FARM HOUSEHOLD STRATEGIES AND PLURIACTIVITY IN UPLAND SCOTLAND

This paper considers how farm households in Grampians, an upland area of Scotland, are adapting to changing economic and political pressures. Most farms in the area are family farms, and such farm households are being exhorted to diversify their sources of income and to reduce their reliance on agriculture. Based on surveys in 1988 and 1989, this study finds, to the contrary, that only a small proportion of farmers has been reducing reliance on agricultural sources of income, and few anticipate a declining share of their household income to come from farming. Most farmers are loathe to undertake ancillary non-agricultural occupations because of the lower status implied; and farmers in the study area are found to have a very poor understanding of the broad policy context within which they produce. The paper also confirms the finding of other studies that off-farm employment of household members makes a significant contribution to farm household income; and the nature of such pluriactivity and of pluriactive farm households in the area is reviewed.