Abstract
In this address I examine the challenges of achieving food system sustainability. Starting from the position that most people want a food system that is “sustainable” and that we have a great reservoir of unapplied technical knowledge applicable to increasing sustainability, I argue that the big issue is collective decision-making to accomplish the goal of sustainability. Using the metaphor of a sailing ship, I raise three questions about steering collectively toward sustainability: What do we want? What are our options? And, how do we decide among the options?
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
According to www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/226950.html, Mao said “let a hundred flowers bloom” and those persons whose manifested ideas were not acceptable were executed.
Steering involves governance; currently a widely used and variously defined concept. I chose not to use governance because I wanted to draw attention more toward visioning about the future and less about current policies and practices.
Between the global and the individual, the levels arbitrarily included in the figure should be understood represent a continuum.
The overlap between the social and the biophysical aspects as depicted by the artifact layer is intended to illustrate the overlap of these domains. For example, human bodies are altered by diet and exercise and the global ecosystem has arguably been transformed by humans through a host of activities that include transporting and cultivating particular species and extracting and utilizing fossil energy at high levels.
References
Altieri, M., R.B. with contributions by Norgaard, Hecht, S.B., Farrell, J.G and M. Liebman. 1987. Agroecology: The scientific basis of alternative agriculture. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Avery, D.T. 2000. Saving the planet with pesticides and plastic: The environmental triumph of high-yield farming. Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute.
Barndt, D. 1997. Zooming out/zooming in: Visualizing globalization. Visual Sociology 12: 5–32.
Belasco, W. 2006. Meals to come: A history of the future of food. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bell, D. 1996. The cultural contradictions of capitalism. New York: Basic Books.
Bell, M.M. 2009. An invitation to environmental sociology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Berkes, F., D. Feeney, B.J. McCay, and J.M. Acheson. 1989. The benefits of the commons. Nature 340: 91–93.
Beus, C.E., and R.E. Dunlap. 1993. Agricultural policy debates: Examining the alternatives and conventional perspectives. American Journal of Alternative Agriculture 8: 98–106.
Blumer, H. 1969. Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Böserup, E. 1965. The conditions of agricultural growth: The economics of agrarian change under population pressure. Chicago: Aldine.
Brundtland, G.H. 1987. Our common future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Oslo: United Nations. www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm. Accessed 25 May 2009.
Buttel, F.H. and G.W. Gillespie Jr. 1988. Agricultural research and development and the appropriation of progressive symbols: Some observations on the politics of progressive agriculture. Bulletin Report No. 151. Ithaca, NY: Department of Rural Sociology, Cornell University.
Catton, Jr., William R. 1982 [1980]. Overshoot: The ecological basis of evolutionary change. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Catton Jr., W.R., and R.E. Dunlap. 1980. A new ecological paradigm for post-exuberant sociology. American Behavioral Scientist 24: 15–47.
Christenson, J.A., K. Fendley, and J.W. Robinson Jr. 1989. Community development. In Community development in perspective, ed. J.A. Christenson, and J.W. Robinson Jr., 3–25. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press.
Constance, D.H. 2009. 2008 AFHVS presidential address: The four questions in agrifood studies: A view from the bus. Agriculture and Human Values 26(1–2): 3–14.
Constance, D.H., and W.D. Heffernan. 1991. The global poultry agro/food complex. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 1: 126–142.
Cox, H. 1999. “The market as god: Living in the new dispensation.” The Atlantic Monthly, 283, March, 18–23.
Dahlberg, K.A., Clancy K., Wilson, R.L., and J. O’Donnell with T. Hemingway. 2002. Strategies, policy approaches, and resources for local food system planning and organizing: A resource guide prepared by the local food system project team. Kalamazoo, MI: Kenneth A. Dahlberg, Department of Political Science, Western Michigan University. http://homepages.wmich.edu/~dahlberg/Resource-Guide.html. Accessed 20 January 2004.
Daly, H. 1990. Toward some operational principles of sustainable development. Ecological Economics 2: 1–6.
DeLind, L.B. 1999. Close encounter with a CSA: The reflections of a bruised and somewhat wiser anthropologist, 1998 presidential address to the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society, San Francisco, CA, June 6, 1998. Agriculture and Human Values 16: 3–9.
Devall, B. 2001. The deep, long-range ecology movement. Ethics and the Environment 6: 18–41.
Diamond, J. 2005. Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Viking Books.
Douglas, J.D., P.A. Adler, P. Adler, A. Fontana, C.R. Freeman, and J.A. Kotarba. 1980. Introduction to the sociologies of everyday life. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Flora, C.B., and J.L. Flora with S. Fey. 2004. Rural communities: Legacy and change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Garber, K. 2008. “Food safety’s dirty little secret.” US News and World Report, 145, September 15/September 22, 27–28.
Gerth, H.H. and C.W. Mills (eds.) (1977 [1946]). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gillespie Jr., G.W. 1995. Sustainable agriculture and prospects for rural community development in the US. Research in Rural Sociology and Development 6: 167–191.
Gillespie Jr., G.W. 1997. Review of Don Kurtz, South of the Big Four. Rural Sociology 62: 139–143.
Glenna, L.L. 2002. Operationalizing evil: Christian realism, liberal economics, and industrial agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values 19: 205–215.
Gouveia, L., and A. Juska. 2002. Taming nature, taming workers: Constructing the separation between meat consumption and meat production in the US. Sociologia Ruralis 42: 370–390.
Gunter, V., and S. Kroll-Smith. 2007. Volatile places: A sociology of communities and environmental controversies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Gussow, J.D. 2001. This organic life: Confessions of a suburban homesteader. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company.
Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162: 1243–1248.
Hendrickson, M.K., and W.D. Heffernan. 2002. Opening spaces through relocalization: Locating potential resistance in the weaknesses of the global food system. Sociologia Ruralis 42: 347–369.
Hinrichs, C.C. 2003. The practice and politics of food system localization. Journal of Rural Studies 19: 33–45.
Kloppenburg Jr., J., J. Hendrickson, and G.W. Stevenson. 1996. Coming in to the foodshed. Agriculture and Human Values 13: 33–42.
Kloppenburg Jr., J.R. 1988. First the seed: The political economy of plant biotechnology, 1492–2000. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Liu, M. 2008. “Saving face goes sour.” Newsweek, 152, October 6, 7.
Lyson, T.A. 2004. Civic agriculture: Reconnecting farm, food, and community. Medford, MA: Tufts University Press.
Lyson, T.A., G.W. Stevenson, and R. Welsh (eds.). 2008. Food and the mid-level farm: Renewing an agriculture of the middle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Martindale, D. 1968. Verstehen. In International encyclopedia of the social sciences, ed. D.L. Sills, 308–313. New York: Macmillan and Free Press.
McKibben, B. 1998. “A special moment in history.” The Atlantic Monthly, 281, May, 55–60, 62–65, 68–73, 76–78.
Merton, R.K. 1995. The Thomas theorem and the Matthew effect. Social Forces 74: 379–422.
Mollison, B. 1990. Permaculture: A practical guide for a sustainable future. Washington, D.C.: Island Press.
Montague, P. 1998. “The precautionary principle.” Rachel’s Environment and Health Weekly, February 19. http://rachel.org/en/node/3850. Accessed 5 April 2000, 31 August 2009.
Mouillesseaux-Kunzman, H. 2005. Civic and capitalist food system paradigms: A framework for understanding community supported agriculture impediments and strategies for success. Unpublished M.S. thesis, Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University.
Nelson, B. 1969. The idea of usury: From tribal brotherhood to universal otherhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Searle, J.R. 1995. The construction of social reality. New York: Free Press.
Severson, K. 2008. “Upton Sinclair, now playing on YouTube.” New York Times, March 12, 2008: 1.
Sewell Jr., W.H. 1992. A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American Journal of Sociology 98: 1–29.
Simon, J.L. 1980. “Resources, population, environment: An oversupply of false bad news.” Science, 208, 27 June, 1431–1437.
Snow, D.A., E.B. Rochford Jr., S.K. Worden, and R.D. Benford. 1986. Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation. American Sociological Review 51: 464–481.
Stevenson, G.W., and R. Pirog. 2008. Values-based supply chains: Strategies for agrifood enterprises of the middle. In Food and the mid-level farm: Renewing an agriculture of the middle, ed. T.A. Lyson, G.W. Stevenson, and R. Welsh. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Stirling, A. 1999. On science and precaution in the management of technological risk: An ESTO project report prepared for the European commission—joint research center. EUR Report No. 19056 EN. Seville, Spain: Institute Prospective Technological Studies. ftp://ftp.jrc.es/pub/EURdoc/eur19056en.pdf. Accessed 9 March 2001.
Straus, R.A. 2001. Using sociology: An introduction from the applied and clinical perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Thomas, W.I., and D.S. Thomas. 1928. The child in America: Behavior problems and programs. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Warner, K.D. 2007. Agroecology in action: Extending alternative agriculture through social networks. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weinstein, D., and M.A. Weinstein. 1974. Living sociology: A critical introduction. New York: McKay.
Wildavski, A. 1988. Searching for safety: Transaction Publishers.
Wojcik, J. 1989. The arguments of agriculture: A casebook of contemporary agricultural controversy. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Gillespie, G.W. 2009 AFHVS presidential address: the steering question: challenges to achieving food system sustainability. Agric Hum Values 27, 3–12 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9243-4
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-009-9243-4