multidisciplinary research programme
In the early 1980's, together with Eppo Bolhuis, he designed a multidisciplinary research programme that focussed on a better understanding of the complex and often contradictory relations between farming and markets. This research was carried out in Italy (Emilia Romagna and Campania) and in Peru (Antapampa and Alto Piura) and formed the bases for his doctoral thesis which was published in the Netherlands under the title Boerenarbeid en stijlen van landbouwbeoefening, in Italy as La ristrutturazione del lavoro agricolo and in English translation by Westview Press as Labour, Markets and Agricultural Production. He defended his thesis at the University of Leiden in 1985.Labour, markets and agricultural production demonstrated that an increased incorporation into the markets on the supply side (that is an increased commoditization of the agricultural process of production) implied a basic shift in development pattern from ongoing intensification, spurred mainly by an increase in the quantity and quality of labour to an continuous increase in scale and a (relative) extensification. It was a thesis that gave rise to considerable debate.
After a short period as lecturer at the University of Leiden, Jan Douwe van der Ploeg was asked by Norman Long, Professor of Development Sociology to join his team at Wageningen University. This was the beginning of a particularly fruitful cooperation that resulted in several articles and a new programme that attracted many students. From his new position Jan Douwe van der Ploeg was able to re-study Dutch and more generally European agriculture using approaches derived from development sociology. This included the "actor-oriented approach" developed by Long which he complemented with his own experiences in the developing world.
Rural sociology - particularly the European and North America variant - and development sociology which was primarily focused of the Third World had long been estranged. Van der Ploeg and Long brought these two sources together. Together they became the centre of a group of young researchers that was to include Dirk Roep, Rene de Bruin, Han Wiskerke, Rudolf van Broekhuizen and many others. This group became instrumental in forging a powerful, new theoretical approach. Labour process analysis, differential degrees of commoditization, differential responses to technology development, cultural repertoire and farmers' strategies together with reconceptualized notions of structure, actor and agency formed the cornerstones of this new approach.
It was an approach that made it possible to understand the impressive and multi-dimensional heterogeneity of European agriculture - conceptualized in terms of farming styles. It identified the emergence of new development trajectories and the heterogeneous (re-) moulding of nature as expressed in fields, animals, plant varieties, and food. Farming was conceptualised as co-production making it possible to integrate these phenomena for the first time into the analysis of farming.
In 1987 Jan Douwe van der Ploeg was invited by Vito Saccomandi, Professor of Agricultural Economics in Perugia and later Italian Minister of Agriculture to join his team for a year. Together with the valuable help of Bruno Benvenuti, they were able to combine the Wageningen approach with a neo-institutional analysis of agricultural production and marketing.
It was in this period that heterogeneity, farming styles, endogenous development potential and techno-institutional innovations became the cornerstones of a vast research programme that encompassed the rural sectors of Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal, Mexico, Kenya and the United Kingdom.