Contingent or Structural Crisis in British Agriculture?

To judge from the unprecedented public demonstrations of the normally placid British farming population in the spring of 1998 and the high level of bankruptcies in the farming sector, British agriculture is in crisis. The current situation has been brought about by the overlap of a sharp fall in farm incomes as a result of the strength of the pound sterling with more fundamental trends towards the progressive withdrawal of production subsidies under the European Union Common Agricultural Policy and the generally depressed state of agricultural commodity prices worldwide. Whereas the first is a uniquely British and possibly temporary problem, the other issues are endemic to the whole of Western Europe's agriculture. Two particular features characterize the political response in Britain to the current situation: first, an increasingly neoliberal approach to agricultural policy, and second, the tendency to substitute rural for agricultural policies. In the paper, the author questions the rationality of these responses both theoretically and by relating the British situation to the recent experiences of the agricultural sectors in Australia and New Zealand.