Large-Scale Commercial Farming in South East England, 1941, 1978, 1981 and 1998-1999

The overall aim of the research was to assess the influence of changes in agricultural policy and regulation on those farms which, during the productivist era, their operators had successfully navigated to a position of dominance in the industry. Four specific objectives arose from this broad aim, which sought to examine large-scale commercial farming overall and to track development and succession on individual matched farms:<br> to investigate how farms, which were relatively large in 1977, subsequently developed during the period of agricultural policy adjustment in the 1980s/1990s;<br> to examine the dynamics of agricultural production systems in relation to the development of large-scale farm businesses between 1941 and the late 1990s;<br> to investigate the opinions and responses of these large-scale farmers to agricultural policy adjustment with the intention of establishing their level of engagement with post-productivity policy measures;<br> to contribute to the development of large-scale farm businesses in the light of the post-productivist transition model of farm business adjustment and agri-environmental change.<br> The data file for 1978 and 1981 for this study contains a subset of the variables from part of the dataset 'Labour and Machinery on Large Arable Farms, 1978-1980', held at the UK Data Archive under SN:1872.