‘Neo-productivist’ agriculture: Spatio-temporal versus structuralist perspectives

• Innovative review and critique of notion of ‘neo-productivism’.
• Links discussions of neo-productivist pathways with debates on productivism and non-productivism in novel ways.
• Critically discusses current pathways of agricultural change.

Critical commentators of agricultural/rural change in advanced economies have begun to refer to ‘neo-productivist’ pathways of change. However, conceptualizations of neo-productivism have so far largely failed to provide a robust analytical framework for understanding the propelling forces, processes and characteristics of complex modern agricultural pathways. This article analyses two key approaches used to conceptualize neo-productivism: an actor-oriented spatio-temporal perspective (the AOST approach) which focuses mainly on geographical and temporal-historical characteristics in the adoption of neo-productivist actor spaces, and structuralist interpretations which see neo-productivism predominantly as a response to macro-political regime change. There is an underlying assumption in both that productivist and non-productivist pathways of agricultural change can be identified in different guises and that the notion of neo-productivism can be situated in relation to productivist/non-productivist concepts. However, they differ in their temporal conceptualisations of agricultural change (i.e. neo-productivism as productivist resurgence versus productivist approaches adapted to match the new political realities of an era influenced by non-productivism), processes (i.e. non-productivist pathways forced by events ‘back’ towards productivist-dominated pathways versus neo-productivism as a shift from a state-led system of support responsible for driving state productivism, to market-based drivers enabled by the gradual withdrawal of the state), and spatial differentiation (i.e. complex geography of actor spaces in the adoption of neo-productivist pathways versus locked-in productivist pathways working alongside multifunctional agriculture). The article concludes with some critical thoughts about the utility of the term ‘neo-productivism’, but also argues that the term allows researchers to further nuance conceptualisations of the complex spatial, temporal and structural changes that characterise modern agriculture in any area of the globe.