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It is accepted that British rural geography has actively engaged with the "cultural turn", leading to a resurgence of research within the sub-discipline. However, a reading of recent reviews suggests that the cultural turn has largely, if not completely, bypassed those geographers interested in the agricultural sector. Farming centred engagements with notions of culture have been relatively limited compared with those concerned with the non-agricultural aspects of rural space. Indeed, agricultural geography represents something of an awkward case in the context of the disciplinary turn to culture, a situation that demands further exposition. In seeking explanation, it becomes evident that research on the farm sector is more culturally informed than initially appears. This paper argues that there have been both interesting and important engagements between agricultural geography and cultural perspectives over the past decade. The paper elaborates four specific areas of research which provide evidence for concern about the "culture" within agriculture. The future contribution that culturally informed perspectives in geographical research can bring to agricultural issues is outlined by way of conclusion.

The desire to govern antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in animal agriculture has gained renewed prominence in the UK and international policy and practice in response to growing concern about the impact of AMR infections on human and animal health. This article adopts a more‐than‐human approach inspired by assemblage and biopolitical thinking to explore how diverse actors work to assemble a regime of governance in animal agriculture through their efforts to tackle AMR. How agricultural animals are represented and positioned in this process, and the consequences of these efforts for broader agricultural animal–human relation in UK animal agriculture is also a concern. Qualitative, empirical material is produced from documents published by government, industry organisations, NGOs and retailers. We highlight the negotiated contingencies of actions on AMR in UK animal agriculture and reflect on the limited extent to which they constitute a new front in the regulation of agricultural animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores a form of knowledge politics played out within and between universities and research institutes as sites of certified disciplinary expertise in the agro‐food domain. It investigates the openness of this domain to the expertise of the agro‐food social sciences particularly when challenge‐led research programmes require collaboration across disciplines. A case study is provided by the multi‐discipline field of food security research in the UK involving interviews with key stakeholders. The article examines how this research fieldfield's disciplinary diversity is understood is understood by key stakeholders. Interview data are analysed thematically in terms of the current and potential contribution of social science disciplines, the different ways in which stakeholders imagine social science research, and whether social scientists themselves recognise and align with these different imaginaries. The article concludes by arguing that the field of food security research in the UK is open only selectively to agro‐food social science knowledges and that this is likely to have negative implications for addressing the challenges of food security. Further, if the promise of collaborative working between disciplines in agro‐food research fields is to be made good then the emphasis of agro‐food knowledge politics scholarship and the governance of knowledge‐making needs to change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of decision support tools on-farm may help to deliver evidence-based guidance to farmers, helping to improve productivity and prevent environmental degradation. While much research has sought to increase the uptake of decision support tools in practice, largely by identifying desirable characteristics of system design, rather little work has used a spatial lens to investigate how they are actually used. Using Latour’s notion of ‘the script’, this paper looks at the spatialities of technological and user re-scripting associated with the introduction of decision support tools on-farm. Although there is some literature on how technologies may be re-scripted by users, studies concerning decision support tools are more limited. Furthermore, while there are studies about how technology (not decision support tools) re-scripts agricultural societies, these are generally concerned with macro-level impacts (e.g. labour changes), rather than exploring life on individual farms. This paper, therefore, focuses on exploring the spatialities of re-scripting, investigating how tools themselves are co-constituted in various ways by different users in different spaces, but more particularly on how life on the farm may be changed by the introduction of decision tools. A case study of decision support tool use on farms in England and Wales demonstrates the need to explore spaces on individual farms if we wish to understand processes occurring at the interface between tools and farmers. Firstly, situated knowledge held by farmers and advisers leads to resistance, negotiation, and re-scripting of decision support tools, which are perceived to provide the ‘view from nowhere’. Secondly, the introduction of decision support tools changes the workflows of farmers, affecting how and when they interact with different spaces of their farm. In signalling the need for more research to theorise the spatialities of re-scripting, we briefly explore how our work can inform policy and the development of decision support tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite links to animal disease governance, food and biosecurity, rural studies has neglected consideration of how actors make sense of the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture and the implications for animal and human health. As antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has become a high-profile problem, the contribution of animal antibiotics is frequently mentioned in scientific and policy documents but how different agricultural actors interpret its significance is less clear. This paper offers the first social scientific investigation of contestation and consensus surrounding the use of antibiotics in agriculture and their implications for AMR as mediated through mainstream news-media and farming print media in the UK. Frame analysis of four national newspapers and one farming paper reveals three distinct frames. A ‘system failure’ frame is the most frequently occurring and positions intensive livestock production systems as a key contributor to AMR-related crises in human health. A ‘maintaining the status quo’ frame argues that there is no evidence linking antibiotics in farming to AMR in humans and stresses the necessity of (some) antibiotic use for animal health. A third frame – which is only present in the farming media – highlights a need for voluntary, industry-led action on animal antibiotic use in terms of farmer self-interest. Common to all frames is that the relationship between agricultural use of antibiotics and problems posed by AMR is mostly discussed in terms of the implications for human health as opposed to both human and animal health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genetic techniques have become increasingly prevalent in livestock breeding, associated with new types of knowledge-practice and changes in the institutional and geographical relationships related to animal husbandry. This paper examines the value of Foucault’s concept of ‘biopower’ to theorising livestock breeding and the implications of the rise of genetic knowledge-practices in agriculture, developing the concept to apply to nonhuman animals and to situations where humans and nonhuman animals are co-constituted through particular knowledge-practices and corporeal meetings. It focuses on the idea of ‘population’ as a central component of biopower, and relates this to conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Reacting to the inherent humanism of Foucault’s outlining of biopower, the paper argues for its relevance in relation to nonhuman populations, and for heterogeneous conceptualisations of biosocial collectivity. Drawing on research with UK beef cattle and sheep breed societies, the paper explores how, in practice, populations are constructed in relation to the production of particular sorts of truths concerning, and particular modes of intervention in, the lives of nonhuman animals. It explores how heterogeneous biosocial collectivities are constituted around these interventions. The emergence of genetic techniques is shown to transform the processes constituting populations and heterogeneous biosocial collectivities, and this is discussed in terms of a new inflection of agricultural biopower associated with novel interventions in the lives of livestock animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an agenda for research into the geographies of UK livestock agriculture as these are being reconfigured through the increasing intervention of genetic techniques and technologies. After discussing three particular techniques, four areas of research are identified. The first three relate to different spaces and scales at which the effects of genetic techniques can be examined: the animal body and animal-human relationships; the farm and other rural spaces; and the national and international networks of genetic knowledge-practices relating to livestock. The fourth area outlines an agenda for engaging with Foucault's notion of biopower as a possible means of gaining a theoretical purchase on three key issues which span these three scales: knowledge, power and life. In its reflections on the wider implications of the proposed research the paper aims to speak to a number of audiences within and beyond the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses George Ritzer’s account of McDonaldization – the socially transformative process of rationalization – to undertake a critical analysis of agri-environment schemes, the dominant form of on-farm nature conservation in England. Drawing on a wide range of evidence, including social surveys of the participants and non-participants of agri-environment schemes, government files, and interviews with government officials, the four key dimensions of McDonaldization – efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control (through non-human technologies) – are applied to the analysis of agri-environment schemes. The irrationalities emerging from a McDonaldized approach to nature conservation are discussed together with their implications for farmers, nature, and society. In conclusion, the paper points to the emergence of alternative models of on-farm nature conservation that may offer ways of resisting and displacing the McDonaldized version. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper explores the role of knowledge in the development of more environmentally sustainable farming systems in the UK and specifically seeks to reveal the porosity of the boundary between state-led and farmer approaches to knowing nature. Its empirical focus is two government sponsored ‘agri-environment schemes’—the Countryside Stewardship scheme and the Environmentally Sensitive Area scheme—which offer financial incentives to farmers and other land managers who agree to undertake environmentally beneficial practices. As a framework for analysis, the paper draws on the notion of ‘knowledge culture’, with agri-environment schemes represented as an emerging ‘policy knowledge culture’ that is seemingly distinct, in its approach to knowing nature, from pre-existing ‘agrarian knowledge cultures’. Data are derived from two large scale, countrywide surveys of agreement holders in the two agri-environment schemes. These reveal that alongside some resistance to the policy knowledge culture of AES, there is also negotiation and interchange taking place between knowledge cultures, and the policy knowledge culture is adapting to and accommodating aspects of the other. As such, the paper contests the findings of previous studies which assert that the codified knowledge of agri-environment schemes always wins out in the implementation of scheme agreements, with the subsequent marginalisation of other knowledge(s). In turn, it suggests that policy knowledge cultures can give voice to farmers’ ways of knowing nature with benefits both for them and nature itself. The paper concludes with some reflections on the extent of knowledge culture transformation and offers some policy recommendations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Within Europe and North America the integration of environmental concerns into agriculture has become a domain almost exclusively defined by public policy. In this paper it is contended that we are currently witnessing a new direction in attempts to reconcile agricultural production and environmental protection, in which the market is playing an increasingly important role. The paper takes as its focus the rapidly expanding number of what are termed ‘market-oriented initiatives for environmentally sustainable food production’ (MOIs), in which the incentive for food producers to manage the environment positively comes directly through the market. The number of MOIs, in both Europe and North America, has proliferated recently, although some have been established for many years. However, both older and newer forms of these MOIs appear to be the focus of a new rural development, food quality, and sustainable farming agenda. In an attempt to make a contribution to this emergent debate, this paper sets out to address the extent to which these MOIs are capable of contributing to the development of more environmentally sustainable food production. In this paper we consider the drivers of this new approach, review the various types of MOI that are emerging in both Europe and North America, and examine the different approaches to environmental management that MOIs adopt. The paper also offers a reflection upon the potential contribution of MOIs to the delivery of environmental goods in food production and the implications of this for public sector approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing amount of land in England is managed through agri-environment schemes such as the Countryside Stewardship Scheme (CSS). The levels of public funding, and the largely experimental status of these initiatives, demands on-going critical evaluation of scheme performance. Based upon information collected during a 3-year programme of environmental monitoring and evaluation of CSS (1997–2000), this paper focuses attention on the implementation of CSS agreements. It argues that understanding of this process needs to take into account a diversity of actors, and in contrast to previous ‘participation studies’ should not be viewed as the product of agreement holders (AHs) acting in isolation. In doing so, the paper draws on actor network theory, to conceptualise the implementation of the CSS as a process involving the active construction and evolution of an actor network, initiated by Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (the government department that runs the scheme), into which AHs and a host of other entities (both human and non-human) need to be enrolled in order for the desired environmental outcomes to be realised and sustained. A number of areas of contestation and instability in the implementation process are revealed through the actor network analysis, allowing a series of recommendations to policy makers to be identified. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It is accepted that British rural geography has actively engaged with the ‘cultural turn’, leading to a resurgence of research within the sub-discipline. However, a reading of recent reviews suggests that the cultural turn has largely, if not completely, bypassed those geographers interested in the agricultural sector. Farming centred engagements with notions of culture have been relatively limited compared with those concerned with the non-agricultural aspects of rural space. Indeed, agricultural geography represents something of an awkward case in the context of the disciplinary turn to culture, a situation that demands further exposition. In seeking explanation, it becomes evident that research on the farm sector is more culturally informed than initially appears. This paper argues that there have been both interesting and important engagements between agricultural geography and cultural perspectives over the past decade. The paper elaborates four specific areas of research which provide evidence for concern about the ‘culture’ within agriculture. The future contribution that culturally informed perspectives in geographical research can bring to agricultural issues is outlined by way of conclusion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Agriculture is a key land user implicated in the causes of, and solutions to, the problem of biodiversity decline. The development, in the late 1990s, of farm biodiversity action plans (farm BAPs) represents an important step towards achieving greater farmer involvement in biodiversity and is the first specific attempt to devise a practical mechanism for meeting biodiversity targets at the farm level. In this paper the processes surrounding the design and implementation of farm BAPs are used to explore how farmers are responding to the biodiversity issue and to highlight challenges and opportunities being faced by the organizations delivering biodiversity to the farming community. It describes the formulation and operation of farm BAPs, and then moves on to present two conceptual domains, governance and ecological modernization, which provide a framework for interpreting the emergence of farm BAPs. Following a brief elaboration of methodology, the paper presents and discusses selected findings from empirical research into farm BAPs across the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we address flaws in existing approaches to farmer behavioral change which place undue attention on the individual. Rather, we argue for a more distributed understanding of farmer decision‐making behavior, which includes all relevant actors within a farmers' "ring of confidence" in projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential contribution of integrated farming systems (IFS) to the development of a more sustainable agriculture has been largely ignored within social science and by policy analysts. The goals of IFS are to sustain agricultural production, maintain farm incomes, safeguard the environment and respond to consumer concerns about food qualityissues. IFS can be conceptualised as a 'third way' or middle course for agriculture between conventional and organic farming. This paper describes the origins and basic principles of IFS and positions this distinctive approach to agriculture within the agri-environmental debate. It also explores some of the implications of pursuing this `third way' for farmers and the institutional and policy frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]