Paper long abstract:

Problems surrounding food security, environmental degradation and a growing world population have attracted significant attention. As one way of alleviating these problems, there have been calls to (re-) visit the 'GM debate'. For example, recent influential recommendations (Chatham House Report, 2009) suggest that GM might satisfy, sustainably, a growing demand for food. (Re-) invigorating productivism, these calls have the potential to challenge attempts to create a 'new post-productivist' rurality.

This paper will explore the potential to understand how these challenges might be worked through 'on-farm' process, practice and routine. It is particularly concerned with interrogating the ways in which, as a result, farm families might 'co-produce' 'new' technologies. This paper argues that comparative, multi-sited ethnography places this 'on-farm' activity within the context of rural consumption and production. Outlining a theoretical framework that draws upon social anthropology and agricultural geography, it seeks to understand the changing diversity of the agricultural landscape.