“Everyone was Pounding on Us”: Front Porch Politics and the American Farm Crisis of the 1970s and 1980s

This essay analyzes agricultural politics and activism in the United States during the farm crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Although journalists and social scientists studied farm activism at the time, historians have neglected it. As this article demonstrates, however, the farm crisis is valuable for analyzing why ordinary Americans mobilized as citizens and activists in a period of economic dislocation. Informed by the recent “emotional turn” in social movement studies, the essay frames farm organizing as an archetypal example of “front porch politics”. Mostly, farmers organized out of a sense of being wronged; the resulting sense of injustice fueled a rural uprising.     

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.     

Understanding the Nature and Extent of Farm and Ranch Diversification in North America*

Abstract Pressure to adopt enhanced production technologies, changing government support policies, increasing and more diverse competition, and changing markets have posed economic challenges to North American farmers over the past two decades. As a response, farmers are adjusting their production model by incorporating agricultural related enterprises. Although there is evidence that farm diversification is occurring throughout North America, there is a dearth of scientific information regarding the types of enterprises being developed and used in this context. This study aims to fill this void by exploring the extent of farm diversification by identifying and describing eight types of enterprises that farmers and ranchers are using. It was found that levels of diversification are often dependent on operating and management attributes and owner characteristics, such as the number of family members working on the farm and the number of days that the farmer's spouse works off the farm.     

Unionism,peasant protest and the reform of French agriculture

Enormous tensions have been created in French rural society by the extent and rapidity of the economic and social changes which have taken place in agriculture since the Second World War; CAP reforms and the GATT agreement have further deepened the sense of crisis within the sector. The French Government has sought to implement change and control these tensions through the “corporatisation” of the dominant farm union and other agricultural interest groups. Rejection of this process by some groups of farmers and widening disparities within agriculture have resulted in shifting patterns of union allegiance and the growth of a variety of forms of protest which, combined with general public support for the preservation of rural areas and antipathy towards American economic and cultural dominance have ensured continued government concessions to the agricultural sector.     

Political Beliefs in an Era of Economic Decline: Farmers' Attitudes Toward State Economic Intervention,Trade, and Food Security1

Abstract The effects of the economy on political attitudes is a longstanding sociological issue that is receiving renewed attention in the face of recent U.S. economic downturns. While the impacts of the farm crisis on financial and household well-being of farm operators have been addressed by a number of studies, few have explored its political outcomes. Four perspectives that consider how economic forces translate into political beliefs are outlined, two reflecting objective economic position (class location and financial pressure) and two indicating subjective appraisals (feelings of economic uncertainty and subjective deprivation). Data from a sample of Ohio farm operators for 1987 are used to analyze how the perspectives are related to progressive beliefs about farming, the domestic nonfarm economy, and third-world food production. Indicators of objective economic position and subjective appraisals have relatively limited impact on farmers' political attitudes. Of these indicators, subjective appraisals were more closely related to attitudes. In addition, operators' stances on farm political issues also affect their views on domestic nonfarm and third-world policy agendas. Implications were found for studies of farmers' political attitudes as well as for broader sociological theory regarding the development of progressive attitudes during periods of economic decline.     

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.     

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.     

Economic Conditions,Spouse Support,and Psychological Distress of Rural Husbands and Wives1

Abstract Previous studies of the relation between economic conditions and psychological stress among farm operators are extended by comparing farming and nonfarming husbands' and wives' depressive symptoms and by including spouse support as both a mediating and a moderating variable. Using three waves of data from the Iowa Youth and Families Project, the analyses found few differences between farmers and nonfarmers, but the relation between economic pressure and distress operates differently for husbands and wives. For husbands, wives' support buffers the relation between economic pressure and husbands' sense of control over events in their lives, which in turn reduces depression. For wives, husbands' support both directly reduces their depression and buffers the effects of economic pressure on depression by weakening the relation between sense of control and feelings of depression.     

Financial Strain and Depression Among Farm Operators: The Role of Perceived Economic Hardship and Personal Control1

Abstract The causal processes accounting for the relationship between farm financial strain and depression are not well understood. Using data from a statewide survey of North Carolina farm operators, we develop a covariance structure model that specifies relationships among farm financial strain, perceived economic hardship in the household, personal control, and depression. Analyses reveal that the relationship between farm financial strain and depression is mediated by perceptions of economic hardship and personal control. Results point to the importance of differential resilience to objective economic problems instead of differential exposure to these problems.     

Factors Influencing the Integration of Alternative Farm Enterprises Into the Agro‐Food System*

Abstract Financial stress and general crisis in European agriculture recently have generated a widespread interest in alternative paths of farm business development and structural adjustment. One of the options suggested by policy makers and adopted by farmers was the development of alternative farm enterprises (AFEs), in which farmers recombine resources on the farm and produce a new mix of products and services in order to supplement their incomes. In the present paper we examine the factors influencing the development of AFEs. According to empirical evidence from Etolia‐Akarnania, a prefecture in western Greece that merits “less favored area” status, AFE adoption is influenced by the amount of family labor, the ratio of hired to family labor, the presence of tobacco as a main enterprise, the proximity of the farm to grade A roads, and the farmers' age. Education, management experience demonstrated by the farm manager, physical size of the farm, enterprise specialization, the use of grants, and farm location are the main factors responsible for the farmers' integration into the agro‐food system.     

Market diversification and social benefits: Motivations of farmers participating in farm to school programs

Activists and academics are increasingly advocating for public procurement of locally grown food as a key market opportunity for farmers. In the United States, linking farmers directly with school cafeterias through farm to school programs are among the efforts that advocates say can provide a significant boost to rural economies. Through an empirical analysis of farmers' perspectives of farm to school programs, this paper explores why farmers participate in these efforts. The data presented are part of a larger study exploring the opportunities and challenges of farm to school programs located in the United States from the perspectives of farmers, food service professionals, and food distributors. Our findings suggest that farmers sold their products to schools for two primary reasons: to diversify their marketing strategies and to contribute to social benefits through direct action. The concepts of embeddedness, marketness, and economic instrumentalism provide a framework for understanding their participation in farm to school programs. Our findings also provide insight into the kind of support necessary to sustain long-term connections between farmers and school food service professionals. As advocates seek to institutionalize public procurement of locally grown foods, it is critical that farmers' needs and motivations are considered.     

The restructuring process and economic centrality in capitalist agriculture

The purpose of the paper is to examine contemporary relations in agricultural production. The discussion focuses upon the internal and external processes modifying production relations on the farm and, in particular, the changing significance of farm-based sources of income and capital (economic centrality) to the farm business in the restructuring of agricultural capital. There are a variety of reasons why farm businesses are finding it increasingly necessary to diversify their sources of income, and in some cases capital generation, which relate to their internal family relations and external contacts. While obtaining alternative sources of income for farmers may be advocated for the purpose of reducing their marginalisation and low income problems, this may only be realisable for a minority. The complexities of farm businesses and their external relations with other forms of capital suggest the need for a construction of a typology which focuses on the economic centrality of the business to the farm family. The discussion here is divided into four sections. First, the main characteristics of the restructuring process in British agriculture are identified, leading to a discussion focusing on the transformation of the family farm. The concept of economic centrality is then discussed as an important characteristic of the restructuring process affecting British farming, and a typology of farm businesses established, based upon empirical evidence collected from London's Metropolitan Green Belt. This evidence forms part of a wider study of the changing structure of farm businesses in three areas of lowland England (East Bedfordshire, West Dorset and London's Green Belt) which links farm business change to changes in the farm landscape.     

论经济危机

过去我们是从书本上认识经济危机,这次＂次贷危机＂让我们亲历了一次1929年＂大萧条＂以来最严重的经济危机。有的专家还认为这次经济金融危机超过了当年的＂大萧条＂。现在全世界都在应对经济危机,各国各有对策,孰是孰非,莫衷一是。要正确应对经济危机,必先正确认识经济危机及其产生的原因。     

The Socioeconomic Basis of Farm Enterprise Diversification Decisions1

Abstract In contrast to earlier studies, recent research on socioeconomic and ecological factors affecting farm decision making suggests that, at the microlevel, farm size is inversely related to specialization and directly related to diversification decisions but empirical tests have been limited. Using a social behavioral, farming systems perspective, we examine factors affecting diversification and specialization decisions, including land tenure, off-farm work, and education (which are crucial to successful management) and environmental variation (which affects the decision to select appropriate enterprises). Data from a random sample of Kentucky farmers were used to test the model. Diversification, whether defined according to crops or commodities, is significantly related to farm size, human capital, and regional variation in land and soil types. The study clarifies the relationship between diversification and farm size issues and broadens understanding of farm diversification decisions. The findings indicate that increased farm size and better farm management reduce the rate of increase in farm specialization.     

Modelling the interaction of economic and socio-behavioural factors in the prediction of farm adjustment

This paper describes a methodology for the representation of farm household decision-making under conditions of agricultural and rural policy change. The methodology employs a Geographic Information System (GIS) to integrate a range of spatially referenced data describing the internal and external decision environments of individual farmers, and model the interaction of these variables in conditioning adjustment in response to policy change. The difficulties in identifying and representing the detailed interaction of farm and farmer characteristics with the external environment of the household and business are reviewed. From a policy perspective it is, however, of considerable importance that models which are sensitive to the complexity of the farm decision-making process are developed and evaluated, for their potential contribution in supporting policy and resource allocation decisions is considerable. The methodology described here remains highly generalized, but it represents an advance on previous techniques through the representation of economic, social and behavioural factors which interact with farm resources and external constraints to predict the response of individual farm holdings to policy and market shifts.     

Multiple business ownership in the farm sector: assessing the enterprise and employment contributions of farmers in Cambridgeshire

Multiple business ownership has become an important theme within the small firms research literature. While early studies emphasised its role in reducing business risk, more recently portfolio entrepreneurship has been recognised as an important growth strategy, particularly in sectors where economies of scale can be achieved at a relatively low level. Research studies specifically examining multiple business ownership are still scarce, but the parallels between portfolio entrepreneurship in non-farm sectors and farm pluriactivity have been noted. Although pluriactivity has been subject to extensive investigation in recent years, analysis has generally focused on farm-centred diversification, rather than the wider entrepreneurial activities of the farmer. Using a survey of nearly 300 farm owners in Cambridgeshire, this exploratory study analyses the incidence of portfolio entrepreneurship in the farm sector and assesses its contribution to enterprise and employment creation. The results demonstrate that a core of farmers have multiple business interests and that these additional business activities make a substantial contribution to both numbers of enterprises and employment creation. While previous studies of pluriactivity have generally used the farm business as the main unit of analysis, it is argued that including the wider business activities of the farm owner enables a more precise estimation of the total contribution of farmers to rural economic development.     

Towards an alternative logic of technological change: Insights from Corn Belt agriculture

Empirical evidence drawn from a Corn Belt case study is used to connect the environmental and socioeconomic contradictions of agricultural production in the region. The paper rests on several key arguments: First, a preliminary case is made for a more explicit recognition of the theoretical and empirical links between the socioeconomic problems of agricultural regions stemming from chronically low levels of producer surplus retention and similar problems of social welfare associated with reduced levels of remunerated labor in the industrial sector. Second, there is a parallel need for connecting the negative social and environmental costs of capitalist agriculture. The case study uses the evolving production process on individual farms as a means of exploring the causal relationship between the movement towards capitalist social relations and environmental degradation resulting from intensive patterns of synthetic chemical use. And third, the role of agency among family farmers faced with a regional economic crisis emerges from the case study analysis. In the 1980s, a small minority of Iowa farmers would adopt, perfect and disseminate a low-chemical input system of production attuned to the logic of family farm social relations. The contribution of the state-sponsored research institutions was notably absent. The case example highlights the process of technological change as a socially-constructed phenomenon subject to alternative forms of rationality that emerge from different syntheses of ecological conditions and social relations.     

Neither ‘family’ nor ‘corporate’ farming: Australian tomato growers as farm family entrepreneurs

For the past two decades there has been much debate about the future of family farming. The basic question on which this debate has turned is whether current pressures on family farm systems should be understood as symptomatic of a terminal condition, in which farmers are replaced progressively by corporate ownership; or whether family farms will persist as a social formation, albeit increasingly subsumed by off-farm interests. Using evidence from the Australian processing tomato sector, this article documents the changing social and economic formation of ‘family farming’. We argue that in this industry, the appropriate way to describe farmers is through the deployment of that a new category of farming; farm family entrepreneurs. This phrase is coined to describe the situation where family units remain at the social and economic heart of farm ownership and operation, but in the context where they relate to their land-based assets through legal and financial structures characteristic of the wider economy. As this article explores, this formation seems to represent an accommodating modus operandi for farm units within neo-liberal agricultural governance. Nevertheless, however, this duality of family-based structures and capitalist entrepreneurialism inevitably provokes a series of tensions, whose resolution requires a variety of organizational strategies to be put in place.     

Where's the Farmer? Limiting Liability in Midwestern Industrial Hog Production

Scholars largely assume that hog production is following the same industrialization process as the integrated poultry industry. Since the collapse of hog farming in the 1990s, academics have anticipated that producers will eventually become trapped in contracts that leave the integrator with full control over the production process. Embedded in this prediction is an assumption that hog farmers respond to these productive pressures individually. Our analysis of the Carthage Management System suggests a different path for the hog commodity chain. The Carthage Management System is a conglomeration of business management firms that bring finishing hog farmers together to form limited liability corporations (LLCs) in the breed‐to‐wean stage of hog production. We use a sociology of agrifood framework to suggest that the nuances of hog production encourage the use of what we call folding corporations to limit liability in ways that profoundly transform the family farm. Corporations and individual hog farmers alike employ this creative LLC structure to deflect responsibility for the risks of hog production. We identify how folding corporations externalize the costs of production onto rural communities. Additional research is needed to better understand unfolding farmer identities, legal protections for farmers, how widespread organizational structures like Carthage Management System are, and their consequences for rural communities and the industrialization process.