Defining Totnes and District
Totnes is a town in the South Hams in Devon with an urban population of around 8,4161, while Totnes and District (that is, Totnes and its surrounding 15 parishes, Figure 2) is a largely notional concept, developed by the Market and Coastal Towns Initiative (MCTI), with a total population of 23,914 (15,498 excluding Totnes town) (Devon Primary Care Trust (PCT) 2008). Although its southern boundaries reflect traditional and geographical relationships based on Totnes’ history as a market town, its northern border is a politically generated boundary, forming the north-eastern boundary of South Hams district. The total land area is almost 24,000 ha., which, when roads, buildings, water and so on are taken out, translates into around 22,000ha of land (DCLG 2005).
The boundary of the area of Totnes and District (© Mark Thurston, Geofutures)
One last challenge that a more localised food system will need to address is that of who will do the farming. It has been estimated that a post-oil agricultural community will need to employ something like 20% of its population in food production2. According to the 2001 Census, in Totnes and District 5.54% of people in the area work in food, forestry and fishing (although an exact figure as how many work in agriculture is unavailable) (ONS 2001). This clearly differs between the urban and the rural populations. 2.4% of Totnes work in food, forestry and fishing, while 7.33% of the rest of Totnes and District do (ibid). The other challenge is the area’s age profile. Farming requires fit and able-bodied people, but Totnes and District has a more aged population than most other parts of the region, as the graph below (Figure 33) highlights:
The population age profile for Totnes and District. Source: based on data from Devon PCT (2008)
In 2008 at the Soil Association conference, Richard Heinberg looked at the increase in the number of people working in agriculture in Cuba before and after their ‘Special Period’ that lasted throughout the 1990s, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the country lost 80% of its fossil fuels and agrochemicals. The percentage of people working in farming rose from 1% to 20%4. The wider link between the availability of cheap oil and the number of people required in agriculture can be seen, for the US, in Figure 45.
The US farm population and direct fuel consumption, 1910 to 2000. Much the same pattern can be observed for UK agriculture. Source: Miranowski 2004
For the UK, this would translate into an increase from half a million to 10 million employed in agriculture in some way6. More people working on the land will in turn necessitate more people living on the land. This implies a process of increased ruralisation, and also raises planning issues in terms of where these people will live.
Footnotes
- This paper defines Totnes as being the area defined in the Census as MSOA E02004191 or ‘South Hams 003’ [↩]
- Heinberg, R. (2007) The Essential Relocalisation of Food Production. In “One Planet Agriculture: the Case for Action”. Edited by Rob Hopkins and Patrick Holden. Soil Association. Retrieved from transitionculture.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/thecaseforaction.pdf [↩]
- Based on data from Devon PCT, 2008 [↩]
- Hernandez-Reguant, A. (2009) Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s. Palgrave Macmillan [↩]
- Miranowski 2004 [↩]
- Also explored in a talk by Heinberg entitled ‘The Implication for Peak Oil on Agriculture’, available at www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/1119264. For a more detailed account, see Wright, J. (2008) Earthscan Books [↩]
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