ABSTRACT
The village studies indicate that in some settlements, such as Swanbourne, agriculture still plays a central part in community life, while in many others, such as Wingrave and Weston Turville, it is utterly marginal as farmers have “retreated” to the open countryside. This remains their “domain” and agriculture is still the major land use in rural areas. However, even in the open countryside, agriculture no longer “reigns supreme”. As we outlined in Chapter 1, the planning system has, since 1947, followed a policy of “urban containment” and has, therefore, been in effect a system of settlement planning. Agricultural land has traditionally lain outside any kind of planning control. However, a profound shift in this post-war arrangement can be discerned during the 1980s. There are two main reasons for this: first, attempts by successive Conservative governments to recast the rôle of rural planning; secondly, the crisis in agriculture. We shall here briefly review these two broad changes before turning later in the chapter to identify their effects on agriculture in Buckinghamshire.
