Paths to Productivism: Agricultural Regulation in the Second World War ant Its Aftermath in Great Britain and German-Annexed Austria

The transition from low-input, low-output farming to a ‘productivist’ agrosystem characterized by high levels of upstream and downstream fl ows of resources on both national and international scales has been a marked feature of the development of European agriculture since the Second World War.1 Agricultural productivism can be identifi ed by a number of features: the substitution of capital, above all biological and mechanical technology, for land and labour; the growth of land and labour productivity and production in close connection with factor and product markets; the ‘optimization’ of farm organization according to economic e ciency goals, leading to intensifi cation, specialization, and concentration; the application of expert knowledge via agricultural education and extension; the internalization of a productivist ethic by the farming population; and-last but not leastthe regulation of all these agrosystemic features by the nation-state which has directed, cajoled, and encouraged the development of an ‘intensive food regime’. Agricultural productivism has played a key role in the development of Western European societies in the second half of the twentieth century by not only increasing the supply of food, but also in enabling the release of labour to the industrial and service sectors.2