Environmental and social risks, and the construction of “best-practice” in Australian agriculture

Amongst the environmental and social externalities generated by Australian agriculture are a number of risks both to the health and safety of communities living near sites of agricultural production, and to the end consumers of agricultural products. Responses to these potential risks – and to problems of environmental sustainability more generally – have included a number of programs to variously: define best-practice for particular industries; implement Quality Assurance procedures; and encourage the formation of self-help community Landcare groups. Taken together, these programs appear to deal comprehensively with both the social and environmental risks associated with agricultural production and products. However, these programs may also be interpreted as strategies that actually encourage the further intensification of agriculture, while attempting to reassure consumers that their food is safe and that farmers are doing all they can to protect the environment. Investigation of the Australian cotton and beef industries illustrates a number of strategies that have become evident between farmers, agri-science agencies, and the retail sector to manage these risks and define good farming practices in ways that satisfy their own perceived interests. Contrary to the image, therefore, of green consumption that is emerging as an integrated concern for clean (and thereby healthy) and sustainably produced foods, it appears that mainstream agricultural industries have bifurcated these concerns in ways that distract attention from production and processing methods, leaving conflict over on-farm production methods a characteristic only of those industries believed to have direct health impacts on nearby communities.     

Are precision agriculture tools and methods relevant at the whole-vineyard scale?

Precision viticulture (PV) has been mainly applied at the field level, for which the ability of high resolution data to match within-field variability has been already shown. However, the interest of PV for grape growers would be greater if its principles could also apply at a larger scale, as most growers still focus their management on a multi-field scale, not considering each field as an isolated unit. The aim of this study was to analyse whether it is possible and relevant to use PV tools to define meaningful management zones at the whole-vineyard scale. The study was carried out on a 90-ha vineyard made of 27 contiguous fields. The spatial variability of vine vigour, estimated with the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), was analysed at within-field and whole-vineyard scales. The spatial variability of the vigour was significant and spatially organized whatever the considered scale. Besides, vineyard spatial variability was characterised using information on environmental factors (soil apparent conductivity and elevation) and vine response (yield, vigour and grape composition). At both scales, NDVI and measured environmental factors were used to establish a three-level classification, whose agronomic significance was tested comparing the vine response observed for each class. The analysis of high resolution information allowed the definition of classes with agronomic and oenological implications, although there was not a straightforward correspondence between the classes defined and quality. Analysing the variability at the whole-vineyard scale highlighted a trend of spatial variation associated to elevation that was hardly visible at the within-field level.     

Cultivating citizenship,equity, and social inclusion? Putting civic agriculture into practice through urban farming

Civic agriculture is an approach to agriculture and food production that—in contrast with the industrial food system—is embedded in local environmental, social, and economic contexts. Alongside proliferation of the alternative food projects that characterize civic agriculture, growing literature critiques how their implementation runs counter to the ideal of civic agriculture. This study assesses the relevance of three such critiques to urban farming, aiming to understand how different farming models balance civic and economic exchange, prioritize food justice, and create socially inclusive spaces. Using a case study approach that incorporated interviews, participant observation, and document review, I compare two urban farms in Baltimore, Maryland—a “community farm” that emphasizes community engagement, and a “commercial farm” that focuses on job creation. Findings reveal the community farm prioritizes civic participation and food access for low-income residents, and strives to create socially inclusive space. However, the farmers’ “outsider” status challenges community engagement efforts. The commercial farm focuses on financial sustainability rather than participatory processes or food equity, reflecting the use of food production as a means toward community development rather than propagation of a food citizenry. Both farms meet authentic needs that contribute to neighborhood improvement, though findings suggest a lack of interest by residents in obtaining urban farm food, raising concerns about its appeal and accessibility to diverse consumers. Though not equally participatory, equitable, or social inclusive, both farms exemplify projects physically and philosophically rooted in the local social context, necessary characteristics for promoting civic engagement with the food system.     

Farmers’ perceptions of coexistence between agriculture and a large scale coal seam gas development

The Coal Seam Gas (CSG) extraction industry is developing rapidly within the Surat Basin in southern Queensland, Australia, with licenses already approved for tenements covering more than 24,000 km². Much of this land is used for a broad range of agricultural purposes and the need for coexistence between the farm and gas industries has been the source of much conflict. Whilst much research has been undertaken into the environmental and economic impacts of CSG, little research has looked into the issues of coexistence between farmers and the CSG industry in the shared space that is a farm business, a home and a resource extraction network. We conducted three workshops with farmers from across a broad region undergoing CSG development to explore farmers’ perceptions of some of the issues arising from large scale land use change. Workshops explored the importance of place identity and landscape aesthetics for farmers, farmers’ acceptance and coping with change, and possible benefits from off-farm income. We found that farmers believed that place identity was not well understood by CSG staff from non-rural backgrounds and that farmers struggled to explain some concerns because of the different way they interpreted their landscape. Furthermore, high staff turnover, and the extensive use of contractors also impacted on communications. These factors were the cause of much frustration and farmers felt that this has led to severe impacts on mental health and wellbeing. Farmers felt that a change in culture within the CSG companies will be required if engagement with farmers is to improve and that efforts to employ local people in these communications was helping this. The workshops also identified a range of issues perceived by farmers arising from increased traffic volumes, impacts to mental health and wellbeing, place identity and loss of water resources for farmers. Finally, it was suggested that scientists and agricultural industry groups will need to work closely with farmers to develop understanding of these emerging issues and to develop solutions that are timely and relevant.     

Nanotechnologies,food, and agriculture: next big thing or flash in the pan?

The advent of the new nanotechnologies has been heralded by government, media, and many in the scientific community as the next big thing. Within the agricultural sector research is underway on a wide variety of products ranging from distributed intelligence in orchards, to radio frequency identification devices, to animal diagnostics, to nanofiltered food products. But the nano-revolution (if indeed there is a revolution at all) appears to be taking a turn quite different from the biotechnology revolution of two decades ago. Grappling with these issues will require abandoning both the exuberance of diffusion theory and ex post facto criticism of new technologies as well in favor of a more nuanced and proactive view that cross the fault line between the social and natural sciences.

Examining the social and biophysical determinants of U.S. Midwestern corn farmers’ adoption of precision agriculture

Precision Agriculture - Precision agricultural technologies (PA) such as global positioning system tools have been commercially available since the early 1990s and they are widely thought to have...     

Safe at any scale? Food scares,food regulation,and scaled alternatives

The 2006 outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, traced to bagged spinach from California, illustrates a number of contradictions. The solutions sought by many politicians and popular food analysts have been to create a centralized federal agency and a uniform set of production standards modeled after those of the animal industry. Such an approach would disproportionately harm smaller-scale producers, whose operations were not responsible for the epidemic, as well as reduce the agroecological diversity that is essential for maintaining healthy human beings and ecosystems. Why should responses that only reinforce the problem be proffered? We use the framework of accumulation and legitimation to suggest corporate and government motives for concealing underlying problems and reinforcing powerful ideologies of individualism, scientism, and centralizing authority. Food safety (or the illusion of safety) is being positioned to secure capital rather than public welfare. We propose implementing the principle of subsidiarity as a more democratic and decentralized alternative. Because full implementation of this principle will be resisted by powerful interests, some promising intermediate steps include peer production or mass collaboration as currently applied to disease prevention and surveillance, as well as studying nascent movements resisting current food safety regulations.     

Confronting coexistence in the United States: organic agriculture, genetic engineering, and the case of Roundup Ready® alfalfa

In agriculture, the principle of coexistence refers to a condition where different primary production systems can exist in the vicinity of each other, and can be managed in such a way that they affect each other as little as possible. Coexistence policies aim to ensure that farmers are able to freely grow the crops they choose—be they genetically engineered (GE), non-GE conventional, or organic. In the United States (US), the issue of coexistence has very recently come into sharp relief with the introduction of Roundup Ready^® (RR) alfalfa, a landmark court decision in 2007 (Geertson v. Johanns), and subsequent governmental actions, including the first Environmental Impact Statement on a GE crop. By contrast, in 2003 the European Union (EU) created a policy to manage coexistence and to address economic harms that may be caused by contamination. We briefly review the EU framework as an instructive resource. This policy analysis then looks at the US organic industry and its standards with respect to GE before turning to the case of RR alfalfa. With a focus on the field trial stage and on environmental assessments prior to market approval, the case reveals numerous problems in the existing regulatory framework as it pertains to coexistence and prevention of contamination of organic products with GE material. The paper concludes with specific policy recommendations for creating a more robust coexistence policy in the US.     

Non-governmental organizations,strategic bridge building,and the “scientization” of organic agriculture in Kenya

This paper contributes to the growing social science scholarship on organic agriculture in the global South. A “boundary” framework is used to understand how negotiation among socially and geographically disparate social worlds (e.g., non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foreign donors, agricultural researchers, and small-scale farmers) has resulted in the diffusion of non-certified organic agriculture in Kenya. National and local NGOs dedicated to organic agriculture promotion, training, research, and outreach are conceptualized as “boundary organizations.” Situated at the intersection of multiple social worlds, these NGOs engage in “strategic bridge building” and “strategic boundary-work.” Strategic bridge building involves the creation and use of “boundary objects” and “hybrid forms” that serve as meeting grounds for otherwise disconnected social worlds. Strategic boundary-work involves efforts to “scientize,” and thereby legitimize, organic agriculture in the eyes of foreign donors, potential research collaborators, the Kenyan state, and farmers. Examples of strategic bridge building and boundary-work are presented in the paper. The Kenyan case illustrates that different social actors can unite around a shared objective – namely, the promotion and legitimization of organic agriculture as an alternative to the Green Revolution (GR) technological package.

Adoption and use of precision agriculture technologies in the sugarcane industry of São Paulo state,Brazil

Precision agriculture (PA) technologies are being applied to crops in Brazil, which are important to ensure Brazil’s position in agricultural production. However, there are no studies available at present to indicate the extent to which PA technologies are being used in the country. Therefore, the main objective of this research was to investigate how the sugar-ethanol industry in São Paulo state, which produces 60% of the domestic sugarcane, is adopting and using these techniques. For this purpose, primary data were used, which were obtained from a questionnaire sent to all companies operating in the sugar-ethanol industry in the region. The aim was to determine to what extent these companies are adopting and using PA technologies, and also to promote a more in-depth discussion of the topic within the sugar-ethanol industry. Information was obtained on the features of the companies, on sources of information that they use for adopting these technologies, on their impacts on these companies and on obstacles hindering their adoption. The main conclusions of this research suggest that companies that adopt and use PA practices reap benefits, such as managerial improvements, higher yields, lower costs, minimization of environmental impacts and improvements in sugarcane quality.     

Log or linear? Distinct intuitions of the number scale in Western and Amazonian indigene cultures

The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education.     

Rings of uranus: invisible and impossible?

Neither the dynamical nor the optical properties of the rings of Uranus are easily understood, unless it is assumed that they are not rings in the ordinary sense but simply volatile material in the orbits of several individual small satellites. It is possible that other natural satellites may also leave such rings in their wakes.     

“Our market is our community”: women farmers and civic agriculture in Pennsylvania,USA

Civic agriculture is characterized in the literature as complementary and embedded social and economic strategies that provide economic benefits to farmers at the same time that they ostensibly provide socio-environmental benefits to the community. This paper presents some ways in which women farmers practice civic agriculture. The data come from in-depth interviews with women practicing agriculture in Pennsylvania. Some of the strategies women farmers use to make a living from the farm have little to do with food or agricultural products, but all are a product of the process of providing a living for farmers while meeting a social need in the community. Most of the women in our study also connect their business practices to their gender identity in rural and agricultural communities, and redefine successful farming in opposition to traditional views of economic rationality.     

Multi-time scale analysis of sugarcane within-field variability: improved crop diagnosis using satellite time series?

Within-field spatial variability is related to multiple factors that can be time-independent or time-dependent. In this study, our working hypothesis is that a multi-time scale analysis of the dynamics of spatial patterns can help establish a diagnosis of crop condition. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the within-field variability of a sugarcane crop at seasonal and annual time scales, and tried to link this variability to environmental (climate, topography, and soil depth) and cropping (harvest date) factors. The analysis was based on a sugarcane field vegetation index (NDVI) time series of fifteen SPOT images acquired in the French West Indies (Guadeloupe) in 2002 and 2003, and on an original classification method that enabled us to focus on crop spatial variability independently of crop growth stages. We showed that at the seasonal scale, the within-field growth pattern depended on the phenological stage of the crop and on cropping operations. At the annual scale, NDVI maps revealed a stable pattern for the two consecutive years at peak vegetation, despite very different rainfall amounts, but with inverse NDVI values. This inversion is linked with the topography and consequently to the plant water status. We conclude that (1) it is necessary to know the crop growing cycle to correctly interpret the spatial pattern, (2) single-date images may be insufficient for the diagnosis of crop condition or for prediction, and (3) the pattern of vigour occurrence within fields can help diagnose growth anomalies.