ABSTRACT
The British countryside is undergoing a period of major reconstruction greater than at any time in the last 130 years. This restructuring has come about, in the main, from the realisation that agricultural land has become surplus to national requirements and is available for a variety of other uses. There have been, and are, many actors and scenes involved in developing this awareness not the least of which has been the obvious and shambolic excesses of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), most clearly expressed through the food and wine surpluses of the late 1980s. One of the central policy directives in reducing this surplus, Set-aside, has become, arguably, the most potent symbol of this restructuring — that of taking land out of production and compensating farmers for its loss. Its potency lies in the fact that it begs the question ‘what is to be done with the land?’ and, in so doing opens the way for new initiatives.
