The Professionalisation of English Agriculture?

Abstract

Following Perkin's suggestion that western European society is increasingly professionalised, and given the emergence of a stratum of large commercial farms in twentieth-century England, this paper examines the contention that, to some extent at least, English agriculture has been professionalised over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It briefly surveys the literature on professionalisation, identifies a list of professional characteristics, and then tests the attributes of twentieth-century English farmers against this list. It also briefly examines the effects of professionalisation, and concludes that, although it would be excessively simplistic to claim that the whole industry has been professionalised, it is possible to identify professional groups.