Philip Woodhouse, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 10 No. 3, July 2010, pp. 437–453.

Although modern agriculture has increased food production faster than populationgrowth in recent decades, there are concerns that existing models of‘industrial agriculture’ are unsustainable due to long-run trends towardsincreased fossil energy costs.This has led to suggestions that food production infuture will need to be based on smaller-scale and more labour-intensive farmingsystems. This paper examines political economy arguments that large-scalecapital-intensive agriculture has proved more productive. It counterposes these toecological economics approaches that emphasize the low energy efficiency ofcapital-intensive mechanized agriculture.The paper argues that discussion of a‘post-industrial’ agriculture remain polarized between visions of a more energyefficientmechanized agriculture on the one hand, and labour-intensive farmingby ‘new peasantries’, on the other. The paper identifies questions that areneglected by this debate, in particular those concerning the productivity of labourin food production and its implications for food prices and the livelihood basisof farming.