With agriculture the primary driver of biodiversity loss, farmers are increasingly expected to produce environmental outcomes and protect biodiversity. However, lack of attention to the way farmers perceive native vegetation has resulted in conservation targets not being met. The Yorke Peninsula (YP), South Australia, is an agricultural landscape where 50% farmers perceived that long-term planning was for ≤ 30 years, not enough time to promote ecosystem conservation; (5) a lack of natural resource management information for farmers—as a result, farmers relied (...) on their own experience to manage vegetation. Furthermore, most farmers depended on agronomists, who generally had no stake in biodiversity conservation. We recommend that (1) the Local Council restore social capital by liaising with farmers to promote roadside vegetation (2) long-term farmer-led conservation action be established and supported by Government and industry acting as facilitators rather than project managers; (3) a change in policy and training promote the involvement of agronomists in conservation and its management on private properties; (4) all levels of Government develop schemes to demonstrate the tangible benefits of native vegetation as habitat for wildlife; (5) on-farm conservation be celebrated as successful farming. (shrink)

Substantial evidence has shown that involvement in peer-to-peer farming networks influences whether a farmer decides to try a new practice. Formally organized farmer networks are emerging as a unique entity that blend the benefits of decentralized exchange of farmer knowledge within the structure of an organization providing a variety of sources of information and forms of engagement. We define formal farmer networks as farmer networks with a distinct membership and organizational structure, leadership that includes farmers, and an emphasis on peer-to-peer (...) learning. This study complements existing ethnographic research on the benefits of organized farmer networking by examining farmers in one longstanding formal farmer network, Practical Farmers of Iowa. Using a nested, mixed-method research design, we analyzed survey and interview data to understand how participation and forms of engagement in the network are associated with the adoption of conservation practices. Responses from 677 farmers from a regular member survey disseminated by Practical Farmers of Iowa in 2013, 2017, and 2020 were pooled and analyzed. GLM binomial and ordered logistic regression results indicate that greater participation in the network, particularly through in-person formats, has a strong and significant association with greater adoption of conservation practices. Logistic regression results show that building relationships in the network is the most important variable for predicting whether a farmer reported adopting conservation practices as a result of participation in PFI. In-depth interviews with 26 surveyed member farmers revealed that PFI supports farmers to adopt by providing information, resources, encouragement, confidence building, and reinforcement. In-person learning formats were more important to farmers relative to independent formats because they were able to have side conversations with other farmers, ask questions, and observe results. We conclude that formal networks are a promising way to expand the use of conservation practices, particularly through targeted efforts to increase relationship building in the network through face-to-face learning opportunities. (shrink)

In response to a commentary on our research article (Azima and Mundler in Agric Hum Values 39:791–807, 2022), we address the argument that increased reliance on family farm labor with low or no opportunity costs leads to higher net revenue and greater economic satisfaction. Our response provides a nuanced perspective on this issue in the context of short food supply chains. We also examine the share of total farm sales from short food supply chains in terms of its effect size (...) on farmer job satisfaction. Finally, we emphasize the need for further research into the sources of occupational satisfaction among farmers involved in such marketing channels. (shrink)

The agri-food system is facing a range of social-ecological threats, many of which are caused and amplified by industrial agriculture. In response, numerous sustainable agriculture narratives have emerged, proposing solutions to the challenges facing the agri-food system. One such narrative that has recently risen to prominence is regenerative agriculture. However, the drivers for the rapid emergence of regenerative agriculture are not well understood. Furthermore, its transformative potential for supporting a more sustainable agri-food system is underexplored. Through a genealogical analysis of (...) four prominent sustainable agriculture narratives; organic agriculture, conservation agriculture, sustainable intensification, and agroecology; we consider how regenerative agriculture’s growing momentum can be contextualised within existing narratives and explore the implications this might have for its transformative potential. This analysis reveals that the genealogies of these sustainable agriculture narratives have led to a number of contestations and complementarities which have coalesced to drive the emergence of regenerative agriculture. We also find that, in contrast to agroecology, regenerative agriculture shares with other Global North narratives a limited scope for offering transformative pathways for agricultural production. This is largely due to their inadequate consideration of power and equity issues in the agri-food system. We argue that regenerative agriculture therefore risks inhibiting deeper agri-food system transformations that address both social and ecological challenges and is not the unifying sustainable agriculture narrative it claims to be. Nonetheless, regenerative agriculture could contribute towards a broader plurality of sustainable agriculture narratives that collectively might enable a transformation to a more sustainable, diverse, and just agri-food system. (shrink)

Agroecological transitions aim at developing sustainable farming and food systems, adapted to local contexts. Such transitions require the engagement of local actors and the consideration of their knowledge and reasoning as a whole, which encompasses different natures of knowledge (empirical, scientific, local, generic), related to different dimensions (economic, environmental, technical, social, political), as well as their values and perceived uncertainties. While these transitions are often problematized in relation to technical issues, this article's objective is to start from the way the (...) local actors consider these transitions in order to see what issues are actually involved. In this study, we analyzed the reasoning of diverse farming actors, including farmers and farm advisors. We conducted 30 cognitive mapping interviews, during which the local actors drew cognitive maps to explicit their reasoning concerning their agroecological transition with an open approach. Their reasoning revealed an emphasis on the human & social dimension of the process of agroecological transitions: (i) human and social considerations come first in the transition process, while technical solutions are viewed as secondary, (ii) use and development of human capacities, social interactions and human well-being are crucial to the conduct of agroecological transitions, (iii) human-scale farming appears as a condition for the use of human capacities, human well-being and rural development, (iv) agroecological transitions imply farming advisory transitions, and (v) rural development appears as a condition for agroecological transitions, implying transitions in society as a whole. (shrink)

This paper discusses some aspects of the article by Azima and Mundler (2022). It is argued that the relationship between work and social satisfaction and direct selling is not necessarily linked to the existence of an opportunity cost of family labor. It is also argued that the effect of the share of direct sales over total shares is weak, while the substantial one is participation to direct selling per se, more than its share on total sales.

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have rippled across the United States’ (US) agri-food system, illuminating considerable issues. US seed systems, which form the foundation of food production, were particularly marked by panic-buying and heightened safety precautions in seed fulfillment facilities which precipitated a commercial seed sector overwhelmed and unprepared to meet consumer demand for seed, especially for non-commercial growers. In response, prominent scholars have emphasized the need to support both formal (commercial) and informal (farmer- and gardener-managed) seed systems to (...) holistically aid growers across various contexts. However, limited attention to non-commercial seed systems in the US, coupled with a lack of consensus surrounding what exactly a resilient seed system looks like, first warrants an exploration into the strengths and vulnerabilities of existing seed systems. This paper seeks to examine how growers navigated challenges in seed sourcing and how this may reflect the resilience of the seed systems to which they belong. Using a mixed-methods approach which includes data from online surveys (n = 158) and semi-structured interviews (n = 31) with farmers and gardeners in Vermont, findings suggest that growers were able to adapt – albeit through different mechanisms depending on their positionality (commercial or non-commercial) within the agri-food system. However, systemic challenges emerged including a lack of access to diverse, locally adapted, and organic seeds. Insights from this study illuminate the importance of creating linkages between formal and informal seed systems in the US to help growers respond to manifold challenges, as well as promote a robust and sustainable stock of planting material. (shrink)

Alternative proteins, including plant-based and cell-based meat and dairy analogues, are discursively positioned as a new form of meat and dairy and as a solution to the myriad of issues associated with conventional animal agriculture. Animal agricultural industries across various nations have resisted this positioning in regulatory spaces by advocating for laws that restrict the use of meat and dairy terms on the labels of alternative proteins products. Underlying this contestation are differing understandings of, and vested interests in, desirable futures (...) for animal agriculture. In Australia, this broader contestation led to a national-level inquiry by a Senate parliamentary committee entitled _Definitions of meat and other animal products_ (the Inquiry). This paper reports findings from a study of the problematizations developed through the Inquiry using a framework for policy discourse analysis referred to as Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be’ methodology. It shows how the dominant discourse throughout the Inquiry moved away from the initial problematization of alternative proteins as a threat to animal agriculture. Instead, both industries were ultimately positioned as not in competition and only labelling laws were problematized with the solution being amendments to ensure ‘consumer clarity’. This outcome ignored a range of alternative problematizations related to the ethical, environmental, health, social and economic issues raised by animal agriculture and by alternative proteins. This lack of scrutiny benefits both industries, by closing off the policy discourse to consideration of a range of alternative interests, voices, and potential solutions, such as stricter health and welfare regulation. (shrink)

The issue of gender and agriculture has been on the research agendas of civil society organisations, governments, and academia since the 1970s. Starting from the role of women in agriculture, research has mainly focused on the gendered division of work and the normative constitution of the farm as masculine. Although the gendered division of work has been questioned, the idea of binary gender has mostly been taken as a given. This explorative research shifts the attention from the production of (traditional) (...) gender roles to the making and unmaking of binary gender. An ethnographic study of four farms in Switzerland is drawn on to explore queer farming practices and investigate how queer farmers navigate gender normativity and what this tells us about gender in agriculture more broadly. After considering the mechanisms through which queer farmers are discouraged from farming as a livelihood on the basis of their sex, gender or sexuality, this article argues that queer farmers de- and re-construct gender and farming identities differently, which has research and policy implications for a more diverse and resilient rurality. (shrink)

The health of farm owners and farmworkers has significant impacts on farm businesses, farming families, and local rural communities where agriculture is an important driver of social and economic activity. Rural residents and farmworkers have higher rates of food insecurity, but little is known about food insecurity among farm owners and the collective experiences of farm owners and farmworkers. Researchers and public health practitioners have stressed the need for policies that target the health and well-being of farm owners and farmworkers (...) while remaining sensitive to the nature of life on the farm, yet farm owner and farmworker lived experiences have been understudied, especially in relation to one another. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 13 farm owners and 18 farmworkers in Oregon. Modified grounded theory was used to analyze interview data. Data were coded using a three-stage process to identify salient core characteristics of food insecurity. Farm owner and farmworker meanings and interpretations of their food insecurity were often contradicted by evaluated food security scores using validated quantitative measures. According to such measures, 17 experienced high food security, 3 had marginal food security, and 11 had low food security, but narrative experiences suggested higher rates. Narrative experiences were categorized by core characteristics of food insecurity, including seasonal food shortages, resource stretching, working extended hours most days of the week, limited use of food assistance, and the tendency to downplay hardship. These unique factors have important implications for developing responsive policies and programs to support the health and well-being of farm livelihoods whose work enables health and well-being among consumers. Future studies to test the relationships between the core characteristics of food insecurity identified in this study and farm owner and farmworker meanings and interpretations of food insecurity, hunger, and nourishment are warranted. (shrink)

Regenerative agriculture refers to a suite of principles, practices, or outcomes which seek to improve soil health, biodiversity, climate, ecosystem function, and socioeconomic outcomes. However, recent reviews highlight wide heterogeneity in how it is defined. This impedes our ability to understand what regenerative agriculture is and has left the movement open to strategic repurposing by diverse stakeholders. Furthermore, the conceptual franchising of the regenerative agriculture debate by Western culture has omitted discussions surrounding social justice, relational values, and the contribution of (...) Indigenous and local knowledge that does not align with Western-centric producer-consumer frameworks. This is a continuation of injustice by creating barriers to representation and participation, and its confrontation will ultimately be necessary for regenerative agriculture to achieve its transformative potential. This article demonstrates that the farming techniques associated with the regenerative agriculture movement today have been practiced for centuries, and in some cases millennia, by Indigenous and local communities around the world. We propose that current Western academic attempts to define regenerative agriculture have resulted in long lists of practices, principles, and outcomes which fall short of describing the whole, because they lack the relational values component that is so integral to these Indigenous and local knowledge systems. We take an urgently needed, Indigenous-informed approach to defining regenerative agriculture, which confronts current epistemic injustice and prioritizes sociocultural and relational values. Finally, we propose an anti-colonial definition that draws on diverse knowledge systems including Indigenous ecophilosophies and published scientific analyses. (shrink)

Critical development and food studies scholars argue that the current food security paradigm is emblematic of a ‘New Green Revolution’, characterized by agricultural intensification, increasing reliance on biotechnology, deepening global markets, and depeasantization. High-profile examples of this model are not hard to find. Less examined, however, are food-security programs that appear to work at cross-purposes with this model. Drawing on the case of Feed the Future in Guatemala, I show how USAID engages in activities that valorize ancestral crops, subsistence production, (...) and agroecological practices. Rather than the result of macro-level planning—of either the New Green Revolution or a greener reform regime—I argue that nonconforming food security projects can be traced to individual actors and their interactions on the ground. I draw on an ‘interface approach’ (Long 1990 ), focusing on the lifeworlds of development workers, their interfaces with each other, and with the to-be-developed. Doing so reveals how food security projects are significantly shaped by the relationships and interests of development actors enmeshed in particular organizational and national settings. This research contributes a fresh perspective on the food security paradigm and its role within the ‘corporate food regime’. (shrink)

Wage inequality and land and labor insecurity are critical barriers to sustainable palm oil production among those employed in Indonesia’s small-farm sector. Palm oil contract farming, a pre-harvest agreement between palm oil farmers and transnational processors and traders, facilitates smallholder participation in global agro-commodities markets, improves smallholder livelihoods, and promotes local economic development in rural communities. But negative externalities in contract farming can emerge depending on whether corporate guarantors of contract-farm assets manage farmer assets equitably. This study explores how contract (...) farming agreements between smallholder farmers of palm oil and futures traders of palm stocks impact the long-term economic development of smallholder palm oil farming in Indonesia. We examined the relative impact of transnational palm oil corporations on smallholder assets in the Indonesian palm oil industry using annual financial data (2003–2019) from Indonesian commodities trading firms. Temporal trends indicated that oligopolistic market conditions were strongly associated with a growing comparative advantage in palm oil, the asymmetric accumulation of land resources by transnational firms, and excessive firm revenues from palm farmer activities. Our regression modelling results suggested that the comparative advantage in Indonesian palm oil was driven by state-oriented policies such that benefit palm traders but disadvantage smallholder farmers. And, through non-metric multidimensional scaling, we demonstrated that smallholder farmers were inefficiently used by firms to produce palm oil, but that smallholder assets were a significant driver to firm revenue growth. Notwithstanding the adverse consequences on palm farmers, these results indicate a set of unique effects of palm oil contract farming on land and labor security in Southeast Asia. The paper reasons that a system of inequitable contract farming is operating in the Indonesian palm oil industry, whereby smallholder palm oil farmers are trapped by transnational firms into socio-economic farming schemes of low oil yield and non-market activity, thus providing palm firms with lucrative non-market revenue streams. Large transnational trading firms are thereby implicated in the long-run commodification of smallholder land for marginal fruit production while exploiting a farmer’s non-market advantages through the manipulation of farmer assets. (shrink)

The human labor and animal inputs required to manufacture meat products are kept physically and symbolically distanced from the consumer. Recently however, meatpacking plants received significant news media attention when they emerged as hotpots for COVID-19 — threatening workers’ health, requiring plants to slow production, and forcing farmers to euthanize livestock. In light of these disruptions, this research asks: how did news media frame the impact of COVID-19 on the meat industry, and to what extent is a process of _defetishization_ (...) observed? Examining a sample of 230 news articles from coverage of US meatpacking plants and COVID-19 in 2020, I find that news media largely attributes the cause for the spread of COVID-19 in meatpacking plants to the history of exploitative working conditions and business practices of the meat industry. By contrast, the solutions offered to address these problems aim at alleviating the immediate obstacles posed by the pandemic and returning to, rather than challenging, the status quo. These short-run solutions for complex issues demonstrate the constraints in imagining alternatives to a problem rooted in capitalism. Furthermore, my analysis shows that animals are only made visible in the production process when their bodies become a waste product. (shrink)

This paper examines the resilience of farmers markets in Michigan to the system shock of the global COVID-19 pandemic, questioning how the response fits into market goals of food sovereignty. Adapting to shifting public health recommendations and uncertainty, managers implemented new policies to create a safe shopping experience and expand food access. As consumers directed their shopping to farmers markets looking for safer outdoor shopping, local products, and foods in short supply at grocery stores, market sales skyrocketed with vendors reporting (...) selling more than ever before, but the longevity of this change remains unclear. Our data collected via semi-structured interviews with market managers and vendors, and survey data from customers from 2020 to 21, suggest that despite the widespread impact of COVID-19, there is not sufficient evidence consumers will continue to shop at farmers markets at the rates they did in 2020-21. Furthermore, reasons consumers flocked to farmers markets do not align with market priorities for increased food sovereignty, as increased sales alone are not a sufficient driver for this goal. We question how markets can contribute to broader sustainability goals or serve as alternatives to capitalist and industrial modes of agricultural production, problematizing the role of markets in the food sovereignty movement. (shrink)

Genebanking, the process of preserving genetic resources, is a central practice in the modern management of crop genetics, especially for the species used for food and agriculture. Closely interrelated networks of local, national and global actors are responsible for ex situ conservation. They all seek to make plant genetic resources accessible for all and now face new challenges arising from digitisation. Plant sciences are entering the postgenomic era, moving fast from initially providing a single reference genome for each species (genomics), (...) to harnessing the extent of diversity within crop species (pangenomics) and among their relatives (referred to as postgenomics). This paper describes the extent to which ex situ collections have already undergone a digital shift, or are planning to do so, and the potential impact of this postgenomic-induced dematerialisation on the global governance of plant genetic resources. In turn, digitising material (seed) collection changes the relationship between genebanks and genomic databases. Comprehensive genomic characterisation of genebank accessions is ongoing, and I argue here that these efforts may provide a unique opportunity for genebanks to further embrace the moral, ethical and ultimately political principles on which they were built. Repurposing genebanks as decentralised digital biocentres could help relocate capabilities and stewardship over genetic resources. Empowering local farmers by providing access, promoting the use and unlocking benefits from state-of-the-art tools of modern plant breeding may allow bridging the breeding divide. However, to accomplish such a paradigm shift, genebanks require a strong political mandate that must primarily originate from the access and benefit-sharing framework. Only so may the global challenges associated with the loss of biodiversity and food insecurity be addressed. (shrink)

An emerging discourse about automated agricultural machinery imagines farms as places where farmers and workers do not need to be, but also implicitly frames farms as intolerable places where people do not want to be. Only autonomous machines, this story goes, can relieve farmers and workers of this presumed burden by letting them ‘farm at a distance’. In return for this distanced autonomy, farmers are promised increased control over their work-life balance and greater farm productivity from letting ‘smart’ robots assume (...) control over the operational environment. Drawing upon the ways that these machines are promoted by manufacturers in various media, we trace the nascent contours of what we term a liberatory sociotechnical imaginary for agricultural automation across three cases—automated milking systems, self-driving tractors, and robotic strawberry pickers. We show how promises for new freedoms and autonomy are flexibly deployed to respond to distinct frictions that farmers, workers, and even farm animals experience in different modes of industrial agriculture. However, underlying these promises is the purposefully understated self-interest of manufacturers, who stand to gain further control over farms if automated technologies assume a central role in agriculture. Through the liberatory rhetoric, we contend, the imaginary seeks to enroll farmers into a socio-technical network that creates new relations of dependence upon the companies who design, sell, maintain, and often retain ownership over automated technologies. While potentially powerful, this imaginary may nonetheless fail to coalesce as farmers, workers, and agroecosystems exert their own agency on automated imaginaries and technological futures for agriculture. (shrink)

Timely and accurate information is vital to the success of row crop farmers in the United States. Information access is also critical to conservation efforts due to its influence on best management practice adoption. Public information sources like extension educators have been declining in importance for farmers, raising concerns around what information farmers receive on conservation practices and the accessibility of agronomic information. In this study we investigate farmers’ changing information source consultation by broadly considering the agricultural information landscape, exploring (...) whether farmers have displayed clear trends in access between public and private sources and whether certain farmer or operational characteristics predict public or private source access. We utilize data from a 2018 survey of farmers in four Corn Belt states to examine farmers’ information seeking behaviors and predict the number of total, public, and private sources accessed using structural equation modeling with latent variables. Our findings elaborate on the public-to-private source shift and reveal that farmers continue to seek information from both private and public sources, though the frequency, mode of contact, and types of farmers contacting these sources differ. Results suggest public information sources are still influential, but they are accessed less frequently, tend to appeal to farmers with stronger environmental concerns, and have less appeal to older farmers compared to private information sources. Our findings indicate the potential for extension and other public sources to diversify modes of communication to further their reach. (shrink)

Vertical farming is a rapidly expanding type of indoor controlled environment agriculture whose promises have attracted widespread praise and considerable early-stage capital in recent years. Among vertical farming’s many claimed benefits, per-area productivity is frequently mentioned, proposing crop yields at least two orders of magnitude higher than outdoor field agriculture. These extremely high yields form the basis for a theory of land use change whereby yield-increasing technologies reduce or reverse the expansionary demands of lower-yielding farms, retaining or returning those areas (...) to “wild nature”. In a sensational articulation of this kind of intensification, from 2007 to 2017 many vivid proposals portrayed centrally located skyscraper farms as a key strategy for building self-sufficient cities. This skyscraper articulation of vertical farming captured the public imagination and led to substantial investment into contemporary vertical farming facilities, the majority of which are in large suburban high-ceiling single-story warehouses. This paper traces the politics of vertical farming’s land-sparing narratives beginning early in the twentieth century, with a closer analysis of two contrasting historical examples: Othmar Ruthner’s 1960s tower greenhouses, which closely resemble the imaginary skyscraper farms of the 2010s; and Noel Davis’ 1980s PhytoFarms, which more closely resembles the well-funded warehouse vertical farms of the 2020s. This analysis suggests that, despite their high yields, the extremely high capital investments needed to build the precise controlled environments of today’s vertical farms preclude the profitable production of staple crops, rendering them unlikely to fulfil their land-sparing promises. (shrink)

At a time when agri-food biotechnologies are receiving a surge of investment, innovation, and public interest in the United States, it is common to hear both supporters and critics call for open and inclusive dialogue on the topic. Social scientists have a potentially important role to play in these discursive engagements, but the legacy of the intractable genetically modified (GM) food debate calls for some reflection regarding the best ways to shape the norms of that conversation. This commentary argues that (...) agri-food scholars interested in promoting a more constructive agri-food biotechnology discussion could do so by blending key insights, as well as guarding against key shortcomings, from the fields of science communication and science and technology studies (STS). Science communication’s collaborative and translational approach to the public understanding of science has proven pragmatically valuable to scientists in academia, government, and private industry, but it has too often remained wedded to deficit model approaches and struggled to explore deeper questions of public values and corporate power. STS’s critical approach has highlighted the need for multi-stakeholder power-sharing and the integration of diverse knowledge systems into public engagement, but it has done little to grapple with the prevalence of misinformation in movements against GM foods and other agri-food biotechnologies. Ultimately, a better agri-food biotechnology conversation will require a strong foundation in scientific literacy as well as conceptual grounding in the social studies of science. The paper concludes by describing how, with attention to the structure, content, and style of public engagement in the agri-food biotechnology debates, social scientists can play a productive conversational role across a variety of academic, institutional, community-level, and mediated contexts. (shrink)

Recent years have seen widespread calls to transform food systems to address complex demands such as feeding a growing global population while reducing environmental impacts. But what is a food system and how can we most effectively work to change it? “Food System” can be found describing more limited dietary regimens as well as sector-specific supply chains going back to the 1930s, but its use to describe very large, dynamic, coupled socio-ecological systems gained traction in academic and civil society publications (...) in the 1990s and this use of the term has increased dramatically in recent years. When the influential food system actors from non-governmental organizations, foundations, consultancies, and the UN that this research focuses on talk about food systems, they seem to be talking about the same thing. Yet the interpretive flexibility of the concept obfuscates that people may have very different framings that may be deeply incompatible. Drawing from interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, this paper examines what food systems thinking does in terms of setting the stage for how we enact the food system and efforts to intervene in it. It reveals that rather than leading to more expansive understanding, the unexamined use of the concept food system might actually serve to sharpen divides. (shrink)

Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN). This is paired with insights from 21 network members on aspects that have allowed STSFAN to (...) thrive, even amid a global pandemic. Our hope is that these insights will encourage others to cultivate their own intellectual communities, where they too can receive the support they need to deepen their scholarship and strengthen their intellectual relationships. (shrink)

Interdisciplinary research needs innovation. As an action-oriented intervention, this Manifesto begins from the authors’ experiences as social scientists working within interdisciplinary science and technology collaborations in agriculture and food. We draw from these experiences to: 1) explain what social scientists contribute to interdisciplinary agri-food tech collaborations; (2) describe barriers to substantive and meaningful collaboration; and (3) propose ways to overcome these barriers. We encourage funding bodies to develop mechanisms that ensure funded projects respect the integrity of social science expertise and (...) incorporate its insights. We also call for the integration of social scientific questions and methods in interdisciplinary projects from the outset, and for a genuine curiosity on the part of STEM and social science researchers alike about the knowledge and skills each of us has to offer. We contend that cultivating such integration and curiosity within interdisciplinary collaborations will make them more enriching for all researchers involved, and more likely to generate socially beneficial outcomes. (shrink)

Ample research documents the health benefits of community gardens, but our understanding of the factors shaping gardener participation is limited. Neighborhood demographics and garden frames have each been theorized to play a role in shaping who participates in community gardens. Yet, our understanding of the interplay between these factors is underdeveloped and this body of work lacks consideration of the racial and class makeup of gardeners on a large scale. With a nation-wide survey that includes measures of gardener demographics (N (...) = 162), the present study considers the extent to which community garden frames and locations simultaneously shape participant demographics. I combine these factors into a conceptual model explaining community garden participation as an iterative process of framing, accessibility, and representation, all situated within a garden’s surrounding community. Results show some base correlations between gardens focusing on healthy food access or symbolic food labels and gardener demographics, but ordered logistic and negative binomial regressions show stronger evidence of community demographics shaping gardener demographics. At the same time, _t_-tests comparing mean neighborhood and gardener demographics shows a consistent under-representation of Latinx community members among gardeners. As theorized in the model presented, community garden locations are important for shaping what demographics are represented among gardeners, but how community garden benefits are framed can limit garden accessibility, and subsequently neighborhood representation, especially for Latinx residents. This model helps illustrate the mechanisms through which garden organizers and advocates can develop more inclusive community gardens through fostering representation from people of color and the working-class. (shrink)

This paper represents one of the first critical social science interrogations of an agrifood just-in-case transition. The just-in-case transition speaks to a philosophy that values building buffers and flexibility into longer value chains to make them more resilient to shocks, which stands in contrast to the just-in-time philosophy with its emphasis on long, specialized, and often inflexible networks. Influenced by COVID-related disruptions and climate change induced uncertainties, the just-in-case transition examined here centers on the heightened interest in vertical farm-anchored supply (...) chains. Interviewing actors responsible for promoting vertical farm-anchored local supply chains in the US and Canada, I attempt to sketch out how these spaces, infrastructures, and practices care. Put differently, as understood through a feminist ethics of care, _whom_ and _what_ are cared for and _how_ is care practiced in these just-in-case transitions and _why_? Enumerative politics was observed in the data—the idea that we can make care count. Practices and discourses linked to infrastructural/supply chain transitions are highlighted that result in care being narrowly conceived as a technical or transactional matter. The paper concludes reflecting on what it means to afford just-in-case agrifood transitions animated by matters of care that hold greater emancipatory potentials. (shrink)

California is a landmark setting for studying produce recovery efforts and policy implications because of its global relevance in agricultural production, its complex network of food recovery organizations, and its environmental and public health regulations. Through a series of focus groups with organizations involved in produce recovery (gleaning organizations) and emergency food operations (food banks, food pantries), this study aimed to deepen our understanding of the current produce recovery system and determine the major challenges and opportunities related to the produce (...) recovery system. Operational and systematic barriers to produce recovery were highlighted by both gleaning and emergency food operations. Operational barriers, such as the lack of appropriate infrastructure and limited logistical support were found to be a challenge across groups and were directly tied to inadequate funding for these organizations. Systematic barriers, such as regulations related to food safety or reducing food loss and waste, were also found to impact both gleaning and emergency food organizations, but differences were observed in how each type of regulation impacted each stakeholder group. To support the expansion of food recovery efforts, participants expressed need for better coordination within and across food recovery networks and more positive and transparent engagement from regulators to increase understanding of the specifics of their unique operational constraints. The focus group participants also provided critiques on how emergency food assistance and food recovery are inscribed within the current food system and for longer term goals of reducing food insecurity and food loss and waste a systematic change will be required. (shrink)

The population of women farm operators continues to increase in the U.S. That growth, however, is mediated by research showing that women in agriculture experience persistent barriers to equality with men. The Feminist Agriculture Food Theory (FAST) developed by Sach et al. (The Rise of Women Farmers and Sustainable Agriculture, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, (Sachs et al., The rise of women farmers and sustainable agriculture, University of Iowa Press, 2016) posits that in the face of these barriers, women (...) farmers in the Northeast are engaging in six strategies to increase their success. These include (1) increasing gender equality on their farms, (2) asserting an identity as a farmer, (3) gaining greater access to resources, (4) shaping new food and farming systems, (5) negotiating roles in agricultural organizations, and (6) forming women-centered farming organizations. While researchers have applied FAST to Michigan, it has not been examined at a national level. In this paper, then, we use the 2017 Census of Agriculture Data to measure how women in agriculture in the U.S. are faring on each aspect of FAST we can measure (strategies 1–5). We compare women to men farmers across these FAST strategies and across three different farm types: Non-Organic Non-Value-Added Farms, Organic Farms, and Value-Added Farms. Our findings suggest for FAST strategies 1 and 2 there is an increase in equity and ability to identify as a farmer for women on organic and value-added farms. However, our findings also suggest that for FAST strategies that require more institutional and structural resources (I.e. strategies 3–5), inequities persist across farm types. (shrink)

Despite increasing attention to the sensors, drones, robots, and apps permeating agri-food systems, little attention has been paid to social media, perhaps the most ubiquitous digital technology in rural areas globally. This article draws on analysis of farming groups on Myanmar Facebook to posit social media as appropriated agritech: a generic technology incorporated into existing circuits of economic and social exchange that becomes a site of agrarian innovation. Through analysis of an original archive of popular posts collected from Myanmar-language Facebook (...) pages and groups related to agriculture, I explore the ways that farmers, traders, agronomists and agricultural companies use social media to further agrarian commerce and knowledge. These activities evidence that farmers use Facebook not only to exchange market or planting information, but also to interact in ways structured by existing social, political and economic relations. More broadly, my analysis builds on insights from STS and postcolonial computing to disrupt assumptions about the totalizing power of digital technologies and affirm the relevance of social media to agriculture, while inviting new research into the surprising, ambiguous relationships between small farmers and big tech. (shrink)

Over recent decades, influential agri-food tech actors, institutions, policymakers and others have fostered dominant techno-optimistic, future visions of food and agriculture that are having profound material impacts in present agri-food worlds. Analyzing such realities has become paramount for scholars working across the fields of science and technology studies (STS) and critical agri-food studies, many of whom contribute to STSFAN—the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network. This article introduces a Special Issue featuring the scholarship of STSFAN members, which cover (...) a range of case studies and interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary engagements involving such contested agri-food futures. Their contributions are unique in that they emerged from the network’s specific modus operandi: a workshopping practice that supports the constructive, interdisciplinary dialogue necessary for critical research and rigorous analyses of science and technology in agri-food settings. This introduction offers an overview of STS and critical agri-food studies scholarship, including their historical entanglements in respective studies of food scandals, scientific regimes and technological determinism. We illustrate how interdisciplinary engagement across these fields has contributed to the emergent field of what we term agri-food technoscience scholarship, which the contributions of this Special Issue speak to. After a brief discussion of STS concepts, theories and methods shaping agri-food policy, technology design and manufacturing, we present the eleven Special Issue contributions in three thematic clusters: influential actors and their agri-food imaginaries; obfuscated (material) realities in agri-food technologies; and conflictual and constructive engagements in academia and agri-food. The introduction ends with a short reflection on future research trajectories in agri-food technoscience scholarship. (shrink)

Silicon Valley and its innovation center counterparts have come upon food and agriculture as the next frontier for their unique style of innovation and impact. But what exactly can the tech sector, with expertise in information and communication technologies, bring to a domain in which the biophysical materiality of soil, plants, animals and human bodies have most challenged farmers and food companies? Based on a detailed analysis of all of the companies that have pitched their products at events sponsored by (...) the Silicon Valley-based convener, Foodbytes!, we show that a large proportion of tech-driven solutions are digital technologies transferred from other domains. These technologies at best inform decision-making on the ecological processes of food and farming, but do not provide tools to treat them, and otherwise provide business solutions not even aimed at major challenges in food and farming. Drawing on a small set of interview data, we additionally suggest that tech entrepreneurs migrate to food and agriculture because it seems purposeful, exciting, or lucrative, but sometimes lack a clear understanding of the problems they might solve with their digital technologies. In making our case about the mismatch of problem and solution, we bring into conversation recent critiques of digital solutionism with abiding concerns in agrarian political economy and critical food studies regarding the role of the biological in both challenging food production and spurring technological intervention. (shrink)

This article examines the construction of image recognition algorithms for the classification of plant pathology problems. Rooted in science and technology studies research on the effects of agricultural big data and agricultural algorithms, the study ethnographically examines how algorithms for the recognition of plant pathology are made. To do this, the article looks at the case of a German agtech startup developing image recognition algorithms for an app that aims to help small-scale farmers diagnose plant damages based on digital images (...) of their symptoms. The study posits that the construction of these algorithms can be grasped as a succession of layers, at each of which the startup’s employees carry out different selection practices. It is argued that these practices gradually inscribe a selective recognition of the phenomenon of plant pathology into the algorithms of the app. This selective recognition is reflected in the fact that the emerging algorithms are effective in identifying isolated plant damages on isolated crops, while ignoring most agroecosystem-related actors and relations through which plant damages arise. The article concludes that the app’s selective recognition of plant pathology is likely to perpetuate or even exacerbate the pesticide use of its users. This is because the app’s view of plant pathology as a phenomenon comprised of isolated plant damages on isolated crops is more compatible with the use of chemical pesticides than with approaches to crop protection that strive for a more moderate use of these substances (e.g., integrated pest management, agroecology, organic agriculture). (shrink)

Ending world hunger remains one of the central global challenges, but the question of how to measure and define the problem is politically charged. This article chronicles and analyses the indicator selection process for SDG 2.1, focusing in particular on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) indicator. Despite alleged efforts to separate political and technical aspects in the indicator selection process we find that they were entangled from the start. While there was significant contestation around which indicators should be selected, (...) the process was characterized by pathway lock-in: The complexity of food security quantification and the resource constraints in the process favored already established data infrastructures and milieus of expertise, locking in the position of FAO and its established food security indicators. The SDG 2.1 indicators frame food insecurity in terms of caloric supply and demand and individual experience, arguably excluding dimensions of democratic agency, sustainability and other dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. The lock-in has thus embedded a narrow concept of food security in the major global indicator framework for food security monitoring. This is likely to have significant effects on how food insecurity is addressed nationally and internationally. Addressing the knowledge politics of food security indicators is important to broaden and open the agenda for sustainable transformation of food systems. Statistics and indicators are important tools in this agenda, but a diversity of approaches and data infrastructures from the local to the international level are needed to understand the multiple dimensions and drivers of food insecurity. (shrink)

Urban agriculture is a promising avenue for food system change; however, projects often struggle with a lack of volunteers—limiting both their immediate goals and the broader movement-building to which many alternative food initiatives (AFIs) aspire. In this paper, I adopt a case study approach focusing on Farm X, an urban farm with a strong volunteer culture located in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Drawing on a significant period of researcher participation and 11 in-depth interviews with volunteers and project coordinators, (...) I first contextualise and explore the history of Farm X, then offer themes to describe key factors which help or hinder their volunteer engagement. Engagement is helped by strong leadership, learning by doing, socialising around plants, and contributing to a movement. Conversely, engagement is hindered by time scarcity, economic hurdles, and struggles over direction. Drawing on McClintock’s (Local Environ 19(2): 147–171, 2014, 10.1080/13549839.2012.752797) insights into the hybrid and contradictory nature of urban agriculture as a tool for social change, the paper continues with a discussion of two important trade-offs involved in both farm management and the movement building promoted by Farm X: focused leadership verses volunteer agency; and asking more verses less of volunteers. Finally, I suggest several avenues that may be useful for other urban agriculture projects interested in movement building. (shrink)

This study examines the case of community resource mobilization within the context of a farmers market incentive program in Washington D.C., USA to illustrate the ways in which providing opportunities for people impacted by food inequities to develop and lead programming can help to promote food access. Through an analysis of interviews with 36 participants in the Produce Plus program, some of whom also served as paid staff and volunteers with the program, this study examines the ways that group-level social (...) interactions among program participants helped to ensure the program was accessible and accountable to the primarily Black communities that it serves. Specifically, we explore a particular set of social interactions, which we collectively term social solidarity, as a community-level form of social infrastructure that program volunteers and participants mobilized to support access to fresh, local food in their communities. We also examine the elements of the Produce Plus program that contributed to the flow of social solidarity within the program, providing insight into the ways in which the structure of food access programs can serve as a social conduit to facilitate or hinder the mobilization of community cultural resources like social solidarity. (shrink)

As a group, LGBTQ+ people experience food insecurity at a disproportionately high rate, yet food security scholars and practitioners are only beginning to uncover patterns in how food insecurity varies by subgroups of this diverse community. In this paper, we use data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey—which added measures of gender identity and sexuality for the first time in 2021—to analyze New Englanders’ food insufficiency rates by gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity. We find that (1) in the (...) past seven days, 13.0 percent of LGB + (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and other non-heterosexual) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is nearly twice the rate of heterosexual people—and 19.8 percent of transgender+ (transgender, genderqueer, gender non-binary, and other non-cisgender people) New Englanders experience food insufficiency—which is two to three times the rate of cisgender men and women. (2) Whereas cisgender New Englanders experience food insufficiency at a _lower_ rate than their counterparts in the rest of the nation (about two percentage points lower for both cisgender men and women), transgender+ New Englanders experience no such New England advantage compared to transgender+ people in the country as a whole. (3) LGBTQ+ New Englanders of color experience devastatingly high rates of food insufficiency, with, for example, one in three Black transgender+ New Englanders not having enough food to eat in the past seven days. These findings suggest that addressing food insecurity in New England demands approaching the problem with an intersectional queer lens, with attention to the ways in which racism, cissexism, and heterosexism are creating a systemic, ongoing food crisis for LGBTQ+ New Englanders, especially those who are transgender+ and/or people of color. (shrink)

This article analyses the interplay between the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) standard, Buddhist socio-economic imaginaries, and values within the global production network (GPN) of organic rice. It asks, _“How do transnational standardisation and local values interact in the global production network of organic rice?”_ Little research has been conducted on the imaginaries and values embedded in the GPNs of organic food. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the transition to organic agriculture among two prominent (...) organic rice farming communities in Thailand, namely the Naso Producer Group and the Ban Thap Thai Organic Agricultural Cooperative. The article draws on a combination of desk research; interviews with governmental and non-governmental officials, standard experts/certifiers, and representatives of the IFOAM; focus group discussions and photo-elicitation sessions with organic rice farmers; on-site observations; and participant observations of mindfulness meditation courses and interviews with Buddhist monks. The results show that Buddhist socio-economic imaginaries have informed the way in which Thai organic rice farmers reconnect to their arable land through an organic farming method, enabling them to live meaningfully and mindfully. This implies that the connectivity of the GPNs of organic rice is not created purely by standards and certifications formulated by transnational private actors; rather, it is also shaped to a large extent by community values and shifts in local mindsets. This article contributes to the literature on food philosophy in the developing world and the governance of the GPNs of organic rice. (shrink)

Social networks can influence people’s behaviour and therefore it is assumed that central individuals in social networks, also called “opinion leaders”, play a key role in driving change in agricultural and food systems. I analyse the outcomes of an intervention (that encouraged Sulawesi smallholder farmers to take a specific action toward improving the health of their cocoa trees) to assess the impact of engaging opinion leaders in agricultural programs that aim to change farmers’ practices. The intervention has been implemented through (...) (a) 18 opinion leaders identified by interviews and a social network survey of 1885 cocoa farmers; and (b) 18 randomly selected farmers who were not central in local social networks. The obtained social networks and statistical data were quantitatively analysed and the results were interpreted with input from the field staff. Contrary to expectations, the highly socially central opinion leaders were not more effective in promoting the initiative in their communities. On average, randomly selected low-centrality farmers convinced almost twice as many of their peers to take the recommended action as compared to the identified opinion leaders (17.1 versus 8.6) but the variation within the random group was also significantly higher. Importantly, while the identified opinion leaders were mostly senior men, women performed better in influencing others into taking action even when their centrality in local social networks of agricultural advice was lower. I discuss the implications of the conventional selection of perceived opinion leaders as model farmers for achieving sustainable and equitable change at scale in agriculture and propose practical alternatives. (shrink)

Many are calling for transformative food systems changes to promote population and planetary health. Yet there is a lack of research that considers whether current food policy frameworks and regulatory approaches are suited to tackle whole of food systems challenges. One such challenge is responding to the rise of ultra-processed foods (UPF) in human diets, and the related harms to population and planetary health. This paper presents a narrative review and synthesis of academic articles and international reports to critically examine (...) whether current food policy frameworks and regulatory approaches are sufficiently equipped to drive the transformative food systems changes needed to halt the rise of UPFs, reduce consumption and minimise harm. We draw on systems science approaches to conceptualise the UPF problem as an emergent property of complex adaptive food systems shaped by capitalist values and logics. Our findings reveal that current food policy frameworks often adjust or reform isolated aspects of food systems (e.g., prices, labels, food composition), but under-emphasise the deeper paradigms, goals and structures that underlie the rise of UPFs as a systems phenomenon, and its socio-ecological implications. We propose that a ‘leverage points’ framework illuminates where to intervene in food systems to generate multi-level changes, while the theory of ecological regulation highlights how to respond to complex multi-factorial problems, like the rise of UPFs, in diverse ways that respect planetary boundaries. More research is needed to better understand the transformative potential of ecological regulation to advance food systems transformation and attenuate whole of food systems challenges. (shrink)

To combat the OneHealth threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the use of antibiotics in agriculture is subject to significant governance-led initiatives to change food system behaviours, including promoting more responsible use of antibiotics on farms through market-level interventions. To combat knowledge gaps about how consumers perceive risks associated with antibiotic use and AMR in farming, the current study carried out an in-depth qualitative focus group study incorporating a risk information exposure exercise with food consumers on the island of Ireland (_n_ (...) = 36). Using a theoretical lens of social representation theory, a thematic analysis of the collected data identified how participants made sense of, often new, information on agricultural antibiotic use and AMR. Participants displayed high awareness and concern for AMR but low understanding and misconceptions around AMR transmission from the agri-food sector. Social representations about antibiotics and food and farming systems shaped preferences for a movement away from antibiotics in farming, and in particular, prophylactic use. However, participants acknowledged the role of antibiotics to protect animal health and the integrity of the food supply chain. They debated the lack of a simple fix to antibiotics in the agri-food system and revealed preferences for preventive actions at farm level and supporting actions at market level. The study highlights the need to first tackle low levels of public understanding through effective risk communication including strategies such as targeted message framing and proactive, cross-sector OneHealth awareness campaigns, followed by the introduction of a trusted antibiotic use food labelling system. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, foodbanks have become a widespread solution to addressing hunger within high-income countries. The primary reason for their establishment has been widely recognised as neoliberal policies, particularly those that led to massive cuts in social welfare assistance. Foodbanks and hunger have subsequently been framed within a neoliberal critique. However, we argue that critiques of foodbanks are not unique to neoliberalism but have deeper historical roots, meaning that the part neoliberal policies have played is not as clear-cut. In order (...) to understand the normalisation of foodbanks within society, and gain a more extensive understanding of hunger and appreciation as to how this issue could be addressed, it is therefore important to gain a historical understanding of food charity development. In this article, we achieve this by presenting a genealogy of food charity within Aotearoa New Zealand, which witnessed a fluctuation in the use of soup kitchens during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a rise of foodbanks in the 1980s and ‘90 s. Highlighting the historical parallels and major economic and cultural shifts that have allowed for the institutionalisation of foodbanks, we explore the patterns, parallels and differences exposed, and how they yield an alternative understanding of hunger. Using this analysis, we then discuss the wider implications of the historical foundations of food charity and hunger to better understand the role neoliberalism has played in the entrenchment of foodbanks, and advocate the importance of looking beyond a neoliberal critique in order to entertain alternative solutions to addressing food insecurity. (shrink)

At the turn of the 21st century, a collection of donors created the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to spark a “new” Green Revolution on the African continent. Since its inception, AGRA’s mission has revolved around a series of interventions designed around the idea of making agriculture a “business.” In this paper, I ask how AGRA puts such discourses into practice with a particular focus in Ghana. To do so, I draw on a television show produced by (...) AGRA called Kuapa, organizational literature, and to a lesser extent, interviews, to assess how AGRA materializes its goals in Ghana. Ultimately, I argue that a focus on discourse not only provides insight into how AGRA conceptualizes agricultural transformation, but also how AGRA pursues agronomic, political, and social changes in the countries in which it intervenes. (shrink)

Understanding what factors can positively or negatively affect farmers’ decisions to adopt new practices is of particular importance to agricultural researchers and practitioners. Few studies in adoption research have examined the role that fenceline neighbours can play in influencing the decisions of their neighbours to adopt new practices, especially in North America. Prior research on adoption suggests that there are spatial effects that exist in adoption decisions, such as the uptake of new farming practices. For example, previous qualitative research with (...) farmers has suggested that fenceline neighbours are influential but can have both positive and negative effects on adoption decisions. A standardized way of understanding fenceline neighbour influences is lacking. Our study presents a novel question set to examine fenceline neighbour dynamics and discusses its application in a survey examining the alternative practice adoption of adaptive multi-paddock grazing (AMP) by Canadian beef farmers. Our study highlights both the utility of our question set and how our question set can be used to provide new insights into local farmer social dynamics (e.g., how farmers engage with their neighbours and what factors influence engagement) and their influence on decisions to adopt. Specifically, our results identified two types of fenceline neighbour behaviors—engagers, and avoiders—and AMP farmers were more likely to be involved in engaged behaviors. Overall, we provide a question set that can be further integrated with trust, risk, and normative theoretical lenses to examine the role of fenceline neighbour dynamics in agricultural adoption and other contexts and call for more landholder research that examines neighbour-to-neighbour effects. (shrink)

The nature of farming is – still – an essentially biological, and thus volatile, system, which poses substantial challenges to its integration into financialized capitalism. Financial investors often seek stability and predictability of returns that are hardly compatible with agriculture – but which are increasingly seen as achievable through data and digital farming technologies. This paper investigates how farmland investment brokers engage with, perceive, and produce farming data for their investors within a co-constructive process. Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’ for investment, (...) I argue, has material and immaterial components: it includes the re-imagination of farming as a financial asset that delivers reliable income streams for investors; and the re-engineering of farmland’s concrete materialities with digital farming technologies. Farmland investment brokers develop investor-suitable farmland imaginaries, underpinned by storytelling as well as the calculative ‘evidence’ of (digital) data. At the same time, digital technologies have become a key tool for transforming farms into ‘investment grade assets’ endowed with the rich data on farm performance and financial returns requested by investors. I conclude that the assetization and digitization of farmland need to be seen as closely intertwined and mutually reinforcing processes and identify key areas for future research on this intersection. (shrink)

Agricultural-technology (ag-tech) and agroecology both promise a better farming future. Ag-tech seeks to improve the food system through the development of high-tech tools such as sensors, digital platforms, and robotic harvesters, with many ag-tech start-ups promising to deliver increased agricultural productivity while also enhancing food system sustainability. Agroecology incorporates diverse cropping systems, low external resource inputs, indigenous and farmer knowledge, and is increasingly associated with political calls for a more just food system. Recently, demand has grown for the potentially groundbreaking (...) benefits of their convergence, with the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) attempting just such a union. Building on its combined expertise in engineering and agroecology, as well as a longstanding reputation as a socially progressive institution, university administrators believe that UCSC could produce a unique, socially just form of ag-tech designed for small, low-resource farmers—a rare contribution given ag-tech’s tendency to cater primarily to large-scale agribusiness. This paper examines the complexities of uniting agroecology and ag-tech through interviews with agroecologists, engineers, and social scientists involved in UCSC’s ag-tech initiative. Within the setting of a historically radical yet neoliberalizing university, I find that significant epistemic and structural barriers exist for agroecology and ag-tech to come together on an even playing field. This case study contributes to broader discussions of the future of food and farming by focusing on the contours and challenges of a widely called-for agricultural collaboration, highlighting its difficulty but also areas of possibility in a particularly rich, contested context. (shrink)

The conceptual promise of relational values, theorized as the principles and virtues of human relationships (with other humans and nature), to motivate sustainability may be observed in its rapid uptake in theoretical and policy domains. Both relying on and impacting nature, agriculture has garnered attention among efforts to apply relational values. However, quantitative measures have received little focus in efforts to operationalize relational values. Guided by the assertion that sustainable agriculture is embedded with both relational and instrumental values (i.e., self-interested (...) ends), this study considers theoretical and methodological challenges and offers a pathway to quantitatively measuring relational values within agriculture, focusing specifically on seeds—an agricultural input embedded with plural values. Drawing on 151 survey responses from seed growers in Vermont, this study assesses how relational and instrumental values are reflected among commercial and non-commercial seed growers and are associated with the presence of crop diversity in their farms and gardens. The findings show that those who sell seeds for income have significantly higher relational values, instrumental values, and crop diversity than those who do not sell seeds. Should these findings be confirmed in future studies, potential exists for policy initiatives encouraging market behavior and its governance to express a range of values beyond instrumental ones exclusively. This paper concludes by arguing that all economic exchange is likely embedded with both relational and instrumental values, meaning that policies and programs that activate a range of values will most likely maximize the impacts of the myriad initiatives pursuing sustainable agriculture. (shrink)

Cities increasingly envision sustainable future food systems. The realization of such futures is often understood from a planning perspective, leaving the role of entrepreneurship out of scope. The city of Almere in the Netherlands provides a telling example. In the neighborhood Almere Oosterwold, residents must use 50% of their plot for urban agriculture. The municipality formulated an ambition that over time, 10% off all food consumed in Almere must be produced in Oosterwold. In this study, we assume the development of (...) urban agriculture in Oosterwold is an entrepreneurial process, i.e. a creative (re)organization that is ongoing and intervenes in daily life. To understand how this entrepreneurial process helps to realize sustainable food futures, this paper explores what futures for urban agriculture residents of Oosterwold prefer and deem possible and how these futures are organized in the present. We use futuring to explore possible and preferable images of the future, and to backcast those images to the present day. Our findings show residents have different perspectives of the future. Furthermore, they are capable in formulating specific actions to obtain the futures they prefer, but have trouble committing to the actions themselves. We argue this is the result of a temporal dissonance, a myopia where residents have trouble looking beyond their own situation. It shows imagined futures must fit with the lived experiences of citizens in order to be realized. We conclude that urban food futures need planning and entrepreneurship to be realized since they are complementary social processes. (shrink)

When large-scale common land is taken from villagers by investors with little compensation, their labour unneeded, villagers’ livelihoods tend to be largely destroyed. This implies a tendency to focus on what has been taken from villagers during the land-based change, which has valid and has far-reaching social relevance. But as the rise of the industrial tree plantation (ITP) sector in Guangxi shows, some villagers are capable of having their livelihoods maintained and even expanded when big investors come and acquire massive (...) amounts of land. This seems to be an anomaly at a first glance, considering what has been taken from villagers, but these unexpected and positive livelihood changes can be explained when one closely examines the dynamic of what is taken and what has been left to villagers. During this ITP boom, although large-scale collectively owned forestland is taken by investors and few work opportunities are created to incorporate those affected, villagers’ control over farmland plots and their access to off-farm work opportunities remain (including the land system and labour dynamics). This paper highlights the importance of analysing “taken-left” dynamics to more fully capture diverse livelihood changes. (shrink)

Food pantries play a growing role in supporting households facing or at risk of food insecurity in the United States. They also support emergency response and recovery following disasters and extreme weather events. Although food pantries are often placed in close proximity to communities with the highest rates of poverty and risk of food insecurity, access to these facilities can be disrupted during and after extreme events. Decreased access to food pantries following disasters can be particularly problematic as the need (...) for these services is also likely to grow after such events. Despite the vast body of research on food retail access and food environments, relatively little research has utilized spatial analysis to understand food pantry access, particularly after extreme events. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we characterize changes in access to food pantries following flooding events in Harris County, Texas—a highly populated and flood prone region with high levels of food insecurity and poverty. Specifically, our study models disruptions in road networks due to flooding and assesses the impacts of these disruptions on proximity to food pantries. The results reveal that much of Harris County sees only small increases in travel distance to food pantries due to extreme flooding, but some areas may be unable to access food pantries at all. This research highlights the potential and some of the limits of private food assistance networks to support emergency response efforts. (shrink)

Research addressing the challenges emerging from the development and diffusion of digital technologies has grown rapidly in recent years. However, much of this literature tends to overlook the immersion of these technologies into our everyday lives. This everyday digitalization cannot be reduced to specific technological innovations and is obviously a crucial aspect of the social changes introduced by digital technologies. This themed issue sets out to explore the everyday dimension of digitalization, in the specific context of agri-food systems. We propose (...) a collection of papers that contribute to opening new approaches to digitalization in food and agriculture, by concentrating the attention on the mundane and ordinary aspects of digitalization and exploring their potential contributions to profound transformations in agri-food systems. The various forms of everyday digitalization that are presented in this symposium offer two particular ways of critically engaging with the digitalization of agriculture and food. Firstly, our everyday digitalization looks beyond examining the impacts of digitalization and positioning digital technologies in opposition to farmers, consumers, government, or other actors. Secondly, we shed light on the politics of uncertainty, which enables us to make anticipatory actions and see things beyond success and failure. What we observe is how these imaginaries participate in the co-production of digital realities through their encounter with the complexity of everyday life. Therefore, it remains essential to engage critically with both the imaginary and the everyday dimensions of digitalization in their multiplicity. (shrink)

Rural Australia has been experiencing dramatic agricultural restructuring. A major contributor to this in some areas is peri-urban and rural residential developments, and amenity/lifestyle developments, including those associated with the inflow of urban middle-class groups into rural areas. These processes are intertwined with neoliberal trends in agri-food governance, and have complex effects on farming. However, there is a lack of farm-level studies that explore how professional farmers have been interacting and co-existing with urban/suburban development while also undertaking agricultural intensification and (...) innovation. This study aims to examine how residential and amenity/lifestyle developments have unfolded in the Illawarra region, New South Wales, and come to influence and interact with local dairy farmers who are also managing the consequences of industry restructuring particularly from 2000. Based on semi-structured interviews, this study shows that with their proximity to Sydney, Illawarra dairy farms are influenced by deregulated planning systems, large-scale residential development, amenity driven demand for rural land, and the amenity/lifestyle economy. These processes bring farmers commercial opportunities and drive farmers to form new social and economic relationships with land buyers and investors. However, it has been increasingly difficult for farmers to acquire land for farming locally. They are also subjected to the expectations and demands of new landholders, including in relation to farm externalities and animal welfare. Farmers have to transform their production systems to fit into this context. The above factors together generate a form of multifunctional rural space. (shrink)

Communities, scientists, policy-makers and industries are requiring farmers to address environmental and wellbeing challenges in their on-farm management, transitioning away from a productivity dominated focus towards a multi-faceted system focus that includes environmental and social values. This paper analyses how Miraka Ltd., an Aotearoa-New Zealand indigenous owned and operated milk company, has taken on the role of institutional entrepreneur to enable and support change towards a multi-faceted system amongst its supply farmers. Observations and interviews were carried out to: (i) identify (...) farmers’ changes in practices, beliefs and values over the last ten years; and (ii) identify how Miraka functions as an indigenous entrepreneur in the agricultural sector. Findings show that interviewees were initially guided by business and family-oriented values, beliefs and practices, but in response to the institutional entrepreneurship by Miraka, approximately half of the interviewees changed these values, beliefs and practices, by internalising people and environmental values. The main strategies employed by Miraka were mobilisation of material resources such as incentives and awards, creation of a rationale addressing environmental and social concerns in the dairy sector, and proactive connection with new actors. The research shows an indigenous owned small-medium enterprise can make changes in values, beliefs and practices amongst its supply farmers, but requires a stronger shared base of values to contribute to a wider economic change. The discussion connects these findings to wider literature on diverse economies and indigenous entrepreneurship to identify to what extent an indigenous small-medium enterprise can contribute to a system change. (shrink)

This paper explores how consumers’ ethical food consumption practices, mediated by mobile phone applications (apps), are transformed into digital data. Based on a review of studies on the digitalization of ethical consumption practices and food apps, we find that previous research, while valuable, fails to acknowledge and critically examine the digital labor required to perform digitalized ethical food consumption. In this paper, we call for research on how digital labor underlies the digitalization of ethical food consumption and develop a conceptual (...) framework that supports this research agenda. Our proposed conceptual framework builds on three interconnected analytical concepts—datafication, affordances and digital labor—that enable the study of digital labor as an infrastructural element of digitalized food consumption. We illustrate our conceptual framework through our previous research concerning Buycott, a US-based mobile app whose stated aim is to facilitate consumers’ ethical purchasing decisions. Using the walkthrough method, we consider how the Buycott app engages user-generated data and what implications this holds for consumers. The app’s infrastructure, we suggest, connects ethical consumption and digital labor. A richer understanding of the digital food economy, we propose, enables social scientists not only to elucidate how consumers engage in digital labor, but also to contribute to the development of new data governance structures in the digital food economy. We therefore call for social scientists interested in food, consumption and the digital economy to contribute to a new research agenda for studying everyday food digitalization by empirically examining how ethical consumption apps implicate ethical consumers’ work. (shrink)

The global dairy industry is undergoing a period of expansion and consolidation, alongside heightened critique and competition from non-dairy alternatives. This review identifies four key megatrends within the global dairy sector, focusing in on the socioecological challenges associated with each. The megatrends were identified through a literature review of recent publications within the dairy science and social science fields, as well as a review of grey literature from intergovernmental and institutional reports. Key findings include geographical range shifts in production and (...) consumption of dairy milk from the Global North to the Global South; intensification of production agendas that strive for mechanisation, standardisation, and corporatisation of the sector; increasing awareness of the ecological impacts of intensive dairying; and finally, disruptions to the sector driven by plant-based milks and, potentially, synthetic milks. We identify under-researched socioecological challenges associated with each of these trends. Although dairy milk may be homogenous in its final form, the sector remains heterogenous in its impacts across spaces, places, and scales, as increasingly intensive dairying systems fundamentally reshape human–cattle relations. The combined impacts of these trends bring into question the mythologies of milk and the assumed desirability of ever-expanding dairy industries. Our review finds that the future of dairy is not clear nor uncontroversial and that more attention needs to be directed to maximising and broadening the social benefits of the dairy and dairy alternatives, minimising the human and non-human costs, and limiting contributions to global climate change. (shrink)

This essay describes some of the work leading up to the first issue of the Journal as a way to understand why it took the form it did and why its guiding concepts are still relevant. Those concepts-identifying philosophical assumptions, interdisciplinary research, and systems thinking are probably more relevant than they were four decades ago, given how complex agricultural and food issues have become.

The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the journal _Agriculture and Human Values_ provided a crucial intellectual space for the early transdisciplinary critique of the industrial agrifood system. This paper describes that process and presents the concept of “The Doctors of Agrifood Studies” as a metaphor for the key role critical agrifood social scientists played in documenting the unsustainability of conventional agriculture and working to create an alternative, ethical, sustainable agrifood system. After the introduction, the paper details the “Critical (...) Turn” in agrifood studies, followed by a reconsideration of my “Four Questions” framework, focusing on the current tension between the food security and food sovereignty discourses and movements. (shrink)

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recently declared transhumance pastoralism as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The notion of heritage seeks to recognize the culture behind the seasonal grazing movements along herding routes, between distant and dissimilar ecosystems. The pastoral families move with their herds from pasturelands used during the winter (winter-lands) to areas pastured during the summer (summer-lands). Whereas this is a key step towards the recognition of the cultural dimension associated to this ancient practice, a (...) relevant feature of transhumance pastoralism is its strong linkage with environmental dynamics. This activity developed in a spatiotemporal and co-evolutionary trajectory, which gave rise to a pastoral territory. A territory is the union or linkage of a meaning with a specific place, that is, the space that is appropriated and valued, both symbolically and instrumentally, by human groups. Hence, the pastoral territory represents the socio-ecological system that integrates a pastoral-based community with the natural environment that it inhabits. We propose a co-evolutionary approach to analyzing some key attributes of transhumant pastoralism, which modulate the socio-ecological interdependence. Based on a study case from Northwest Patagonia, Argentina, we identified and characterized seven attributes: (I) mobility, (II) connectivity, (III) temporal synchrony, (IV) local interdependence, (V) local ecological knowledge, (VI) adaptive capacity legacy, and (VII) mixture of land tenure. We discuss these features as examples that represent keystone socio-ecological attributes for the recognition of transhumant pastoral territories as a biocultural heritage. (shrink)

Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, (...) we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America’s most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census. (shrink)

Since its origins as an academic newsletter, _Agriculture and Human Values_ has evolved to be one of the leading journals publishing critical scholarship of the food and agricultural system. This essay illustrates and comments on the evolution of the scale and scope of research published in the journal over the years.

Before Euro-American settlement, many Native American nations intercropped maize (_Zea mays_), beans (_Phaseolus vulgaris_), and squash (_Cucurbita pepo_) in what is colloquially called the “Three Sisters.” Here we review the historic importance and consequences of rejuvenation of Three Sisters intercropping (3SI), outline a framework to engage Native growers in community science with positive feedbacks to university research, and present preliminary findings from ethnography and a randomized, replicated 3SI experiment. We developed mutually beneficial collaborative research agendas with four Midwestern US Native (...) American nations. Ethnographic data highlighted a culturally based respect for 3SI as living beings, the importance it holds for all cultural facets of these Native nations, and the critical impact the practice has on environmental sustainability. One concern expressed by Native growers during ethnographic research was improving soil health—part of the rationale for establishing the 3SI agronomic experiment. To address this, we collaboratively designed a 3SI experiment. After 1 year, 3SI increased short-term soil respiration by 24%, decreased salt-extractable nitrate by 54%, had no effect on soil microbial biomass (but increased its carbon-to-nitrogen ratio by 32%) compared to the average of monoculture crops. The overarching purpose of this collaborative project is to develop a deeper understanding of 3SI, its cultural importance to Native communities, and how reinvigorating the practice—and intercropping in general—can make agroecosystems more sustainable for people and the environment. (shrink)

Alternative food networks (AFN) are argued to provide platforms to re-socialize and re-spacealize food, establish and contribute to democratic participation in local food chains, and foster producer–consumer relations and trust. As one of the most recent examples of AFN, Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) have gained notable traction in attempting to redefine consumer-producer relations in the organic value chain. The participation of stakeholders, such as consumers, has been a key element theoretically differentiating PGS from other organic verification systems. While research on (...) farmer participation in PGS is attracting interest, consumer participation is still widely overlooked. Using a mixed methods approach, this paper describes five PGS markets in Mexico, Chile and Bolivia. A survey was conducted with consumers in the PGS markets to explore their awareness of the PGS, how consumers participate in the PGS, and their level of trust in the respective PGS and its certified products. Results showed a low level of awareness of PGS among market consumers, few participation possibilities, and minimal consumer participation overall. Nevertheless, trust in organic quality was generally high. Consumers primarily relied on the direct relationship with producers and the PGS market itself as sources of trust. These results provide novel insight into PGS consumer-market interactions, and contribute to discussions concerning social embeddedness, awareness and participation within AFN. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted food and educational systems, laying bare institutional inadequacies and structural inequalities. While there has been ample discussion on impacts to the food system and higher education institutions separately, there has been little written through the perspective of people who navigate both. Farmers, researchers, graduate students, chefs, and many stakeholders contribute to community engaged scholarship (CES) in food systems, facing novel obstacles and opportunities with the spread of the pandemic. In this article, I utilize institutional ethnography (...) to center the experiences of the people who participated in or led CES projects during the spring and summer of 2020. The goal of this study is to understand how discourse and texts in the academic institution constrain the reality of CES partnerships and identify areas for change. My findings show that tenure and promotion guidelines and funding opportunities constrain CES partnerships, reducing opportunities for relationship building and discouraging innovative models of participation. Quantified evaluation metrics on grant rubrics and tenure and promotion guidelines privilege individual academic researchers growing large programs, writing lucrative grants for the university, and publishing profusely. However, community-led and decentralized projects were able to adapt to community priorities and sustain research projects during the pandemic. COVID-19 created obstacles to community engagement and allowed for creative approaches to community participation. By restructuring academic evaluation and funding processes to support problem-solving models of CES led by community partners, CES projects can support both academic and community priorities in times of disruption and relative stability. (shrink)

The concept of inclusive innovation has become widely embraced in the agricultural domain and promises to overcome traditional innovation paradigms by emphasizing more balanced, sustainable, and just human-environmental relations. Indigenous and local knowledge play an increasingly important role in debates about inclusive innovation, highlighting the diversity of relevant actors and marginalized perspectives. At the same time, the positioning of Indigenous and local knowledge in innovation processes remains ambiguous and contested. This article addresses this positioning in the context of inclusive agricultural (...) innovations by reviewing 65 publications through iterative inductive coding. The qualitative review generates a conceptual framework that distinguishes five different modes relating innovation processes to Indigenous and local knowledge. These modes differ in locating innovations in endogenous, exogenous, or hybrid knowledge production. Furthermore, they also differ in their conceptualizations of Indigenous and local knowledge as dynamic or static. The resulting matrix provides resources for navigating the complex epistemic and political relations between knowledge systems in the agricultural domain. (shrink)

Domestic activities, involving productive and reproductive spheres, are mainly performed by women, requiring a great amount of knowledge and skills that are poorly represented in the literature and often undervalued in the society. Women’s role in the food system was investigated in Lacanjá Chansayab, Mexico, a village inhabited by ~ 400 Lacandon Maya people. This research included participant observation for three months in the community and semi-structured interviews with 10 cis-women and 5 cis-men documenting their recipes, the relationships that are (...) developed along their work in the food systems and actions for the restoration of traditional food. Women’s roles in food systems are central; they have an intricate knowledge of their environment and have principal roles in producing, obtaining, and transforming biodiversity into diverse meals within the kitchenspace. But they do more than producing, collecting, and mixing of ingredients. Their role in the food systems creates different types of relationships; the kitchenspace is a source of empowerment, traditional food is crucial for maintaining biocultural memory, and for establishing relationships with other-than-human beings. However, serving traditional foods is also a potential source for discrimination against their families even from members of their own community. It was recognized by participants that traditional food system is a medium for biocultural restoration in their community. Dignifying women’s work, views, techniques, and knowledge in traditional food systems is critical for food sovereignty, social justice, and biocultural restoration. (shrink)

This article reflects on how Agriculture and Human Values has approached women, gender, and agriculture over the years based on a content analysis of the journal. Overall, the journal has a long history of dealing with these issues with increasing interest over time. The predominant research themes in this area are women on farms; gender, agriculture, and environment; and gender, agriculture, and intersectionalities. Feminist political ecology constituted the major theoretical orientation of this scholarship. Two themes in gender scholarship that received (...) scant attention were masculinities and sexualities. Although many articles focused on women and gender over the years, little evidence exists that the findings from this research penetrated the main issues in the journal. Studies in which gender is not the central focus, such as those related to sustainability, work, and supply chains, would benefit from attention to feminist work in these areas. (shrink)

Advocates for re-localizing food systems often encourage consumers to support local farmers and strengthen local food economies. Yet, local food systems hinge not only on consumers’ willingness to buy local food but also on whether farmers have the social support networks to address diverse challenges during food production and distribution. This study characterizes the challenges and support systems of farmers selling to local markets in Québec, Canada, across multiple growing seasons using a mixed-methods research design. We sent an online questionnaire (...) to 1046 farmers and conducted follow-up interviews with 15 of the 133 respondents. Our findings show that farmers relied on an average of four support actor groups, particularly employees, customers, and other farmers. Actors played distinct roles in terms of the importance, frequency, and formality of interactions, providing immediate and long-term support through formal and informal relationships across multiple spatial scales (farm, local community, and regional/international). Our thematic analysis showed that support actors helped farmers in four key domains: (1) Knowledge sharing and emotional support; (2) Labour and workforce; (3) Material and financial aid; and (4) Consumer education and business promotion. Farmer associations provided resources to tackle various challenges, acting as bridges across multiple support actor groups. Yet, our results suggest that political desires to encourage local food systems are in some cases poorly matched with resources to address specific types of challenges farmers face. Specifically, overlooking the role of diverse social support actors in helping farmers build food production and distribution capacity could undermine efforts to foster localization. (shrink)

A growing body of literature argues that achieving radical change in the agri-food system requires a radical renegotiation of our relationship with the environment alongside a change in our thinking and approach to transformational food politics. This paper argues that relational approaches such as a more-than-human ethic of care (MTH EoC) can offer a different and constructive perspective to analyse agri-food system transformation because it emphasises social structures and relationships as the basis of environmental change. A MTH EoC has not (...) yet been applied to regenerative agriculture, yet other literature on regenerative agriculture suggests that care may be present in these spaces and calls for the need for social science analysis of the regenerative movement. This paper uses a MTH EoC lens to reveal a diverse array of ways in which power is and can be deployed for change in the regenerative agriculture movement in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Globally, regenerative agriculture tends to be analysed through positivist, scientific approaches that focus on biophysical markers of ecological improvement. Yet, a relational approach reveals how engagement in regenerative agriculture is creating significant shifts in mindset towards more holistic and relational understandings of biological and social ecosystems. A regenerative mindset framework is suggested as a method of understanding the connection between a regenerative form of thinking, being and doing for farmers. Interviews suggested that this shift in farmers’ socio-ecological relations is crucial to the transformational potential of regenerative agriculture. This paper argues that relational analyses such as the MTH EoC approach used to analyse regenerative agriculture in this research, refresh the way we analyse agri-food system change. They also are critical to guiding and supporting on-the-ground socio-ecological shifts that are necessary to see agricultural transformation. (shrink)

In the 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) graded the mortgage security of urban US neighborhoods. In doing so, the HOLC engaged in the practice, imbued with racism and xenophobia, of “redlining” neighborhoods deemed “hazardous” for lenders. Redlining has caused persistent social, political and economic problems for communities of color. Linkages between redlining and contemporary food access remain unexamined, even though food access is essential to well-being. To investigate this, we used a census tract-level measure of low-income and low (...) grocery store food access from the US Department of Agriculture Food Access Research Atlas, redlining data from Mapping Inequality Project, and demographic data from the American Community Survey. We employed generalized estimating equations with robust covariance estimates to analyze data pertaining to 10,459 census tracts in 202 US cities. Tracts that the HOLC graded as “C” (“decline in desirability”) and “D” (“hazardous”) had reduced contemporary food access compared to those graded “A” (“best”). Increases in contemporary census tract proportions of Black, Hispanic, or other racial/ethnic minority residents, as well as disabled residents, were associated with reduced food access. Increases in contemporary proportions of residents age 75 years and older or those without a car were associated with better food access. Tracts that underwent housing redevelopment since being graded had better food access, while those undergoing gentrification had reduced food access. Results suggest that issues of redlining, housing discrimination, racism, ableism, displacement, and food inaccessibility are deeply intertwined. (shrink)

Drawing upon ethnographic research on human living and producing with fungi, and Haraway’s theorization of sympoiesis and the model ecosystems of mycorrhizae developed in current mycological research, we offer a concept of _sympoietic growth_. Sympoiesis is a concept that suggests a way of thinking about growth as a more-than-human process and provides an alternative political imaginary both to current forms of economic growth and to the idea of “degrowth.” We explore human-fungi co-operation in forests, an urban park, and a shopping (...) mall, on a miso production farm, and in a Catholic parish to provide insights into the logic and relationships involved in sympoietic growth in the field of agriculture and food production. We argue that this form of food provision has a sustainable, (re)generative potential not only in ecological and social but also economic terms. In conclusion, we highlight three patterns of sympoietic growth: the absence of any urge to “take (back) control” over the multispecies dynamic on the part of the humans; a non-instrumental passion for more-than-human life; and a combination of intellectual and manual labor as a form of attachment to the more-than-human world. (shrink)

Richard P. Haynes, founding editor of _Agriculture and Human Values_, was an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florida. His personal interests in the environmental dimensions of agriculture led him to found the journal in the 1980s with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Later in life, he published on ethical treatment of lab and farm animals. Haynes understood _Agriculture and Human Values_ as a broadly multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary platform for critical studies of agriculture and (...) food systems. As he took over the editorship of _The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics_ in the 1990s, he fashioned it as a complementary outlet for more traditionally philosophical studies of environmental and agricultural topics. (shrink)