Family farming in western Newfoundland : production and exchange strategies in a remote agricultural region

Flint, John David (1995) Family farming in western Newfoundland : production and exchange strategies in a remote agricultural region. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

In Canada, government policies and programs and the market structure itself encourage the rationalization of agriculture; large, cost efficient regionally specific monocrop operations. In Newfoundland farms continue to survive and in some cases flourish in ways that seem to flout state policy and the dictums of the agrifood market. Based on field research conducted in a small farming region in western Newfoundland, this thesis examines the multiple production and exchange strategies of farmers in that region and attempts to find social explanations for this diversity. Changes in the provincial market structure and transportation system have been influential. The fairly recent vertical of integration of Newfoundland's food delivery system has had a profound effect. The thesis also considers the influence of kinship and community ties and obligations on the modes of production and exchange and reveals ways that farmers have adapted to the constraints of unfavourable land tenancy arrangements and a generally unsympathetic local non-farming community. -- In order to describe and explain the various production and exchange strategies taken by the 17 farm units surveyed, this thesis develops a farm typology with its roots in the political economy of Kautsky and Chayanov and their successors. While farm typologies - particularly those developed in North America - have tended to rely on quantitative data, the typology presented here is based on qualitative data and particularly the social relations of production and exchange within and outside each farm unit. In the analysis, three districts of "family farm" emerge within the survey area, each relying on a particular set of social, economic and political resources for success. In conclusion, this thesis suggests that the varying needs of each of these types must be taken into consideration when agricultural policy is formulated.

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