The developing discipline of Food Crime requires the analysis of food safety responsibility from a critical structural perspective. Analyzing the Canadian dairy industry, this project seeks to answer how the legal definition of food safety impacts the production practices of farmers, and where farmers place the burden of food safety responsibility, while partially testing institutional anomie theory. A legal discourse analysis of food safety law in Canada is performed to contextualize individual interviews with six active family-farmers in rural southern Ontario in order to determine how dairy farmers experience food safety legislation. As hypothesized, farmers experience food safety law through forms of disempowerment and alienation involving dairy production products, leading to a partial displacement of responsibility for safe food. The ideas of institutional anomie theory were insignificant or inconclusive for these case studies. More research is required to determine potential policy implications concerning the safety of Canadian food.

In the industrialized world, sustainable agriculture has remained a fringe agricultural experiment, unable to provide a large-scale alternative model. Cuba provides a case study of a massive agricultural shift to sustainable farming brought about by economic crisis. In 2009, 31 farmers and 6 key informants from 4 provinces in Cuba were interviewed and 12 women participated in a participant driven photography project about their involvement in small-scale agroecological farming. The research found that the inability to purchase imported chemicals and fertilizers has encouraged farmers to innovate their own solutions to maintaining soil, plant, animal and ecosystem health. Institutional support through academic institutions and non-government organizations is facilitating the spread of agroecological education through farmer-to-farmer exchanges. Economically, farming as a profession provides a fair income; although, farmers’ wealth was tied to other industries in their respective regions, and influenced by tourism. The need for housing and land tenure are large barriers, but the government’s opening up of land for farming in usufruct has been a successful strategy for encouraging new farmers. Allowing for subsistence growing, has been historically and is currently an important incentive. Cooperatives allow for the distribution of scarce inputs, provide educational and social opportunities for farmers and can provide retirement benefits, administrative and legal help. However, women tend to participate less in cooperatives, and traditional household roles and machismo are still an undercurrent in the Cuban countryside. Cuba’s agricultural story is rich in lessons that can be applied globally, learned from its requirement to respond quickly to change during economic crisis. These lessons are simple; productivity and happiness increase with worker autonomy, support from government and institutions works better when it is participatory, and social groups whether cooperatives, family or neighbourhoods, provide an essential human support system. / Graduate / 0366 / 0453 / 0473 / 0733 / lisawillott@gmail.com

Since the 1990s, suicide and stress amongst farming individuals in Britain has gained increasing attention. This is because restructuring of the farm sector has placed greater economic pressure on farm family businesses and led to dramatic socio-cultural change in rural communities. Academic research has been dominated by a medical, reactionary approach to the examination of stress. This ignores the cultural and gender processes which are embedded in a patriarchal family farming ‘way of life’ that may, in reality, underpin medicalised outcomes. This ethnographic research, utilising repeated life history interviews with multiple members of farming families, based in Powys, Mid Wales, provides a crucial first step in a more proactive understanding of stress by tracking the dynamics, construction, enactment and maintenance of relational farming identities. From such a perspective, behavior according to a farming ‘way of life’ is brought sharply into focus as a course and source of components of stress. Drawing upon a range of theoretical positions, a robust conceptualisation of farming stress is developed. In particular insights from feminism inform the non-medical approach adopted by this research. Ideas are drawn on from emerging, feminist international perspectives of relational farming gender identities and by closer integration of theoretical post-modern insights from cultural, rural studies which has persistently neglected farming individuals. This research contributes to theoretical and empirical development within agricultural geography by providing an example of how micro contextualisation of farming/ rural lives can be contextualised within the macro-economic framework of agriculture. Results are drawn from 7 case study farming families, with scale of analysis utilised to reveal from birth the construction, maintenance and enactment of relational farming gender identities. Farm survival is found to be heavily dependent upon socialisation within the ideology of family farming, the enactment of farming identities beyond the farm gate, and the necessity for individuals to adhere to a patriarchal ideology. This patrilineal ‘way of life’ ideology and its gendered components are revealed to demonstrate that adherence to gender roles is becoming increasingly difficult within the current context of agricultural and rural change. The struggle that individuals have to maintain their place and sense of belonging in family farming emerges as a key source of contemporary stress. Further work is needed to ensure that the gendered understanding of farming stress formulated in this research is applied to rural stress policy and practice.

ABSTRACT Bergman Trygg, E. 2014. Investigating the effect of monetary compensation on Human-Elephant Conflict, A qualitative study in Idodi and Pawaga Divisions, Tanzania. Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsatser: Kulturgeografiska institutionen, Uppsala University. The purpose of this study is to investigate how a compensation scheme affects farmers’ attitudes toward elephants, the Tanzanian government and the concept of conservation. Another purpose is to see what respondents know about the scheme in relation to what is written in the scheme documents. This was done by conducting 20 qualitative interviews with farmers in five different villages in Idodi and Pawaga Divisions, Tanzania. Respondents were divided into two groups: One who had received compensation and one who had not. This aimed to distinguish differences between respondent groups, hence evaluating the efficacy of the compensation scheme and how it affects their attitudes. More interviews were conducted with victims or their relatives who had been attacked by wild animals in order to see what these victims knew of the scheme and how authorities handled attacks.      Results showed small differences between the groups. Both had positive attitudes toward elephants and conservation, contradicting to what is presented in earlier studies. Attitudes toward the government were mainly negative due to suspicions of corruption. There were more positive attitudes toward the government among respondents who had received compensation. Knowledge of the scheme was low compared to what is written in the scheme documents.   Keywords: Human-elephant conflict, compensation scheme, attitudes, farmers, Tanzania   Supervisor: Bert Eriksson.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 102-107). / xi, 107 leaves, bound ill., maps 29 cm

This thesis contributes to the established literature on farm women within the context of family farming. It recognises that not enough is yet known about the discourses and agency which influence their lives. Consequently, this study has sought to establish what dominant discourses shape the lives of farm women, their responses to these discourses and how their discursive positioning influences their agency. This study employed a qualitative case study approach involving interviews with a diverse mixture of independent farm women, along with women farming in marital relationships. This thesis engages these narratives to showcase the colourful, complex life-experiences of farm women. In addition, and where present, women�s partners were interviewed to provide male farmers� perspectives about women in family farming. This research has found that women�s lives are shaped by positioning and contextualising discourses, with which they comply to ensure that the family farm survives. Their subservient discursive positioning limits the agency they can express, although they are able to mobilise indirect agency through supporting their partner; an implicit form of agency which has previously been unrecognised or understated. Cumulatively, this thesis highlights the need to recognise the diversity of farm women, and how they are able to exercise agency from their constrained subject positions within the family farming context. Furthermore it emphasises that agency is a dynamic, and far more varied concept than previously understood.

Despite a National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development and the embodiment of this in numerous national and state statues, environmental degradation continues to occur on rural land. This raises the question of how the primary land managers in Queensland perceive sustainable development. Australia’s early reliance on agricultural production and international markets contributed substantially to the extensive environmental degradation that has occurred. Consequently economic and environmental issues have dominated the research on sustainable development, with the social dimension relatively neglected. In addition, despite the large quantity of work that has been conducted with farmers and graziers, little is known about how either of these types of land managers interpret sustainable development. The aim of this thesis was to develop an in-depth understanding of graziers’ perceptions of sustainable development to make a contribution to this area. An exploratory interpretative approach was taken to conduct this investigation because previous research had been limited. In-depth unstructured interviews were conducted with 57 Queensland graziers in the tropical savannas in a case study with two locations – the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Central West. This approach was supported by participant observation and a brief questionnaire to provide background information. The fieldwork was conducted over a period of five months which allowed analysis to be conducted as the study progressed. Most of the graziers were interviewed on their properties with the goal of adding richness to the data and assisting with interpretation. Several bodies of literature have been used to interpret the results of this study. Areas of the sustainable development literature relevant to this thesis are reviewed to provide a context for the thesis. The literature on structural change in Australian agriculture provides a background to the broad influences on the agricultural sector and farmers. Also reviewed are the approaches taken to change the land management practices of farmers. The enduring value of farming and the changing values of rural land use are explored through a review of agrarianism, the goals and values of farmers and the post-productivist transition. The results for both study locations showed that these graziers preference the economic dimension of sustainable development over the environmental and social dimensions. The rationale for this preference is that maintaining economic viability will allow them to achieve their social goal – to continue their preferred way of life. A strong focus therefore, is on economic viability as a means to a social end. The objective is to overcome the constraints of being market and season dependent and the costs of operating in rural and remote locations through a whole-of-enterprise business management approach. The need for graziers to continue increasing their productivity to remain economically viable and to continue being competitive in international markets, challenges their ability to balance the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. For some the environmental dimension of sustainable development may be compromised to accommodate their economic priorities and social goals. A perceived future threat, more so for Gulf graziers, arises from the belief that they and their interests are marginalised through consultation processes. This contributes to their belief that the government prioritises Aboriginal land rights and environmental protection interests over their production interests. They believe that if this continues their future is at risk through further decreases to the security of their tenure. The results of this study suggest that a more innovative and integrated approach will be required to meet the challenges of sustainable development in these areas, in early twenty-first century Australia. The holistic approach from a social science perspective has provided an understanding of what graziers value and why. These insights contribute to knowledge of how to progress sustainable development. They could be tested with other types of land managers and as a foundation on which to build a more comprehensive understanding of sustainable development.

Despite a National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development and the embodiment of this in numerous national and state statues, environmental degradation continues to occur on rural land. This raises the question of how the primary land managers in Queensland perceive sustainable development. Australia’s early reliance on agricultural production and international markets contributed substantially to the extensive environmental degradation that has occurred. Consequently economic and environmental issues have dominated the research on sustainable development, with the social dimension relatively neglected. In addition, despite the large quantity of work that has been conducted with farmers and graziers, little is known about how either of these types of land managers interpret sustainable development. The aim of this thesis was to develop an in-depth understanding of graziers’ perceptions of sustainable development to make a contribution to this area. An exploratory interpretative approach was taken to conduct this investigation because previous research had been limited. In-depth unstructured interviews were conducted with 57 Queensland graziers in the tropical savannas in a case study with two locations – the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Central West. This approach was supported by participant observation and a brief questionnaire to provide background information. The fieldwork was conducted over a period of five months which allowed analysis to be conducted as the study progressed. Most of the graziers were interviewed on their properties with the goal of adding richness to the data and assisting with interpretation. Several bodies of literature have been used to interpret the results of this study. Areas of the sustainable development literature relevant to this thesis are reviewed to provide a context for the thesis. The literature on structural change in Australian agriculture provides a background to the broad influences on the agricultural sector and farmers. Also reviewed are the approaches taken to change the land management practices of farmers. The enduring value of farming and the changing values of rural land use are explored through a review of agrarianism, the goals and values of farmers and the post-productivist transition. The results for both study locations showed that these graziers preference the economic dimension of sustainable development over the environmental and social dimensions. The rationale for this preference is that maintaining economic viability will allow them to achieve their social goal – to continue their preferred way of life. A strong focus therefore, is on economic viability as a means to a social end. The objective is to overcome the constraints of being market and season dependent and the costs of operating in rural and remote locations through a whole-of-enterprise business management approach. The need for graziers to continue increasing their productivity to remain economically viable and to continue being competitive in international markets, challenges their ability to balance the economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. For some the environmental dimension of sustainable development may be compromised to accommodate their economic priorities and social goals. A perceived future threat, more so for Gulf graziers, arises from the belief that they and their interests are marginalised through consultation processes. This contributes to their belief that the government prioritises Aboriginal land rights and environmental protection interests over their production interests. They believe that if this continues their future is at risk through further decreases to the security of their tenure. The results of this study suggest that a more innovative and integrated approach will be required to meet the challenges of sustainable development in these areas, in early twenty-first century Australia. The holistic approach from a social science perspective has provided an understanding of what graziers value and why. These insights contribute to knowledge of how to progress sustainable development. They could be tested with other types of land managers and as a foundation on which to build a more comprehensive understanding of sustainable development.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on February 29, 2008) Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on February 13, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.