Landscape change in the multi-functional countryside: a biographical analysis of farmer decision-making in the English high weald

Abstract

There is growing recognition that the landscape implications of agricultural restructuring are complex, location specific and subject to various feedback effects. This paper explores how the economic decline of mainstream farming in the English High Weald is redefining the relationship between agriculture and the landscape, encouraging existing farmers to diversify their income base but also creating opportunities for new forms of land occupancy and management in a multi-functional countryside. Through a biographical analysis of a range of different types of land manager, it is illustrated how attitudes to land use and the occupancy of rural land are changing, distinguishing between holdings that are still seen primarily as sites of production by their farming family occupiers and those that are coming to be regarded chiefly as spaces for living by a new category of lifestyle occupier. The implications of this differentiation of the stakeholder community for future landscape management in the United Kingdom and the European Union are explored.