The changes in farming through the 1950s to 1980s, described in Chapter 6, can be seen as a period of modernisation. A particular model of agricultural development, of increasing output and productive efficiency through new technology, enterprise expansion and the concentration of farms into larger units, was developed and promoted by policy. This more industrial approach was associated with an individualisation in farm business, typically with limited linkages amongst farms within a particular locality, in contrast with our earlier models of common fields or the Great Estates. This approach increased the potential for the exploitation of economies of size through specialisation, and enabled farms to become more technically efficient; but as we have noted, it also had detrimental impacts on the environment. While local horizontal linkages have declined, there has been a move towards market-oriented vertical linkages with other firms along the food production, processing and marketing chain. Farmers have become increasingly dependent on purchased inputs and on contracts for the sale of their output, generally with large processing and retail companies.

However, the redirection towards farming systems that are more environmentally benign, that promote landscape and wildlife or provide public access, especially with a goal of increasing production at the same time, may be expected to imply a need for rather different sets of institutional relationships, in the same way that the declines of the common fields or of the Great Estates led in their turn to new institutional arrangements.