Rural transport in eastern Amazonia: Limitations, options, and opportunities

In rural Amazonia farmers rely on a variety of conveyances for overland transport ranging from burros through horse-drawn carts and bicycles to motorized carts and trucks. We compared the costs of purchasing and operating these different conveyances and determined how transport mode, road quality, distance to market, and product value affect the profitability of farming in this region. We conclude by suggesting policy changes necessary to both increase the effectiveness of rural transport in regions of Amazonia where colonization has already occurred and slow encroachment into unoccupied areas.     

A Political Ecology of Shrimp Aquaculture in Thailand1

ABSTRACT This paper uses themes from political ecology to develop insights into the billion dollar shrimp aquaculture sector in Thailand. We find that corporations can exercise only limited control over shrimp production and that there is no clear trend toward larger operations. We explain the continued viability of small owner-operated farms by looking at how shrimp farming is located in physical and social space, and at the ability of owner-operators to work within the highly unstable socio-ecological processes of shrimp production. We also find that shrimp farming has induced a spatially-uneven increase in state territorial regulation. The spatial distribution of regulation is shaped by differences in how landscapes become politicized, and the degree of jurisdictional clarity. We conclude that industry self-regulation has limited prospects for containing the social and environmental problems of shrimp farming in Thailand, but that expanded state regulation that mobilizes the participation of local people might be effective.     

Les agriculteurs dans la fabrique d'une nouvelle agriculture

The model of development that has governed the modernization of farming in France is increasingly coming under attack. Given this, analysing the “work” that farming performs to “translate” the criticisms with which it must cope in formulating new definitions of roles is important in order to understand changes under way in this sector. The changes undergone by farming over the past eighty years are briefly presented and then the procedures and results of a survey, conducted during the mad cow disease among beef-farmers in Burgundy, are described. Light is thus shed on the diversity of the positions that farmers have adopted with regard to the future of their occupation. An interpretation is proposed of how the distribution (and interplay between) these positions might affect agriculture. - Special issue on Agriculture and food.     

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.     

Residential Remittances and Food Security in the Upper West Region of Ghana

In recent years, out migration from the Upper West Region to the southern belt of Ghana for farming has become commonplace. The natural question that has arisen is: what is the potential impact of remittances from this migration pattern on food security in the region? Using multivariate ordered logistic regression this study assesses the linkage between remittances and household food security (derived using the HFIAS) among urban and rural households (n=1,438) in the region. The findings show that urban remittance‐receiving households and rural remittance and non‐remittance receiving households were more likely (OR=2.44, p<0.05; OR=2.46, p<0.001; and OR=1.49, p<0.1, respectively) to report being more severely food‐insecure than urban non‐remittance receiving households. The findings demonstrate that household strategies such as migration and remittances on their own are not sufficient to ameliorate the precarious food insecurity situation of the region. The study calls for development of alternative livelihoods in the region.     

Planning for change in small towns or trying to avoid the slaughterhouse blues

Rural farming communities throughout the Prairies and Great Plains have sought to reverse decades of slow economic decline by attracting value-added processing of agricultural products as a means of economic development. The meatpacking industry has been attracted to the region by the availability of fed cattle. It has created thousands of low-paying jobs and boosted local agricultural economies by increasing the demand for animals and feedstuffs, while at the same time impairing water quality and bringing a host of social problems to packinghouse communities. This article examines how the town of Brooks, Alberta prepared and dealt with these challenges over a two year period following the expansion of a beefpacking plant. Despite the advance warning of the social changes that would accompany the hiring of additional workers the town failed to meet the housing needs of newcomers recruited to work at the plant and experienced a significant increase in a variety of social disorders. The study concludes that preparing for change begins with the recognition that social and environmental impacts are inevitable with the arrival of a new industry. A pro-active response to protecting the environment and ensuring that basic human needs are met is better for a community and its workforce than having changes thrust upon it by an industry whose only interest is in maximizing profits.     

The geography of Washington's world apple: global expressions in a local landscape

This article explores how the globalization of food and agriculture is linked to local processes of agrarian transformation in the case of the apple industry in the United States. The local, regional history concerning environmental, technological and social change in the apple industry reveals the ways in which the local landscape has changed as this agro-industry has developed and globalized over the last century. Our focus embraces three themes: the social construction of value in fresh apples, the changing structure of the apple industry, and the changing social relations of production as they concern transnational wageworkers. The social constructions of value ascribed to apples in the industry's advertisements aimed at national and international consumers exist in sharp contrast with the local level intensification of farming practices. Changes in farm structure, production technology, labor process and relations, and the composition and settlement patterns of farm labor reflect both the industry's regional development as well as how the globalized apple industry is manifested in the region's development history and geography.     

An Inclusive Treadmill? Expansion of Industrial Maize Farming and Simple‐Commodity Producers in Turkey

The growth of industrial maize farming in Turkey during the first decade of this century points to the primacy of economic development over ecological concerns at a time when global nitrogen and phosphorus flows already exceeded safe limits. In this article we focus on the relations of production as the driver of an economic sector that not only has ecological but also social costs. Through a trend analysis of maize yields as our ecological indicator, we explain how relations of production influence industrial maize farming in this period and how different modes of production (e.g., simple‐commodity producers) participate in a corporate market. A “treadmill of production” perspective argues that simple commodity producers are excluded from industrial treadmills. Our findings indicate that provinces with predominantly simple commodity production experienced significant increases in maize yields and adapted to the industrial maize treadmill. However, there is a significant difference between simple‐commodity producers and large farms that widens over the decade. Our results suggest that simple‐commodity producers are included in ecologically harmful economic practices with significant obstacles. We call for a revision of the assumed relationship between the size of economic operations and their ecological impacts in the critical sociology literature and policy approaches.     

Children and the Modern Farming Movement

In the twenty‐first century, a small percentage of U.S. children have ties to family‐based agriculture. Yet with the rise of the modern farming movement that emphasizes local and family‐based production, new spaces may exist for involving children and youth in farming. This article focuses on the social value of children to family‐based agriculture in the contemporary era. Drawing on a qualitative study of families that farm in the capital region of New York—an epicenter for the modern food movement—we consider why families farm, how they involve children in their farms, and how they understand children's contributions. Interviews with 76 adult members of 50 families show children to be central to families' goals; they often rationalize farming as a lifestyle choice undertaken for the benefit of their children. Families also actively involve their own children—and other people's children—in their farms. By documenting the way families talk about children and farming, we shed light on the logic used to incorporate children into modern productive enterprises. The centrality of children, we argue, helps explain the success of the modern food movement and the persistence of family‐based agriculture despite conditions that make it economically difficult to accomplish.     

Women in the Field: Women,Farming and Organizations

One striking feature of farming as an occupation is that there are few women who farm in their own right. The passing of land from father to son means that women rarely own land. Their typical entry to farming is through marriage. Women's route of entry to farming affects interpersonal relationships within the family, and also women's role in the public space of farming. Women are under‐represented in farming organizations, in training programmes, and in the politics of farming. This article focuses on the position of women within farming organizations and the interaction between (male) farming organizations and women's farming organizations. Farmers are an extremely well‐organized occupation and wield considerable political power because of this effective organization. However, farming organizations are almost entirely male. This article examines how women are treated within farming organizations, and also the interaction between (male) farming organizations and women's farming organizations. Drawing on the theory of organizations, I argue that the inclusion of women in farming organizations and the existence of women's farming organizations reinforce gender divisions within agriculture and do not in any way question the understanding of men as farmers, or the political power they hold.     

Family farmers and major retail chains in the Brazilian organic sector: Assessing new development pathways. A case study in a peri-urban district of São Paulo

The expansion of the organic sector in Brazil is seen as a leverage for the social emancipation of the small family farmers. Next to the traditional alternatives circuits of organic food and farming, new powerful capitalistic actors, such as supermarket chains, are rapidly entering the Brazilian organic arena. Can family farming benefit from the development of these “conventional” commercialisation circuits in the organic sector? Research undertaken in 2007, in a green belt rural community of São Paulo, shows how family farmers may have benefited from the implication of large retail chains in the organic sector and how an economically and ecologically outstanding agriculture may arise from these circumstances. However, we highlight the crucial role played by social regulation: only strong solidarity between farmers and the implication of technicians, militants and researchers in the process made it possible to counter the negative effects of the liberal logic governing the development of organic farming via the major retailers. Still, as tougher competition is expected on the regional organic market, the development of short supply chains involving “committed” consumers and the broader integration of the local farmers in networks of organic militancy appear crucial. It would guarantee a continuous enhancement of the local human and social capital, reinforce an emerging process of internal conversion and allow for a stronger social regulation of the future local development pattern.     

Care Farms in the Netherlands: An Underexplored Example of Multifunctional Agriculture—Toward an Empirically Grounded,Organization‐Theory‐Based Typology

For agricultural and rural development in Europe, multifunctionality is a leading concept that raises many questions. Care farming is a promising example of multifunctional agriculture that has so far received little attention. An issue that has not been examined thoroughly is the strategic mapping of different care farm organizations in this emerging field. The objective of this article is to develop a typology for care farms in the Netherlands and provide insight into the diversity of care farms. We have used different concepts from organization theory and information from regional organizations of care farmers to identify key dimensions and develop a typology of care farms. Key dimensions are the ratio between agriculture and care, the background of the initiators, and the degree of collaboration with formal care institutions. We found six main types of care farms with different identities, four of which were initiated by the farmers' families (mainly female partners). The other two types were started by new entrants in agriculture. On the basis of our findings, we confirmed, disputed, and supplemented insights to multifunctional farming literature. As a further contribution to that field, drawing from the organization theories underlying our typology, we have sought to understand how different types of care farms could emerge.     

'You have neither neighbours nor privacy' : ambiguities in the experience of emotional well being of women in farming families

This paper explores findings from an ethnographic study of relations of dependency within agricultural communities in the Northern region. Using a life course perspective it focuses on the cultural strategies which women draw upon to deal with the changing constraints, emotional stresses and loneliness of marrying into a farming family. Accounts from women occupying different generational positions demonstrate how they manage to achieve personal wellbeing through creative resolution of the different ambiguities involved in being a‘country girl', a ‘farmer's wife’ and a‘gran'.     

FOUCAULDIAN HOG FUTURES:

The development of mega-hog farms is a contentious topic throughout the United States that has garnered a lot of attention in the past five years. This article examines the construction of mega-hog farms in light of Michel Foucault's (1977) analysis in Discipline and Punish . I argue that Foucault provides a good starting point but that to understand current forms of agriculture we must extend his framework to include nonhuman animals as active in discipline and resistance. In order to comprehend how swine farming has shifted from the ancien regime to the disciplinary regime, I provide details on the mutual construction of the swine, the farmer, confinement architecture, and legislation.     

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.     

The Canadian prairie dryland disaster and the reshaping of ‘expert’ farm wisdom

The settlement of the Canadian prairie dry belt was accompanied by ‘expert’ claims that ‘proper’ farming in the dubious region would invariably produce crops. As the region sank into the abyss between 1917 and 1926, settler experience revealed the falsity of several aspects of the expert message regarding summer fallowing, mixed farming, fall rye, deep plowing, and even the necessity of summer rain. In the end, largely the tillers themselves devised a new system of dry farming, though significantly for the heart of the dry belt no abiding dry farming solutions were ever found.     

The cultural representation of the farming landscape: masculinity, power and nature

This paper explores ideas of masculinity and femininity as articulated in the representation of the rural landscape among farm families in a community of Southern France. It is shown that the local discourses of the farming landscape emphasise the embodied inherited relationship between the farmer and the land. In these discourses, the good farmer is one who has an innate understanding of nature. This sympathetic feel for the land is associated with traditional peasant farming. In contrast, the alienated and exploitative attitude of the bad farmer towards nature is associated with modern agriculture. It is argued that this rhetoric of landscape and identity reproduces patriarchal ideologies which exclude and marginalise women from farming. The real farmer can only be a man because only men are seen as having this natural connection with the land. Women in contrast are defined by their lack of connection to farming and the land. Through an analysis of discourse, it is shown how an imagery of earth and blood constitutes a cultural idiom which legitimates men's mastery over nature and women.     

Mythologization of Farming Styles in Australian Broadacre Cropping*

Abstract Farming styles theory, as developed by Jan Douwe van der Ploeg to explain diversity in agriculture, is being considered as a possible tool to assist in targeting of extension in Australia. A farming style is a socially constructed type that reflects the worldviews and strategies of one configuration of farming practice for a particular commodity (or common combination of commodities) in a particular region. The various farming styles in a region represent a repertoire of possible worldviews and strategies. We first conducted focus groups to identify farming styles among Australian broadacre croppers. We then conducted case studies to validate these styles, and to gain further understanding of the rationale of each style. The case studies, however, failed to confirm the styles. The findings instead suggested that the styles which emerged from the focus groups were artifacts of the method. We conclude that focus group methodology legitimized the expression of stereotypical images grounded in local farming discourse and provided an avenue for reification of “mythological” styles, although the styles still provided social control over farmers' activities. Researchers should be aware that focus groups potentially allow the expression of mythology, and should reflect on the validity of data collected by this method.     

气候变化与都市现代农业发展

本文讨论了在气候变化大背景下都市现代农业的未来发展,作为与先进的科学技术和生活方式紧密结合的一种农业经营方式,都市农业不仅可以借鉴传统农业的经验,而且有条件通过发挥自身的优势和不断的尝试,为气候变化下的传统农业寻找应对挑战的路径。     

Farming Patterns,Rural Restructuring,and Poverty: A Comparative Regional Analysis1

Abstract This study examines the contentions of two recent perspectives on rural economic organization and their implications for poverty. Building from (1) agrarian political economy and (2) the rural restructuring literatures, we present a comparative regional analysis of how farming patterns and other aspects of economic organization differentially affect poverty in rural areas. Data are based on 2,349 nonmetropolitan U.S. counties for the 1970–1980 period. Nonhired labor-dependent, family-operated farming (smaller and larger family farming) has relatively similar cross-regional effects on rural poverty. The effects of industrialized farming are more spatially variant, suggesting that this type of farming is integrated into regional political economies in different ways than are simple commodity units. However, farming patterns have only a small effect on rural poverty relative to other factors, such as the local employment structure, characteristics of the population, and geographic location. The results of this study highlight the need to move beyond the farm sector to understand both the dynamics of this sector and the socioeconomic consequences of rural restructuring. More broadly, the study underscores the importance of testing general sociological relationships under different spatial (e.g., regional) contexts.