The Contested Futures of UK Farming: Livelihoods, Landscapes and Technologies

该项目将通过对联合王国粮食生产者的人种学研究，分析粮食系统中不同行为者对未来的设想。我会问“英国农民如何想象、计划和创造未来？此外，这些计划如何受到粮食系统中不同参与者有争议的未来的影响？'.不同想象的未来消失或实现的方式能告诉我们关于我们食物系统中的力量平衡的什么？面对气候变化的现实，这种摩擦如何影响英国农业变得更加环保的能力？本研究的最终目的是通过探讨不同感知和实践未来的方式的环境可行性，将对未来的更好、更长期的理解融入农业政策制定中。我将在一个农业社区内进行长时间的参与式观察和半结构化访谈。通过长期参与他人的嵌入式经验，民族志提供了一个很好的方式来研究像“未来”这样难以捉摸的东西。这将涉及在一个有界区域内与不同类型的农场和农民进行互动。有必要与一些产量和规模不同的农场合作，以便对不同类型农场未来有争议的愿景形成一种微妙的比较观点。这必须包括小型和大型农场、有机农场和利用新技术的农场。在一个具体领域与各种各样的利益攸关方进行互动，应有助于形成一种更加根深蒂固的人种学意义上的空间、地点和时间观念。这种定性的工作与这些食品生产商将补充反射性使用未来的研究方法，如情景分析。此外，我将在英国粮食生产的未来，包括政策制定者，非政府组织和企业的其他利益相关者进行半结构化访谈，以研究如何更广泛的方法来影响未来的农业社区。

This project will analyse how the future is imagined by different actors in the food system through ethnographic research with food producers in the United Kingdom. I will ask 'how do British farmers imagine, plan for and create the future?' and, further, 'how are these plans mediated by the contested futures of different actors in the food system?'. What can the way different imagined futures disappear or materialise tell us about the balance of power in our food system? And, faced by the realities of climate change, how does this friction affect the capacity for British farming to become more environmentally friendly? The ultimate aim of this research is to integrate a better, longer-term understanding of the future into agricultural policymaking by interrogating the environmental viability of different ways of perceiving and practicing the future.I will conduct extended periods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews within a single farming community. Through prolonged engagement with the embedded experience of others, ethnography offers an excellent way to examine something as slippery as 'the future'. This will involve interacting with a cross-section of different types of farms and farmers within a bounded area. It will be necessary to work with a number of farms of varying output and size in order to develop a nuanced and comparative view of the contested visions of the future different types of farms have. This must include both smaller and larger farms, organic farms and those utilising novel technologies. Interacting with a diverse range of stakeholders in a specific area should allow for the development of a more embedded and ethnographic sense of space, place and time. This qualitative work with these food producers will be supplemented by a reflexive use of future studies research methods like scenario analysis. In addition, I will conduct semi-structured interviews with other stakeholders in the future of UK food production, including policymakers, non-governmental organisations and businesses to examine how broader approaches to the future affect farming communities.