PhD is about the family farm in the United Kingdom. It investigates the reasons behind their survival since the end of World War Two and the current day. The research is situated in a gap in knowledge within agricultural geography that exists due to an inadequacy to explore effectively the family farm and its continuation. This is related to two strands of research. First, analysts of the era between the mid-1940s and early-mid 1980s argued that the inability of the family farm to access funding through external connections to fund technology would result in their extinction. Second, activities such as farm diversification, which have been suggested by proponents of agricultural phases since the early-mid 1980s such as 'post-productivism', have failed to provide real options for family farmers to survive without food production. This PhD acknowledges the role of the family farm itself, technology and external connections to its persistence. It creates a theoretical framework grounded in an appreciation of the everyday and mundane, which justifies concentration on a single family farm located in Ceredigion, Wales, UK. The study implemented ethnography and multi-sited ethnography by living and working on a family farm and using the complementary methods of participant observation, focused discussions and in-the-field interviewing. The study found that family farmers utilise their own creativity, resources and abilities to engage with technology and external connections in diverse, multiple and unexpected ways. These practices were related to motivations such as maintaining a good way of life, producing food and supporting the local community. In turn, these motivations were connected to a deeply embedded emotional longing to survive and keep the name on the land.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

The western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande), is an increasing problem in UK strawberry crops. The use of polythene tunnels has provided a more favourable environment for the pest, and pesticide-resistant strains have resulted in control failure. There is a need for improved knowledge of thrips biology and for additional control methods that can be integrated with natural enemies in order to make thrips management programmes more robust. The distribution of, and damage caused by, F. occidentalis was investigated to improve monitoring and decision-making, and the viability of using traps as a control was tested. Over 74% of adult thrips on plants were in flowers. Twice as many adult thrips were found in mature flowers at the top of the plant compared to those at the side. The distribution of larvae between flower and fruit stages varied with thrips density. All stages of flower and fruit were susceptible to damage but thrips larvae caused more damage than adults per individual, so the distribution and numbers of larvae between fruit stages best predicted the timing of damage. The predatory mite Neoseiulus cucumeris Oudemans reduced damage by feeding on thrips larvae. Economic crop loss occurred at five adult thrips per flower in the absence of N. cucumeris, but up to about 11 adult thrips per flower with good mite establishment. Adult F. occidentalis females overwintered on strawberry and on weeds, resulting in more thrips in second-year than in first-year crops. Mass trapping using blue sticky roller traps caught sufficient adult thrips to reduce fruit damage by 55-68% and increased grower returns by an estimated £2.2k per hectare. The addition of the F. occidentalis aggregation pheromone, neryl (S)-2-methylbutanoate, to the traps doubled the trap catch, but a visual stimulus was essential for trapping. (R)-lavandulyl acetate reduced trap catch, suggesting that it is not part of the aggregation pheromone.

Abstract not available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis analyses the central role of agricultural labour in the construction of personhood, landscape and work in an Andean ayllu. It is an ethnographic study based on fieldwork in a small subsistence farming village in the highlands of Bolivia. In employing a practice‐led approach and emphasising everyday labour, ambiguity and the realities of history and political power play, rather than the ayllu’s ‘core characteristics’ of complementarity and communality, the thesis moves away from the structuralist approaches which have dominated this field of study. In this setting, agricultural activity, llank’ay, (to transform the land), fills and shapes the days and seasons throughout the year. Llank’ay goes beyond economistic definitions of ‘work’ to include leisure, politics and everyday practice: it is bound up with myths of cosmogony, notions of value, the power of the land and a basic belief in what it is to be a human. The thesis examines the importance of llank’ay through several prisms: the tasks of the agricultural year and how these are crucial to the development of personhood; the mediating role of llank’ay in claims to land and inter‐village relationships of reciprocity; the effects of Protestant conversion and the role of llank’ay in sustaining an animate landscape; the intersection of llank’ay with other forms of work; migration and the outcomes of discontinuing llank’ay. I conclude that in this ayllu the practice of agricultural activity transforms people and land, creates belonging and communality and shapes the local concept of what labour is. It in turn creates the structures and limits within which people and land can be transformed.