Agricultural landscapes as places of production and for living in owner’s versus producer’s decision making and the implications for planning

The farmer as a producer has traditionally been in focus when changes in agricultural landscapes are studied. Decisions on husbandry, rotational systems, machinery, fertilisation and pest management do indeed affect the landscape in crucial ways and landscape dynamics cannot be understood if the farmer’s decision making and the surrounding technology, socio-economics, and organisational structure are ignored. However, normally the farmer is not the only decision maker. Often he farms leased land and the owner may be an equally important actor concerning landscape changes. Even when the farmer and the owner are the same person, the ‘owner’ may take very different types of decisions than the ‘producer’ does. Many of these decisions concern the landscape as a ‘living place’ (in the sense of a place to live in) rather than as a production area. Decisions linked to the landscape as a living place have been overlooked in landscape research, yet are playing a growing role due to occupational changes in the countryside and changes in agricultural subsidies (from production to land-based subsidies), and to the growing interest in environmental protection and enhancement. I argue that the owner is a key person in changes of the structural part of the landscape and should be included in landscape research and also be considered as a key actor by the planning authorities. Empirical data from an extensive interview survey of 700 farmland and woodland owners in Denmark are used to support the argument, and finally some implications for landscape planning and public regulations are discussed.