ABSTRACT
The last two decades of the twentieth century were a period of considerable flux in terms of European and particularly British agriculture and rural development. While the term ‘crisis’ is much overused, it is now clear that the 1980s and 1990s were a period when agriculture’s position in society became questioned, at the same time as the British national state, for a variety of reasons, jettisoned its post-war role of providing a clear and nationally based strategy for its agricultural space by integrating its agricultural priorities with its wider town and country planning policies (Marsden et al. 1993). This process has been well documented over the past 20 years. It is common to trace this transition in relation to the changing nature of the state’s role with respect to agriculture. This is to be expected in that in post-war years and more recently, the (multilevel) state has played a key direct (through subsidy and market regulation) and indirect role (through research and development and fiscal policy) in shaping British agriculture.
