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Flood storage involves creating sacrificial land for water to purposefully inundate to protect land downstream. Obtaining the right or co‐operation to flood on private property remains a challenge. This paper is based on empirical qualitative research with 14 key stakeholders involved in the practice of gaining land to flood in England and Wales and the different forms of financial and economic approaches that might be used to facilitate this right. Expropriation of land, one off‐payment, annual single payment, and flood event losses compensation were explored. Availability of funding as compensation is the main driver for landowner adoption of flood storage schemes. Three funding approaches were revealed; flowage easement, full land purchase, and agricultural schemes funding diffuse storage. Rather than attempting to gain partnerships between spatially dislocated stakeholders in upper storage and lower impacted catchments success resides on the storage land and persuading landowner co‐operation. A clear enforced legal framework of ownership of land and funding mechanisms is also viewed as essential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Sociologia Ruralis is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the transmission of world coffee prices to the price received by Ugandan coffee growers by means of Directed Acyclic Graphs which reveal the flow of information from the spot indicator price to the London futures price and then to the growers' price. A positive shock in the futures and indicator prices has respectively a positive and negative effect on the growers' price, and Forecast Error Variance Decomposition shows that uncertainty is attributable to own price, London futures price, and indicator price, in rank order. The article recommends that the Ugandan Coffee Development Authority should provide information on both futures and indicator prices to the growers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The farming community in the UK have significant unmet health-care needs that have traditionally remained invisible. The project that is the subject of this paper is an attempt to improve access to health care for farmers and make their needs visible. It is based in an upland area of England and involves two nurse practitioners (NPs) and two support workers who provide health care for the farming community. The main targets of the project are farm accidents, mental health and occupational diseases. The NPs visit farms, on request, for consultations and also attend auction marts, agricultural shows and other farmers’ meetings. Evaluation is by a telephone follow-up interview with a sample of clients seen by the NP, who will be compared with a group from a similar area who do not receive the service. A farm accident survey is underway, case notes are being audited and the NPs are keeping a reflective diary as further sources of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have treated participation in agricultural cooperatives as a single variable. A better understanding of farmers' cooperative behavior may be achieved by distinguishing separate components of participation. This paper identifies four components; use or patronage, support for the cooperative and involvement in the running of the organisation, membership of other cooperatives and cooperating informally with other farmers. A survey of members of two crop marketing cooperatives in England suggests that the four components of participation are not closely associated. Factors which predict one will not therefore predict other forms of participation equally well. Attitude variables tend to predict use of cooperative services best. Measures of farm size, related to socio economic status, are better predictors of support and membership than patronage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brexit, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, has offered the UK government a unique opportunity to fundamentally reform agricultural policy. In England, the new policy—called Environmental Land Management—will reward farmers for activities that produce environmental public goods, such as clean air and water and a thriving wildlife, and prevent environmental hazards. It could lead to the biggest changes in land management since the end of World War II. This photo essay and the process of making it contributes to a better understanding of how farmers feel about the changes underway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rewilding is an increasingly common conservation approach, aiming to restore ecosystem processes and minimise human intervention. Rewilding has the potential to profoundly change landscapes and people–nature relations. These issues prompt an ongoing debate about how and if rewilding should be done.Farmers are key stakeholders in this debate; they stand to be both affected by and influence the trajectory of rewilding initiatives developing in the United Kingdom and globally. Despite this, a comprehensive understanding of farmers' perceptions towards rewilding is lacking.Here, we focus on how members of the farming community in England perceive common rewilding scenarios (beaver release, farm‐level rewilding and landscape‐scale rewilding), and how these perceptions shape farmers' attitudinal support for rewilding practices.Using thematic analysis of semi‐structured interviews with 36 farmers and farming representatives, we show that the diversity of famers' attitudes can be understood through the prism of perceptions on five core issues: (a) the perceived need for restoration action, (b) the ecological effectiveness of rewilding, (c) rewilding's compatibility with ensuring food security, (d) rewilding's compatibility with rural lifestyles, livelihoods and economies and (e) multidimensional justice of rewilding initiatives. These issues are rooted in collective farming values, and farmers' perceptions of these issues are influenced by mental models, perceived social impacts and perceived ecological outcomes of rewilding initiatives. Diverse perceptions result in a range of attitudes, from enthusiastic support to strong opposition to different rewilding practices.We argue that the scope to increase support for rewilding varies depending on the type of underlying negative perceptions. Where the negative perceptions are based on objectively verifiable causal beliefs (mental models), opponents' minds may be changed through the provision of positive experiences, social learning, and adhering to good governance principles. However, where negative perceptions are based on values, for example, a preference for traditional rural landscapes, they are unlikely to change easily. Pursuing rewilding ambitions that clash with the values of local farmers may risk social conflicts, but accommodating these values too much may compromise rewilding's own goals. Rewilding initiatives will need dialogue and social engagement to navigate their path around this tension. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to extend understanding of the rural middling sort by exploring their engagement with cricket. Cricket enjoyed considerable popularity across the south-eastern counties by the mid-eighteenth century; however, very few sources have survived and so our knowledge of the game - especially at the grass roots - is very limited. The article focuses on a unique set of scorecards from a club founded in 1773 in the Kentish village of Wingham, and uses these to examine both who was playing village cricket in this period, and the nature of the social and cultural networks in which it was embedded. As will be seen, those engaging in the game were closely associated with the larger farmers, tradesmen and artisans in the village. The same groups ran the parish vestry, and it is suggested that cricket flourished in this period because it provided a suitable outlet for the middling sort to display their social status both within and beyond the bounds of their own parishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst objectivist epistemologies have been dominant in productivist agriculture, the local, cultural and environmental contexts of sustainable agriculture are more fully informed by constructivist epistemologies. Within constructivism, tacit knowledge - an intuitive knowledge that cannot be formalised - is explored empirically. Six types of tacit knowledge were identified as a result of working closely with a sustainable food network: the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership. Customs cohere around integrating food with other sustainable activity; developing a complex unregulated organisation requires savoir-faire. The unique character of Brighton has developed an operational folklore, and network identity is important, particularly in relation to conventional agriculture and to the city as a whole. A confidence in people's roles has helped define network development and using different discourses, communicating the network in diverse contexts, is important for understanding the network. All these tacit knowledge elements have a strong influence over the network but have to be assimilated knowledge rather than learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dynamics of tenant farming and short-term leasing dynamics in Romney Marsh provide answers to the issues relating to land ownership and occupation in the rural economy of early modern England. With the failure of the English peasantry to establish control over the land, landlords were enabled to consolidate, enclose and create large farms and to lease them to capitalist tenants. This role by the landlords is crucial in England's agrarian history. Along with the landlords, there also emerged the larger tenant farmer. These tenant farmers played a major role in the evolution of taxation in Romney Marsh and the evolution of English capitalism in general.

The article focuses on pastoral farming in south-east England in the fifteenth century. Since the mid-thirteenth century sheep farming had played an important role in the economy of south-east England. This importance continued in the early fifteenth century, when the coastal marshes teemed with animals. In the 1430s and 1440s this pasture demand collapsed totally. The expansion of the cloth industry towards the end of the century, coupled with a stabilization of the rural population, brought about a renewed interest in sheep farming. The end of the century, however, does see a growing diversification within the pastoral economy. Cattle breeding was taking its place alongside sheep rearing. The pastoral economy in south-east England thus followed slightly different paths from those followed in other parts of the country. In the early years of the century the need to supply the armies going abroad encouraged farmers to produce stock for the market. Pasture rents rose and the price of animals stayed high or, in the case of horses, increased significantly.

The article discusses the economic status of farmers in 1086 in Kent, England. It is reported that in 1946 and 1947 the "Economic Journal" published two contributions by R. V. Lennard which were aimed at constructing a comprehensive statistical picture of the holdings of the English peasants in 1086. Out of several surveys Lennard produced a league table indicating the relative size of land holdings in the various counties. His findings were in many ways unexpected, especially in the very low rating given to a number of eastern counties where the husbandmen had commonly been thought of as unusually prosperous, as well as free. Lennard did not explain the composition of his sample, but it can be readily reconstructed on his criterion. It contains 80 manors, or distinguishable parts of them, the majority either small or very small, none large by Kentish standards, only 20 of even moderate size, and more than three-quarters of them in lay ownership. On average they had between seven and eight villeins apiece, owning between 13 and 14 oxen; but the median was four villeins, and a quarter of them contained only one or two.

This article investigates the social structure and the distribution of agricultural wealth in Cumbria, England. The challenge thrown to a growing group of historians may well turn out to be beneficial. There is little doubt, for example, that the examination and analysis of probate inventories, covering large geographical areas, and for long curiously neglected, will eventually produce working estimates of changing wealth levels which will in turn permit inter-regional as well as inter-local comparisons. It is explicitly assumed that a person's economic and social position at the time of his death-when the inventory was made-may not reflect his wealth and status at the peak of his career as a farmer, dealer, or craftsman. The apparent wealth levels suggested by inventories may have been influenced by a host of variables-the most important being mean death ages in a period, time, or region, ages at marriage, the sizes of families, inheritance customs and types of tenure. Plainly, if a strong element of homogeneity exists, these damaging or worrying variables become much less frightening, although it is taken for granted that elaborate demographic investigation must follow at a later stage, and that no dubious assumption will be left unchecked. Finally, it should be stressed that this is a study of stages in the growth of wealth and not a study of poverty.

The article presents a study that investigates the social change on the Leveson-Gower estates in England during the period 1714-1832. It discusses the economic and social conditions of small farmers and agricultural laborers during the period. The sizes of tenant farms and the methodology used in the study are presented. It provides an explanation on the source of the data used for the study. The article also discusses the fate of the English "yeoman" in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and of the small owner-occupier, who has been generally equated with the English yeoman.

The article focuses on agriculture in England during the sixteenth century. It discusses the factors which quickened the pace of economic life in medieval England and the agrarian problems during the sixteenth century. A comparison of the labor plight in England during the thirteenth and sixteenth century is presented. In the sixteenth century, as in the thirteenth, there were tenant-farmers who were in a strong enough position to resist all efforts by their landlords to raise rents. The article suggests that in the sixteenth century those who acceded to the passage of the enclosure legislation did not use it. and those who needed protection did not need protection from the threat of enclosure.

The article focuses on the population distribution of wireworm in East Anglia, England. Requests for wireworm counts were usually made by farmers to the district advisory officer, who sent them on to provincial headquarters. The pre-war type of farming, which also influenced the acreage of grass being ploughed, was another important factor. The sampling distribution corresponds generally with the amount of permanent grass, except for Norfolk where the lower mean wireworm population density probably accounts for the fewer samples taken. The distribution of wireworm density should be correlated with ecologically similar areas.

Sixty cattle farmers in England were questioned about the costs associated with premovement testing forbovine tuberculosis (TB). On average, the farmers had premovement tested 2·45 times in the previous 12 months, but the majority had tested only once. An average of 28·6 animals were tested on each occasion, but there were wide variations. The average farm labour costs were £4.00 per animal tested, veterinary costs were £4.33 and other costs were £0.51, giving a total cost of £8.84, but there were wide variations between farms, and many incurred costs of more than £20 per animal. A majority of the farmers also cited disruption to the farm business or missed market opportunities as costs, but few could estimate their financial cost. Most of the farmers thought that premovement testing was a cost burden on their business, and over half thought it was not an effective policy to control bovine TB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social class status of the small farm freeholder in the English Midlands. One accustomed to the life and manners of the Midlands can identify a small freeholder by sight. His customary garb -- his working and marketing clothes -- are as distinctive in the country as are the bowler hat, black coat, and stiff collar of the clerks in the city. The small farmer traditionally wears a colored dress shirt, detachable collar, tie, wool trousers stuffed into the tops of rubber boots, and a felt hat which has seen better days. Small freeholders in this section of England commonly own from a few acres to possibly thirty or forty acres of land. Milk cows, swine, and chickens are the source of most of their produce. A few farmers have developed rather large garden plots. The small farm freeholder has a distinctive way of life. He makes his living by manual labor and at the same time tries to live like a gentleman. He is condescending to day laborers and feels out of place with both the urban working and middle classes. He shows deference to the remaining squires and large estate holders.

Jon Huxley and colleagues evaluated the benefits of benchmarking health and welfare in organic dairy herds of farmers in England. They also evaluated the challenges in achieving uniformity of method in certification. Benchmarking, to establish comparisons of specific health and welfare factors on different farms, is a potentially valuable tool for identifying and acting upon areas of weakness. Observations of behavior, body condition and lameness were made on fully organic units in south-west England. The authors noted that further studies will assess the impact of the benchmarking process on farms.

Reports on the imprisonment of farmer, Roger Baker from Cornwall, England for attacking a female State Veterinary Service veterinary surgeon and local animal health inspector. Holding of surgeon's head under liquid slurry.