Abstract

Farmers’ Positions in the Conflict Over Agriculture’s Social Ecological Transformation

The farmer protests in several European countries in recent years mark a broad-based resistance to elements of the socio-ecological transformation of agriculture. In addition to criticism of specific measures with an ecological focus – such as the planned abolition of agricultural diesel subsidies – a wide range of descriptions, interpretations, and potential cures for agriculture’s problems were articulated within the heterogeneous field of agricultural actors.
In order to analyze these complex debates and identify viable transformation leverage points, systematic in-depth knowledge of the positions and perceptions of agricultural actors is required. The project therefore examines conflict-related social representations in two central thematic areas: (1) farmers’ perceptions of social recognition and (2) their views on distributive issues in agriculture’s political economy. We assume that attending to these core dimensions of social justice is vital in order to understand conflict dynamics around agriculture’s socio-ecological transformation.
Regarding social recognition, we explore how farmers interpret their societal role and the social worth they are credited with. Possible examples include tensions between their self-perception as indispensable food producers and their experience of public criticism, for example in connection with issues of animal welfare or environmental protection. Other potentially relevant views include the perception that farmers face expectations that go far beyond mere production, low-reliability political guidelines, or perceptions of limited autonomy and administrative overreach for detailed documentation requirements.
In the second topic area of distributive political economy views, we will explore fundamental ideas about how economic opportunities, burdens, and decision-making freedoms should be distributed within the agricultural sector – and how farmers perceive the status quo of these factors. Possible examples include the position of agricultural businesses within the supply chain, for example issues of pricing, market structures, and bargaining power. Furthermore, we will attend to farmers’ orientation in terms of multifunctional vs. productivist paradigms, and their attitudes toward land and international trade policy.
For each topic, a Q-methodological study will be conducted. Relevant perspectives and patterns of argumentation will be systematically compiled from academic and non-academic sources and presented to participants for evaluation. Participants’ response patterns will yield condensed typical viewpoints – so-called social representations – that enable a differentiated and empirically grounded reconstruction of farmers’ positions in agriculture’s transformation conflict. In combination with socioeconomic data on the respondents and their farms, the socio-economic embeddedness of these representations can also be analyzed. The anticipated results not only allow for a deep understanding of central lines of conflict within the agricultural sector, but will also be compared to models of the socio-ecological transformation conflict in society as a whole. This allows for the identification of structural similarities and differences between sectoral and society-wide dynamics. Overall, the project contributes to an empirically based analysis of the conditions, challenges, and potential of a socio-ecological transformation of agriculture.