This paper focuses on the relationships between people and farmed nonhuman animals, and between these animals and the farmed environments they encounter, in the enactment of interspecies endemic disease situations. It examines how the nonhuman embodied capacities, agency and subjectivities of cows and sheep on farms in the north of England make a difference to how the endemic conditions of lameness and bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) are encountered and responded to by farmers and advisers. The paper draws on empirical research with farmers and their advisers, and explores three key, inter-related, themes: first, the importance of intersubjective relationships between people and animals on farms; second, the nonhuman components of the 'disease situations' associated with endemic diseases, including animals' embodied characteristics and behaviours and the relationships between bodies and environments on different farms; and finally the ways in which animal agency and resistance makes a difference to on-farm interventions aiming to prevent or treat lameness and BVD. The paper concludes by arguing that animals' capacities, and nonhuman difference, should be taken further into account in future policy and practice interventions in endemic disease in farmed animals.

This article concerns UK commercial fruit and vegetable growers' narratives regarding the sustainability of water use for food production. In it we explore their perspectives on efforts by regulators to limit agricultural withdrawals of water from the natural environment in line with EU Water Framework Directive objectives, alongside their views on retailer sustainability commitments. Discourse analysis is used to investigate how the growers contested restrictive regulation, constructed their identities, portrayed other supply chain stakeholders, and conveyed their social relations with them. Using Erving Goffman's theory of frontstage and backstage performances, the implications for the growers' water management decisions and their internalisation of sustainability agendas for water are examined. Whilst the growers gave accounts of purposely misrepresenting their water withdrawal practices and their discourse illustrated significant polarisation between environmental and agricultural interests, their underlying commitment to environmental sustainability was ambivalent, with both anti and pro-environmental attitudes expressed. The growers also frequently gave critiques of superficial sustainability in fresh produce supply chains. We argue that, given contemporary shifting definitions of agricultural identities, settings in which their construction is negotiated can provide windows of opportunity for conventional growers to engage in genuine pro-environmental performances that may deepen their assimilation of environmental goals and commitment to sustainable water use.

The adverse consequences of contemporary agri-food relations, particularly in terms of public health and environmental sustainability, have led to growing calls-across interdisciplinary research and policy perspectives-for fundamental systemic change. Focusing on the interconnections and 'workings' of agri-food , these accounts have coalesced around the vernacular of transformation to think through the possible ways in which these relations might be configured differently. Against this backdrop, the relationship between food 'production' and food 'consumption' emerges as a key problem. This article revisits debates developed within approximately two decades ago concerning the terms on which consumption and consumers are brought into agri-food scholarship, arguing that these are given renewed impetus in the context of contemporary calls for agri-food transformation. We build on and advance these previous integrative efforts both by taking stock of recent advances in consumption studies and by responding to the shifting contours of food politics. The analysis focuses on the case of alternative proteins and outlines three substantive bodies of scholarship-the geographies of edibility, the economy of qualities and visceral politics-that we suggest offer considerable potential for renewing and updating the development of integrative perspectives on production and consumption. To conclude, we reflect on the theoretical and practical risks of seeking to reconcile 'production' and 'consumption' and argue that these new integrative concepts may themselves provide more suitable conceptual 'building blocks' for exploring the transformation of agri-food relations.

Agriculture is one of the most precarious professions, being vulnerable to weather extremes and animal disease. As crises hit the agricultural sector, a growing awareness and concern for the mental wellbeing of farmers developed. Economic decline, climate change and culling animals all have a profound impact on affected farmers. To date, research has tended to focus on the farmer, typically a man, and not the farm family. This article considers the impact of Coronavirus (COVID-19) on men and women on farms. Using qualitative interviews and focus groups, the impact of the pandemic on men's and women's work and social life within the family is explored. We found a differential impact. For farmers, usually men, COVID-19 was generally a positive experience both in terms of work and social life. For women, on the other hand, COVID-19 was found to have a negative impact on their work and social life. While gender equality in agriculture persists, women's equality in the workplace has advanced. However, with the pandemic, women worked from home on the farm. They experienced a regression in gender equality with traditional expectations of responsibility for childcare and housework returning. In addition, their emotional and 'mental' labour increased. We conclude that in the future, the mental health of men and women on farms needs to be considered when crises occur. Crises impact the farm family and different members of the family in dissimilar ways.

In conventional food systems, there are often large social and geographical distances between production and consumption. Alternative food networks (AFNs) like relationship coffee models aim to shorten these distances through direct contacts, communication, trust, transparency or commitment to improve farmers' livelihoods. These relationship coffee models appear in diverse shapes with various implications for producers. Therefore, we deductively develop a framework to conceptualise proximity in four dimensions (organisational, institutional, cognitive and social) with subdimensions and three transversal dimensions ((temporary) geographical proximity, power, and communication). The analytic framework is complemented by an illustrative case to empirically test it, showing high geographical, organisational, institutional and cognitive proximity but low social proximity between coffee producer and restaurant owner. For future research, the framework can help to conceptualise proximity or to distinguish different types of relationship coffee models and to unpack conditions under which relationship coffees can increase proximity between coffee producers and buyers, often located far apart.

The purpose of this article is to provide an understanding of how different countries formulate and regulate antibiotic use in animals raised for human consumption. A comparative case study was undertaken, analysing historical documents from the 1950s to the 1990s from the UK, the first country to produce a scientific report on the public health risks of agricultural antibiotic use; and Sweden, the first country to produce legislation on the growth promotor use of antibiotics in food animals. Sheila Jasanoff's concepts of 'co-production' and 'political cultures' have been used to explore how both countries used different styles of scientific reasoning and justification of the risks of agricultural antibiotic use. It will be argued that national dynamics between policy, science and public knowledges co-produced different risk classifications and patterns of agricultural antibiotic use between both countries. UK's political culture used 'expert committees' to remove the issue from public debate and to inform agricultural antibiotic policies. In contrast, the Swedish 'consensus-oriented' political culture made concerns related to agricultural antibiotic use into a cooperative debate that included multiple discourses. Understanding how national policies, science and public knowledges interact with the risks related to agricultural antibiotic use can provide valuable insights in understanding and addressing countries agricultural use of antibiotics.

Shucksmith (2012) has recently suggested that rural research might be refreshed by incorporating theoretical insights that have emerged through a renewal of class analysis. This article seeks to advance this proposed research agenda by exploring the concept of asset-based class analysis and its association with the concept of social capital. The article explores connections between social capital, class analysis and understandings of community, noting how all have been associated with long running and unresolved debates. Attention is drawn to the problems of modernist legislative approaches to these debates and the value of adopting more interpretive perspectives. A distinction between 'infrastructural' and 'culturalist' interpretations of social capital is explored in relation to 'asset-based' theorisations of class and culture. It is argued that an infrastructural conception of social capital might usefully be employed in association with a disaggregated conception of cultural capital that includes consideration of emotion and affect, as well as institutional, objectified and technical assets. These arguments are explored using studies of rural communities, largely within Britain.

The extent to which counterurbanization is affecting rural population dynamics in southern Europe is explored using the example of Andalucia, Spain. "The purpose of this paper is to ask, in the context of Andalucia, whether an emergent counterurbanization trend is evident in a traditional area of rural population decline in southern Europe. More broadly, it raises questions about whether the concept counterurbanization helps or hinders our understanding of rural migration."

Patterns in population movement in Europe are described. "This paper will review the findings of relevant studies...to determine the state of our knowledge regarding the magnitude of, and differences in the urban-rural or metropolitan-non-metropolitan mobility of the population. In doing so, the paper will touch upon the influences of demographic, social, economic and environmental variables."

The authors examine the impact of counterurbanization in England. They "try and unravel how household turnover and in-migration selectivity are effecting rural change, and how local communities and policy-makers are responding to that change, in a number of villages in East Northamptonshire, a rural district in the heart of 'shire' England." The focus is on the extent to which the incoming households differ from those they replace, thus changing the socioeconomic characteristics of the rural population. The impact of such migration on the housing market is noted.

"The essay outlines some possible implications of recent research on demographic patterns for the historical study of rural society in Portugal. The first part is devoted to a summary of population trends since the 16th century, and the need for aggregative studies based on parish registers is emphasised." The author argues "that the available evidence suggests the pertinence of a regional perspective, in which variation across space is given as much prominence as change over time. A number of regional patterns--in mortality, fertility and nuptiality--are described and shown to be associated with regionally specific patterns of household organization. Some implications are suggested of the fact that this regional configuration of family forms and demographic patterns appears to have been in existence and to have persisted since the 16th century." (summary in FRE, GER)

"This paper...argues that a reconciliation between...different explanations of counterurbanization can possibly be achieved, but will require the pursuit of a more nuanced analysis of the detailed unfolding of the migration process. Such an analysis involves examining the migration from the migrant's perspective. In particular, we need to recognize the variety of both spatial scales and experiential environments that may be involved in any one act of migration." The geographic focus is on England.