Contextualising farmer perspectives on regenerative agriculture: A post-productivist future?

Abstract

Within agri-food scholarship, longstanding debates have focused on the empirical applicability and conceptual utility of differing agricultural paradigms. These have often dovetailed with considerations around the future of agriculture in countries such as the UK given a shift in emphasis away from the central tenets of a high-input, yield-oriented productivism. Alternative diagnoses, particularly in notions of a post-productivist paradigm, have proven influential in capturing broad changes in the restructuring of agricultural activity. Whilst debates around the characterisation of these paradigms continue, they highlight distinct contestations in broader (and shifting) questions around what agriculture should be ‘for’, e.g. whether environmental ‘goods’ should be valued more highly than material production. Situating our paper within these ongoing debates, we draw on farmer perspectives in examining the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices in two farmer clusters in the East and South-West of England respectively. As a diverse array of practices which appear favourably positioned in a post-Brexit policy environment, we explore the ways in which regenerative agriculture can be understood as seeking to reconcile productivist and post-productivist tendencies. Drawing attention to the tensions, contradictions and uncertainties at play in these farmer perspectives, we highlight: the environmental and emotional appeal of regenerative agriculture compared to its adoption for more pragmatic (economic) reasons; the parallels and differences between regenerative agriculture and organic production; and the multiple sources of trusted information drawn upon by farmers in an uncertain policy environment. We conclude the paper by reflecting on the need to better contextualise and conceptualise contemporary interest in regenerative agriculture within longer theoretical lineages, in which the voice of farmers themselves must be central.