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Figure 7 Agricultural Employment In Wales Source: ...


Figure 7 Agricultural employment in Wales

Source: http://new.wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/publications/was2005/?lang=en
Causes of Agricultural decline
Some of the responsibility for the current position and trends has been levelled at the cost-price squeeze effect that is currently taking place within the food chain, with consumers consistently demanding lower retail prices. Whilst it is true that this has had a significant impact on the industry, it is not the sole cause of the current position. Three other significant factors have also had an adverse effect.
Disease. The perceived lack of safety in British foods following the incidences of foot and mouth, BSE, swine fever and, more recently, outbreaks of avian flu (Haynes 2007) has also had a significant impact upon consumer's and buyer's both confidence in the UK and abroad. The fact that these have occurred within a relatively short period of each other has done little to improve the recovery position of the industry as a whole, the timescale of which has been extended as a result of these events.
Technology usage. Apart from the larger corporate farm holdings the use of modern technological advances within agriculture within the smaller holdings has not been taken advantage of to the extent that other industries have respond to this area of business to the same extent. This is presumably due to the older age demographics of the older owners and tenants, together with the time constraints that they experience as a result of low levels of employment. Based upon the lack of profitability of many small farms, another contributory factor to the lack of new technology resources in use results from the limited financial resources available to purchase the equipment and training necessary for such innovations.
Finally, the local colony attitude as indicated by Hechter (1969) is still in evidence in many rural and farming areas. The psychological position of a large element of the agricultural community is resistant to change, a situation that makes improvements for greater efficiency difficult to implement.
National and Regional Strategies
There have been a number of initiatives instigated with regard to the agricultural industry, particularly from the European Union, although these and those that have come from the UK authorities, have not been met with unanimous approval. In the case of the EU strategies there is a body of opinion that this limits national action. As Alan Greer (2005) states in the introduction to his study on the agricultural industry, there is a widespread assumption that the existence of a CAP across the European Union undermines the capacity of states to construct their own national policies. To a certain extent the comment made by Greer is true.


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