Eroding a Way of Life: Neoliberalism and the Family Farm - Softcover

Knuttila, Murray

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889779457 ISBN 13: 9780889779457

Publisher: University of Regina Press, 2023

Synopsis

An analysis of how neoliberal policies have radically restructured farming in Western Canada.

The establishment of a Western Canadian economy dominated by family farming was part of the government’s post-Confederation nation building and industrial development strategy. During this era, Western family farms were established and promoted to serve as a market for Canadian industrial goods and a source of export cash crops, which both played essential roles in the national economy.

In Eroding a Way of Life, Murray Knuttila shows how decades of neoliberal policies, state austerity, deregulation, and privatization have fragmented agrarian communities across Western Canada, a process hastened by the advent of the capitalization of machinery and high-input industrial farming. As a result, earning a living on the family farm has become increasingly impossible. As farmers sell off their land to larger producers, rural communities are watching their railroads, schools, churches, post offices, and hospitals close, and many villages and small towns are being reduced to plaques on the highway.

Analyzing the history of prairie agriculture through the lenses of class, federal policies, and global capitalism, Knuttila describes the physical, social, and political reordering of the countryside and the resulting human costs paid by farmers, labourers, and families.

About this title

About the Author

Murray Knuttila is Professor Emeritus at the University of Regina and Brock University. He is the author of several books, including That Man Partridge and Paying for Masculinity. He resides in Regina, Saskatchewan.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Regina Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0889779457
• ISBN 13: 9780889779457
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 400