Co-construction of agency and environmental management. The case of agri-environmental policy implementation at Finnish farms

One of the main challenges of European environmental policies is to recruit local-level actors to fulfil set targets. This article explores how targets of European agri-environmental policy have been achieved in Finland. It also analyses how implementation practices produce conditions for agri-environmental management and how policy success—or sustainability in general—relates to the different actors’ capacities to act. It is argued that we need to adopt a relational view in order to analyse the success and outcome of agri-environmental policy. This article assesses the ways in which the actor-network theory could contribute to this discussion by a notion of co-construction of agency. The empirical part of the article follows farmers’ sociologies. The practices and conceptualisations through which the policy goals are translated into farming practices are analysed, and it is shown how different forms of knowledge have become relevant stakes in the politics of agri-environmental management. It is argued, that the notion of co-construction of agency will help to open up the translation process and scaling between local and universal knowledge. Most importantly, it reveals the different forms of resistance deriving from farming practices. Finally the challenges that the notion of co-construction of agency poses for the agri-environmental policy are discussed.