Keeping the stress off the sheep? Agricultural intensification, neoliberalism, and ‘good’ farming in New Zealand

Haggerty, Julia H.; Campbell, Hugh; Morris, Carolyn

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.12.003

Cited by 87 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…In the 1992 GATT agreement the argument was forwarded that market-liberalisation alone would lead to environmental improvements as a result of the removal of trade distortions (GATT, 1994). However, in New Zealand e one of the 'test cases' of market-liberalisation (Haggerty et al, 2009) e evidence suggests that initial environmental benefits from the destocking of heavily subsidised sectors (primarily sheep) were later reversed as market forces simply took over from government subsidies as the driver of environmental degradation (Hall et al, 1999). Rather than creating a more environmentally sustainable farming culture, liberalisation has (as should have been expected) led to a culture with strong ideological leanings towards market freedoms: farmers in countries with neo-liberal approaches (e.g.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An important distinction between our approach and that of cultural economics is that we contend, for farmers, it is 'lowbrow' cultural capital that is important rather than highbrow forms. Research has illustrated that in agriculture much prestige and status is generated through producing quality livestock (Madsen and Adriansen, 2004;Holloway, 2005;Yarwood and Evans, 2006), producing 'tidy' agricultural crops (Seabrook and Higgins, 1988;Burton, 2004;Burton et al, 2008), and following good stockmanship practices (Haggerty et al, 2009). Likewise, status symbols (objectified cultural capital), in farming communities tend to be associated with the practical activities of the farmer e for example, new agricultural machinery (Dessein and Nevens, 2007), large grain silos (Dalton, 1967;Rogers, 1983) and the size of the farm itself (Bell and Newby, 1974;Wilson, 1988).…”

Section: The Impact Of Current Voluntary Agri-environmental Schemes Omentioning

confidence: 99%

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Creating culturally sustainable agri-environmental schemes

Burton

Paragahawewa

2011

Journal of Rural Studies

261

186

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a b s t r a c tEvidence is emerging from across Europe that contemporary agri-environmental schemes are having only limited, if any, influence on farmers' long-term attitudes towards the environment. In this theoretical paper we argue that these approaches are not 'culturally sustainable', i.e. the actions are not becoming embedded within farming cultures as part of conventional 'good farming' practice. We propose (following Bourdieu) that, in order to culturally embed the environmental values, beliefs and knowledges that underlie such schemes, policy-makers need to devise approaches that allow the creation of cultural and social capital within farming communities e rather than simply compensating for economic capital lost. We outline the theoretical basis of our position and discuss how the contemporary agri-environmental approach of paying for specified environmental management services restricts the ability of such schemes to generate cultural and, thereby, social capital. Finally, we outline two possible ways of accounting for cultural capital in scheme creation: either through the development of measures of cultural capital that enable its incorporation into contemporary economic models or through a major revision to the way we construct and apply agri-environmental schemes.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Impact Of Current Voluntary Agri-environmental Schemes Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating culturally sustainable agri-environmental schemes

Burton

Paragahawewa

2011

Journal of Rural Studies

261

186

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“…Geographers and anthropologists have often approached audit under the sign of neoliberalism (Enticott, 2014;Larner, 2003;Shore and Wright, 2015;Strathern, 2000;White, 2016). Thus in agro-food studies, the proliferation of private standards audited by third party certifiers is often cited as a hallmark of the neoliberalization of the global food system (Guthman, 2007;Haggerty et al, 2009;Lockie and Higgins, 2007). However, Kipnis (2008) highlights the ambiguity of this association, whose force and meaning vary depending on the place and disciplinary circuits in which ideas of audit and neoliberalism are invoked.…”

Section: Audit Assurance and Animal Welfare Regulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Paperwork and the decoupling of audit and animal welfare: The challenges of materiality for better regulation

Escobar

Demeritt

2016

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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This article uses the case of animal welfare to contribute to academic debates about audit and better regulation reforms designed to reduce administrative burdens and increase regulatory effectiveness. Combining desk-based policy document analysis, on-farm field visits, and 31 interviews with livestock farmers and animal health and welfare inspectors in England, it explores farmers' record-keeping practices and the contrasting role regulatory records are understood to play in assurance and good animal husbandry by farmers, regulatory inspectors, and veterinary experts. Farmers experience record-keeping as something they must do to satisfy external regulatory demands rather than anything that good farmers might themselves use in caring for their livestock. As a result they regard paperwork as burdensome and often fail to comply with record-keeping requirements. By contrast, inspectors and animal welfare experts frame record-keeping and analysis as central to good animal husbandry and to a properly anticipatory approach to managing animal health and welfare. Those veterinary-medical presumptions about farm practice inform both the design of specific animal welfare recordkeeping requirements and their self-effacing conceit as being about peering over the farmer's shoulder to audit already existing records. Our findings highlight the dual tendency for the practice of regulatory record-keeping to become decoupled from both the formal requirements and from the quality of care that paperwork is meant to assure. Our analysis extends the critical literature on audit and regulation by drawing on the materialist tradition of science and technology studies to elucidate how this decoupling is shaped by the physical form and materiality of records themselves.

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“…Prior to full market liberalisation a strong emphasis on meat and wool production meant that farmers across New Zealand had become ideologically and structurally entrenched in sheep and, to a lesser extent, beef production with little concern for diversifying risk (Haggerty et al 2009;Stock & Peoples, 2012). The occurrence of the El Niño drought in 1988-89 thus caught the industry unprepared.…”

Section: Drought In the First Stage Of Neoliberalisation -A Crisis Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…New Zealand has been described as "unequivocally liberalized" (Koester, 1991) or a "laboratory" for free-market policies (Sautet, 2006), and is touted as one of the best countries in which to study the effect of neoliberalisation on agriculture (e.g. Le Heron, 2003;Haggerty et al, 2009). The paper begins by outlining how the market liberalisation process affected New Zealand agriculture, and then presents the results of a survey of mostly sheep/beef farmers in North Otago/South Canterbury -a dryland farming region on the east coast of the South Island.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Market liberalisation and drought in New Zealand: A case of ‘double exposure’ for dryland sheep farmers?

Burton

Peoples

2014

Journal of Rural Studies

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Market liberalisation/globalisation and climate change are two great global political/economic challenges of our time. Researchers have noted that the coincidence of these events has resulted in 'double exposure' where the positive or negative effects can overlap creating a pattern of winners and losers, particularly in the agricultural sector. However, existing research has been focused on developing economies leaving the issue of double exposure in economically developed economies relatively under-researched. To address this gap, this paper examines three droughts that occurred in North Otago/South Canterbury (New Zealand) over the last 30 years, and focuses on how market liberalisation in 1984 influenced dryland sheep farmers' ability to cope with drought. From in-depth farmer interviews we find that neoliberalism's impact has changed as the neoliberal project has developed from a position where there were few winners (1980s), to few losers (1990s), and, currently, to increasingly sectorally based winners and losers (2000s). We relate this to the developing influence of neoliberalism and suggest how neoliberalism may be influencing the vulnerability of agriculture to future droughts. A key finding is how neoliberalism has promoted the reconfiguring of rural space around the expanding dairy industry and how this is now influencing the vulnerability of both dryland sheep and dairy farmers to future droughts. Finally, we briefly consider the implications of the findings for the 'double exposure' framework.

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Keeping the stress off the sheep? Agricultural intensification, neoliberalism, and ‘good’ farming in New Zealand

Cited by 87 publications

References 31 publications

Creating culturally sustainable agri-environmental schemes

Creating culturally sustainable agri-environmental schemes

Paperwork and the decoupling of audit and animal welfare: The challenges of materiality for better regulation

Market liberalisation and drought in New Zealand: A case of ‘double exposure’ for dryland sheep farmers?

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