The cosmopolitan farmer: Ideas and practices beyond travel and internationalisation

Abstract

The occupation of farmer has traditionally been associated with spatial boundaries expressed in farm organisation and renewal, including generational succession, attachment to land and a local activity range. Recent studies have pointed to the existence of new forms of attachment and a rise in transnational activities, contributing to new perspectives on farmers' identity and development of practices in response to change in agribusiness.In this paper we seek to add to the ongoing discussion of how farming practices develop, with reference to contemporary translocal practices in Swedish farming, asking whether and how farming relates to cosmopolitanism. Being a globalised industry and activity, farming involves translocal practices expressed in farmer and labour mobility, information exchange and economic and political interdependencies. Cosmopolitanism as an idea and in relation to practices contributes to understanding of what characterises transnational practices and what they are intended to achieve. We argue that farmers exhibit cosmopolitanism, but from a specific spatial position. Cosmopolitanism is thus not free from spatial connections, while references to mobility are numerous. Someone has to be mobile, but it does not always have to be the farmer. Mobility may be a means to achieve something, but cosmopolitanism as a mode of thought and action is more embedded in everyday work and strategies on the farm.