ABSTRACT
Agriculture is very definitely the same animal as it was 20 years ago. The idea of 'the farmer' owes more to spin-doctoring than it does to the 'reality' of farm operations. The academic literature on farming is replete with references to the crisis of agriculture, or at least to a crisis for agriculturalists. The most figures put out by Eurostat appear to confirm that farm incomes are in sharp decline; if not everywhere within the European Union (EU), then at least in most venues. Although the EU is under pressure to introduce key changes, at this stage all we have seen is a gentle acceleration of trends, alongside compensations that are justified on non-production grounds but which help maintain farm incomes. The efforts to re-write its fundamental being has been capture by forces of inertia. A number of driving forces lie behind inertia in the farm sector. For one, there is the power of consumer demand.
