Lessons learned from pesticide drift: a call to bring production agriculture, farm labor, and social justice back into agrifood research and activism

I use the case of pesticide drift to discuss the neoliberal shift in agrifood activism and its implications for public health and social justice. I argue that the benefits of this shift have been achieved at the cost of privileging certain bodies and spaces over others and absolving the state of its responsibility to ensure the conditions of social justice. I use this critical intervention as a means of introducing several opportunities for strengthening agrifood research and advocacy. First, I call for increased critical attention to production agriculture and the regulatory arena. Second, I call for increased attention to ‘social justice’ within the food system, emphasizing the need to rekindle research on the immigrant farm labor force.

The emancipatory question: the next step in the sociology of agrifood systems?

I provide an historical overview of the development of the Sociology of Agriculture as a critical response to perceived inadequacies of conservative theories of social change regarding rural society in general, and agriculture in particular. I do this by focusing on the three questions that have dominated the discourse on agrifood studies: “The Agrarian Question,” “The Environment Question,” and “The Food Question.” I analyze the success and constraints of selected alternative agrifood initiatives in relation to the three questions and introduce a fourth, the Emancipatory Question. I conclude that agrifood social scientists need to embrace a praxis orientation to agrifood studies and participate in social movements designed to create a more socially just alternative agrifood system.

Identifying vulnerabilities, exploring opportunities: reconfiguring production, conservation, and consumption in California rice

This paper describes a role for rural sociology in linking agrifood system vulnerabilities to opportunities for encouraging sustainability and social justice. I argue that the California rice industry is particularly vulnerable for two reasons. First, a quarter of rice growers’ revenues derive from production-based subsidies that have been recently deemed illegal by the World Trade Organization. Second, about half of California’s rice sales depend on volatile export markets, which are susceptible to periodic market access disruptions. Such vulnerabilities present political opportunities to reconfigure the connection between production and consumption. By exploring how production subsidies could be transformed into multifunctionality payments, and investigating new regional markets, rural sociology can contribute to discussions about how to encourage a more sustainable and socially just California rice industry. My discussion aims to prompt rural sociologists to explore similar questions in comparable agrifood systems.

Unlikely allies against factory farms: animal rights advocates and environmentalists

I examine the risks and opportunities associated with social movement coalition building in attempts to block or curtail the rise of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) in the United States. As producers have scaled up animal production facilities, environmentalists and animal rights activists, along with numerous other social actors, have begun anti-CAFO campaigns. I argue that while the CAFO has mobilized a diverse group of social actors, these individuals and organizations do not all have the same interests (aside from resistance to CAFOs), leading to some unlikely allies. These odd alliances provide opportunities for agrifood scholars to study the relationship between the coalitions that social movement organizations form and the support they receive from their respective constituencies. Lastly, I argue that the need for agrifood scholars to address the pitfalls associated with single-issue coalition building extends beyond the unlikely alliance between environmentalists and animal rights activists, as agrifood related crises have led to a proliferation of such coalitions.

Interdisciplinarity and boundary work: challenges and opportunities for agrifood studies

Despite its vigor, agrifood studies research faces two fault lines: the durability of disciplines, and challenges in engaging non-academic stakeholders. In this essay, I use the concept of boundary work from social studies of science and technology to reflect on the challenges and opportunities for more engaged interdisciplinary research in agrifood studies. I draw on recent field visits to several “sustainable food chain” research projects funded through the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme (RELU), an innovative interdisciplinary research initiative of the UK Research Councils, to highlight the contradictory nature of boundary work in interdisciplinary research. Involving efforts both to bridge interfaces and to separate, exclude and manage other disciplines or stakeholders, boundary work is inherent to interdisciplinarity. Innovations in the organizational culture of projects and in the larger structural context for research can multiply the more generative potential of boundary work, and also yield more and better interdisciplinary research in agrifood studies.

“<Emphasis Type="Italic">Chasms</Emphasis>” in agrifood systems: rethinking how we can contribute

The reaction to conventional agriculture and food systems has generated a host of alternative social movements in the past several decades. Many progressive agrifood researchers have researched these movements, exploring their strengths, weaknesses, and failures. Most such research is abstracted from the movements themselves. This paper proposes a new way of self-organization that, while fulfilling traditional university demands on researchers, will provide research support for progressive agrifood movements by transcending the boundaries of disciplines and individual universities.

From value to values: sustainable consumption at farmers markets

Advocates of environmental sustainability and social justice increasingly pursue their goals through the promotion of so-called “green” products such as locally grown organic produce. While many scholars support this strategy, others criticize it harshly, arguing that environmental degradation and social injustice are inherent results of capitalism and that positive social change must be achieved through collective action. This study draws upon 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork at two farmers markets located in demographically different parts of the San Francisco Bay Area to examine how market managers, vendors, and regular customers negotiate tensions between their economic strategies and environmental sustainability and social justice goals. Managers, vendors, and customers emphasize the ethical rather than financial motivations of their markets through comparisons to capitalist, industrial agriculture and through attention to perceived economic sacrifices made by market vendors. They also portray economic strategies as a pragmatic choice, pointing to failed efforts to achieve justice and sustainability through policy change as well as difficulties funding and sustaining non-profit organizations. While market managers, vendors, and customers deny any difficulties pursuing justice and sustainability through local economics, the need for vendors to sustain their livelihoods does sometimes interfere with their social justice goals. This has consequences for the function of each market.

The illusion of control: industrialized agriculture,nature, and food safety

I explore the role of nature in the agrifood system and how attempts to fit food production into a large-scale manufacturing model has lead to widespread outbreaks of food borne illness. I illustrate how industrial processing of leafy greens is related to the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 associated with spinach in the fall of 2006. I also use this example to show how industry attempts to create the illusion of control while failing to address weaknesses in current processing systems. The leafy greens industry has focused efforts on sterilizing the growing environment and adopting new technologies, while neglecting to change the concentrated structure of processing systems. Repeated breakdowns in these systems illustrate a widening fault line between attempted and failed control of nature in industrial food production.

Resilience and vulnerability in US farm policy: parsing the payment limitation debate

Since the New Deal era, the commodity title has been the major farm support program in US farm bills. Commodity programs have encouraged farmers to pursue specialized, monocultural, and input intensive production strategies that are increasingly viewed as unsustainable. Yet commodity programs remain politically resilient. As revealed in the farm payment limitation debate in the 2007 farm bill reauthorization process, political support for commodity programs is maintained through policy elasticity adaptations that combine new with old policy rationales. The recent extension of farm program support to producers of commodities that have not received benefits in the past poses a potential threat to existing commodity programs, as this legislation has institutionalized competition within production agriculture over the allocation and design of subsidies. This paper argues for renewed attention to the policy support mechanisms that undergird the conventional agrifood system in order to better understand alternative agrifood system possibilities and constraints.

Professionalization of agriculture and distributed innovation for multifunctional landscapes and territorial development

Professionalization of farmers and rural entrepreneurs is identified as a potential resource to advance transition to multifunctional landscapes and territorial development. Drawing on interactive conceptions of knowledge creation and technical change, I argue that collective structures that support pooling of experiential knowledge can complement public and private sector engagement in innovation systems. Through exercise of leadership in advancing integration of farming into regional development and in integrating ecological and social concerns into agriculture, farmers can forge a professional identity and broker a new social contract entitling them to renewal of their political and economic status.

Action research on alternative land tenure arrangements in Wenchi,Ghana: learning from ambiguous social dynamics and self-organized institutional innovation

This study reports on action research efforts that were aimed at developing institutional arrangements beneficial for soil fertility improvement. Three stages of action research are described and analyzed. We initially began by bringing stakeholders together in a platform to engage in a collaborative design of new arrangements. However, this effort was stymied mainly because conditions conducive for learning and negotiation were lacking. We then proceeded to support experimentation with alternative arrangements initiated by individual landowners and migrant farmers. The implementation of these arrangements too ran into difficulties due to intra-family dynamics and ambiguities regarding land tenure. Further investigations to find out how ambiguities could be tackled revealed that the local actors themselves had taken initiatives towards developing institutional innovations to reduce ambiguities. However, there is still considerable scope for further development of these self-organized innovations. The article ends with a reflection on inter-disciplinary action research, where it is argued that making “mistakes” is an inherent and necessary characteristic in action research that aims to address complex social issues.

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.

Resilience in the US red meat industry: the roles of food safety policy

We use the case of red meat food safety to illustrate the need to problematize policy. Overtime, there have been numerous red meat scandals and scares. We show that the statutes and regulations that arose out of these events provided the industry with a means of demonstrating safety, facilitating large-scale trade, legitimizing conventional production, and limiting interference into its practices. They also created systemic fragility, as evidenced by many recent events, and hindered the development of an alternative, small-scale sector. Thus, the accumulated rules help to structure the sector, create superficial resilience, and are used in place of an actual policy governing safety. We call for rigorous attention to not only food safety, but also the role and effect of agrifood statutes and regulations in general, and engagement in policy more broadly.

Rights-based food systems and the goals of food systems reform

Food security, health, decent livelihoods, gender equity, safe working conditions, cultural identity and participation in cultural life are basic human rights that can be achieved at least in part through the food system. But current trends in the US prevent full realization of these economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) for residents, farmers, and wageworkers in the food system. Supply chains that strive to meet the goals of social justice, economic equity, and environmental quality better than the dominant globalized food value networks are gaining popularity in the US. However, achieving important human rights has become conflated with other goals of food system reform over the past decade, such as being “community-based,” local, and sustainable. This conflation confuses means, ends, and complementary goals; and it may lead activists trying to help communities to regain control of their food system choices into less productive strategies. This paper introduces a new concept, rights-based food systems (RBFS), and explores its connection with localization and sustainability. The core criteria of RBFS are democratic participation in food system choices affecting more than one sector; fair, transparent access by producers to all necessary resources for food production and marketing; multiple independent buyers; absence of human exploitation; absence of resource exploitation; and no impingement on the ability of people in other locales to meet this set of criteria. Localization and a community base can help achieve RBFS by facilitating food democracy and reducing environmental exploitation, primarily by lowering environmental costs due to long-distance transportation. Sustainability per se is an empty goal for food system reform, unless what will be sustained and for whom are specified. The RBFS concept helps to clarify what is worth sustaining and who is most susceptible to neglect in attempts to reform food systems. Localization can be a means toward sustainability if local food systems are also RBFS.

Saving St. James: A case study of farmwomen entrepreneurs

An ethnographic case study of five rural farmwomen in Cedar County, Nebraska, was conducted to contribute to the understudied area of rural entrepreneurship and women entrepreneurs. This naturalistic inquiry into the lived experiences of five women provides an exceptional view of the founding of a new microenterprise, the St. James Marketplace, a farmer-to-customer market in an agricultural setting. The study considered factors identified from previous research on entrepreneurship in both urban and rural settings. It connected the formation of this microenterprise to the history, culture, values, and economic situation that motivated the founders’ entrepreneurial behavior. A social embeddedness perspective was employed in the analysis. Negative forces from the macroenvironment, such as the closing of the local church parish and declining economic conditions for farming, influenced the creation of the venture. However, the most important motivation was to sustain community. This study satisfies a need for in-depth inquiry into rural entrepreneurship, rural communities, and rural farmwomen entrepreneurs.

Tracing the process of becoming a farm successor on Swiss family farms

A theoretical model for farm succession is developed in which identity-related variables such as preferences for working autonomously or with animals influence occupational choice at the outset of the process, while environmental factors such as farm size and income prospects gain in importance during the latter stages of succession. A survey of 14-to-34-year-old potential farm successors in Switzerland is carried out to test the model. While female respondents focus on identity-related factors when making occupational choices, the model can be verified for several influencing variables for male successors, such as continuing the family tradition and the potential conversion of farmland to building land. For both men and women, the prospect of working alongside their parents is an important factor in the decision to take over the family farm.

Gender,ethnicity, and economic status in plant management: Uncultivated edible plants among the Nahuas and Popolucas of Veracruz,Mexico

Uncultivated plants are an important part of agricultural systems and play a key role in the survival of rural marginalized groups such as women, children, and the poor. Drawing on the gender, environment, and development literature and on the notion of women’s social location, this paper examines the ways in which gender, ethnicity, and economic status determine women’s roles in uncultivated plant management in Ixhuapan and Ocozotepec, two indigenous communities of Veracruz, Mexico. The first is inhabited by Nahua and the second by Popoluca peoples. Information was gathered through group and individual interviews and a food frequency survey. Results show that the gender ideology prevailing in each community, resulting from distinct ethnic affiliations and economic contexts, shapes women’s plant management. In Ixhuapan, Nahua women are used to leaving their community to generate income, while in Ocozotepec men are considered the main breadwinners and are the mediators between Popoluca households and the larger society. Nahua women gather quelites at the cornfields more often than their men, and more often than their female counterparts in Ocozotepec. They also manage and sell plants from their homegardens at higher percentages than Popoluca women. However, women in both communities use intensely the plants of their homegardens and play a key role in biodiversity conservation and cultural permanence.

The local industrial complex? Questioning the link between local foods and energy use

Local food has become the rising star of the sustainable agriculture movement, in part because of the energy efficiencies thought to be gained when food travels shorter distances. In this essay I critique four key assumptions that underlie this connection between local foods and energy. I then describe two competing conclusions implied by the critique. On the one hand, local food systems may need a more extensive and integrated transportation infrastructure to achieve sustainability. On the other hand, the production, transportation, and consumption of local foods are fundamentally as reliant on fossil fuels as are long distance foods. A more holistic approach to energy use in the food system is needed to determine which particular sociotechnical factors optimize energetic sustainability.

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.