Scales of Sustainability: the Ethical Positioning of Productivist Farmers in Debates about the Environment

Recent tensions between governments seeking to set sustainability goals and farmers arguing that such goals endanger their businesses have resulted, among others in the Netherlands, in a seemingly deadlocked debate about the future of agriculture. Our discursive analysis of a study of productivist farmers in the municipality of Hollands Kroon suggests that a more constructive debate might be enabled by taking seriously the ethics of globalist ruralism espoused by these farmers, which includes a sense of social and environmental responsibility, and the agency they perceive themselves to have or lack across different scales (local, national, European, global).