Farm Crisis, Mobility and Structural Change in Swedish Agriculture, 1992–2000

This is a longitudinal study of structural change in Swedish agriculture during 1992 to 1999/ 2000, in which period the country entered the European Union and its agriculture went through a major economic crisis. The study is unique in drawing on a theoretically grounded typology to describe the agrarian structure and its dynamism. The results show that there has been a great deal of mobility of farming households in the agrarian structure during the period. As expected, the rate of closure has been high. It is remarkable, though, that despite the fluidity, the farm structure remains remarkably stable, but increasingly bimodal: it continues to be dominated economically by a relatively small stratum of family farms, while being numerically dominated by part-time farms and by pluriactive farmers.