ABSTRACT
This paper opens with the background and findings of a research project which looked at fifty farm families in Pembrokeshire, south west Wales in 1980-81. It gives a brief account of the pattern of agricultural restructuring over the intervening period and the recent drop in farming returns which are down some 56 per cent from last year. It then goes on to report some of the findings from a re-study of these same farms some eighteen years on, giving an account of the way in which economic recession has an uneven impact on farm businesses according to the size of holding, type of farming, the stage of farm and family cycles as well as the life course.
