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Integrating culture and community into environmental policy: community tradition and farm size in conservation decision making

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Abstract

Community research by anthropologists and sociologists details the effects that centralization of decision making has on local communities. As governance and regulation move toward global scales, conservation policy has devolved to the local levels, creating tensions in resource management and protection. Centralization without local participation can place communities at risk by eroding the environmental knowledge and decision making capacity of local people. Environmental problems such as water quality impairments require perception, interpretation, and ability to act locally. Through a presentation of findings from farm communities in the Sugar Creek Watershed (Northeast Ohio, USA), this paper examines tradition, social scale, and land use among Anabaptist and other farm households, and refocuses on-farm conversation away from conventional individual metric-based studies and toward a systems approach. This new approach frames conservation behavior in a socio-cultural system that is influenced by tradition in on-farm decision making. Data from four subwatersheds are used to probe the effects of these variables on conservation adoption, explore the optimal farm size concept, and discus the roles of tradition and local and non-local knowledge in sustainability.

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Notes

  1. The structure of agriculture describes the relationships among farm size, income, community indices of quality of life, and government policy in which relationships are drawn between these factors and the size, concentration of ownership, and degree of vertical integration of firms in the agricultural industry. This structure is affected by government policy, industry practices, and food consumption patterns (Buttel et al. 1990; see Lobao and Meyer 2008 for a comprehensive literature review).

  2. Decision making criteria is also referred to as “reference values” in cybernetic systems by Roy Rappaport (1984) and is the beliefs, attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge that influence decisions.

  3. Examples from the US include: the consolidation in government-sponsored agricultural conservation programming under the National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS); the regulatory protection of the environment under the US Environmental Protection Agency; and control over farm production decision-making by corporations, consulting firms, and third party auditing agencies through crop licensing agreements, field practice guidelines, and other standard operating procedures that are directed by authorities outside of the farm household and community.

  4. Ben-Amos (1984) identifies seven forms of tradition that are used in academic discourse. These include: (1) “lore” as a form of tradition that is ideational, such as mythology, songs, or customs; (2) “canon” as the aggregate set of lore, values, and texts that are codified by the dominant group as official representations or guides to a culture; (3) “process” is the emphasis on intergenerational cultural transmission in which folklore is the object of a specific transmission process, such as oral history; (4) “mass” emphasizes folklore as the vehicle for transmitting tradition without attention given to process; (5) “culture” is a common form when tradition and culture are used interchangeably; (6) “langue” (drawing on Saussure’s distinction between langue and parole, the former is a set of rules for language use and the latter represents how speakers actually use language) as a form when people draw on common traditions but interpret or use them differently; (7) “performance” is a form of tradition in which the content and manner of transmission are interconnected and defined by who performs and when it is performed.

  5. Moral order refers to a comprehensive way of life guided by rules that pattern daily activities and social relations.

  6. Granovetter (1985) describes economic interactions between people and firms as being embedded in social relationships.

  7. “English” is the term many Amish use when referring to members of mainstream groups due to the language they speak.

  8. Findings from this research were used to develop approaches to collaborate with OOA farmers with moderate success.

  9. Conservation measures are cumulative over time and reductions have continued to be documented.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude towards the farmers and residents of the Sugar Creek watershed, Sugar Creek Partners, North Fork Task Force, members of Amish Church Districts, the Wayne County Soil and Water Conservation District, National Resource Conservation Service, Wayne County Auditor, and Wayne County Extension for their support and participation in this research. In addition, I want to thank Dr. Richard Moore and Dr. Mark Weaver for their insights in this research and collaboration in companion studies. This research was funded by grants from the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education’s Graduate Student and Research and Education grant programs, and the US EPA 319(h) grant program.

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Parker, J.S. Integrating culture and community into environmental policy: community tradition and farm size in conservation decision making. Agric Hum Values 30, 159–178 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-012-9392-8

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