ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the situation of family farming-past, present and future-in New York State and in Wales. Wales is that wet, windy westerly part of Britain which stretches out towards Ireland and the Atlantic rollers. These are also the areas where two-thirds of the population live, leaving the heartland of Wales rural and relatively distant from large towns. Suburban and ex-urban growth is limited to the populous south-east and is not a threat to the heartland of rural Wales. A hundred years ago the agricultural structure and rural social system of Wales was based on large landowners, tenant farmers, and farm labourers. Thus land use in Wales, as in the rest of the UK, has been tightly controlled in terms of building, commercial, and manufacturing uses. In some areas such as the south Wales valleys the combination of farming with another job such as quarrying or mining has had a long history.
