From “Food from Nowhere” to “Food from Here:” changing producer–consumer relations in Austria

The notion of a “third food regime” implies simultaneous processes of further global concentration and integration and at the same time resistance through new emerging producer–consumer relations. This paper examines these processes by looking at Austria over the last 30 years. While direct producer–consumer cooperatives established at an early point, today forms of community supported agriculture (CSA) are rare. This paper explains this by identifying a shift of the entire food system from “food from nowhere” to “food from here.” The account follows the early emergence of alternative food networks through the political appeal to consumer patriotism in connection with Austria joining the EU, to a sustained positioning of retail chains with regional and national food products. The paper argues that this satisfies the needs of a large proportion of consumers and discourages the emergence of new food initiatives. The paper follows the development of different approaches and their transformations until today. Thus a picture evolves of changing, and partly progressing consumer–producer relations in response to wider societal and political transformation processes. The results explain why the movement towards CSA is currently weak in Austria, but demonstrate at the same time how alternative food networks may contribute to a transformation of the food system.     

Multi-stakeholder initiative governance as assemblage: Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil as a political resource in land conflicts related to oil palm plantations

Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSI) claim to make production of commodities more socially and environmentally sustainable by regulating their members and through systems of certification. These claims, however, are highly contested. In this article, I examine how actors use MSI regulation with regard to land conflicts with a focus on the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). MSIs are a resource that actors in land conflicts can use to generate evidence that gives them leverage in their negotiations. To do so, actors employ the interrelations between two kinds of land conflict: localized land conflicts between local land users, and disputes between more distant actors over aggregated land-use related to the sustainability of palm oil production. To demonstrate this, I use the notion of assemblage in two case studies from Sumatra, Indonesia. Thinking in terms of assemblage allows the contradictory but interrelated practices that shape MSIs to be understood. In distinct locally embedded processes, actors enact MSIs in contexts of unequal power relations, from which MSI governance emerges. The way in which access to an MSI is distributed among contending actors shapes MSI enactments and thus its governance. The unequal distribution of access to the RSPO results in a governance that favors companies over communities.     

Governance in the age of global markets: challenges,limits, and consequences

We live in an age defined in large part by various facets of neoliberalism. In particular, the market world has impinged on virtually every aspect of food and agriculture. Moreover, most nation-states and many international governance bodies incorporate aspects of neoliberal perspectives. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), with their own standards, certifications, and accreditations are evidence of both the continuing hegemony of neoliberalism as well as various responses to it. Importantly, to date even attempts to limit neoliberal hegemony through MSIs have been largely within the parameters established by those same neoliberal agendas. However, neoliberalism is itself in crisis as a result of climate change, the continuing financial crisis, and rising food prices. The founding myths of neoliberalism are still widely held, having the effect of closing off alternative paths to the future. Yet, this need not be the case. Alternatives to the current MSIs that promote justice, democracy, and equality can still be constructed.     

Making “minority voices” heard in transnational roundtables: the role of local NGOs in reintroducing justice and attachments

Since the beginning of the new millennium, initiatives known as roundtables have been developed to create voluntary sustainability standards for agricultural commodities. Intended to be private and voluntary in nature, these initiatives claim their legitimacy from their ability to ensure the participation of all categories of stakeholders in horizontal participatory and inclusive processes. This article characterizes the political and material instruments employed as the means of formulating agreement and taking a variety of voices into consideration in these arenas. Referring to the specific case of the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil”, I undertake a detailed analysis of the tensions relating to different forms of participation, which create a gap between “local minority voices” and international stakeholders—either non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or industries. Local communities and small-scale farmers face difficulties when making their voices heard in the form of debate proposed. Firstly, some participants attempt to re-impose a vertical hierarchical relationship between small-scale farmers or affected communities and company managers/directors in order to deprive the former of their powers of representation and of being able to transform reality. Secondly, the liberalism of interest groups in the roundtable accords value to experts, global knowledge, strategy, and detachment, at the expense of other capabilities of rooted or attached people who come to defend their real lives with a desire to raise critical issues of injustice. In this context, I highlight the capacity of local NGOs to relieve some of those tensions and to help locally affected communities and small-scale farmers introduce public stages for debates, by accommodating other forms of participation apart from the liberal one. By being close to and by restoring their dignity through a specific work of solicitude and care, local NGOs prepare affected people for public speaking.     

Extending the horizons of agricultural research and extension: Methodological challenges

The recent enthusiasm for “participation” in agricultural development has fueled the development of new approaches to research and extension. The rhetoric of “participation” extends the horizons of agricultural research and extension beyond technical problem-solving. Yet in practice few of the personal, political, and experiential aspects of this process are addressed. This paper aims to draw attention to these elements of practice and to locate research and extension within wider social processes. Through a critique of conventional methodological strategies, this paper considers the possibilities offered by “participatory” alternatives. Considering the scope and objectives of agricultural development raises a series of methodological questions: What counts as knowledge? Who defines and represents this knowledge? Whose knowledge counts? Knowledge for what? Knowledge for whom? The paper goes on to assess a number of these “new” methodologies, within and beyond agricultural development. Through a consideration of their strengths and weaknesses, a series of further issues are highlighted for future methodological development. It is argued that for agricultural research and extension to acknowledge process, closer attention needs to be paid to context. The activities of research and extension need to be set in time. Strategies are needed to explore and address diversity and difference in communities. Situating the actors and agencies involved in development within relations of power involves addressing—and redressing—the nature of interactions between these actors. These changes require not an ever increasing array of methods, it is argued, but new approaches to learning.     

“Conservative” ideology and the politics of local food

Analysis of conservative political participation in local food initiatives tends to be critical and dismissive, positing this participation as self-serving, individualistic, exclusionary, nativist, or reactionary. While there are nefarious aspects to certain forms of conservative local food politics, my research at three farmers’ markets in the Upper Midwest reveals that self-identified conservatives can and do hold more nuanced positions. Those with whom I met recognize the need for both local and broader change, are concerned about marginalized and struggling people, are troubled by the impacts of conventional agriculture on the health of farmers, consumers, and other species, and are humble and willing to listen to other perspectives. Most analyses of food systems miss these nuanced perspectives because they approach American political ideology through a rigid left–right binary. Using more fluid approaches to understanding political ideology can create room for recognizing the complexity and diversity of views pigeon-holed under the label of “conservatism.” Along with these different approaches, a politics of empathy and mutual respect across ideological difference can help reveal common values, concerns, and aspirations for changing the food system. Recognizing these commonalities can help build a broader base of support for food system transformation.     

逻辑转换:重塑思政课教学的理性魅力——以“毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义理论体系概论”为例

高校思政课教学改革效果不尽如人意,现有的围绕教学方法、手段、考核方式、实践教学环节等"形式"方面的改革已经达到了实效的可能性边界。未来思政课教学改革应该重视以"内容"为核心的改革,通过逻辑的转换,重塑思政课教学的理性魅力。以"毛泽东思想和中国特色社会主义理论体系概论"课程教学内容为例,说明在教学过程中逻辑转换的现实和理论根据以及重塑理性魅力的具体途径和做法,以此提升思政课教学效果,更好发挥其育人功能。     

Challenging the populist perspective: Rural people's knowledge,agricultural research,and extension practice

Recent trends in agricultural science have emphasized the need to make local people active participants in the research and development process. Working under the populist banner “Farmer First”, the focus has been on bridging gaps between development professionals and local people, pointing to the inadequate understanding of insiders' knowledge, practices, and processes by outsiders. The purpose of this paper is to expose the paradox of the prevailing populist conception of power and knowledge, and to challenge the simple notion that social processes follow straightforward and systemic patterns and can thus be manipulated with a transfer of power from outside to inside. The authors view “knowledge” as a social process and knowledge systems in terms of a multiplicity of actors and networks through which certain kinds of information are communicated and negotiated, and not as single, cohesive structures, stocks or stores. The guiding phrase is “the analysis of difference”, which suggests that knowledge is multilayered, fragmentary, and diffuse, not unitary and systematized. It emerges as a product of the interaction and dialogue between different actors and networks of actors with conflicting loyalties who negotiate over “truth” claims and battle over contrasting images and contesting interests. The paper challenges those promoting Farmer First approaches to reassess how people in different agroecological and sociocultural contexts make sense of and deal with constraining and enabling processes related to research and extension; how they attempt, through recourse to various discursive means, to enroll one another in their various endeavors; and how they use relations of power in their struggles to gain access to and control of social and political space.     

How knowledge deficit interventions fail to resolve beginning farmer challenges

Beginning farmer initiatives like the USDA’s Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP), farm incubators, and small-scale marketing innovations offer new entrant farmers agricultural training, marketing and business assistance, and farmland loans. These programs align with alternative food movement goals to revitalize the anemic U.S. small farm sector and repopulate landscapes with socially and environmentally diversified farms. Yet even as these initiatives seek to support prospective farmers with tools for success through a knowledge dissemination model, they remain mostly individualistic and entrepreneurial measures that overlook structural barriers to productive and economic success within U.S. agriculture. Analysis of the BFRDP’s funding history and discourse reveals a “knowledge deficit” based program focused on the technical rather than the structural aspects of beginning farming. This is contrasted with qualitative analysis of beginning farmer experiences in California’s Central Coast region. The discrepancies between the farmer experiences and national structure of the BFRDP program ultimately reveal a policy mismatch between the needs of some beginning farmers and the programs intended to support them.     

Gender,ecology, and the science of survival: Stories and lessons from Kenya

Sustainable development and biodiversity initiatives increasingly include ethnoscience, yet the gendered nature of rural people's knowledge goes largely unrecognized. The paper notes the current resurgence of ethnoscience research and states the case for including gendered knowledge and skills, supported by a brief review of relevant cultural ecology and ecofeminist field studies. The author argues the case from the point of view of better, more complete science as well as from the ethical imperative to serve women's interests as the “daily managers of the living environment”. In the interests of both objectives the paper advocates an ethnoscience research approach based on empowerment of rural people, rather than simple extraction of their knowledge. The Kenyan case study of women's agroforestry work follows their response to the drought and famine of 1985 and chronicles the unfolding discovery of women's ecological, political, and social science as gendered survival skills. The case is re-counted as a story, in keeping with an explicit choice to learn through participation and to report through storytelling. The experience of rural women and researchers during the drought provides several lessons for both groups about their respective knowledge systems, their agroforestry work, and the relationship of both to local and national political economy.     

“互联网+课程思政”模式的机理、优势与建构策略

“互联网+课程思政”模式是融合“课程思政”和网络技术的一种新型高校思想政治教育形式,具有特有的内在要义机理与教育优势,使思想政治教育具有时代感、吸引力和有效性。应建立健全课程目标、网络平台、课程内容、教学方法、评价机制,建构起“互联网+课程思政”模式,通过有效实施提高“课程思政”教育功效,实现立德树人,培养学生成为合格的社会主义建设者和接班人。     

Exclusions in inclusive programs: state-sponsored sustainable development initiatives amongst the Kurichya in Kerala,India

We critically discuss the impact of sustainable development initiatives in Kerala, India, on biodiversity and on women farmers in the matrilineal Adivasi community of the Kurichya-tribe in Wayanad. By contextualizing development programs regarding the specifically gendered access to land, division of labor, distribution of knowledge and decision-making power, we situate our analysis within the theoretical framework of feminist political ecology. We first outline women’s gaining of social and political space in local self-government institutions (Panchayath) and then critically discuss the impacts of women’s farming groups (Joint Liability Groups: JLGs). Decentralization and development programs have aimed at empowering women and reducing poverty through improved food security. However, little success has materialized, as patriarchal power structures concerning decision-making processes as well as control over the most valuable resources (land and rice) and traditional knowledge have been maintained. Whereas women’s self-help groups (Kudumbasree) in Kerala have enhanced their position, women’s farming groups (JLGs), by contrast, have brought little betterment. In some cases they have even downsized women’s management and knowledge of resources related to agriculture and do not integrate or enhance Kurichya women’s knowledge. As some women are now introducing high-yielding rice seeds and fertilizer and as it is impossible for them to control land and get access to traditional rice seeds—the domain of men—we contest the notion of women being considered the preservers of agrobiodiversity. We argue, rather, that the construction and transformation of ecological traditional knowledge is highly dependent on the gendered multi-scaled power structures of state and community.     

新时代实现“人的城镇化”的现实困境与路径选择——马克思、恩格斯城乡融合思想的启示

始终关注人的利益,努力实现人的自由和全面发展是马克思、恩格斯城乡融合思想的基本价值取向。当前,我国在实现“人的城镇化”过程中面临着一些困境,主要体现在户籍制度下农民工的身份转换难、农民工家庭半耕半工的分工困局、农民工心理“城镇化”难等问题。实现“人的城镇化”是新时代实现人的全面发展的题中应有之义。要实现“人的城镇化”,需要树立人本理念,健全居住证制度;加强中小城镇建设,促进城乡融合;完善对被征地农民多元保障机制;引导农民工的政治参与,以满足他们的多层次需求。     

以大学为依托的农技推广模式的探索与实践--以西北农林科技大学为例

为了探索适合新的历史时期中国农业科技推广模式,创新完善农业推广体系,西北农林科技大学承担了国家财政部“探索以大学为依托的农业科技推广新模式”项目。通过8a在不同试验站的推广实践,总结了在新的历史条件下中国农技推广的新模式：即以大学教授牵头,以试验站为载体,以农技人员为主体的农业科技推广模式。提出了3种不同子模式：1＋2＋2校地技术人员示范村模式,10＋10能人示范户模式,6＋6＋6示范村模式;并提出了9种具体形式：示范形式,培训形式,指导形式,讨论式形,交流形式,访问形式,引导形式,参与形式和会议形式;阐述了不同试验示范站模式的共性,分述了3个试验示范站的运行模式及其效果,同时分析了大学推广模式的优势在实践中的体现,也指出了大学推广模式存在的问题。     

Moral metaphysics,moral revolutions,and environmental ethics

Many philosophers and environmentalists have advocated the development of a revolutionary new moral paradigm that treats natural objects as “morally considerable” in-themselves, independently of their relation to human beings. Often it is claimed that we need to develop a radically new theory of value to underpin this new paradigm. In this paper, I argue against this position and in favor of a more critical approach to environmental ethics. Such a critical approach, I believe, is not only more politically sound, but it is not open to the kinds of objections that afflict “biocentric moral theories” that depend on a conception of the intrinsic worth of nature. In the first sections of the paper, I develop a set of these criticism. In the last part of the paper, I turn to examine the advantages of a critical approach to environmental ethics.     

A forest of evidence: third-party certification and multiple forms of proof—a case study of oil palm plantations in Indonesia

In recent years, new forms of transnational regulation have emerged, filling the void created by the failure of governments and international institutions to effectively regulate transnational corporations. Among the variety of initiatives addressing social and environmental problems, a growing number of certification systems have appeared in various sectors, particularly agrifood. Most initiatives rely on independent third-party certification to verify compliance with a standard, as it is seen as the most credible route for certification. The effects of third-party audits, however, still need to be empirically investigated. This article provides a critical assessment of the notion of ‘evidence’ which is at the heart of auditing practices. It focuses on the case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and fieldwork carried out in Indonesia, the world’s largest producer of palm oil. In this country, some non-governmental organizations decided to participate in the RSPO in order to use this platform to tackle the issue of land conflicts. They managed to include important clauses regarding indigenous and land rights in the RSPO standard. In practice, however, auditors rarely recognize as valid evidence the forms of proof put forward by local communities. As a result, the whole process risks compounding local power imbalances.     

A spreadsheet-based model for teaching the agronomic,economic, and environmental aspects of bioenergy cropping systems

In order to assess and compare the economic and environmental sustainability of newly emerging bioenergy cropping systems, students need a comprehensive computer-based tool for cataloging attributes of various proposed bioenergy feedstock crops. We have developed a spreadsheet-based model whereby students develop financial budgets; energy budgets, and carbon budgets, for various bioenergy cropping systems. This paper details the rationale and development of the teaching tool spreadsheet-based model. At the beginning of the semester, students working in small groups consisting of 2–3 individuals are assigned ownership of a “virtual farm” in a designated geographical region. Throughout the semester, as particular bioenergy crops are discussed in lecture, the students use the teaching model to develop economic, energy, and carbon budgets for each crop specific to the geographical aspects of their virtual farm. The computer spreadsheet model helps students determine the approximate farmgate value of bioenergy feedstocks and determine the carbon and energy footprint associated with the various cropping systems. At the conclusion of the semester, students use the model generated results to contrast and compare their farm’s bioenergy cropping system economic and environmental performance to that of farms situated in other geographical areas. End-of-semester student evaluations of the course resulted in ratings of “superior” or “above average” for student interest and all other parameters associated with the course. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the teaching tool and a motivation and willingness for students to acquire knowledge of bioenergy based systems as part of their formal education to prepare for future employment opportunities.     

Soil conservation in Cuba: A key to the new model for agriculture

Most aspects of agriculture in Cuba prior to 1989 were comparable to California: a high energy input, conventional agriculture (based on what the Cubans now call the “classical model”) in which little was done to protect the nation's soils from erosion, loss of fertility, salinization, and other forms of degradation. In stark contrast the new “Alternative Model,” which has been rapidly replacing the previous model since 1989, emphasizes soil conservation and rehabilitation and the general improvement of the nation's soils as the key to sustaining low-input production and attainment of food security. One of the first steps in implementing the new model was the launching of an ambitious program to reclassify, evaluate, and map the nation's soils in great detail, and to interpret the maps for management of sustainable production. A main feature of this program is coordinated fertility trials to determine, for each combination of crop and soil, the minimum quantity of plant nutrients needed to produce the crop. The build up and maintenance of soil fertility and productivity is being accomplished with various organic and mineral amendments and biofertilizers, produced or mined within the country (locally, where possible) and through rational management utilizing cover crops, green manures, crop successions (intercropping and rotations), and other appropriate technologies. Rehabilitation of degraded soils, tillage reduction, reforestation, vermiculture, vermicomposting, and other forms of waste cycling are other features of the new model that are important to soil conservation and maintenance for sustainable production.     

“软权力”与美国的信息战略

权力有“硬权力”和“软权力”之分,信息权是“软权力”的重要组成部分。美国实施的信息战略就是试图通过控制信息主导权以维护其在全球的霸主地位。     

农林类高校思想政治理论课分组教学模式研究——以全国六所农林高校为例

高校思想政治工作,关系着高校培养什么样的人、如何培养人以及为谁培养人的根本问题。而高校思想政治理论课(以下简称“思政课”)是对大学生进行思想政治教育的主渠道,增强“思政课”的亲和力与针对性,给学生带来实实在在的获得感,成为当前高校“思政课”的主要任务。农林类高校在“思政课”教学中既有普通高校的共性,又有自己的特性。对此,通过对全国六所农林类高校的调查,找到农林类高校在“思政课”教学中遇到的特性,提出具有针对性的教学改革方式——分组教学,最终提高农林类高校“思政课”教学有效性。