Land, culture and crisis. From productionist success to fiscal and environmental impasse on European farms (1940-1990)

Objective

To provide a regional and farm-level social and cultural context to the current tension between agricultural production and the environment

The project seeks to establish:

i) the variation in historical and cultural legacy within the selected European sites and in particular the ways in which the land, landscape and the environment are conceptualised and evaluated;

ii) the extent to which there exists at the local and farm level a cultural basis conducive to the implementation of the policy reforms consequent to recent recognition of surplus production and the high cost of rural/agricultural support given public pressure to treat the agrarian sector as a natural and threatened environment.

Through reference to Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Netherland, UK and Greece, the project is designed to gather data on the development and contemporary state of farm culture and its associated formal organizations, specifically within the context of how land and the countryside were/are perceived and valued by the people who "own" and/or work them. The project is designed to inform the on-going debates on rural depopulation, the role of farming within the environment, the tensions between productionism and notions of sustainability and problems of private tenure and public access.

Programme(s)

• FP3-ENV 1C - Specific research and technological development programme (EEC) in the field of the environment, 1990-1994

Topic(s)

• 0304 - Integration of environmental concerns into agricultural policy

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

University of Manchester

Address

Oxford Road
M13 9PL Manchester
United Kingdom

Participants (5)

Instituto Superior de Ciências do Trabalho e da Empresa

Portugal

Address

S/a,avenida Das Forcas Armadas
1600 Lisboa

Landbouwuniversiteit Wageningen

Netherlands

Address

50,costerweg
6700 HB Wageningen

NATIONAL AND KAPODISTRIAN UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS

Greece

Address

Christou Lada Street 6
10561 Athens

The Provost Fellows and Scholars of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of QueenElizabeth near Dublin hereinafter TCD

Ireland

Address

2 Dublin

Universidad de Córdoba

Spain

Address

Avda. Menéndez Pidal
14071 Córdoba