“The Only Thing That Isn't Sustainable . . . Is the Farmer”: Social Sustainability and the Politics of Class among Pacific Northwest Farmers Engaged in Sustainable Farming

Using interviews and participant observation at Pacific Northwest sustainable farming operations, this article analyzes the complex ways that class privileges and labor practices impact the social sustainability of sustainable agriculture. While the farmers in this study were highly aware of and reflexive about the class politics of sustainable agriculture, they also participated in a classed system that restricts access to sustainable farming as an occupation even as it exploits the labor of the farmer in order to regulate prices. In particular, the farmers in the study benefited from educational privileges and often‐lucrative off‐farm income, they expressed a desire to make their goods more accessible and affordable even as they marketed their foods to their upper‐middle‐class consumers, and they used their own idealism as justification to exploit their own difficult labor on the farm. Using a qualitative, ethnographic approach, this research explores the negotiations between farmers' social ideals and the actual practice of sustainable agriculture in a capitalist system.     

Farm business and the development of alternative farm enterprises: An empirical analysis in Greece

The objective of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework and an empirical evidence of farm business change in relation to the adoption and development of alternative farm enterprises (AFE). The present paper adopts a business typology and looks at the various paths of development. A range of factors condition which path of farm business development will be selected. Some factors relate to the farms' physical characteristics, its business and its human capital. A sample of 200 farmers in the prefecture of Etolia-Akarnania in Greece is analysed in order to identify the factors influencing the choice of farm business development. Three main paths of farm business development are identified in this lagging region of Greece. Conventional (mainstream) farming, alternative farm enterprise development and conventional farming with off-farm employment. Appropriate statistical modelling revealed that both economic and social factors exert an independent effect on the choice of farm business development. Proposals concerning the formulation of future rural policy in the lagging regions of Greece are drawn, based on the results derived from the analysis of the present sample.     

Images of Success: How Illinois Farmers Define the Successful Farmer1

Abstract Farmers' views of farming success help frame their responses to information about farming, including alternative agriculture. A Q-analysis of 68 commercial farmers' subjective images of the successful farmer and the relative importance they accord different personal values and characteristics revealed four “model” images of the successful farmer. The Steward recognizes a moral responsibility to sustain land resources; the Manager succeeds largely by virtue of analytical skill; the Conservative's main goal is long-term preservation of the farm business; and the Agrarian values the rural life style and community participation. Farmers holding the Steward image tended to be older and to farm fewer acres; those with the Manager image included a large proportion of less experienced farmers. Approximately 40 percent of the farmers' views of success did not fit any of the four “model” images. Analysis of the findings suggests that images of success may be associated with life stage or generational differences in farming goals and values.     

Becoming a New Farmer: Agrarianism and the Contradictions of Diverse Economies*

A resurgence of agrarianism has motivated new farmers to enter farming, not for profit, but for lifestyle and socio‐ecological values which are frequently associated with diverse economies. Proponents of diverse economies argue for an ontological reframing that accounts for non‐capitalist forms of economic exchange. However, these perspectives have not fully addressed the conditions—often structured by race and class—that facilitate participation in diverse economies. This paper is based on mixed‐methods research on the life cycle of new farmers in Hawai‘i that include participants of farmer training programs. We investigate what drives new farmers into farming, by what mechanisms they are able (or not) to establish a farm, and what limits the duration of their participation. Our analysis reveals three contradictions of diverse economies in agriculture: (1) the inadvertent undervaluation of farmwork that undermines broader efforts to improve the welfare of farm labor; (2) the tension between the value of scaling up and the vulnerability of cooptation; and (3) the ways in which the duration of new farmers' engagement is structured by their ability to mobilize unpaid labor and external resources. These contradictions challenge long‐term and inclusive participation in diverse economies in ways that constrain their emancipatory potential.     

Socio-economic constraints and environmentally friendly farming in the Southwest of England

This paper details the findings of research which examined the socioeconomic and attitudinal circumstances of a sample of farms participating in a range of agro-environment schemes and initiatives in Southwest England. Evidence from very diverse circumstances revealed a common fundamental trend, namely that the attitudinal dispositions of farmers were more important than their ‘structural’ constraints or opportunities in influencing farm decision-making. The attitudes of farmers held sway in the attitude-structure relationship, specific family, and thus financial circumstances were rarely associated with predictable farming or conservation activities. These findings support the notion that in order to better understand and influence farm decision-making, we need to know more about how farmers' attitudes and values are constructed. Agro-environment policies could employ mechanisms for targeting and enhancing farmers' personal attitudes and ambitions in relation to the environmental impact of their activities.     

“Tractorettes” or Partners? Farmers' Views on Women in Kansas Farming Households

In the United States, for various reasons, fewer farm families rely solely on their farming operations for their livelihoods. As the structure of agriculture changes and farm families adjust their livelihood strategies, do the discourses around gender relations in households also change? This article analyzes the portrayal of women's roles in farming households by drawing on interviews with Kansas field crop farmers, primarily regarding their land‐use decisions, but also inquiring about their farms and communities. The article addresses the following question: How do farmers' discourses compare to Brandth's (2002a) categorizations of three dominant discourses in the literature on gender in European family farming—the discourse of the family farm, the discourse of masculinization, and the discourse of detraditionalization and diversity? While Brandth finds the discourse of the family farm prevalent in the literature, overall, the discourse apparent from 30 farmer interviews is more characteristic of detraditionalization and diversity. Although men are primarily the principal operators in farming, overall, women were not portrayed simply as helpers. Rather, their roles are depicted as diverse and important to farm operations.     

Soil as Social‐Ecological Feedback: Examining the “Ethic” of Soil Stewardship among Corn Belt Farmers

In this article we examine in‐depth interviews with farmers (n = 159) from nine Corn Belt states. Using a grounded theory approach, we identified a “soil stewardship ethic,” which exemplifies how farmers are talking about building the long‐term sustainability of their farm operation in light of more variable and extreme weather events. Findings suggest that farmers' shifting relationship with their soil resources may act as a kind of social‐ecological feedback that enables farmers to implement adaptive strategies (e.g., no‐till farming, cover crops) that build resilience in the face of increasingly variable and extreme weather, in contrast to emphasizing short‐term adjustments to production that may lead to greater vulnerability over time. The development of a soil stewardship ethic may help farmers to resolve the problem of an apparent trade‐off between short‐term productivist goals and long‐term conservation goals and in doing so may point toward an emergent aspect of a conservationist identity. Focusing on the message of managing soil health to mitigate weather‐related risks and preserving soil resources for future generations may provide a pragmatic solution for helping farmers to reorient farm production practices, which would have soil building and soil saving at their center.     

Exploring the Feasibility of Farmers' Rights

In many developing countries, there is concern that a conventional system of plant breeders' rights provides no rewards to farmers for their role in the conservation and enhancement of agro‐biodiversity. To redress this imbalance, developing countries are incorporating farmers' rights provisions in their plant variety protection legislation. This article examines the feasibility of farmers' rights provisions based on intellectual property rights. It argues that the farmers' rights provisions crafted by some developing countries will involve enormous operational difficulties, while IPR‐based farmers' rights are unlikely to provide significant economic returns to farmers or farming communities. At the same time, farmers' rights provisions, as currently conceived, are likely significantly to dilute the incentives for innovation provided to institutional plant breeders.     

Squaring Farm Security and Food Security in Two Types of Alternative Food Institutions*

Abstract Even though both farmers' markets and community supported agriculture were first developed to provide markets for farmers, recently the goals of food security have been attached to these market‐based alternative food institutions, based on their potential to be 'win‐win” economic solutions for both small‐scale farmers and low‐income consumers. This article reports on survey and interview research conducted in California during 2004–2005 designed to examine to what extent CSAs and farmers' markets are addressing food security in both concept and practice. Findings show that managers of these institutions generally support the idea of improving the affordability of the food they provide, and most have made an effort to do so, although these efforts vary with institutional capacity. Still, some hedged their interest in supporting food security goals with countervailing concerns such as the need to support farmers first. It is ironic, then, that the way that private CSAs and farmers' markets achieve some elements of food security is by virtue of the support of public food assistance programs.     

The Persistence of the Black Farmer: The Contemporary Relevance of the Lenin-Chayanov Debate1

Abstract Previous empirical studies of black farmers have identified socioeconomic and demographic variables as important to their success and survival. The theories of Lenin and Chayanov also highlight the role of demographic and socioeconomic factors in the differentiation of the peasantry. Panel data from a survey of black small-scale farm operators in the North Carolina Piedmont are used to test hypotheses based upon the Lenin-Chayanov debate. A multivariate analysis shows that black farmers who survived owned tobacco quota, had more on-farm household labor, had smaller households, and had higher gross farm incomes than those who left agriculture. These results point to the need to synthesize Lenin's macro-level focus on class formation and Chayanov's micro-level focus on enterprise formation in order to understand smallholder persistence. Over the five-year period studied, approximately 50 percent of the original respondents were no longer actively operating farms indicating that the future of the black smallholder remains precarious.     

Off‐farm Work among Rural Households: A Case Study in the Brazilian Amazon

This article analyzes off‐farm work among subsistence‐level farmers in the Santarém region of the Brazilian Amazon. We build on the literature on rural livelihoods in the Global South by exploring how the opportunity to work off the farm is embedded in social relationships. We additionally differentiate our analysis by type of off‐farm work, and examine how other characteristics such as human capital, the available labor supply, and access to infrastructure vary by work outcome. In general, the factors that contribute to more secure, relatively higher‐paying work differ from those important in understanding patterns of lower‐paying, daily wage work. We find that on‐farm social capital, measured as the presence of a co‐resident on the property who works off the farm, increases an individual's probability of working off the farm, but has a stronger effect for lower‐wage work. We also find that the farm owner's relationship to households on the farm property plays a significant role in predicting patterns of off‐farm work. These findings suggest that social capital plays an important role in providing access to employment and therefore to cash income, but that farm‐level social capital does not necessarily provide pathways to stable or high‐paying jobs outside agriculture.     

‘My Grandfather Would Roll Over in His Grave’: Family Farming and Tree Plantations on Farmland*

Abstract In this paper we hypothesize that farmers with a stronger valuation of family farming will be more resistant to converting farmland to tree plantations. Our survey data analysis from 106 farmers in northern Alberta reveals that general opposition to trees on farmland is the strongest predictor of farmers' resistance to the establishment of poplar tree plantations on privately‐owned land. Valuation of family farming is the strongest determinant of resistance to trees on farmland. Among the potential intervening variables influencing support for tree plantations, including county, age, gender, number of children, and percent of income from farming, number of children and percent of income from farming had significant direct effects on valuation of family farming. This study suggests that economic incentives alone are unlikely to influence farmers' willingness to convert their land to non‐traditional uses, and that intergenerational transfer of land, and its relationship to valuation of family farming, deserves further attention in rural sociological scholarship.     

Farm Wives' Labor Force Participation and Earnings

Abstract The decisions of farm wives to work off the farm and the earnings they make in that off-farm employment should be considered simultaneously. Previous studies of wives' off-farm earnings have included only employed wives in their analyses of the factors affecting earnings, which results in biased estimates. This study tests, via Tobit analysis, a model which includes all farm wives and examines the effects of wives' human capital, farm and family constraints, and labor market characteristics on both their off-farm employment decisions and their earnings. Wives' off-farm earnings are found to be related to wives' education, labor market experience, presence of children, other family income, farm size, and debt/income ratio. Changes in these factors have a greater influence on the labor market participation decisions of farm wives than on the variation in their earnings, once employed.     

Manipulated Masculinities: Agribusiness,Deskilling, and the Rise of the Businessman‐Farmer in the United States

In this study we examine how the agribusiness industry works to manipulate conventional farming masculinities in the United States to facilitate agricultural deskilling, a process that has serious implications for the future of sustainable agriculture uptake among American farmers. Through analyzing one year's worth of advertisements in three conventional farming magazines and through conducting participant observation and interviews at the second largest indoor farming show in the United States, we examine the ways in which agribusiness companies, such as chemical, seed, and farm machinery manufacturers, represent farmers and farming masculinities in their advertisements and marketing materials. We observe a shift occurring among certain agribusiness sectors away from representations of a rugged, strong, solitary farmer, who dominates nature through his manual labor, to depictions of a “businessman” farmer, who farms in collaboration with certain qualified partners (i.e., company representatives). We ultimately argue that these new representations of farming masculinity aim to more deeply entrench conventional farmers' dependence on chemical inputs and agribusiness products by promoting a process of deskilling, effectively alienating the farmer from the land.     

After Farming: Emotional Health Trajectories of Farm,Nonfarm, and Displaced Farm Couples*

Abstract This study links macro social change to emotional health through continuity and change in farming. Families were divided into four groups, depending on whether they were full‐time farmers, part‐time farmers, displaced farm families who had left farming during the 1980s, or nonfarm families. Using four waves of panel data, we estimated initial levels and subsequent changes in per capita family income, stressful life events, and depressive symptoms of wives and husbands. Between 1989 and 1992, full‐time farm families' incomes decreased dramatically, while displaced farm families started 1989 with the lowest average per capita family income but saw the largest average increases in subsequent years. Farm status and changes in income predicted changes in stressful life events; changes in stressful life events, in turn, predicted changes in wives' and husbands' reports of depressive symptoms.     

Innovating Conservation Agriculture: The Case of No‐Till Cropping

Abstract The extensive sociological studies of conservation agriculture have provided considerable understanding of farmers' use of conservation practices, but attempts to develop predictive models have failed. Reviews of research findings question the utility of the conceptual and methodological perspectives of prior research. The argument advanced here is that actor‐network theory is useful in analyzing conservation agriculture as a radically different agriculture: a new paradigm with new beliefs about soils, plants, the environment, and farmers themselves as well as new crop production systems. The new indigenous cultures of conservation tillage and cropping are innovative products of social networks that join farmland, farmers, farm advisors, and farm supply representatives in new ways. The spread of conservation agriculture has occurred as the result both of new agricultural science of conservation tillage and cropping and the spread of these new networks and their innovative cropping systems.     

Why is diversification an attractive farm adjustment strategy? Insights from Texas farmers and ranchers

State agencies have been encouraging the development of different enterprises to diversify farm incomes in an effort to retain farmers in business, attract new entrants to agriculture and promote regional development. Entrepreneurship and farming are known to be driven by a complex set of goals including those which are economic and intrinsic in nature. However, little information is available regarding the set of goals that drive agriculture entrepreneurship, preventing state agencies to adequately target potential diversifiers. This paper provides a better understanding of the range of goals, both financial and nonfinancial, that are important in farmers' decisions to diversify their operations. The generation of additional income, the continuance of farming and ranching, and the enhancement of quality of life are among the most important diversification goals in Texas. A principal component factor analysis performed on the importance ratings of diversification goals resulted in six dimensions: (F1) Reduce Uncertainty and Risk; (F2) Grow and Service Markets; (F3) Enhanced Financial Condition; (F4) Individual Aspirations and Pursuits; (F5) Revenues Enhancement; and (F6) Family Connections. The study also examined the relationship between various entrepreneur and farm characteristics and the goal pursuit dimensions. Operator's age, number of generations the farm had been in the family, household income, number of farm employees, and distance to an urbanized area influence types of goals pursued through diversification.     

The Differing Values of Multigeneration and First‐Generation Farmers: Their Influence on the Structure of Agriculture at the Rural‐Urban Interface

Recognizing the inherent pressures on farm families and farmland, USDA has been developing policies and programs that simultaneously attempt to retain existing farm families on the landscape, recruit new farmers, and create lasting economic opportunities rooted in agriculture. In this article we argue that to date there has been an overemphasis on economic and structural approaches and a systematic discounting of the way individual farmer and farm household motivations can differ as they relate to the farm household life cycle, enterprise growth, adaptation, and reproduction. We use a sociological lens to qualitatively and quantitatively examine the social differences between multigeneration and first‐generation farmers at the rural‐urban interface by exploring how economic and noneconomic values influence succession plans and enterprise structure. We find that the answers to these questions are complex, layered, and not static, as farm households cycle through the life course. We describe how the differences between young and old multigeneration and first‐generation farmers can influence the structure of agriculture at the rural‐urban interface, and conclude with some practical policy recommendations.     

Ethnicity and Farm Entry Behavior

Abstract The persistence of ethnic traits in both the visible agricultural landscape and the practices of established farmers in the United States has been well documented but not unchallenged. One limitation of most studies is that they have focused on relatively special populations of farmers who could be expected to have unusually strong ethnic identity. It has not been clear that ethnic background could serve as a useful variable in explaining variation in farmers' behavior in the general farm population. The present study examines the role of ethnicity in a large random sample of recent entrants into dairy farming in Wisconsin. In particular, we provide some confirmation that the farm operator's ethnic identity can be linked to differences in entry paths, current farm characteristics, and cultural beliefs in our sample. We also suggest that ethnicity plays a stronger role in affecting the resources and opportunities available to young farmers than the strategic decisions made to employ these assets.     

Are Conventional Farmers Conventional? Analysis of the Environmental Orientations of Conventional New Zealand Farmers*

Abstract Within the political economy of agriculture and agrofood literatures there are examples of approaches that reject simple dichotomies between alternatives and the mainstream. In line with such approaches, we challenge the assumption that alternative agriculture, and its attendant improved environmental practices, alternative management styles, less intensive approaches, and better approaches to animal and ecosystem welfare, is the only source of agricultural sustainability. This article uses national farm‐survey results for New Zealand's sheep and beef, dairy, and horticulture sectors to examine conventional farmers, measure their assessments of farming practices, and assess their environmental orientation. Analysis identifies a proenvironmental cluster of farmers in each sector characterized by a higher environmental‐orientation score and distinct ratings of other farm practices queried in the survey. We interpret the results in terms of the exposure of different agricultural sectors to the effects of market‐based, audited, best‐practice schemes. The presence of shades of “greenness” among conventional farmers has important implications for environmental management and for our understanding of the various and complex pathways toward the greening of agrofood systems.