Certified organic agriculture in Mexico: Market connections and certification practices in large and small producers

Certification within organic agriculture exhibits flexibility with respect to practices used to demonstrate that a product meets published quality standards. This case study of Mexican certified-organic agriculture finds two forms. Indigenous smallholders of southern Mexico undertake a low-input, process-oriented organic farming in which certification is based upon extensive document review, group inspections, and assessment of on-farm capacity to produce organic inputs. More recently, northern Mexican large agribusiness producers have implemented certifications based upon laboratory testing and assessment of purchased inputs. To specify these differences, this article examines large and small producers in Mexico's organic agriculture sector based on a diagnostic census of Mexican organic agriculture in 668 production zones and field surveys in 256 production zones in which 28 indicators were analyzed. After comparing the organic cultivation and certification practices of large, agro-industrial, input-oriented private firms versus small, cooperatively organized, indigenous and peasant groups, we analyze the implications of this duality for certification frameworks. We argue (with Raynolds, L., 2004. The globalization of organic agro-food networks. World Development 32(5), 725–743; Gonzalez A.A., and Nigh, R., 2005. Smallholder participation and certification of organic farm products in Mexico. Journal of Rural Studies; DeLind, L., 2000. Transforming organic agriculture into industrial organic products: reconsidering national organic standards. Human Organization 59(2), 198–208) that the increasing bureaucratic requirements of international organic certification privilege large farmers and agribusiness-style organic cultivation and present the possibility of a new entrenchment of socio-spatial inequality in Mexico. While organic and fair trade agriculture has been touted as an income-generating production strategy for small producers of the Global South, our study suggests that Mexican organic agriculture reproduces existing social inequalities between large and small producers in conventional Mexican agriculture.     

The social practice of sustainable agriculture under audit discipline: Initial insights from the ARGOS project in New Zealand

One of the most interesting recent developments in global agri-food systems has been the rapid emergence and elaboration of market audit systems claiming environmental qualities or sustainability. In New Zealand, as a strongly export-oriented, high-value food producer, these environmental market audit systems have emerged as an important pathway for producers to potentially move towards more sustainable production. There have, however, been only sporadic and fractured attempts to study the emerging social practice of sustainable agriculture - particularly in terms of the emergence of new audit disciplines in farming. The ARGOS project in New Zealand was established in 2003 as a longitudinal matched panel study of over 100 farms and orchards using different market audit systems (e.g., organic, integrated or GLOBALG.A.P.). This article reports on the results of social research into the social practice of sustainable agriculture in farm households within the ARGOS projects between 2003 and 2009. Results drawn from multiple social research instruments deployed over six years provide an unparalleled level of empirical data on the social practice of sustainable agriculture under audit disciplines. Using 12 criteria identified in prior literature as contributing a significant social dynamic around sustainable agriculture practices in other contexts, the analysis demonstrated that 9 of these 12 dimensions did demonstrate differences in social practices emerging between (or co-constituting) organic, integrated, or conventional audit disciplines. These differences clustered into three main areas: 1) social and learning/knowledge networks and expertise, 2) key elements of farmer subjectivity - particularly in relation to subjective positioning towards the environment and nature, and 3) the role and importance of environmental dynamics within farm management practices and systems. The findings of the project provide a strong challenge to some older framings of the social practice of sustainable agriculture: particularly those that rely on paradigm-driven evaluation of social motivations, strong determinism of sustainable practice driven by coherent farmer identity, or deploying overly categorical interpretations of what it means to be ’organic’ or ’conventional’. The complex patterning of the ARGOS data can only be understood if the social practice of organic, integrated or (even more loosely) conventional production is understood as being co-produced by four dynamics: subjectivity/identity, audit disciplines, industry cultures/structure and time. This reframing of how we might research the social practice of sustainable agriculture opens up important new opportunities for understanding the emergence and impact of new audit disciplines in agriculture.     

Smallholder Preferences for Agri‐environmental Change at the Bhoj Wetland,India

Incentive‐based approaches have gained policy interest in linking change in agricultural land management with environmental conservation. This article investigates how scheme design influences smallholder farmers' decisions to switch to organic farming to reduce water pollution, drawing on a study at a Ramsar wetland site providing water for the city of Bhopal. Results from a choice experiment suggest that transitional payments are necessary to overcome farmer constraints to adopt organic farming, and that effective land certification has the potential to act as a self‐enforcing mechanism linking farmer incomes with wetland conservation benefits.     

Farm Work Satisfaction and Acceptance of Sustainability Goals by Australian Organic and Conventional Farmers1

Abstract Farmer dependence on large-scale organizations for inputs to production is an attribute of Australian agriculture and has changed the character of farm work and how farmers see the future of agriculture. We discuss how these changes are related to farmer satisfaction with their work and their commitment to an alternative or conventional agricultural paradigm. Organic and conventional farmers are compared and findings show that organic farmers experience higher levels of work satisfaction and endorse the alternative agricultural paradigm more strongly than conventional growers. Personal success in using organic methods explains differences between organic farmers in their work satisfaction and commitments to the alternative paradigm. Similarly, conventional farmers confident about the future of their farms are satisfied with their work and express some commitment to the sustainability paradigm. Organic and conventional farmers share concerns about environmental sustainability, but are thinking differently about what sustainable farming is and how it will affect the future of Australian agriculture.     

Designing Dreams or Constructing Contradictions? European Union Multifunctional Policies and the Polish Organic Farm Sector*

Analysts have heralded the principle of “multifunctionality” undergirding the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy “Second Pillar” support mechanisms as a “new . . . and strong paradigm” for agriculture ( van der Ploeg and Roep 2003 ), with the potential to re‐embed social, environmental, and ethical concerns into the structure of the agricultural system. Multifunctionality‐inspired agrienvironmental policies arguably represent an alternative to the productivist‐focused structural forces driving global industrialized agriculture. Yet few empirical studies interrogate the links between the assumed benefits of these policies and farmer experiences. This article examines the introduction of European Union multifunctional agrienvironmental policies in Poland, specifically incentives and supports for certified organic farming, and demonstrates that while favorable incentive subsidies have promoted increased entry into the organic farming sector, inattention to contextual factors has generated barriers to entry and access, creating unanticipated vulnerabilities for Poland's organic farmers and subsequent contradictions in policy implementation. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that, although specific organic certification standards have changed little since Poland's accession to the European Union, the processes associated with new EU multifunctional policies have shifted toward greater institutionalization and bureaucratization, potentially thwarting the efficacy of multifunctional incentives for organic agriculture in the Polish context.     

Labor and Production Barriers to the Reduction of Agricultural Chemical Inputs1

Abstract Advocates of sustainable agriculture consider farmer flexibility and innovativeness a key element in efforts to develop farm practices that reduce chemical inputs. In contrast to labor displacing technologies, farming with reduced chemical inputs may increase labor demands. Consequently, concerns about labor supply may affect farmer adaptability in reducing chemical inputs. This research addresses two specific questions. First, how concerned are farmers about the availability of labor needed to reduce chemical inputs? Second, do farmers view production problems as insurmountable without chemicals because of labor constraints? The majority of farmers surveyed agree that it is difficult to reduce chemical inputs because additional labor is hard to find, and their own labor inputs would have to increase. Results of OLS regression analysis show that whether the farmer hires workers affects the relationship between perceived labor and production barriers. Labor supply is less elastic for farmers who hire no labor, and they have less access to social networks that would provide them with sources of the additional workers needed if chemical inputs were reduced. The significance of these results for the development of sources of information that enhance farmer adaptability is discussed.     

Organic coasts? Regulatory challenges of certifying integrated shrimp–mangrove production systems in Vietnam

The Vietnamese government aims to expand the scale of Naturland certified organic production in integrated shrimp–mangrove farming systems across the coast of Ca Mau province by 2015. In doing so the division between public and private regulation has become blurred. We analyze the government's goal by examining the regulatory challenges of using organic certification as a means of linking farm-level management to the sustainability of coastal (mangrove) landscapes. The results show the importance of farmer perceptions of sustainable farm and landscape management, fair benefit sharing mechanisms in the certified value chain, and legitimate private sector-led auditing. We conclude that in order to overcome conflicts of interest and legitimate representation in organic certification, the social and economic conditions of production require regulatory intervention from provincial and local level government. To achieve benefits beyond the scale of the farm, the role of shrimp producers should be redefined as partners in rather than targets of regulation.     

关于深化上海农村改革的若干思考

上海深化农村改革应着力发展现代农业经营的"三类主体":家庭农场、农民合作社和农业企业;着力保障农民的"三项权利":农民的土地承包经营权、农村集体经济组织成员权利和农民宅基地用益物权;着力盘活农村的"三块土地":农村承包土地、农民宅基地和农村集体建设用地;着力完善涉农的"三项制度":农产品价格形成制度、农业支持保护制度和土地征收制度;着力提升农村公共服务的"三项水平":农村义务教育水平、农村社会保障水平和农村医疗服务水平。     

Beyond bifurcation: Examining the conventions of organic agriculture in New Zealand

The last 10 years have witnessed numerous attempts to evaluate the merits of new theoretical approaches – ranging from Actor Network Theory to ‘post-structural’ Political Economy and inhabiting a ‘post-Political Economy’ theoretical space – to the explanation of global agricultural change. This article examines Convention Theory (CT) as one such alternative approach, assessing its potential in the context of ongoing change within commercial organic agriculture in New Zealand. More specifically, CT is used to expose the insufficiency of recent ideas of conventionalisation and bifurcation, both reflecting more traditional Political Economic approaches, as explanatory concepts for the emerging condition of the New Zealand organic sector. In this paper, the concept of worlds of justification as developed in CT is utilised to address the emerging complexity of organic production. While farmers supplying a more diversified domestic market can be distinguished from those supplying export markets, an exclusive focus on such distinctions ignores the influential role of extra-economic factors on the viability of organic production systems. Thus, in addition to what are classified as market and industrial worlds in CT, the paper addresses aspects of civic, green, domestic, inspired and renown worlds. Producers' selections of organic certification organisations are used to demonstrate the interaction of these worlds in the development of the organic sector in New Zealand. The article concludes with the imperative to move ‘beyond bifurcation’ and acknowledge the greater complexity of negotiated outcomes that might be achieved from a CT perspective than from existing political economy-derived models like conventionalisation and bifurcation.     

“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.     

Measuring Adherence to Alternative vs. Conventional Agricultural Paradigms: A Proposed Scale*

Abstract Current debates and conflicts in agriculture appear to reflect the competing perspectives of two increasingly distinct camps of agricultural stakeholders: proponents of “alternative agriculture” and proponents of “conventional agriculture.” Several analysts have argued that members of these two camps hold fundamentally divergent paradigms of agriculture, and thus, literally see the world quite differently. The purpose of this paper is to describe an instrument—the Alternative-Conventional Agriculture Paradigm Scale (or ACAP Scale)—developed to measure the basic beliefs and values assumed to constitute the two competing perspectives in agriculture. Items designed to tap all of the major dimensions identified in the alternative-conventional agriculture debate were included in surveys of known groups of alternative and conventional agriculturalists, as well as in a statewide survey of farmers. The items discriminate significantly between the three samples (with the statewide farmer sample taking the intermediate position), suggesting their validity as measures of the elements of the competing agricultural paradigms. The items also exhibit a high degree of internal consistency, indicating the appropriateness of combining them into a single instrument to measure adherence to alternative versus conventional agriculture. As expected, the known groups provide more consistent responses than do the statewide sample of farmers, presumably reflecting the greater ideological coherence of social movement and interest group members. However, the alternative agriculturalists are far more consistent than are the conventional agriculturalists, and potential explanations for this finding are drawn from recent work on social movements.     

Environmental certification of forests: The evolution of environmental governance in a commodity network

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) influence social and environmental aspects of commodity production through certification schemes like organic and forest certification. As these become mainstream, however, they are often compromised by the interests of more powerful agents. Utilizing the concept of governance in global commodity networks, this article examines the mainstreaming of forest certification. By working with retailers, forest certification expanded rapidly. The retailer focus, however, limits the spread of forest certification among medium-sized, small, and community forest management operations. It also raises questions of fairness because it imposes costs on forest managers without providing compensation through higher prices. NGOs now implement programs to make Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification more accessible and more useful to forest managers, but these do not resolve the imbalance of power between the big retailers demanding certification and the small forest managers who must absorb increased costs. The dominance of big retailers in commodity networks provides an attractive route to rapidly mainstream certification schemes, but it also limits their reach and compromises their equity.     

Educational qualifications of UK farmers: A review

Better-educated farmers are known to make greater use of information, advice and training, to participate more in government schemes and to be more proactive in adjusting to change and planning for the future of the business. Such traits are in greater demand as the pace of change accelerates. Yet there is no single authoritative source of information on the educational attainment levels of UK farmers and no benchmark against which to monitor trends. This literature review attempts to integrate evidence from all available sources. The consensus emerging from a number of recent studies seems to be that at least one-third and possibly half of all UK farmers today have pursued courses of further or higher education and obtained qualifications, largely in agriculture or related subjects. About 4–6% have degrees, a similar number have HNDs and between a quarter and a third have FE qualifications from full-time or part-time study. The proportion qualified has risen steeply since the Second World War but still compares unfavourably with managers of other small businesses. Higher levels of educational attainment are associated with large farms and the arable east, with employers, female or pluriactive farmers and with farm managers. Although these relationships tend to be dismissed as ‘age effects’ or ‘size effects’, it is suggested that education may be exerting an independent influence on farmer behaviour.     

Conventionalization, civic engagement, and the sustainability of organic agriculture

It is often assumed that organic farming is synonymous with sustainable agriculture. The broad goals of sustainable agriculture include economic profitability, environmental stewardship, and community vitality. However, the “question of sustainability” (Ikerd, 2008) can be asked of any type of farming, including organic production. One way to assess sustainability is to consider farmers’ perceptions of the sustainability of their operations. I draw on data from a survey of certified organic producers in Washington State to broaden our understanding of the sustainability of organic agriculture. Specifically, I consider certified organic producers’ perceptions of the degree to which their operations contribute to broad sustainable agriculture goals. Moreover, I use multiple regression to investigate how these perceived contributions are influenced by farm conventionalization variables (e.g., organic acreage, non-organic sales, and specialization) and civic engagement variables (e.g., direct marketing, community group membership, and participation in sustainable/organic agriculture organizations) while controlling for farmer demographics and farm location. Farm conventionalization appears to have a significant negative effect on perceived contributions to environmental and social sustainability, but a significant positive effect on perceived contribution to economic sustainability. Civic engagement appears to have a significant positive effect on perceived contributions to environmental and social sustainability, but no effect on perceived contribution to economic sustainability.     

Agricultural Journalists' Assessments of Print Coverage of Agricultural News1

Abstract Critics of agricultural news claim farm media and mass media coverage of agriculture is systematically distorted, a condition that could seriously affect the agricultural information system. A national survey used agricultural journalists as expert judges to assess how well three types of print journalists cover agricultural news. Their assessments indicated that mass media reporters who do not regularly cover agricultural news tend to write agriculture stories that are superficial and stereotyped but not biased toward agricultural interests. Farm magazine writers' stories are not superficial or stereotyped, but writers are uncritical of agriculture, biased toward agroindustry, and overlook important social and environmental issues. Newspaper farm beat reporters are closer to farm magazine writers in not trivializing agriculture and closer to general newspaper reporters in avoiding close ties with industry. Both farmers and public thus receive biased and fragmented reporting that may polarize their views on current agricultural issues. Even if reporters are aware of critical shortcomings in their coverage, improvement may require reduction in structural constraints on story choice.     

Embeddedness and local food systems: notes on two types of direct agricultural market

Direct agricultural markets, predicated on face-to-face ties between producers and consumers, are often seen as central components of local food systems. Activists and academic analysts often assume that trust and social connection characterize direct agricultural markets, distinguishing local food systems from the “global food system”. This article examines that premise about direct agricultural markets, using the concept of social embeddedness from economic sociology to analyze the interplay of the economic and the social. Specifically, it draws on Block's (1990) elaboration of the concepts of marketness and instrumentalism to qualify the concept of social embeddedness. Taken together, and augmented by consideration of how they relate to power and privilege, these concepts provide an analytical framework that more accurately describes the social relations of two types of direct agricultural markets — the farmers’ market and community supported agriculture. In providing an alternative market, farmers’ markets create a context for closer social ties between farmers and consumers, but remain fundamentally rooted in commodity relations. In attempting to construct an alternative to the market, as reflected in an explicit emphasis on community and in the distinctive “share” relationship, community supported agriculture moves closer towards the decommodification of food. Nonetheless, in both types of direct markets, tensions between embeddedness, on the one hand, and marketness and instrumentalism, on the other, suggest how power and privilege may sometimes rest more with educated, middle-class consumers than with farmers or less-advantaged consumers. Recognizing how marketness and instrumentalism complicate social embeddedness is critical for understanding the viability, development and prospects of local food systems.     

The Efficacy of a Program Promoting Rice Self‐Sufficiency in Ghana during a Period of Neoliberalism*

The number of the world's food insecure rose at the end of the first decade of the twenty‐first century. Despite these negative developments, however, a 2010 United Nations report argues that food security could be improved if development efforts are supported by government programs that target smallholder farmers. This report is significant because it challenges the neoliberal perspective, which tends to promote a private‐enterprise market system and favor large‐scale producers. These competing visions for agricultural development frame our evaluation of the impact of the Africa Rice Center's (AfricaRice) efforts to promote new rice varieties among smallholder farmers to narrow the rice consumption‐production gap in Ghana. We begin by distinguishing the outreach efforts to help farmers increase production and the political‐economic conditions that limit the longevity of that outreach effort. We reviewed program documents revealing expenditures and yields among the smallholder farmers, and we conducted intensive interviews with the farmers. Although we find that the program succeeded in mobilizing farmers to increase rice production, we question the sustainability of the program's impact because state funding for the program has ended.     

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.     

The environmental belief systems of organic and conventional farmers: Evidence from central-southern England

Little comparative work has been conducted on the environmental belief systems and behaviours of conventional and organic farmers, especially in relation to farming culture, the environment and lowland farmland avifauna. Adopting a modified behavioural approach, this paper analyses the ways in which the environmental attitudes and understandings of farmers in central-southern England influence their behaviour. Key stakeholder and farmer interviews and a focus group discussion showed how some organic farmers tend to have small, diverse and untidy farms, ecocentric attitudes and a non-exploitative approach towards farming which includes an appreciation of farmland birds. This often contrasts with the tidy, well-organised conventional farmers with their larger, specialised farms, technocentric attitudes and exploitative view of nature, frequently related to creating pheasant cover and the belief that corvids and birds of prey are vermin and should therefore be eradicated. However, these attitudes and behaviours may not necessarily be representative of any differences between those farmers loosely labelled as ‘organic’ and ‘conventional’.     

Conversion to Organic Dairy Production in the Netherlands: Opportunities and Constraints*

Abstract Organic agriculture is perceived as being more sustainable than conventional agriculture. However, while there is a growing interest in, and market for, organic products, large‐scale conversion to organic agriculture is not taking place. Even though conversion from conventional to organic dairy production is not especially difficult in theory, conversion is slow in this specific sector. The conversion process to organic agriculture is often analyzed by investigating farmer motivations and attitudes. However, since modern agricultural production is organized in production chains, which are in turn subject to stakeholder influence, a wider focus that includes these interrelationships might provide new insights regarding the lagging conversion. Based on document analysis, policy analysis, and interviews, this article investigates opportunities for, and barriers to, conversion to organic dairy production in the Netherlands within the setting of the chain network. Opportunities and barriers are found at three levels within the chain network: the actor level, the chain level, and the network level. We conclude that, despite some involvement in organic production and a positive disposition toward it, the chain network is not ready for a large‐scale conversion.