Rhetoric, Agency, and the Farmer's Knowledge in the Management of Upland Environmental Processes

Stephen Emery, University of Durham

Link to project: Angling and the Rural Environment

The aim of this project is to determine how the rhetoric of an environmental agenda for English farming is received and implemented by English farmers, and to trace that implementation through geomophological mapping of environmental measures on farms. The results will contribute to policy formation on integrated rural development. The specific objectives are as follow:

• To analyse the rhetoric of knowledge and agency implicit in policy and other documents affecting farmers under the new schemes;
• To make an ethnographic study of farmers' own knowledge and sense of personhood in relation to both their own farms and to policy rhetoric;
• To map the measures undertaken on farms as a result of the new politics, with special reference to soil erosion and silt sedimentation; and
• To evaluate the effectiveness of the policy for attaining sustainable land use management