RURAL RESTRUCTURING AND THE REGULATION OF FARM POLLUTION

In this paper the emergence during the 1980s of a water pollution prob lem associated with intensive livestock production is examined. Farm p ollution is socially constructed and is shaped by rural social change. Rural areas are experiencing social and economic restructuring with a resultant shift in emphasis from production to consumption concerns. 'New' people are living-in the countryside, with ideas about how its r esources should be managed that often differ from those with tradition al production interests. At the same time, the debates surrounding the privatisation of the water industry opened up the issue of water poll ution in the countryside to greater critical scrutiny. It is in this c ontext that pollution from farm 'wastes' (termed here 'farm pollution' ) has gone from being a 'nonproblem' in the 1970s to an issue of great er public and political concern and regulatory activity since the late 1980s. Based on evidence from a study of dairy farming in Devon, it i s argued in this paper that the farm pollution problem and its regulat ion are as much a function of social change in the countryside as of e nvironmental change in rivers.