Governing the Boundaries of Viability: Economic Expertise and the Production of the ‘Low-Income Farm Problem’ in Australia.

The article discusses the restructuring of agriculture in Australia. The productivity and efficiency of farmers has assumed increasing significance on the political agenda of many Western nations since the late 1960s. Issues such as the globalization of production, the emergence of global regulation, the substitution of labor with capital, changes in consumption patterns, and the declining contribution of agriculture to national gross national product have all contributed to an increased international concern with the restructuring of agricultural industries. The emergence of a low-income farm problem in Australian agriculture toward the end of the 1960s is inseparable from its production through the practices of agricultural economists. The author examines the discursive practices through which some rural producers were constituted, from the late 1960s, as a threat to the ongoing security of Australian agriculture. The article draws attention to how seemingly neutral attempts to describe low-income farms, and diagnose solutions, sought to constitute farm viability as a domain of knowledge on which only economists could authoritatively speak.