Productivism is allegedly dead, long live productivism. Evidence of continued productivist attitudes and decision-making in South-East England

The adjustment of the European Unionʹs Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) initiated in the mid-1980s in response to its high cost and in-built tendency for overproduction set in train a series of measures that have been interpreted as reversing the former emphasis on agricultural production and diverting farmers towards alternative approaches to running their businesses. The policy reform measures have been characterised as contributing to a structural transition from a ‘productivist’ to ‘post-productivist’ era in agriculture, although empirical evidence for such reorientation at the farm level is less than conclusive. This paper reports on results from an analysis of large-scale commercial farmers in an area of relatively intensive arable and mixed livestock farming using documentary and survey sources to seek evidence of this transition over the long-term. Although these farmers have engaged with policy reform measures where these do not conflict with their primary objective, they continue to intensify and specialise their agricultural operations and to concentrate productive farm resources through accumulation and expansion.