Rural geography I: Changing
expectations and
contradictions in the rural
John McDonagh
National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Corresponding author:
Department of Geography, School of Geography and
Archaeology, National University of Ireland, Galway,
University Road, Galway, Ireland.
Email: john.mcdonagh@nuigalway.ie
Progress in Human Geography - 37(5)- 2012- p p 712–720
Abstract
Rural areas are increasingly thought of in terms of opportunity, as engines of growth in a world of economic uncertainty, they are being challenged in terms of their role in providing safe and secure food supplies, and they are being lauded and criticized in terms of climate change and mitigation. The multiple scales of these discussions, and the intensity and increased volume of rural debate that has emerged, see rural geographers occupy an interesting space in terms of conceptualizations, engagement and understanding of rural livelihoods and rural sustainability. Through the lens of agriculture and related spheres, the principal issues pertaining to agriculture as a sectoral activity and an instrument of rural and regional development, this report explores rural geographers’ critique of agriculture and small-scale farming in sustainable rural futures and the changing expectations and contradictions that currently abound.
Keywords agriculture, small-scale farming, rural geography, rural policy, sustainable communities
I Introduction
The transformation of rural space has been driven by the growth in neoliberalism, agribusiness and the control of multinational corporations. Indeed, this report comes at a time when the relevance of rural research, confronted by global challenges of food security, energy security and climate change, has never been greater. This report also comes at a time of change and uncertainty: change in terms of the major reforms the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is about to undergo in 2013; uncertainty in terms of the global economic downturn, which has, almost by default, refocused attention on the rural. In fact, the international financial crisis has, it could be argued, ‘exploded the neoliberal hegemony of recent decades, revealing starkly the inadequacy of the doctrine that the free market is superior to state intervention’ (Shucksmith and Ronningen, 2011: 285). Indeed, in challenging such doctrine, there have been calls for more broadly conceived understandings of how we think about ‘sustainability and the potential of rural places in terms other than those of market failure and public goods’ (p. 285). What is apparent, also, is the shifting policy landscape in terms of intervention and agricultural subsidies. Concerns about rural crises (such as BSE/CJD and Foot and Mouth Disease), conflict (such as GM crop production or traceability within the food chain) and the threat of climate change have, to varying degrees, brought a refocusing of attention on the ‘local’, the ‘less intensive’, the ‘small-scale farm’ and the significance of ‘public goods’. This re-engagement has ignited debate around conceptualizations of the rural and contestation on the place of agriculture and the family farm therein. Furthermore, while there may be a wariness about engaging with the topics of food, farming and land use that dominated 1970s and 1980s rural studies (Woods, 2012a: 2) rural geographers are not ‘readily reject(ing) the strengths of past practices’ (Hoggart et al., 1995: 4). Instead, they are engaging in debates on the role of agriculture and small-scale farming as a public good, in ways that do not ‘retreat into conventional and uncritical ruralism’ (Cloke, 2006: 24) but which contribute to the ‘study of change processes ... and ... the revitalisation of the rural economy’ (Fazzi, 2010: 119).
II Globalization and the rural
The pervasive nature of globalization, with its consequent fluidity in the movement of people, goods, services and knowledge systems, characterizes much of the backdrop to current rural research (Woods and McDonagh, 2011). The need to engage with the consequences of EU enlargement and the inherent necessity for cohesion, both social and economic, across a diversity of member states (Gorton et al., 2009) continues apace. Within this consideration, rather than the rural declining in consequence (Bell et al., 2010), we see an increased volume of discussions on the fluidity and diversity within these spaces (Gorton et al., 2009; Halfacree, 2006; Lowe and Ward, 2009; Ray, 2006; Ward and Brown, 2009; Woods, 2012a), indicating ‘that the status of the rural, empirically and conceptually, remains an issue’ (Bell et al., 2010: 206). Within this diversity, it is no great surprise to talk of the rural as an imprecise term, difficult to categorize, measure and in turn evaluate (see, for example, Cloke, 2006; Halfacree, 2006; McDonagh, 2001; Mahon, 2007; van der Ploeg et al., 2000) or, conversely, as something that has a ‘relative simplicity’ with its focus on ‘sustainable economic growth and improved living conditions’ (Woods, 2011: 131). By the same token, the desire for a ‘living countryside’ sustained by ‘dynamic local actors’ (Varley et al., 2009: 6) is counterbalanced by a circumstance which sees the most significant policy shaping rural areas within the EU being termed a Common ‘Agricultural’ Policy, with all its connotations. Consequently, with such scope for debate, it is easy to see the challenge this presents to contemporary rural geographers who are grappling once again with the place of agriculture within the rural.
This grappling, in whatever way, complex or simple, is played out through the predominantly global, neoliberal imperatives that continue to drive agriculture as an economic activity and related tensions around, and reactions to, exploitation of its resources, depletion of land and nature, manipulation of animals, and competitive forces that oppress agricultural populations and threaten their livelihoods. Divisions continue to exist regarding ways of conceptualizing agricultural change in economic terms, with the post-productivist debate just one example; Evans et al. (2002: 313) describe post-productivism as a failed theoretical endeavour attempting to ‘capture in one convenient package’ the complex changes affecting agriculture and rural areas. The nature of social and cultural dimensions that bind the farming community to agriculture, both in contradiction to and as a result of economic pressures, and the ethical and democratic concerns about the roles and responsibilities attaching to agriculture are also significant areas of discussion in their own right (Alston, 2004; Beekman and Brom, 2007; Bellon and Lamine, 2009; Korthals, 2001; Thompson, 2000; von Wire´n-Lehr, 2001). In fact, it could be argued that the current rural focus attempts to manoeuvre agriculture to a more acceptable position that provides a more endogenous development strategy. This positioning sees agriculture ‘encompassed by rural space and society’ (Gray, 2000: 42) where traditional interests are ‘blended with the understanding of lifestyles, identity and ‘‘otherness’’ introduced by the cultural turn’ (Woods, 2012a: 2). This embracing of what is termed a new rural paradigm overtly encourages endogenous development – bottom-up innovation and territorially based integrated rural development (Woods, 2011). Reflecting both global trends and EU policy, we see globally the promotion of decentralization and encouragement of participation, while from a European policy perspective there is a ‘fundamental shift from ideologically supporting sectoral policies (agriculture) to supporting more spatial (rural) policies’ (Shortall, 2004: 35). The question remains, however, as to whether such sentiment is more aspirational than operational. The rhetoric of policy towards new sociopolitical contracts, with farmers being cast as custodians of the countryside or as innovators and stimulators of the rural economy, may be acceptable parlance, but is such sentiment built on a policy and strategy that is prioritized in its scope and vision (predominantly towards agriculture and productivism) (see FAO, 2009; OECD/ FAO, 2011)?
Rural areas have undoubtedly been imprinted by an industrial agriculture, ‘a vast open-air assembly line’ (Bell et al., 2010: 208), but, equally, addressing the dangers of industrialized farming is neither a ‘luxury nor utopian idealism’ (van der Ploeg and van Dijk, 1995, cited in O’Connor et al., 2006). While small-scale farming may have been viewed as marginal within this discussion, there is renewed interest in moving away from ‘industrialized agriculture’ and additional focus on local, organic, artisanal and non-food-producing functions and ‘public good’ conceptualization of the rural. This places farmers at the centre of ‘a public goods narrative of the countryside’ (Selfa et al., 2010: 596) providing ‘new’ services to society rooted in the practices of family-farm households (O’Connor et al., 2006). Furthermore, while the future of small-scale farmers ‘may well not lie in farming’ (Wiggins et al., 2010: 1341) per se, their importance to the sustainability of rural communities cannot be underestimated. Indeed, their demise could have large-scale societal consequences in terms of ‘costly negative environmental externalities, including the loss of open space, disruption of rural landscapes, degradation of wildlife habitats, depletion and pollution of water resources as well as a reduction in crop diversity’ (Barbieri and Mahoney, 2009: 58).
III Changing expectations of the rura
Discussions about the rural have in many cases been spatially specific, focusing on western economies, and to a large extent predominantly UK-centric, or written from a British vantage point (Halfacree, 2006). Woods (2012a) referred to this in his recent editorial in the Journal of Rural Studies, suggesting that, despite the best of intentions to broaden the scope and reach of rural studies and debates therein, the majority of contributions focus ‘on the global North with relatively few articles reporting on research in Africa, Asia or Latin America’ (p. 3). This ‘gap’ is also particularly apparent when we talk of small farms and their role in the rural. An interesting question here is how well-established processes and conceptualizations of trends in the rural relate to small-scale farming and how such positioning challenges global North conceptualizations of the rural. In fact, the recent contribution of Poulton et al. (2010) on service delivery to smallholders in Africa, Valde´s and Foster’s (2010) work on the importance of agriculture in reducing poverty in Latin America and Diao et al.’s (2010) exploration of challenges in Africa reinforce such challenges and contradictions. The thesis that many countries in Africa will be unable to bypass ‘a broad-based agricultural revolution to successfully launch their economic transformations’ (Diao et al., 2010: 1375), and Hazell et al.’s (2010: 1349) rather stark reminder that ‘of the developing world’s three billion rural people, over two-thirds reside on small farms of less than two hectares (and) there are nearly 500 million small farms’, further reiterate the real and present challenges to rural geographers, questions raised, insights given, and conceptualizations that invariably become embedded.
The acceleration and intensification of globalization processes sees global North and global South contend with the same challenges, albeit at different scales, intensity and immediacy. As globalization becomes a central tenet of development in all regions, the contribution of rural researchers is all the more intensified, as the delicate demands and opportunities that globalization presents is acutely strong in rural areas and particularly in the future of small farms and rural sustainability. While Birner and Resnick (2010: 1442) suggest that Kautsky’s 1899 publication The Agrarian Question promoted the superiority of the large farm with little justification for agricultural policies to support the economic development of small farmers, there is evidence to the contrary in that ‘policies to support the economic development of small farmers has proven to be a particularly successful strategy to reduce rural poverty’. They are equally cognizant, however, that the major challenge is in the implementation of such policies in ways that support poverty reduction and boost economic development. Haggblade et al. (2010: 1429) allude to this when they argue that ‘policy makers have high expectations for the rural non-farm economy’, seeing it as a ‘pathway out of poverty for their rural poor’, but seem less aware of the need to ‘stimulate buoyant rural economies, with robust non-farm income growth, not simply low-productivity employment’. While it is true that there has been much discussion about the negative future of small and family farms in terms of their abilities to invest, innovate and compete in global markets, it is also true that there is ‘substantial evidence that the contribution of agriculture to growth and poverty reduction will continue to depend on the broad participation of smallholder farmers’ (Birner and Resnick, 2010: 1443). This is reiterated by Shucksmith and Ronningen (2011: 285), who argue that ‘small farms can not only persist but make a central contribution to the sustainability of rural places, economically, socially, culturally and environmentally’ and furthermore ‘(they) should be recognised as a progressive, postneoliberal alternative rather than as a pre-modern obstacle to economic efficiency and productivism’.
As society’s expectations of agriculture have changed (see, for example, FAO, 2009; Lang, 2010; OECD/FAO, 2011; Rosin, 2012), the rural and the activities therein grow in importance. Traditional conceptions no longer suffice, and despite an increasingly urbanized world the rural has not only refused to ‘fade away’ but has found voice in interesting and to some extent unexpected (if not altogether new) ways (Woods, 2012b: 125, for example, refers to ‘the spatial and social differentiation in the development of alternative food networks and the challenge of contested discourses of rurality to technocratic solutions to both food security and climate change’). It is this broad participation that sees rural areas, and particularly agricultural activities, become dominated by what are loosely termed ‘public goods’ discussions. While in some ways we have looked at the rural as merely an addition to the existing patterns of agriculture played out through integrating farm and farm household into local area and environment, or in more recent times as a process that seeks to remove farmers from the landscape altogether (van der Ploeg et al., 2000), emergent conceptualizations see a ‘new position for agriculture as part of a multi-dimensional rural development strategy’ (Banks and Marsden, 2000: 466) within a sustainable ‘living countryside’. Varley et al. (2009: 6) justifiably argue that there is every reason to expect a positive sustainable future for rural areas if relevant policy actors and rural interests agree that rural policy should be built on a ‘normative commitment to sustainability’ and a strong adherence to the ideal of a living countryside. What is clear, also, is that pursuit of this ideal will require dynamic local actors (of which farmers are a key part), who can extend their enterprises to further enhance local rural economies and societies. This new ‘sociopolitical’ contract between agriculture and society (Banks and Marsden, 2000) sees a redefinition of ‘identities, strategies, practices, interrelations and networks’ (van der Ploeg et al., 2000: 392) which forge a realignment of farming activities by means of diversification. The dominant way in which this is played out centres on the so-called paradigm shift in the countryside which sees a move away from modernization in the form of productivism to what is called a postproductivist and/or multifunctional and consumptive countryside ‘characterised by the reconfiguration of resources (land, labour, nature, networks), the valorization of amenity values in landscapes, and the emergence of new economic activities ... [including] ... the emergence of new agri-food networks (AFNs)’ (Selfa et al., 2010: 596).
The remodelling of the CAP towards rural development has begun to change the place of agriculture in rural society in member states. Political dialogue, however, has tended to focus on the implications of global trade liberalization for the CAP and, while the challenges facing individual rural communities have not been entirely overlooked (Marsden, 2006), they have been more footnote than feature. This proposed readjustment sees the farming body engage in a range of diversification processes related to their viability while also meeting wider objectives, such as quality food, environmental services and landscape protection. This brings subsequent challenges in terms of adding value downstream from the farm gate, developing multiple-use land resources (leisure, food, etc.) and creating greater ‘cohesion between activities, not only at farm level but also between different farms or farms and other rural activities’ (van der Ploeg et al., 2000: 392). Consequently, both process and key actors are crucial. The creation of a suitable space in which new forms of farm-based activities emerge and an enabling environment whereby linkages between farmer, community and market, through conduits that up to now may have been under-utilized or inaccessible, become more commonplace will be necessary. (An interesting question here emerges around such innovation and what might entail a new LEADER – that is, the EU’s ‘Links between actions of rural development and rural economy’ initiative – type development: for example, could small-scale farming be reconceptualized as rural innovation and, if so, how?) These demands then are often described in the context of a productivist to a post-productivist to a multifunctional countryside, whereby rural space becomes a place of consumption and production, where new interests and uses of rural areas emerge, and where local and global economies become more incorporated.
IV Impacting the rural economy
Research into the sociocultural dimensions of farming yields an important strand of knowledge on farmers’ perceptions of their roles, their decision-making paths, and what influences these. Sociocultural conceptualizations of farming such as van der Ploeg’s (1994) ‘styles of farming’ and Vanclay et al.’s (1998) ‘farming subcultures’ view farmers as social actors whose approaches to farming are informed by a range of influences from both within and outside the farming community. These processes explain the heterogeneous nature of farming, and account for why traditional farming practices endure in the face of globalization (van der Ploeg, 1994). The nature of institutional supports and how account is taken of socially constructed understandings of farming and appropriate farm management is of significance in maximizing opportunities for agriculture to remain economically viable. Vanclay et al. (2006) posit certain concerns about he potentially hegemonic nature of extension advisory when trying to isolate what farmers themselves identified as farming styles. They suggest instead that farmers draw on a repertoire of strategies for dealing with specific situations, and farming styles as social constructs are more complex phenomena that are not easily classifiable. Where these issues become significant is in the context of changing agriculture fortunes within the wider rural economy (outlined by Hubbard and Gorton, 2011), with van der Ploeg (2000: 497) arguing the need for farmers to resist seeing rural development as ‘a contradiction between ‘‘conventional’’ and ‘‘alternative’’ farming systems’ (for example, in the perception of new farming practices such as organic farming).
The place of the farmer as an actor within these new farming practices is reflected in an ongoing trend to connect agriculture to productive activity in terms of policy. Hubbard and Gorton (2011: 82) examined the relationship between agriculture, agricultural policy and rural development under the CAP in the context of four competing models of rural development: agrarian, exogenous, endogenous and neoendogenous. Pillar 1 of the CAP receives 80% of expenditure, and strongly influences agrarian models of rural development which continue to be based around competitive farming, either in terms of food production or multifunctionality. Under this ‘European model of agriculture’ which reflects an essentially farm-centric approach to rural policy, farmers are rural entrepreneurs who combine other activities with food production (see also Gorton et al., 2008). Also of concern here, however, is that the subsequent study findings concluded that agriculture and farmers had not stimulated other forms of activity in the non-agricultural rural economy, with the majority of farmers continuing to rely on agriculture for their livelihood. At the same time, farm incomes had fallen below those of the non-farm rural economy. In other words, the contribution of agriculture to employment and economic activity was less than that of other sectors, with a competitive farming sector not seemingly a prerequisite for viable rural areas. Hubbard and Gorton (2011) describe the agrarian model as ‘increasingly anachronistic’ in the context of the EU15. The considerable gap between agricultural and other rural economic fortunes raises questions about other underlying issues, such as forms of market failure that do not reflect standard market arrangements and the need for innovative forms of intervention (Dorward et al., 2005). In a related set of observations, Dwyer et al. (2007) assert that the Rural Development Regulation, the basis of the second pillar of the CAP, has shown a high degree of conservatism as well as an emphasis on farmcentric measures. Discussions are currently under way on strengthening neo-endogenous approaches to rural development as part of CAP activities; however, Hubbard and Gorton (2011) suggest that these will have limited impact if not accompanied by fundamental changes in development funding structures which no longer place the farmer at the centre of EU rural policy.
V Concluding remarks
While the numbers engaged directly in farming have declined (in a global North context) and its traditional dominant position has shifted (in theory at least), there is renewed interest in engaging in equal measure with farmer practices, rural livelihoods and changing expectations for agriculture. Rural discourse and rhetoric may have focused on the non-agricultural possibilities within rural areas, but there are equally valid arguments that rural sustainability can be ‘constructed very effectively using the innovativeness and entrepreneurial skills present in the agricultural sector itself’ (van de Ploeg et al., 2000: 401). While the rural is made up of many actors, farmers have played and continue to play a major part. Not only do farmers ‘have the land’, but there is also a realization that small farms in particular are unable to sustain themselves in a post-productivist society, and a broader more multifunctional outlook is desirable. This, suggest van der Ploeg and Renting (2000), enables the construction of new rural practices that are not only positively valued by the broader community but also provide considerable satisfaction for the farmers themselves. Furthermore, while the ‘modernist project foresaw no role for small farms’, the type of research currently undertaken suggests that not only is there a place for small-scale farming but small farms may provide a vital role in the sustainability of rural communities as well as providing an ‘alternative(s) to neoliberal universalism’ (Shucksmith and Ronningen, 2011: 275). It must also be borne in mind that the role of policy and government – nationally and supra-nationally – cannot be ignored either. Mincyte (2011: 103) argues that the EU encourages a largely contradictory model of sustainability, pushing for diversified rural economies and a more recreational and public goods type of approach, on the one hand, while on the other ‘agricultural reforms pull towards the industrialisation of agricultural production by pouring capital into bio-technologies, chemical industry and the use of carbo-based technologies in agriculture, funding the consolidation of land ownership and supporting the development of agricultural enterprises’. This effectively creates a ‘new rural underclass’ and a development agenda that sees small-scale farming ‘falling through the cracks of rural and social development programmes’ (p. 103).
Rural researchers, in reassessing their ‘wariness ... at returning to topics that characterised the early days of the subdiscipline in the 1970s and 1980s: food, farming, land use’ (Woods, 2012b: 131), are increasingly exploring ways of ‘greater cross-fertilization ... in the mutual interests of understanding policy constraints and possibilities in different rural environments’ (Cloke, 1985: 8). Rural policy-making processes are being challenged (Cloke, 2006) and perspectives that help reveal the actual processes of change, such as regulation theory, actor-network theory, ecological modernization or more culturally informed approaches, are increasingly engaged. Challenge and contradiction remain, however, and questions still abound in terms of the place of agriculture in the rural, waxing and waning from a dominant position where the farmer and production are central to one encompassed by a broader Rural Development Regulation, espousing a multifunctional countryside (albeit a countryside where almost 80% of the supports go to agriculture). In terms of future discussions, there are still many questions to be asked in this context, and in the ever popular question of what do people really want from agriculture and the countryside (Hall et al., 2004): who is going to pay and how much will it cost?.
Acknowledgement
I wish to gratefully and sincerely acknowledge the considerable input and constructive feedback that my colleague Marie Mahon gave to this report.
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