اجازه دادن به آنها در - روابط بازنشستگی کشاورزی و دامداری

Through a focus on agricultural retirement, this paper extends on the recent work considering human–livestock relations. Drawing on research conducted in Hampshire and West Sussex (UK), the paper utilises farmers’ narratives of farm work and retirement to explore the themes of [dis]connection between farmers and their dairy cattle. The paper attempts to add complexity and nuance to assumptions about the nature and extent of animal objectification with commercial dairy farming, and consider the intricate moral geographies [re]created within the individual farm. The discursive and material ‘placings’ of animals are considered alongside an exploration of how the intricate temporality and spatiality of these are disturbed and disrupted by the move to retirement. In discussing these relations the paper examines how animals are central to the everyday lives and identities of farmers and how separation from them alters farmers’ attachment to particular practices, places and social networks.

Recent years have witnessed a profusion of responses to the call to ‘bring animals back in’ within geography (Wolch and Emel, 1995, p. 632). Particularly important within this corpus of work has been that considering how animals are ‘quintessential hybrids’ (Buller and Morris, 2003, p. 217) which are enrolled in networks and “might have subjectivities, agencies and practices through which they might create lifeworlds that impact on human ideas and communities” (Johnston, 2008, p. 633). Agriculture would appear to be fertile ground for exploring the geographies of animal–human relations, with recent political attention paid to the importance of farmers being seen as ‘good stewards of both land and livestock’ (The Curry Report, 2002, p. 24) alongside more popularised discourses of the treatment of animals within ‘modern’ industrialised agricultural practices, reminding us how distanced we have become from our food.1 Whilst Morris and Evans (2004) observed a greater initial research interest on ‘wild’ and ‘domestic’ animal–human relations than on farm livestock, there is now a developing body of work opening up in this latter area.2 Notable recent studies have explored, for example, the centrality of livestock to locality, politics and identity (Evans and Yarwood, 2000), and contrasting views on farm animals being both reduced to ‘meat machines’ (Stassart and Whatmore, 2003, p. 456) and also sentient beings performing individual subjectivities (Holloway, 2007). While behaviour and welfare scientists (e.g. Hemsworth, 2003) have explored animal–human interactions in experimental conditions to better understand issues of productivity and animal welfare, social scientists have made progress in exploring the socio-affective relations between humans and livestock. Several qualitative studies have begun to unpick the complexities and contradictions within these relations. Holloway’s (2001) study of hobby-farms, for example, is enlightening in exploring the ethical ambiguity of these relations and how socially-constructed categories of ‘livestock’ and ‘pet’ are blurred within what may be seen as more ‘marginal’ forms of production. Recent studies by Convery et al., 2005, Convery et al., 2008 and Wilkie, 2005 have used qualitative methodologies to get ‘behind the scenes’ of larger-scale commercial farming to illustrate that despite these long being synonymous in popular discourse with ‘factory farming’ of the ‘animal machine’ (Harrison, 1966), they too host ambiguous moral relations in which livestock are often viewed by farmers as more than simply commodities. Both Convery et al., 2005 and Wilkie, 2005 investigate the critical importance of context in exploring these animal–human relations, with attachment and detachment acting as critical framing concepts. Wilkie (2005) explores the emotional attachment to animals of different actors in the agricultural industry and observes how individual animal subjectivity can lead to them becoming more than ‘just an animal’ – what may be termed the decommodification of the animal – but that ultimately they remain something that can be quickly recommodified. Convery et al. (2005) explore detachment in a much more literal sense by considering the ambiguities of the ‘breach in relationships between animals and humans’ in light of the 2001 UK foot and mouth epidemic. They illustrate both the contradictory attitudes farmers have to the same animal, whilst articulating how this loss transcended the material and became a loss of the meanings associated with the lifescape of which humans, animals and landscape form part. The current paper wishes to contribute to this growing discussion of human–livestock relations and further explore the themes of attachment/detachment between animals and humans within commercial farming. The paper takes as its focus agricultural retirement – a further, but hitherto under-explored, moment which breaches the relationship between farmer and livestock, and which arguably provides a fruitful context for exploring human–animal relations. Although there has been some academic attention paid to agricultural retirement, this has tended to focus most predominantly on themes of farm transfer and succession (e.g. Potter and Lobley, 1996), with little attention on the retirement experiences of farmers and what these may tell us about human–livestock relations. Discussing animals post-separation (cf. Convery et al., 2005), gives a nexus at which farmers can reflect clearly on the nature of their previous relationship to animals, their feelings post-separation, as well as articulating the nature of this attachment. In doing this the paper wishes to explore and further develop several themes. First it examines the nature of the subjectification/objectification boundary (after Holloway, 2001) and in doing so attempts to further challenge the assumption that commercial farming is de facto more objectifying in relation to animals than smaller-scale farming. Second, the paper will explore the moral ambiguity faced by these farmers and how it is managed when they are forced to sell (or recommodify) their animals as they retire. Third, and related, the paper will discuss how individual animal subjectivity is not, and indeed cannot, be disregarded on these farms. Fourth, in exploring farmers’ narratives, the paper wishes to take up the suggestion that a fruitful avenue for discussing the ‘relational geographies of ageing’ (after Hopkins and Pain, 2007), may be to explore the co-constitution of “moments and geographies between human and non-human actants” ( Horton and Kraftl, 2008, p. 286). Specifically, the paper will explore the way that animals may figure in the challenges retirement poses those farmers studied.

The contributions of this paper are twofold. First, through drawing on the narratives of farming retirees, this paper has further exposed the intricate nature of farmers’ relationships with their livestock. Second, the paper has shown that a relational geography of ageing and retirement may be one that usefully incorporates the linked lives of animals. The paper has highlighted how socio-affective relationships between farmers and their animals do exist within commercial dairying, but these remain well masked by what may be seen as a process of recommodification. This process relates not just to geographical [re]placings, but is also discursive and temporally layered. Approaching such a process through the lens of retirement exposes some of these intricate timings and placings. It also reveals how the discursive practices which make recommodification, and the associated moral repositioning of farmers, relatively easy in the everyday farming lifescape, do not hold together in the context of the transition to retirement. As previous research has suggested, animals often embody a lifetime’s work, and it has been seen here that this relates not just to an embodiment of farming skill in terms of breeding and husbandry, but also as biographical markers through which farmers may narrate not only their own life, but also the progression and cumulative work of several generations. The implications of this for retirement are significant. Separation from, and particularly the selling of, animals arguably serves to magnify the hiatus which previous research has shown retirement may create – representing not only a cessation of occupation, but also a disconnection from a localised, often familial, farming heritage. Indeed this paper contributes to the wider literature on retirement in suggesting that the decision to retire is neither entirely individualistic, nor a purely present-centred one. Farmers’ narratives of their farming lives and subsequent retirement illustrates how individual animals, rather than homogenous herds, are commonly recognised. The objectifying practices of modern agriculture may, conversely, be read as an increased individualisation of animals, as farmers are forced to engage with their livestock at very detailed spatial and temporal scales. Whilst previous research has sought to explore how such technical changes have reframed the way we comprehend livestock, the current findings suggest there are also implications for the retiring farmer. Livestock are commonly embedded within spatially-specific networks – where individual idiosyncrasies are harnessed, and even celebrated, within the herd. The value of these animals is understood relationally, and whilst the point of retirement may be seen as offering physical closure, as individuals move away from the farm or disconnect from the dairy herd, moral and emotional closure may not always accompany this. Recognising the socio-affective relationship between farmers and livestock offers potential for understanding retirement transitions. Those farmers spoken to talk of a role attachment, to which animals are central, and which shows not only a simple emotional [dis]connection to their animals, but also how landscapes and places are understood, relationally, through their animals and related working practices. Alongside this, daily and seasonal rhythms – historically shaped by the demands of livestock husbandry – become internalised and there is a need to remap these into their new, retirement, situations. The social capital associated with animal husbandry may be lost and altered in retirement, which in turn remoulds the nature of engagement with particular social groups and settings. This paper has focused on those for whom retirement involved physical disconnection from their dairy herd. Further research is needed into the retirement experiences of those whose successors maintain their dairy herd, those who choose alternative retirement routes (such as semi- or non-retirement), and those from other areas of the agricultural sector – who are likely to offer different emphases and experiences from those considered here. More detailed research is needed into other forms of disconnection from livestock – not only relating to disease (Convery et al., 2008) and retirement, but also those who have either chosen to, or been forced to leave the dairy industry for other reasons. There remains a further gap, not only in relation to agriculture but also retirement more generally, in the research which focuses on the post-retirement experiences and adaptations of individuals, couples and wider families.