivist mindset. This shift involved an alteration in their spirit of farming that acknowledged and valued some non-productive aspects of farming practice-including biodiversity enhancement, landscape creation and conservation, soil maintenance, etc. Ward, et al. (1998) provide among the strongest arguments for such a change in their examination of farmers evolving attitudes toward the regulation of pollution. Similarly, Morris and Potter (1995: 51) identify 'new conservationists' among farmers participating in the schemes while emphasising the need to develop enhanced means to legitimise conservation as an appropriate and viable use of rural land. ...
... Furthermore, non-economic incentives can arise, which may explain the lack of importance of farm structural factors. Studies by Lowe et al. (1997) and Ward et al. (1998) address the important dis-tinction in attitudinal norms that divide farmers into more radical, proactive environmental managers, and more traditionalists with respect to their perceived environmental responsibilities. The more proactive farmers exhibit a sense of responsibility and a need for precautionary avoidance of environmental harm, while traditionalists are more accepting of environmental harm and tend to see it as an inevitable result of agricultural production. ...
L. Nahuelhual, M.A. Engler, B. Carrillo, V. Moreira, and I. Castro. 2009. Adoption of cleaner production practices by dairy farmers in southern Chile. Cien. Inv. Agr. 36(1):97- 106. Rising concerns about the environmental costs of dairy production have resulted in an increasing use of farm practices that diminish negative production externalities. Yet, little empirical evidence exists regarding the factors infl uencing the adoption of pollution-reducing strategies by dairy farmers. In this study, we estimate a logit probability model to explain fi rst- stage adoption of capital-intensive cleaner production (CP) practices, using a sample of 100 medium and large-size dairy farms located in southern Chile. Voluntary approaches to pollution control in agriculture are relatively recent in Chile and diffusion has been slow and uneven among farmers. Only 43% of the farmers surveyed were using some CP practices at the time of the interview. The probability of adoption was found to be positively correlated with farmer's education and age, awareness of environmental regulations, the type of milk buyer, and the use of complementary CP management practices. Conversely, farm structure variables were not signifi cant, which suggests that the adoption of CP practices could be responding to non- economic motivations.
... • subdivision assessment Source: Henderson (2000). (Lowe & Ward 1997;Ward et al. 1998). Where farmers are deemed to be employing accepted farming practices and complaints continue, then a case may be presented for the protection of agricultural activities through right-to-farm legislation, buffer distances or agricultural zoning. ...
Land use conflict involving farm externalities represents an increasing policy concern in Australia as agricultural activities intensify and as the nation's metropolitan areas continue to expand outwards. A review of the rural-urban fringe literature reveals a noticeable absence of research exploring the intensity of conflict experienced by farmers. Similarly, inadequate attention has been given to the policies adopted by government to manage conflict. This article contrasts the regulatory system that has been implemented to manage conflict involving poultry farming on the metropolitan fringe of two Australian state capitals: Perth, Western Australia and Sydney, New South Wales. Spatial variation in the nature of government intervention is uncovered. In the discussion that follows reasons are identified to help explain such variation including state ideology, metropolitan growth, industry activism, geographical constraints and farm characteristics. It is concluded that where agricultural industries experience internal political divisions and a geographically dispersed membership it becomes more difficult to influence government policy.
... To date adaptations, on the whole, have been limited to marginal adjustments to conventional farming practices, as analysis of the responses to the 1992 CAP reforms has demonstrated (Brouwer and Lowe, 1998;Winter and Gaskell, 1998). The reorientation of agricultural technologies and styles of farming in response to concerns over sustainability has so far largely been analysed by social scientists with reference to speci"c issues such as pollution regulation (Lowe et al., 1997;Ward et al., 1998), agri-environmental schemes (Morris and Potter, 1995;Whitby, 1994;Wilson, 1997) and organic agriculture (Clunies-Ross and Cox, 1994;Tovey, 1997). Of these, organic farming represents the most fundamental challenge to the status quo in agriculture and has been recognised, at least by some advocates of sustainability, as the desideratum for a future agriculture (Bowler, 1992;Pretty, 1998). ...
The potential contribution of integrated farming systems (IFS) to the development of a more sustainable agriculture has been largely ignored within social science and by policy analysts. The goals of IFS are to sustain agricultural production, maintain farm incomes, safeguard the environment and respond to consumer concerns about food quality issues. IFS can be conceptualised as a `third way’ or middle course for agriculture between conventional and organic farming. This paper describes the origins and basic principles of IFS and positions this distinctive approach to agriculture within the agri-environmental debate. It also explores some of the implications of pursuing this `third way’ for farmers and the institutional and policy frameworks.
... Such constructions of rurality have wider currency, bearing close resemblance, for instance, to aspects of both the 'move-in for self' and 'move-in and join-in' households identified by Cloke et al (1995; and, even more generally, to Short's (1991, p. xvi) 'environmental myths' of 'wilderness' and 'countryside'. Other work has highlighted how some rural residents value 'green views' (Phillips 2001a;Phillips et al. 2001), evaluating the countryside as an aesthetic landscape and in some cases supporting the development of highly manufactured green spaces such as golfcourses and leisure complexes as a means of retaining and even enhancing rurality (see also Thrift 1987), while other rural residents very much view the countryside as a place of ecological nature, valuing its 'wild' flora and fauna and the 'purity' of its atmosphere and waterways (see Lowe et al. 1997;Macnaghten and Urry 1998;Phillips and Mighall 2000;Ward et al. 1998;Ward et al. 1995).Yet other people value spaces of nature of nature in the countryside for amenity functions and the facilitation of companionship, friendship, and senses of community, tradition, identity and spirituality (Etzioni 1998;Harrison 1991;Schama 1995). Smith and Phillips' (2001, p. 460) claim that greentrifiers are attracted to "village and landscapes synonymous with working farms, country lanes, green fields and sheep" may furthermore connect to the broader arguments of people such as Tovey (2003) and Jones (2003) about the significance of domesticated animals within rural life. ...
... Goodman (1999) attacks 'modernist' agro-food studies for ignoring 'nature' as an active agent in developing social explanations. Marsden (2000) suggests that Goodman's critique is too far-reaching and ignores important attempts within agricultural political economy to incorporate natural processes (citing inter alia Buttel, 1998; Marsden, 1997; Murdoch and Marsden, 1995; Ward et al., 1998). ...
... The main requests they made concerned the system's maintenance and monitoring. First, they worried that the filter system planted with reeds may attract invasive species such as thistles or coypu and that the landscape would be perceived as messy, based on their assessment of the skill of other farmers based on their ability to shape and control the landscape with ploughing and weeding (Ward et al. (1998) reported that farmers often confuse good practice and good husbandry on the farm). The arrangement that was finally reached with a local water board, which will be in charge of cleaning up the system, seems to have reassured them. ...
The European Water Framework Directive enjoins its members to retrieve the good ecological status of their water resources. In France, it has resulted in the regulation of entrants' reduction plans which aim at halving the quantities of pesticides. This plan matches standard situations of non-point pollution sources, where the water infiltrates towards the underlying aquifer. However, numerous situations exist in France in which groundwater is imperfectly protected by a shallow impervious layer in the topsoil, meaning that sinkholes may connect the surface water and relay pollution directly to the aquifer. These impervious layers induce subsurface drainage demand and construction so that the effluent can be collected at outfalls of drainage systems, and be processed in constructed wetlands before falling down the sinkholes, thus decreasing net pollution. The Champigny aquifer corresponds to this description, and has been shown to be highly vulnerable. The mission of AQUI'Brie, a non-profit organisation, is to protect this groundwater, which is one of the water resources of Paris. Although well aware of the benefits of buffer zones, but at this time without incentives to implement them, AQUI'Brie started a co-construction process of constructed wetlands, involving all the stakeholders of a small catchment located upstream from a sinkhole. This paper describes the co-construction from the first meeting to the final structures in a context of high land use pressure. It shows that the number and area of constructed wetlands has diminished beyond the threshold for which the performance of depollution process may fail. In 2011, a performance assessment programme was set up to determine if the co-constructed wetlands comply with the new current regulations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... A farm population dominated by Progressives and Jeffersonians, for example, will be much less amenable to a reorientation towards multifunctionalism and agri-environmental schemes than one composed principally of Environmentalists and Yeomen. In this context, regulatory approaches that simply emphasise punishment of regulatory transgressions and impose new objectives without addressing these perceptual problems may act principally to alienate these groups, thus generating large monitoring and enforcement costs, while failing to develop an ethos supporting the legitimacy of such controls (Ward et al., 1998). On the other hand, regulation is itself also an important signaling device which communicates a set of values endorsed by government (Elster, 1989). ...
The role of agriculture in rural areas is changing significantly in Europe, with environmental protection and enhancement, and provision of amenity and recreation increasingly emphasized both in public debate and in new policy initiatives. Faced by these shifting priorities, it is increasing important to understand how farmers themselves perceive their roles in relation to environmental management in particular. As recent research in New Institutional Economics has shown [Frey, B.S., 1997. Not Just for the Money. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham.], policy assumptions and instruments that are at odds with the underlying motivations of agents may actually reduce achievement of policy objectives if they act to degrade beneficial norms or alter the basis on which agents make choices. Understanding how farmers conceive of their environmental rights and responsibilities is therefore important in helping to design agri-environmental measures that can complement, rather than conflict, with the underlying normative assumptions that farmers themselves hold. This study employs Q methodology to investigate the perceptual frameworks of a sample of UK arable and mixed lowland farmers regarding the appropriate way in which to approach the environmental management of agricultural land. The Q analysis identifies five distinct perspectives on notions of agricultural stewardship; we term these Environmentalists, Progressives, Commodity Conservationists, Jeffersonians and Yeomen. We discuss the main characteristics of these groups and comment on these results in the context of current UK agri-environmental policy, which is changing both the presumptions of farmers' entitlements to agricultural payments, and the expectations pertaining to farmers in relation to environmental responsibilities. In conclusion, we suggest that Q methodology can be a valuable way of demonstrating the nature of the mental frameworks of actors in a particular context and this enables us to formulate some important questions regarding the motivations of land managers in the context of a rapidly changing rural policy.
... Bisang et al. (2003) also highlights the reduced relative influence of local suppliers in a domestic market overtaken by the few multinational corporations supplying GM seeds and agrochemicals, which affected negatively traditional small and medium farmers and reshaped the agricultural landscape in the area. Embedded in ongoing processes of agricultural and rural change, new meanings and visions for sustainable agriculture are currently being constructed and contested throughout the world (Marsden, 1998; Ward et al., 1998; Altieri and Rosset, 1999; Smithers and Joseph, 1999; Pretty, 2001; Ortega et al., 2003; Ferreyra and Beard, 2005). In Argentina, a country in crisis and institutionally committed to intensification, the Rolling Pampas will most likely continue to play a key function in the recovery of the national economy through substantial agricultural export retentions (Stiglitz, 2002; Ferrazzino et al. 2004; Longoni, 2005). ...
Historically, agricultural production in the Rolling Pampas of Argentina was characterised by low use of synthetic inputs. This changed during the 1990s, with the widespread adoption of technology privileged by neoclassical macroeconomic policies implemented in the same decade. In this paper, Emergy Accounting is used to quantitatively assess the ecological sustainability of agricultural systems in the region throughout the 20th century. Economic deregulation and trade liberalisation have led to an increase in productivity, but have also increased dependency on non-renewable resources. As the ecological and socioeconomic implications of intensification become more controversial, there is an urgent need for integrated, multiscale and multi-disciplinary monitoring and research. Moreover, there is a greater need for a broader, critical and inclusive debate to redefine the role and shape of sustainable agriculture in the Rolling Pampas. Emergy accounting, an evolving methodology that brings ecological imperatives to the forefront of evaluation, constitutes a valuable tool for such a debate.
Philip Lowe died in February 2020 and so an academic career spanning five decades in environmental and rural social science and the sociology of knowledge came to an end. A pioneer of the social science of environmentalism, since the early 1990s Philip Lowe had been closely associated with the Centre for Rural Economy at Newcastle University in the UK and had been the intellectual force behind establishing rural economy as both a subject and mode of social science analysis. This paper reflects on a career and on the evolving concept of ‘rural economy’ as an economic form, a policy realm, and a knowledge practice. Through this history, it presents an account of the contribution of Philip Lowe's research and writing which, as a result of his death, now stands as a bounded and complete body of work for the benefit of future generations of scholars.
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Mechanization in tea plantation business is a phenomenon that is happening in Indonesia. The demand for tea products, the existence of land and tea plants that must be routinely maintained makes the managers of tea plantations have to find ways to manage tea plantations. Mechanization is a strategy taken by planters to cultivate land and maintain the amount of tea products when fewer workers are attracted to the tea plantation business. This paper will discuss the mechanization that occurs in the tea plantations of Serah Kencong, Blitar Regency. The focus of this paper is to explain the causes of mechanization in Serah kencong tea plantations, the views of tea pickers about the mechanization on these tea plantations, and the impact of mechanization on the lives of Serah Kencong planter communities and the natural environment.
In a time of great agricultural and rural change, the notion of 'multifunctionality' has remained under-theorized and poorly linked to wider debates in the social sciences. This book analyses the extent to which the proposed transition towards post-productivist agriculture holds up to scientific scrutiny, and proposes a modified productivist/non-productivist model that better encapsulates the complexity of agricultural and rural change. By combining existing notions and concepts, this book (re)conceptualizes agricultural change, creating a new transition theory, and a new way of looking at the future of agriculture.
The emergence of emissions trading as a standard feature of national climate mitigation strategies is commonly considered to be evidence of the neoliberalisation of environmental governance. The New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme is distinctive among national climate mitigation programmes in its attempt to establish a financial liability for greenhouse gas emissions arising from agricultural production. This attempt, however, has been politically contentious, with strident and vocal opposition from some members of the agricultural sector. Drawing on the concept of “environmental subjectivities” this study explores farmers' contestation of the policy programme and ascribes the foundering of emissions mitigation in agriculture to the attempt to merely assign financial liabilities rather than cultivate subjects disposed to managing emissions in pastoral production. When discussing climate change and greenhouse gas mitigation during qualitative interviews, pastoral farmers directly challenged the aims and attributes of the ETS, often referring to how the scheme conflicted with existing objectives for farming and how the scheme confused financial liability with environmental responsibility. New Zealand's experience reveals potential contradictions between the political and economic justification for market-based instruments and the unruly subjectivities of market actors. The findings of this research suggest that market-based instruments alone may fail to cultivate environmental subjectivities and highlight the need for agricultural and environmental governance to address the social and cultural foundations of farming practices.
The European Union's support for farming in ‘less favoured areas’ (LFAs) is currently implemented in the United Kingdom through headage payments for cattle and sheep, although reforms to the system are under way. These payments have caused environmental concern, since, although formally social in nature, they are implicated in processes of agricultural intensification and management practices that reduce ecosystem integrity and landscape interest. In this paper, we examine the extent to which enhancement of the policy mix could take such concerns into account. Initially, we review the evidence of environmental change, also taking into account afforestation and increasing recreational demands on the hills and uplands. An analysis of the environmental perspective is interwoven with current economic, cultural and social difficulties, based on summaries of farmer attitudes drawn from a range of inquiries. We then examine options proposed for change, particularly the conversion of the Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowances headage payments to an area-based compensation, and greater cross-compliance with environmental preconditions. We conclude that scope exists for improved integration of social support for farming with measures to conserve and enhance the environment in hill and upland areas. However, more coherent policies that encompass marketing to pro-ecological, pro-social consumers, education and research, community and infrastructure could strike a more effective balance in attaining objectives for farming and society as a whole, by according a pivotal role to organic farming as a standard for low-input agriculture. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Geography finally seems to be taking the environment, and particularly nature, seriously in conceptual terms. Stimulated not least by accounts of nature developed by William Cronon and Bruno Latour, and the continued 'cultural turn' more generally, articles and indeed whole journals have begun to consider the geographical implications of rethinking nature. Despite Williams' (1998: 29) claim that the social construction of nature and the environment is now 'an accepted concept that needs little elaboration, though it still fascinates', elaboration is in. In this short report, I shall comment on the main themes this elaboration is pursuing and also how this has been criticized as potentially damaging to environmental protection.
After over a decade of leading research work which has examined the political economy and globalization of the ‘industrial’ agro-food system it is clear that there are now important new challenges associated with the incorporation of nature, consumption and alternative food networks. Taking David Goodman's recent paper (Sociologia Ruralis 1999, no. 1) as a starting point, this discussion not cautions against a premature and over-generalized rejection of political economy on the basis of concepts based upon actor-network theory. Questions of food governance expose the asymmetry in power relations in food networks, whether conventional or alternative. Moreover, while accepting the need to examine the ‘hybridity’ of nature-society relations, this needs to be done in ways which expose the degree of interconnection through the development of micro-analytical research and the development of ‘middle-level’ concepts.
Voluntary environmental policy instruments have attracted much interest in recent years, yet they remain firmly established only in the industrial setting of the typical environmental policy ‘leader’ states such as the Netherlands or Germany. This paper examines two Irish examples of innovative voluntary agreements, a farm plastic recycling scheme and a bird conservation project. These both suggest that the voluntary approach can be applied successfully outside the typical industrial sector. Noteworthy in explaining the emergence of the two case studies here was a policy transfer effect from the UK, involving organized Irish farming interests and Irish bird conservationists. A fear of impending state legislation, which is often cited as a vital precondition for successful voluntary approaches, was actually less important than the autonomous initiative of the interest groups themselves. It is suggested that a more important role for the state lies in ensuring good policy co-ordination. A concluding discussion examines the general problems and potential of relying on interest groups to transfer and implement innovative voluntary environmental policy instruments. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment
This paper addresses the issue of farmers’ views concerning the perceived legitimacy of environmental cross compliance as a governance mechanism. Recent work on the theory of regulation emphasises the importance of the legitimacy ascribed to a regulation in determining the effectiveness with which it can be implemented. The current study outlines a rationale for why this motivational question should receive attention in economic studies of policy design and reports the results of a survey of 102 arable farmers in East Anglia, UK, which investigated the level of support for the principle of cross compliance for biodiversity objectives. It was found that two attitudinal factors, referred to as ‘Stewardship Orientation’ and ‘Technological Beliefs’, were by far the most significant in determining the acceptability of cross compliance in the sample, and that structural and socio-demographic factors were considerably less important. The study also identified clusters of farmers according to their overall attitudinal orientation. Of the five groups thus categorised, four appeared on average likely to reject cross compliance as a general principle, leaving only the most ‘Environmental’ cluster in support. The policy implications are discussed and some conclusions drawn.
Building on normative conceptualisations of multifunctionality as a decision-making spectrum bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought, this paper analyses farm-level multifunctional agricultural transitions. First, the paper suggests that it may be possible to categorise different farm types along the productivist/non-productivist multifunctionality spectrum, and that transitional potential from weak to strong multifunctionality often differs between different categories of farms and types of farm ownership. Second, the paper conceptualises multifunctional transitional processes at farm level over time, and introduces the notions of multifunctional path dependency and decision-making corridors, the latter of which can be understood as ‘bundles’ of decision-making opportunities bounded by productivist and non-productivist action and thought. The analysis suggests that system memory plays an important role in defining the likelihood of multifunctional actions, and argues that transitional ruptures—sudden breaks in transitional pathways—often characterise farm-level transitions. The paper concludes by highlighting the methodological challenges awaiting future researchers of multifunctional agricultural transitions.
This paper analyses whether the Australian Landcare movement complies with notions of ‘post-productivist rural governance’. The paper argues that Landcare has been a vast improvement on previous approaches to the management of the countryside in Australia, and that it has managed to mobilise a large cross-section of stakeholders. However, the Landcare movement only depicts certain characteristics of post-productivist rural governance. Although Landcare has some elements that fit in with theorisations of social movements, it still depicts many characteristics that show its close affiliation with the state and its agencies (in particular budgetary shackles). Landcare cannot be conceptualised as a fully inclusive movement, and there is little evidence that Landcare has been able to actively shape government policy. However, Landcare has contributed towards changing environmental attitudes, which can be seen as a key precondition for the successful implementation of post-productivist rural governance structures. In particular, Landcare's innovative approach of mutual farm visits, and its emphasis on the demonstration of ‘best practice’, has led to both an increased awareness of land degradation problems and the creation of grassroots ‘information networks’. There has also been some success with regard to Landcare's ability to change attitudes of the wider Australian public. Two important lessons with regard to conceptualisations of post-productivist rural governance emerge. First, individual components of post-productivist rural governance may change at different times, with the attitudinal level most influenced by Landcare, while underlying socio-political productivist structures will take much longer to change. Second, the problem in being able to label Landcare (the most innovative rural programme in advanced economies) as an expression of post-productivist rural governance shows how far away rural programmes in advanced economies still may be from such new forms of governance. The results, therefore, support those advocating that post-productivism may only be a theoretical construct in the minds of academics, rather than an expression of reality on the ground.
EU agri-environmental legislation provides that every Member State may enact its own regulations specifying standards and environmentally sensitive areas. Thus Member States have substantial scope for adapting basic principles and implementing them in their own way. This has enabled competing interest groups to promote their own priorities. Spanish environmental policy has been influenced by its membership of the EU and by the political interests of Spain's Regional Governments. Before EU agri-environmental legislation came into force, environmental considerations were virtually ignored when shaping farming policy. The agri-environmental measures were the last of the new CAP accompanying measures to be introduced into Spanish agriculture, the national basis for their application being laid down in 1995. Only two of the seven types of measures provided in Regulation 2078/92 have been adopted at a national level. The other five have been incorporated, very unevenly, into regional programmes designed to help environmentally sensitive areas. Only 6 out of 66 programmes had been developed and implemented by the end of 1998. Local effectiveness of regional measures is low as a result of scheme factors (lack of policy coordination, competition from other CAP subsidies) and attitudinal factors (farmers’ scepticism and reluctance of the agricultural authorities).
The Ontario Environmental Farm Plan Programme (EFP) represents a significant departure from previous agri-environmental initiatives in Canada. In this programme, the focus is not on the promotion and adoption of any particular farming innovation, but rather on the completion of a farm-level environmental appraisal and the development of a farm-specific environmental action plan. As with more traditional schemes, there is interest in understanding how the programme is performing and in documenting outcomes. Evidence suggests that a significant proportion of farmers who enter the programme complete only part of the process or apply the evaluation to only certain aspects of their operation. In effect, there is variation in the way participants participate. This paper examines the nature of, and reasons for, differing levels of engagement among participants in the EFP Programme. Results from a survey of past participants suggests that farm-specific environmental conditions, farmers’ motivations concerning the environment, and positive perceptions of the programme itself are associated with more complete levels of participation. Underlying some of the revealed variations in participation are abiding concerns for the confidentiality of the process and more general concerns relating to the intervention of the state in agricultural land use.
There is increasing public policy interest in the management of rural landscapes for conservation, both in terms of natural and cultural heritage. Agri-environmental policies are an important part of an emerging vision for a sustainable countryside, with increasing support for the existing Environmentally Sensitive Area (ESA) and Countryside Stewardship (CS) schemes. This paper provides insight into the nature of land-manager attitudes towards the conservation of rural landscapes and how these relate to differing modes and levels of engagement with these two schemes. It is based on the results of a recently completed project exploring the attitudes and practices of 100 land managers towards features of landscape and historic interest. Agri-environmental research has often sought to 'typologise' attitudes and practices around discrete land-manager types; an approach that may downgrade commonalities between land managers, the potential interplay of elements defining these types, and the possibility that land-manager identities may not be uniform. In this paper, in contrast, we emphasise the significance of these three analytical issues surrounding land-manager attitudes and practices. We explore land managers' interest and investment in conservation and go on to explain how these concerns were often closely related to the wildlife, historic and aesthetic goals of the schemes. The analysis then considers in detail how a concern for conservation often came to interplay with economic concerns to produce different attitudes and practices. We term these 'styles of participation and nonparticipation' to emphasise that such modes of uptake are not necessarily associated with specific land-manager types. Land managers developed these attitudes and practices with respect to different parts of their farms, types of landscape feature, and scheme in question. We conclude by emphasising the importance of contextualised analyses of land-manager values, knowledges, and practices for exploring the nature and possibilities of a 'sustainable countryside', and the role of agri-environmental policy within this policy vision of rural areas.
The social, as a plane of thought and action, has been central to political thought and political programmes since the mid-nineteenth century. This paper argues that, while themes of society and concerns with social cohesion and social justice are still significant in political argument, the social is no longer a key zone, traget and objective of strategies of government. The rise of the language of globalization indicates that economic relations are no longer easily understood as organized across a single bounded national economy. Community has become a new spatialization of government: heterogeneous, plural, linking individuals, families and others into contesting cultrual assemblies of identities and allegiances. Divisions among the subjects of government are coded in new ways; neither included nor excluded are governed as social citizens. Non-political strategies are deployed for the management of expert authority. Anti-political motifs such as associationism and communitarianism which do not seek to govern through society, are on the rise in political thought. The paper suggests some ways of diagnosing and analysing these novel territorializations of political thought and action.
This paper examines some of the ways in which state power is extended and consolidated. In particular, Foucault's notion of ‘governmentality’ is employed to investigate some of the rationalities and technologies used by the modern liberal state to ‘govern at a distance’. Governmentality allows us to explain how the state is able to regulate spheres of civil society that are not under its direct control. In order to undertake this task successfully a host of indirect mechanisms must be employed to ensure that civil domains are governable. Statistics are cited as one good example of how government at a distance is achieved, for the collection of numbers about various populations allows those populations to be acted upon as they are made increasingly visible and calculable. The example of British agriculture during the 19th and 20th centuries is explored. It illustrates how the collection of statistics gradually rendered agriculture visible and permitted its characterization as an economic sector. The development of a national policy—for the ‘national farm’— followed, which sought to rationalize agriculture in line with statistical representations. Thus a consolidation of the agricultural territory was achieved during the post-war years. In the process, farms and farmers were disembedded from their immediate socio-spatial contexts as they were integrated into a discrete economic sector.
The paper examines the recent emergence of a water pollution ‘problem’ in Britain associated with agricultural pesticides, and addresses the following questions: 1.(i) how have pesticides become such an important part of arable farming practice in Britain; and2.(ii) how has the ‘problem’ of pesticide pollution been defined and contested by different groups.
Farm survey evidence from the River Ouse catchment will be used to show how farmers decide to use pesticides, how they legitimise and represent their practices; and how they understand the associated environmental risks. The paper concludes that the role of pesticide advisors and the perception of weeds in farming culture remain important barriers to the reduction of pesticide use.
This paper proposes some new ways of analysing the exercise of political power in advanced liberal democratic societies. These are developed from Michel Foucault's conception of ‘governmentality’ and addresses political power in terms of ‘political rationalities’ and ‘technologies of government’. It draws attention to the diversity of regulatory mechanisms which seek to give effect to government, and to the particular importance of indirect mechanisms that link the conduct of individuals and organizations to political objectives through ‘action at a distance’. The paper argues for the importance of an analysis of language in understanding the constitution of the objects of politics, not simply in terms of meaning or rhetoric, but as ‘intellectual technologies’ that render aspects of existence amenable to inscription and calculation. It suggests that governmentality has a characteristically ‘programmatic’ form, and that it is inextricably bound to the invention and evaluation of technologies that seek to give it effect. It draws attention to the complex processes of negotiation and persuasion involved in the assemblage of loose and mobile networks that can bring persons, organizations and objectives into alignment. The argument is exemplified through considering various aspects of the regulation of economic life: attempts at national economic planning in post-war France and England; the role ascribed to changing accounting practices in the UK in the 1960s; techniques of managing the internal world of the workplace that have come to lay special emphasis upon the psychological features of the producing subjects. The paper contends that ‘governmentality’ has come to depend in crucial respects upon the intellectual technologies, practical activities and social authority associated with expertise. It argues that the self-regulating capacities of subjects, shaped and normalized through expertise, are key resources for governing in a liberal-democratic way.
The introduction of the theme of government into Michel Foucault's later work opens up a rich domain of research. Aspects of this theme are considered with reference to Foucault's analysis of early Anglo-Scottish liberalism and more recent forms of neo-liberalism from the point of view of governmental reason. The article focuses on the interconnections between the government of others and techniques of the self in liberal arts of government and suggests some possible implications concerning the ethics of intellectual work.
The procedures and the nature of “technologies” are suggested to be broadly similar to those which characterize “science”. In particular, there appear to be “technological paradigms” (or research programmes) performing a similar role to “scientific paradigms” (or research programmes). The model tries to account for both continuous changes and discontinuities in technological innovation. Continuous changes are often related to progress along a technological trajectory defined by a technological paradigm, while discontinuities are associated with the emergence of a new paradigm. One-directional explanations of the innovative process, and in particular those assuming “the market” as the prime mover, are inadequate to explain the emergence of new technological paradigms. The origin of the latter stems from the interplay between scientific advances, economic factors, institutional variables, and unsolved difficulties on established technological paths. The model tries to establish a sufficiently general framework which accounts for all these factors and to define the process of selection of new technological paradigms among a greater set of notionally possible ones.The history of a technology is contextual to the history of the industrial structures associated with that technology. The emergence of a new paradigm is often related to new “schumpeterian” companies, while its establishment often shows also a process of oligopolistic stabilization.
The Badlands of Modernity offers a wide ranging and original interpretation of modernity as it emerged during the eighteenth century through an analysis of some of the most important social spaces. Drawing on Foucault's analysis of heterotopia, or spaces of alternate ordering, the book argues that modernity originates through an interplay between ideas of utopia and heterotopia and heterotopic spatial practice. The Palais Royal during the French Revolution, the masonic lodge and in its relationship to civil society and the public sphere and the early factories of the Industrial Revolution are all seen as heterotopia in which modern social ordering is developed. Rather than seeing modernity as being defined by a social order, the book argues that we need to take account of the processes and the ambiguous spaces in which they emerge, if we are to understand the character of modern societies. The book uses these historical examples to analyse contemporary questions about modernity and postmodernity, the character of social order and the significance of marginal space in relation to issues of order, transgression and resistance. It will be important reading for sociologists, geographers and social historians as well as anyone who has an interest in modern societies.
In this paper the emergence during the 1980s of a water pollution problem associated with intensive livestock production is examined. Farm pollution is socially constructed and is shaped by rural social change. Rural areas are experiencing social and economic restructuring with a resultant shift in emphasis from production to consumption concerns. 'New' people are living in the countryside, with ideas about how its resources should be managed that often differ from those with traditional production interests. At the same time, the debates surrounding the privatisation of the water industry opened up the issue of water pollution in the countryside to greater critical scrutiny. It is in this context that pollution from farm 'wastes' (termed here 'farm pollution') has gone from being a 'nonproblem' in the 1970s to an issue of greater public and political concern and regulatory activity since the late 1980s. Based on evidence from a study of dairy farming in Devon, it is argued in this paper that the farm pollution problem and its regulation are as much a function of social change in the countryside as of environmental change in rivers.