AgriCultured Project
13 Princes Street, Oxford. OX4 1DD Tel: 01865 203 015
Email:  farming@gn.apc.org
Web: www.agricultured.org

8 December 2003

PRESS RELEASE


Oxfordshire farming study reveals human face of farming crisis


A newly published analysis of Oxfordshire farming shows the structural changes in the food and agricultural sector over the last forty years. The analysis draws on interviews with Oxfordshire farmers and the personal consequences for them [1]. The analysis is published with an audio presentation from five of the ten farmers interviewed to form workshop materials. The materials are available from the project website at www.agricultured.org or the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies, Oxford [2].



The analysis of the UK farming sector, commissioned by the AgriCultured Project from Corporate Watch [3], shows: a declining farm workforce and the loss of small and family farmers, reduced farming incomes, globalisation of agricultural trade, increasing corporate power, and supermarket exploitation of farmers.


While the personal experience of Oxfordshire farmers is told in the interviews, the briefing puts that into a broader regional and national context. For example, the social value of livestock markets is revealed in an interview with farmer Clive Hawes who says 'there'd be like hundreds of people there, all trading, which made a very healthy, in my opinion, a very healthy community, that's what I used to enjoy, that's to me what it was about, you know, mixing, interacting'. Research by Corporate Watch shows that selling livestock through auction markets was still dominant in the 1960's and over 800 such markets were operating in the UK, but by March 2001 there were only 170 livestock markets remaining.


Kathryn Tulip, from Corporate Watch who wrote AgriCultured Project Briefing said

"The experience of the Oxfordshire farmers in this study illustrates the trends in agriculture generally and while we tend to think that it's new machinery and practices in farming that have been the greatest change over the last forty years; it's outside the farm, the changing markets and increasing corporate control that's more significant"
ENDS

Contact: Kathryn Tulip 01865 793 910 or Andrew Wood 01865 203015
Editors Notes

[1] Ten farmers were interviewed in 2002/2003 as part of an oral history project undertaken by Voices from Oxfordshire. The farmers were between 42 and 68 years old at the time of their interviews. Of the ten farmers interviewed two had left farming for other work and three were retired or semi-retired, one with no obvious successor to take the farm on. Those continuing farming had diversified into non-agricultural activities - building rental for office or holiday accommodation, running a retirement home, marketing their produce locally at farmers markets or in their farm shop. Others were growing organic produce or new crops like tobacco or trials of genetically modified crops.
[2] The original recordings and transcripts of the interviews were deposited at the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies on 25 November 2003. See:  http://www.oxfordshire.gov.uk/cos

[3] Corporate Watch is a not for profit organisation dedicated to investigating the social and environmental impact of corporations. See  http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk