“We’re very late to the party”: motivations and challenges with improving soil health in Utah
AbstractThe criticalness of soil health to agricultural production and conservation has been well documented in certain areas of the US and among certain farmers. Yet, other agricultural lands and producers in the US remain largely understudied in regards to soil health, particularly agricultural production systems in the Intermountain West. Using results of in-depth interviews with farmers and ranchers in Utah participating in the Utah Soil Health Network On-Farm Soil Health Demonstration Project on their agricultural lands, we begin to fill these gaps in the social science research by focusing on the motivations of these...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 17, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Identifying public trust building priorities of gene editing in agriculture and food
AbstractGene editing in agriculture and food (GEAF) is a nascent development with few products and is unfamiliar among the wider US public. GEAF has garnered significant praise for its potential to solve for a variety of agronomic problems but has also evoked controversy regarding safety and ethical standards of development and application. Given the wake of other agribiotechnology debates including GMOs (genetically modified organisms), this study made use of 36 in-depth key interviews to build the first U.S. based typology of proponent and critic priorities for shaping public trust in GEAF actors and objects. Key organiz...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 17, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Thick critiques, thin solutions: news media coverage of meatpacking plants in the COVID-19 pandemic
AbstractThe 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 ofdefetishization observed? Examining a sample of 230 news articles from coverage of US meatpa...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 17, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Feed the futureland: an actor-based approach to studying food security projects
AbstractCritical 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-p urposes 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 ...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 16, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Organic as civic engagement revisited: civic codes and deliberative strategies in the debate about hydroponic certification
This article develops a different approach by taking up E. Melanie DuPuis and Sean Gillon’s invitation to “begin a conversation about the everyday forms of civic engagement” involved in the governance of the organic foods market and other alternative economies (DuPuis and Gillon in Agric Hum Values 26:43, 2009). I merge DuPuis and Gillon’s analysis of civic “modes of governance” in the organic sector with a theory of deliberative discourse developed by the cultural sociologist Jeffrey Alexander. I then apply this approach to examine a 2017 dispute about whether hydroponic growing operations were eligible for ce...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 10, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Small farmers, big tech: agrarian commerce and knowledge on Myanmar Facebook
This article draws on analysis of farming groups on Myanmar Facebook to posit social media asappropriated 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 informat...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 6, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Farmers` agonistic conflict frames regarding river restoration disputes
AbstractMissing cooperation between farmers and nature conservationists is an obstacle to conflictive social-ecological transformation processes of agro-systems in Germany. Conflict psychology research shows that agonistic conflict frames play a crucial role in the parties ’ response to and perception of conflicts. However, the role of conflict frames regarding farmers’ response to conservation conflicts in Germany, which are a recurrent expression of social-ecological transformation, is yet unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we investigate whether farmers ha ve different agonistic conflict frames and whether thes...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 6, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Small farmers, big tech: agrarian commerce and knowledge on Myanmar Facebook
This article draws on analysis of farming groups on Myanmar Facebook to posit social media asappropriated 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 informat...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 6, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Farmers` agonistic conflict frames regarding river restoration disputes
AbstractMissing cooperation between farmers and nature conservationists is an obstacle to conflictive social-ecological transformation processes of agro-systems in Germany. Conflict psychology research shows that agonistic conflict frames play a crucial role in the parties ’ response to and perception of conflicts. However, the role of conflict frames regarding farmers’ response to conservation conflicts in Germany, which are a recurrent expression of social-ecological transformation, is yet unclear. To address this knowledge gap, we investigate whether farmers ha ve different agonistic conflict frames and whether thes...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 6, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Moving towards an anti-colonial definition for regenerative agriculture
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 agr...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 4, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
‘Smallholding for Whom?’: The effect of human capital appropriation on smallholder palm farmers
This study explores how contract farming agreements between smallholder farmers of palm oil and futures traders of palm stocks impac t 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. Tem poral trends indicated that oligopolistic market conditions were strongly associated with a growing comparative advantage in palm oil, the asymmetric accumulation of land resources by transnationa...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 3, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
The adoption of conservation practices in the Corn Belt: the role of one formal farmer network, Practical Farmers of Iowa
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 ...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - May 3, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
