Description
In recent years farmers protests have emerged both in the UK and Europe, part of which has been a backlash against efforts to move towards greener farming practices. In amidst the contestations of green agricultural transitions, farmers will have to keep farming and keep producing food. Farmers often have deep affinities for their industry, for most it is more than a job, it is a way of life. Our paper picks up this idea through the concept of Good Farmer Identity, which posits that affinities for (often industrialised) practices of food production are a key element of many farmers (re)producing their self-identity (Burton et al., 2021). We will show that though far from a homogenous identity, the academic literature to date shows us that good farmer identity is typically a masculinised identity, shaped by patriarchal structures. With this in mind, we interrogate the idea that masculinised farmer identities may also be a potential site of petro-masculinities (Daggett, 2018). We will illustrate this via an examination of media sources related to UK agriculture.
