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The restructuring of post-war West European agriculture has had repercussions for general economic activity, local labour markets, local rural economic structures and the provision of local services. This study addresses these and related issues in one region of France. The region - La Cerdagne Francaise - is located in the Pyrenees,approximately 100 km west of Perpignan. The region is an upland area, falling within the remit of special EC agricultural policies designed to maintain an agricultural presence in the region. Economists and geographers have dominated research on agricultural and rural change. This study adopts a sociological and anthropological focus, and is based on extensive fieldwork. Whereas structural-functionalist approaches have taken the rural village as the object and location of study, Marxian writings link agricultural change and rural development to wider processes within the capitalist mode of production. This study utilizes an actor based perspective,examining the processual nature of change within the region. Archive research, historical reconstruction and ethnographic fieldwork are used to examine the processes of change in the region from the early nineteenth century to to-day. The post-war restructuring of agriculture in France has left farming families facing acute difficulties in terms of labour supply, low farm incomes, lack of off-farm economic opportunities, and problems of succession. These problems are particularly acute in La Cerdagne where local agriculture has become marginal. The particular form that agricultural restructuring has taken in La Cerdagne has been influenced by a small number of powerful local farming families and locally-grounded kinship systems that extend beyond the agricultural sector in the region. These families and the importance of kinship underpin the patterns of continuity and change in the region.

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A series of experiments is described in which a semi-organic fertilizer is compared to the more widely used inorganic type. A semi-organic fertilizer contains a base of organic materials to which is added a mixture of inorganic salts to make up a suitable analysis. The results from three years field trials and certain greenhouse experiments are presented. Barley was used as the test crop in all experiments. Biomass production and nitrogen accumulation were studied in the field trials. In the field trials a greater stand density was produced using the semi-organic fertilizer as compared with an inorganic fertilizer and no-fertilizer treatment. This difference was evident from early in the season and was therefore attributed to relative success in germination and/or establishment. A high salt concentration in the soil water surrounding seeds has been shown to reduce the rate and final percentage germination for a wide variety of crops. The superior stand density produced on the semi-organic treatment was probably due to the lower osmotic effect produced by that fertilizer. The results of the greenhouse experiments supported this hypothesis. Field and greenhouse experiments were not analogous with respect to the emergence observed on the no fertilizer treatment. The pattern of nitrogen uptake was different on the two fertilizer treatments. Proportionally more nitrogen was absorbed later in the season by plants growing on'the semi-organic treatment. This led to a greater nitrogen content per head on the semi-organic treatment. Although there were significantly more heads per unit area on the semi-organic treatment there was no difference in the dry weight per head, this could be due to prolonged photosynthesis in the heads on this treatment. Total biomass production was similar on the two fertilized treatments but proportionally more of the weight was in the heads on the semi-organic treatment. There was a strong negative correlation, later in the season, between plant density and a) dry weight per plant and b) nitrogen content per plant on the inorganic fertilizer treatment but this was not so on the semi-organic fertilizer.

The central task of this thesis is to understand why the institutional credit disbursed by rural credit programmes (RCPs) in developing countries tends to by-pass the small farmers to whom it is frequently directed. In undertaking this task, a number of secondary research objectives are pursued, notably, the measurement of credit demand and the investigation of credit-rationing procedures. The case for RCPs is discussed and selected aspects of programme performance examined. The problem of large-farmer bias is identified and several possible explanations drawn from the literature, which relate broadly to demand-side (borrower) behaviour and supply-side (lender) behaviour. The importance of these various explanations is examined in the context of a case study of farmers in N.E. Thailand. By constructing a series of linear programming (LP) models of representative farms, short-term credit demand is derived and the scarcity value of credit is found to be high for independent farmers (those not participating in the RCP). Questionnaire responses support a positive interpretation of the LP results (independent farmers face a credit-supply shortage) and provide additional evidence that the tendency of small farmers not to borrow from institutions cannot be explained by lack of demand. Demand schedules are constructed to quantify some of the income disadvantages facing farmers who have no access to institutional credit. The behaviour of the major lending institution in the study area is then explored in greater detail by investigating the possibilities for non-price credit rationing. Multiple discriminant analysis (MDA) is employed firstly to identify the precise criteria by which small farmers are excluded from the institution's loan portfolio,· and secondly, to estimate the population total of independent farmers in the survey area excluded by these criteria. The number is high, indicating that lender behaviour is a major barrier to small farmer institutional borrowing. Income schedules from the MDA and LP analyses are brought together to show that some relaxation of the current rationing criteria would allow more small farmers access to rural credit without necessarily jeopardising the lender's commercial viability.

The purpose of this study is to investigate and provide a better understanding of the processes of Bedu livestock marketing system in the Badia of Jordan, particularly farmers' market behaviour, linkages to markets and their decision-making process. A mixture of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies were utilised. A stratified random sample of 193 Bedu farmers, and interviews with traders were applied. The whole region of the Jordan Badia and Research Development Programme was covered. The questionnaires were distributed and every farmer was interviewed by the researcher in the period from July to November 1995.A broad conceptual framework was employed to investigate quantitatively the interactions and dependencies between household conditions, socio-economic characteristics and livestock sales. These factors, which are usually outside the livestock enterprise, are important in household marketing decision-making in relation to time and place of sale, and reasons for sale. The results of this study indicate: Regarding farmers' marketing behaviour, marketing decisions are related to a household's demand for cash, and environmental factors such as the high cost of production, disease, unstable government policy, household characteristics, and labour capacity. The most important of these factors is to generate cash to buy feed or to reduce costs and eliminate the risk of disease. Most households with fewer than 100 head of sheep were more restricted in their sales decisions than households with larger flocks.

There is an increasing demand for information regarding the role of individual businesses in achieving sustainable development. In agriculture, quantitative indicators of farm sustainability have focused on financial performance or physical environmental impacts. Examples of attempts to integrate multiple financial and environmental indicators into single economic indicators are characterised by limited theoretical links and a lack of transparency in the accounting framework. Consequently, the interpretation of these indicators in a sustainability context is often unclear. Two farm-level integrated environmental and economic sustainability indicators are developed, the environmentally adjusted net value added (ENVA) indicator of weak sustainability, and the sustainability gap (SGAP) indicator of strong sustainability. Drawing on financial and management resources, the sustainability of five Scottish case study farms is examined, taking into account the economic costs associated with nitrate and greenhouse gas pollution. The farms were contrasting in both type and location. The results show that all five farms are weakly sustainable, although the sustainability of the grazing livestock farms is subsidy dependent. Only one farm, an organic arable/livestock farm, is strongly sustainable. The other four farms failed to meet at least one of the four sustainability standards considered. The results also show that current classifications of sustainability based on farm type are not a sufficient method for determining it in Scotland. An area for future enquiry is to extend the accounting methods to other elements of natural capital and apply the indicators to a wider range of farm types in order to draw general conclusions about the relative sustainability of different farming systems in different locations in Scotland.

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Introduction. Chapter I Population Distribution and Changes illustrative of the major phases of the life of S.E. England. An analysis of the 1931 Census of the region and a comparison with the Censuses of 1911 and 1921. The growth of the population and the relative importance and major features of distribution of its industrial and agricultural elements. Chapter II The New Coalfield. Its location, physiography and geology. A short history of its discovery and development and a consideration of output and labour. A description of transport and markets and their geographic control. Chapter III Non-Agricultural Industry. The geographic and economic conditions governing the location and development of the major typical industries of S.E. England, A description of labour, transport and market conditions and a consideration of the Industries as consumers of Kent coal. The Paper Industry The Cement Industry The Brick and Tile Industry. Chapter IV Agricultural Industry. An analysis of the physiographic background of agriculture: climate, topography, soil and drainage. Some aspects of the economic background of agriculture - a broad consideration of markets; the distribution and type of farming population; the size and type of farms. Present agricultural production, distribution and marketing. A comparison with pre-war conditions. A correlation of agricultural conditions with the controlling factors of the physiographic and economic background and a consideration of subordinate agricultural industries in relation thereto. General Transport Considerations. Water Transport and Port Conditions. Inland Waterways Some aspects of geographic and economic conditions at the ports; their trade and development. Land Routes; their geographic control and present character. VI Regional Planning. Some consideration of the expected future development of the region from an examination of Regional Planning Reports. A summary of the industrial and agricultural life of the S.E. as reflected therein.

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