Subsistence and Sustainability in Post‐industrial Europe: The Politics of Small‐scale Farming in Europeanising Lithuania

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the marginalisation of small‐scale semi‐subsistence farming in the context of the European Union's sustainable development reforms as implemented in the new member countries. In documenting how small‐scale farming in post‐socialist Lithuania has been redefined from being a solution to the environmental and social degradation of industrialised agriculture under socialism to becoming a major obstacle in building sustainable agriculture, this case study offers a critique of sustainability as a developmental project and the asymmetrical relationships implicit in the rural development politics in Europe. Taking a historical‐comparative approach, this study demonstrates that the notion of sustainability has been built on assumptions about the industrialisation and globalisation of agri‐food systems that exclude alternative local forms of production, consumption and distribution. As a result, the implementation of such sustainable development policies leads to the reproduction of the industrialised agriculture and the exclusion of small‐scale farmers from the vision of sustainable rural societies.

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