in english/ Præsentation ved etnologisk Ph.d.-konference i Edinburgh

Ph.d-project: 

The future of farming in Denmark, in an ethnological perspective.

Hello... I wrote my thesis on agricultural legislation 3 years ago, but have only recently started my phd.-research, so I will be presenting my arguments for the project rather than sharing the relatively modest experiences I have gathered so far. This is my first presentation of the project and I will most likely make the classical mistake of trying to unload too much information on you. On that account I have mixed the arguments and the methodology, but left out the theoretical approach. Accordingly I am grateful to Salva, whom you heard just before the break, for explaining his project's conception, because we share the same theoretical framework - speaking of, if it hadn't been for him, I would have been tempted to issue a warning: We are now leaving the city! I think it is worth noting that every single presentation, yesterday and today, has dealt with urban issues, like as if the countryside in Europe does not exist in current ethnology or cultural anthropology ...I wonder if there is a cultural blindness, an urbanism or city-centrism at play here?

My Ph.d.-project aims to study and map the current situation in danish agriculture, in relation to the dominant, but contradictory interpretations of the conditions, obstacles and potentials in the sector. I will get back to the dominant views shortly, but will first present my project's perspective. It is my argument that there is a much broader diversity, and therefore alternatives to the current discourse, than is being presented in the danish public debate. More specifically I will look for primary food-productions, that have created a production-model different from the models usually discussed by the experts in the area as representing the future. An underlying theme is whether if it is at all  possible to configure the primary production in a way, so it would be possible within the current legal and ideological framework to create conditions in which economically, environmentally  as well as socially viable productions can be established in danish agriculture?

This investigation will combine a diverse empirical on-site research at 10 farms geographically distributed across Denmark, each farm a representative of  an 'alternative' ownership-, business and labourmodel; and each embodying an established alternative to the main trend of structural development in the sector. This material will be juxtaposed against an attempt at 'sorting out' the legal and ideological framework and the arguments supporting or dismissing this framework.    

//On the screen you see a picture from one of the two case-studies I have conducted so far. It is an agro-collective of about 80 adults and 40 children established in 1978. The farm was the first to help organize and certify organic food. Today it owns 400 ha. and is in a danish context thus a 'mid-large' farm. The slide shows one of the harvest rituals, where the children are invited to play in the cereals.//

The project will emphasise the point of view of the farmers themselves, as they will represent the diversity in the sector. Agriculture implies life-modes with a site-specific and cultural heritage - often involving a very particular family-heritage - which has been increasingly culturally marginalized with the growing urbanization and computerfication.

The massive change in production-means, employment and international competition within the agricultural sector over the last 50 years – reflected in the demography of the rural regions, where farmers now represent a minority of the population and are often alone in managing vast farmlands - or perhaps more correct the only dane working on these mega-farms. It has been a societal upheaval – the cultural significance of which can hardly be underestimated and a development that has not yet really been studied or analysed by the cultural sciences. At least not in Denmark.

I myself was born in the countryside, so I have some clear and concrete images of this change, but I imagine that most of you have an idea of what I am talking about. If nothing else perhaps by simply remembering how the countryside looked like  when you were a child. The village where I went to school, which appart from the school had 4 small shops does not exist anymore - in this context and relating to my talk about social viability I can tell you that in Denmark a help-line, a telephonenumber that depressed farmers can call and talk with a psychologist, was established two years ago and has since been so busy that the offer was recently expanded.... I see it as a curious but illuminating symbol of

how agriculture has become this entity in our societies - that at the same time is present and real, but also somehow distant and embarrassing.

//In the last six-seven years, since the on-set of the so-called financial crisis, we have seen an uncharacteristic increase in grassroot-activites among the danish famers. Here is a picture from one of the many demonstrations in the fall/winter of 2010. The sign on the tractor says: When agriculture in Denmark dies, Denmark dies. The following slide shows employment in foodrelated jobs in percentage of the total number of jobs in different regions of Denmark. These figures can be contested as they include everything from drivers to accountants, but clearly shows how the distance from or proximity to the capitol is influential//

Agriculture also implies a production in constant - often conflicting - dynamic exchange with the natural ressources and biological metabolism that all life depends upon. The impact of agriculture on the environment has slowly been gaining attention, but so far not really challenged the political practise of economic priority in supporting the farmer's ability to compete with our main competitors, Poland and Germany among others, who have a significantly more relaxed attitude towards environmental protection than we do in Denmark. Or at least so we are led to believe.

But the social and environmental realities of the farming community are rarely discussed seriously by the lawmakers and if studied by academics it appears to be scattered studies done by the lone researcher and not met with any great interest in the academic community. Although these are in fact serious societal problems and produce a much wider lack of social coherence, than concerns just the rural communities; something else is at the forefront of the ongoing debate and research.

As they are funned of saying in the anglo-saxican world: It is the economy stupid!  It will be too much, to give you an overview of the situation in Denmark.

Instead what I will do is to refer to The Danish High Economic Counsil, an institution which gives authorative advice to the danish government, on what measures to take regarding the national economy. In their 2010 report they argued that the danish agricultural sector had no future, and that it would be prudent to allocate the funds used to sustain its activities, to other higher yielding sectors. The economists estimate that half of 10.000 remaining full-time farmers are "technical insolvent".

// There you see a picture of the accumulated debth in the sector over the last ten years: 65% of the combined value of the danish primary producers (that is land, machines, buildings technology ect) has been deposited in the banks as security for loans//

Only two(!?) months after this report was made public the government passed - with the narrowest margin of majority in the parliament - a new agricultural act, that sought to deregulate the sector by abolishing restrictions concerning size, ownership, citizenship, educational background and so on - hoping to attract investors and create an incentive to speed up the process of constructing mega-farms. Megafarms are efficient, competetive and - so the articulated reasoning went - more in tune with the market than the smaller outdated production-units, the new legislative term for a farm, which, so the minister was quoted telling a newspaper after the act was passed. "...should go into the historybook and the sooner the better."

There is a baffling paradox at the heart of this matter. If, as british biologist and agricultural activist Colin Tudge among others has argued, the farmer on the megafarm was doing financially well, there would at the very least be an excuse for a system that has such a negative impact on the local social coherence, the ecosystem as well as producing food of a very standardized  quality. But the contrary seems to be the case. Megafarms - which in a danish context may not be as big as a normal sized farm in other european countries - implies budgets and investments way beyond the means of a single person, we are talking several million euros, and the economy in the primary sector simply does not support this kind of investment.

However, the dominant political discourse is that The Future of Agriculture in Denmark belongs to the mega-farms owned by.... investments-companies, hedgefunds and/or whoever wants to invest believing that the tide of the decreasing foodprizes will turn and there is a profit to be made down the line. In either case these farms will be run by wage-labours and an era of independently owned and managed farms will come to an end. A farming-culture, a rural culture and the concept of place and identity in these rural regions will be transformed.

I will not dwell on the subject of bio-technology but my presentation does not convey the actual situation if I fail to mention that an understanding of agriculture both as a cultural and an economic factor in  the danish society will be incomplete if the agro-educational- and agro-researchinstitutions are not mentioned. It is where the danish situation probably differs from most european countries; and from where the ability to even still be a country of primary production, given that our standard of living is so much higher than our main competitors, derives. And also where some experts see danish agriculture heading, namely towards transforming our production into one huge  laboratory for breeding and developing agricultural high-tech. It is also within this part of the sector that you find the cross-over interests of companies like Carlsberg and Novo-zymes, the danish pharmaceutical giant - and this common interest also plays a part in defining and shaping danish agriculture.

//There you see the previuos minister of food, the one who send the act just mentioned through parliament, together with the head of Monsanto's european section, in a danish Monsanto-GMO-corn test-field//  

In Denmark, the land in the world with the highest percentage of land used for agricultural purposes - we struggle to find common ground on this issue. On the one hand you have the few remaining fulltime-farmers, represented by a very powerful and highly skilled organization, and on the other a public alienated by the development - a survey made by the big agricultural organization itself in 2010 shows that almost half of the danish population views agriculture as a negative factor in the society. In the middle we have the politicians and the banks, the real owners of the production, who are mainly driven (or perhaps stalled) by the unenviable prospect of either pulling the plug on the unfeasible farms - which would most likely take down a number of small banks as well - or to go with the arguments of the farmers, that if they only could get a more competetive structure aka deregulations and less restrictions, mainly regulations on the use of chemicals, they will make money again and be the motor of economic growth they were in the past.

// This slide shows two newspaper-front-pages from the same day: 8th of Nov 2012. One states that a new report shows that danish farmers have increased their use of pesticides rather than curbing the use and that the latest generation of chemicals are more poisonous than previously. The headline reads: Farmers put more poison in the fields; and the other newspaper reports that the main agricultural organization have elected a new director who stands for "...a more direct confrontational line against the rest of the danish society" The headline reads: The farmers take a new course.//

Needless to say the political reality of an economy still in reccession and a growing public concern about the condition of the environment - is to say one thing and do the other.

In my view, nothing exemplifies this situation better than the arguments surrounding the work on - and the final result of the latest agricultural act - the one mentioned above.

Unfortunately we see signs of a similar discrepancy as regards the current process of revising the agricultural act. When the latest act was passed, the opposition was furious, promising - or rather swearing - to abolish this act  first thing when they came into power.

When they came into power they quickly established a Commission on the Future of Nature and Agriculture, predominantly made up of academics with a green profile and with a prolific use of the term sustainability in its guiding principles.

The new Act is currently being written, by a group of clerks in the department of Nature-Employment under the ministry of Food, and although the actual content is unknown, rumors and comments originating from within the ministry and the x-commission-members paints a gloomy picture. Once again it looks like the economic growth of the sector (?) takes precedence over any wider contextual positioning of agriculture within society.

//this is a rather poor picture taken at a recent work-shop entitled: The Future of Nature and Agriculture, hosted by the Ministry of Environment, and discussing the reccomendations of the agriculture-commission. What you can barely make out, is the result of a vote at the workshop, where the participants were asked to consider: Should Denmark protect the environment at the expense of competetiveness in the agricultural sector, or keep the present balance of interests, or prioritize an increase in production even if it is harmfull to the environment? The last oppinion is represented by the yellow colour here, almost 70 %//

The legal framework for foodproduction in Denmark is being managed as a sector that should be given special economic considerations, for the sake of economic growth itself and not especially to ensure our foodsafety, nor as an intricate part of- and holding special responsibilties towards the social fabric of the rural districts nor protecting the ecosystem and natural ressources they interact with. 

This somewhat 'leftist-sounding' view of agriculture's role in society is not my own, this is in fact the official articulated european policy and the reasoning behind the agricultural subsidies to begin with!

The agro-policies of the EU is to support a more hollistic approach, in which agricultural production should serve several purposes in a broader community-context, a policy called: The Multifunctional Farm. Employment, social coherence in the rural regions, biodiversity and the foodsecurity of the continent should be seen as complimentary interests. According to the european commisoner on agriculture it is to prevent a development towards big industrialized farms and to protect and nurture a diverse, reliable and extensive agricultural sector that the union maintains the economic subsidies.

My project will seek to understand the implications of these contradictions and changes, or to break it down further I might add that this project aims to be critical of the current development which appears to be driven against the better judgements of our knowledge, and not to be in the interest of the society as a whole but serving narrow economic interests.

As I argued in my ph.d.-application addressing these contradictions and  this development - or perhaps more correct these processes of transformation - is a relevant and topical question, not the least in the cultural sciences and should have more priority. I believe that we, as academics should play an active role, in helping shape a more sustainable future.

Thank you.