FAMILY FARMING: RHETORIC AND REALITY

Farm Management,

Family farming an asset for the planet ... : Food security, biodiversity, climate, water, jobs, environment... family farms are tackling the challenges of the future!

Over its fifteen pages or so, the 2014 edition of the CIRAD brochure produced for the Paris International Agricultural Show illustrates to what extent and in what way family farming can address the challenges of providing jobs and alleviating poverty; food security; preserving the environment and natural resources; climate change, etc. The brochure Agricultures familiales, une chance pour la planète... centres on two main topics. The first is the capacity of this type of farming to innovative and the second research "on" and "for" family farming. From these two perspectives, the brochure shows how family farms and research are working together to address a number of challenges. It is abundantly illustrated and easily accessible to a broad readershi

The Potential for Joint Farming Ventures in Irish Agriculture: A Sociological Review

peer-reviewedJoint farming ventures (JFVs) are promoted within Irish and EU policy discourses as strategies that can enhance the economic and social sustainability of family farming. Research has shown that JFVs, including arrangements such as farm partnerships, contract rearing and share farming, can potentially enable farmers to work cooperatively to improve farm productivity, reduce working hours, facilitate succession, develop skills and improve relationships within the farm household. In the context of increasing policy promotion of JFVs, there is a need to make some attempt at understanding the macro socio-cultural disposition of family farming to cooperation. Reviewing sociological studies of agricultural cooperation and taking a specific focus on the Irish contextual backdrop, this paper draws the reader’s attention to the importance of historical legacy, pragmatic economic and social concerns, communicative norms, inter-personal relationships, individualism and, policy and extension stimuli, all of which shape farmers’ dispositions to cooperation and to JFVs specifically.This work was funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Ireland under the Research Stimulus Fund (RSF), Project Number: 11/S/151

Working Time: How Do Farmers Juggle With It and How Has It Impacted Their Family Total Income

Employment in agriculture has changed drastically over the last fifty years. While the share of self-employed farmers has remained relatively stable over that period, the contribution of paid workers and of unpaid family workers to agricultural employment has reversed. Fifty years ago, unpaid family workers contributed significantly to farm work while paid workers were not as common. Now, the share of paid workers is converging towards that of self-employed farmers while unpaid family workers have basically disappeared. The increase in paid work can also be observed at the individual level. Almost half of all farmers reported another professional activity, be it paid off-farm work or a nonagricultural business. Changes affecting farming can also be observed in the income composition of farming families. Net farm income now accounts for roughly one-fourth of the family's total income. Wages and salaries which have always contributed significantly to the farming family's income is now, and by far, the largest contributor.Farm Management,

From ‘As Good as Gold’ to ‘Gold Diggers’: Farming Women and the Survival of British Family Farming

The survival of family farming in British agriculture has long been a topic of interest for rural researchers and is undergoing something of a current renewal of interest. However, insights from feminist approaches remain underutilised despite the crucial role farming women continue to play in family farming. This article addresses the unity of farm, family and business by interpreting it as a patriarchal way of life. An ethnographically informed repeated life history methodology is employed to study in detail the family members of seven farms in rural mid-Wales. Findings show that the recent survival of the family farms investigated has been heavily dependent upon compliance with a patriarchal ideology that demands that women be ‘as good as gold’. However, it is discovered that a new view of women is emerging in the world of British family farming, that of ‘gold digger’. Women entering relationships with farming men are increasingly being considered a threat to farm survival by virtue of their entitlements if the relationship breaks down. The necessity to study the intricacies of personal relationships in family farming has important implications for most future research into this form of agricultural business arrangement

Persistence of family farming, learning from its dynamics

Traditionally, the family farm has always been seen as a cornerstone of the agricultural production system. Given social, economic and political evidence (Calus, 2009), this organisational form might still continue to shape agricultural development. However, important changes in social and economic environment (e.g. industrialisation of agriculture, increased risk level and public vision on agriculture) become threats to the traditional model. A SWOT analysis of the family farms indicates the various intrinsic characteristics that make family farms resilient to changing conditions. Even in a changing economic and social landscape these aspects provide them with building blocks for creating new organisational forms or institutional arrangements. This paper shows these building blocks, and is only, prudentially, indicative for possible new institutional arrangements. Creativity may produce numerous outcomes from building blocks. Land tenure is only one example from past and present to show how institutions can deal with a potential threat, such as the large demand for land as production factor. Similar creativity is needed to the exploding capital demand in agriculture. One of the major challenges will be to provide family farms with low-costing capital. Food security and local community viability is the social price for this low cost supply.family farm, corporate farm, peasant, SWOT, Consumer/Household Economics,

The Depopulation of Rural Areas and the Farming System

Depopulation of rural areas can entail negative externalities. This paper examines, inter alia, the influence of the farming system on depopulation processes. The population change in rural communities in Switzerland (family-based farming system) and in the German Land Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (fordistic farming system) is explained through regression analysis by the proportion of persons occupied in the three economic sectors and by other variables. In Switzerland, a high proportion of locals occupied in farming affects population dynamics positively; in Mecklenburg- Western Pomerania, the situation is exactly opposite. This can serve as an argument to support small and networked farms in rural problem regions.Community/Rural/Urban Development,

A Study of Time and Labour Use on Irish Suckler Beef Farms

End of project reportLabour is one of the four factors of production and an increasingly costly and scarce input on farms. The attractiveness of non-farming employment, the nature of farm work and the price received for farm outputs are resulting in falling levels of hired and family labour

Farmers, farm workers and work-related stress

This research explores the ways in which stress affects farming communities, how this has changed in recent years, and the degree to which work-related aspects of stress may be assuaged by support interventions. A qualitative case study research approach was employed to address these issues, involving 60 interviews in five locations across England and Wales.In examining farming stress, a distinction is made between its intrinsic, extrinsic and workrelated dimensions. Whileinterviewees tended to associate day-to-day worries and acute stress with farming’s intrinsic demands (such as disease and adverse weather conditions), external causes of tension (such as competition and regulation), together with worries about finances and family, were associated with more sustained anxieties. By contrast, work-related aspects of farming stress, such as workload issues and farming practices, involved a combination of physical and mental health effects.Notably, work-related and extrinsic dimensions of stress have increased in recent years in relation to organisational and policy shifts, price fluctuations, mounting paperwork demands, workload intensification, and changes in agricultural regulation. These have prompted an escalation in the aspects of their work that farming communities feel powerless to control, and represent a major area for policy intervention. Principal farmers displayed the most visible manifestations of stress, linked at once to the intrinsic, extrinsic and workrelated dimensions of their work. By contrast, family farm workers and labourers often lacked autonomy over the way they worked, and work-related aspects of stress concerning workload and organisation made up a greater part of their experience. Increased paperwork demands emerged as a major cause of stress among interviewees, particularly forfarmers and their wives, who struggled to balance these with traditional farming priorities. Differences between farmswere also influential in explaining stress. Livestock farming embodied intrinsic pressures relating to stock crises and the unpredictability of animals, but more recently has come under intense economic pressure, prompting a rationalisation of working practices. Arable farmers found the organisation of activities, such as harvesting and planting, in a context of reduced and increasingly contractual workforces particularly challenging. Mixed farmers faced the dual stresses of balancing work activities with conflicting timetables, and the paperwork demands of a complex portfolio of farming. Smaller farms were struggled with intensified workloads, while larger enterprises had to comply with the demands of more inspection regimes.Support agencies need to overcome the stigma attached to asking for help among farming communities and offer a rangeof responsive and proactive services. Locally based support was more likely to be used and trusted, although concernsabout client confidentiality might deter those most in need from seeking help. Where existing local networks wereestablished, there was a strong argument for providers to plug into these and work towards publicising their efforts to ensure that support is provided most effectively. Critically, support must be multidimensional, reflecting the wide range of stressors and their impacts among farming communities