Structuring for serendipity: family wealth creation, farmer autonomy and the pursuit of security in an uncertain Australian countryside

Abstract

The social and economic particularities of family farms have captured researchers’ attention for many years; but rural scholarship still lacks a clear, analytical sense of how and why family farms are organised in the ways that they are. This thesis critically examines the internal logics underpinning the socio-economic organisation of Australian farms. It adopts Johnsen’s (2003) conceptualisation of farm enterprises as three-way coalitions between farm businesses, farm households and the respective property holdings. Changes to the Australian agricultural property regime are used as the lens through which to observe how the organisational logics of farm enterprises are recalibrated in response to environmental policy reforms; specifically, the separation of land and water titles. Despite the obvious economic significance of separating land and water titles, the impacts on farm organisation remain under-researched. Hence, this thesis uniquely brings together scholarship on family farming with that of water reforms. A qualitative research method – farm life history – is used to generate narratives of the development of 40 farms in Victoria, Australia. Twenty-one of these are from an irrigation district where land and water titles have been separated, and nineteen from a dry land region unaffected by the reforms. The interpretive chapters comprise an analysis of the ways in which the ownership configurations of farm businesses, land and water assets embody farmers’ aspirations for building wealth and maintaining autonomy. These aspirations are jointly articulated in the concept of ‘structuring for serendipity’, which elevates the notions of risk, uncertainty and security as critical drivers shaping farm-level responses to contemporary conditions. The thesis concludes that the organisational forms observed within the Australian agricultural sector ultimately represent farmers’ pursuit of a sense of security in a constantly changing and uncertain countryside.