Farming Intensification and Environmental Justice in Northern Ireland
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Farming Intensification and Environmental Justice in Northern Ireland Ekaterina Gladkova1
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Going for Growth, an industry-led strategy to expand the agri-food sector, was adopted by the Northern Irish government in 2013 in order to encourage farming intensification in Northern Ireland. This approach, however, threatens an already fragile natural environment and has already had detrimental consequences for human health and well-being. This article employs an environmental justice perspective to scrutinize farming intensification in a community affected by this phenomenon. Based on findings from semi-structured interviews with local residents, the article describes their exposure to environmental risks as a result of farming intensification. The uneven distribution of environmental burdens is also coupled with limited opportunities for the local residents to engage in environmental decision-making and to be recognized as active agents of change. The article concludes that farming intensification in Northern Ireland is marked by procedural environmental injustice and should be addressed by downscaling levels of production and reforming decisionmaking processes.
Introduction By 2017, Northern Ireland had experienced a sharp rise in the number of intensive pig and poultry farms (those housing at least 40,000 poultry birds, 2000 pigs raised for meat, or 750 breeding pigs)—indeed, the number of farms increased by 68% from 154 in 2011 to 259 in 2017 (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism 2017). Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local campaigners attributed this trend to a broader shift in farming intensification, in addition to the Northern Irish government’s adoption of the Going for Growth (GfG) strategy in 2013. Industry-led, the GfG endeavored to expand the agri-food sector with the goal of “growing a sustainable, profitable and integrated Agri-Food supply chain, focused on delivering the needs of the market” (Agri-Food Strategy Board 2013: 11). GfG was premised and adopted based on a controversial idea of a pressing need to increase global food production in light of population growth (Tomlinson 2013). The strategy prioritized the export of produce, aiming to grow sales outside * Ekaterina Gladkova [email protected] 1
Department of Social Sciences, Northumbria University, Ellison Place, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK
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Northern Ireland by 75% (Agri-Food Strategy Board 2013: 11) and called for governmentled incentives to encourage economies of scale at producer and processor levels. The latter entailed incentivizing “larger, more diversified farm units across Northern Ireland, with lower production costs, higher productivity and higher environmental and welfare standards, enabling the promotion of a stronger, more profitable product” (Montgomery 2015: 8). GfG secured substantial amounts of government and industry investment—£442 million in 2016 (Agri-Food Strategy Board 2016: 8)—that was channeled, among other thin
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