Agricultural change in Denmark between 1982 and 1989: the appearance of post-productivism in farming?

Abstract

Regional agricultural development in Denmark in the 1980s is analysed by using surrogate statistics for three bipolar development trends: 1) intensification-extensification. 2) concentration-dispersal and 3) specialisation-diversification. The scale of analysis is the municipality. The results show that agriculture in eastern Denmark has intensified and specialised, whereas central parts of Jutland have extensified and diversified mainly due to the introduction of more complex crop patterns and a decline in the number of dairy cows. An increase in concentration is evident for the whole country. Aggregation of the development trends show that only 16% of the municipalities developed in the direction of ‘industrialisation’. a result which conflicts with the conventional understanding of the main development trends in Danish agriculture. However, part of this new interpretation may be related to the data and methodology employed in the analysis.

Keywords:

• Agricultural development
• spatial differentiation
• intensification
• extensification
• specialisation
• productivist
• post-productivist