ABSTRACT
The farm is still a defining institution of the countryside, dominating its landscape. There are enduring problems of land ownership, cultivation and mechanisation. Big landowners and farmers can still overrule public interests, by blocking access, selling off swathes of land for development, cutting down forests or polluting the atmosphere with agrochemicals with barely a nod to any other authority. But there are also new types of farm which are showing the way to different values and diverse ways of using land effectively and in harmony with the environment. And there is a growing understanding of the craft of the farm and the heritage of the farm. In some cases, farms understand museum culture better than the museum and are creating quasi-curated spaces for recreation and for selling quality artisanal produce. There is also a big interest developing among contemporary artists in the farm. Whether or not these developments have any impact on the way food is produced and distributed remains to be seen, but they all combine to represent quite different values from those of the relentless business models of the latter twentieth century.
