Capitalist Coordination of Agriculture: Food Processing Firms and Farming in Central Canada1

Abstract This paper is concerned with the restructuring of petty commodity producers in agriculture and, more specifically, the role of food processing firms in this process. Two mechanisms by which processors secure their agricultural supplies—corporate farming and contract farming—are examined in central Canada. Although fairly widespread, corporate farming by processors is slowly declining and is unlikely to have a major impact on petty producers. By comparison, this study indicates that, in the context of corporate consolidation, the behavior of food processors in granting production contracts to formally independent farm operators is furthering the social differentiation of the latter.     

A note on multivariate capability indices

In manufacturing industry, there is growing interest in quantitative measures of process variation under multivariate setting. This paper introduces a multivariate capability index and focuses its applications in geometric dimensioning and tolerancing. This index incorporates both the process variation and the process deviation from target. Two existing multivariate indices are compared with the proposed index.     

In Search of the Fart-Time Capitalist Farmer: Labour Use and Farm Structure in Central Canada*

Cet article examine la thèse selon laquelle l'agriculture capitaliste prédomine aujourd'hui dans l'Occident industrialisé. Une étude empirique des fermes dans le centre du Canada qui sont intégrées dans les entreprises agroindustrielles explique la complexité structu-relle de l'agriculture et l'importance des caractéristiques du produit agricole pour définir 1'organisation de la ferme. Les données qui indiquent la longue durée et le volume relativement élevé de travail-leurs salariés saisonniers (dont quelques-uns du Mexique et des Caraïbes) employés dans certaines categories de fermes sont parti-culiérement notables. Ce type de travail est important pour définir la structure de ces fermes. Ces conclusions contestent quelques généralisations nâtives trouvées dans la documentation sur la structure des fermes et suggère le besoin de repenser les analyses précédentes des répercussions des entreprises agroindustrielles sur l'agriculture familiale. This paper examines the contention that capitalist agriculture is coming to predominate in the industrialized West. An empirical study of central Canadian farms integrated into agribusiness operations indicates the structural complexity of agriculture and the importance of commodity features in defining the social organization of farms. Particularly notable findings concern the long duration and relatively high volumes of seasonal wage labour, some of it migratory offshore labour, used on certain categories of farms, and the importance of this labour usage in defining these farms in structural terms. These findings challenge the sweeping generalizations found in the rural sociological literature concerning farm structure, and in particular previous analyses of the impact of agribusiness on petty-commodity production.     

The Demand for Healthy Eating: Supporting a Transformative Food “Movement”

To the extent that social science scholarship engages real‐world developments it remains grounded and better able to resist elite agendas. With this in mind this article argues for the critical encounter with what I argue is the most significant struggle around food and agriculture today—the amorphous and broad‐based movement that strives to resist the further degradation of food environments and ensure healthy eating in society. This struggle is inevitably engaged with contemporary neoliberal agendas that have transformed and degraded food environments as they have privileged profit making over healthy diets. The article considers different sites where the struggle over healthy eating is taking place, both at the level of the state and more extensively in civil society. It considers the debate over bovine growth hormone in Canada and the wider efforts to turn around school food environments as examples of state‐centered and civil‐society struggles, respectively, that illustrate different dimensions of the healthy‐eating movement today. In each case the agendas of transnational food corporations are seen to be directly contradicting efforts to ensure healthy diets. The article considers some notable successes among advocates of healthy eating, in the United States and Canada and most notably in Britain, and examines some of the factors that may account for this success. Overall, I argue that this struggle has the potential to challenge the hegemony of neoliberal discourse in fundamental ways. The article concludes with a call for academics, and rural sociologists in particular, to give a much greater priority to healthy‐eating struggles, and considers a number of areas where academic practitioners can aid activists' efforts to resist the further degradation of diets and establish healthier food environments.     

Bringing "Globalization" Down to Earth: Restructuring and Labour in Rural Communities*

Cette étude de cas sur des travailleurs licenciés dans un comté rural de l'Ontario s'inscrit dans le cadre de la controverse au sujet des effete, sur les travailleurs et la société, de la libéralisation du commerce et de la restructuration économique. En nous fondant sur l'expérience des travailleurs licenciés, la durée du chômage, la comparaison entre les anciens et les nouveaux emplois ainsi que sur la baisse des revenus, nous fournissons des données empiriques sur le genre de transformation qui s'opère dans une communauté rurale. Nous affirmons que, pour ce type de communauté du moins, les effets à long terme de la restructuration sont négatifs pour les travailleurs et la communautéà laquelle ils appartiennent, et, en particulier, pour les femmes et les travailleurs plus âgés.
A case study of laid-off workers in a rural Ontario county is placed within the polarized debate over the implications for workers and for society more broadly of trade liberalization and economic restructuring. Examining experiences of layoff, including length of time unemployed, comparisons between old and new jobs, and the degree of income loss, we present empirical data on the transformation taking place in a rural community context. We argue that, for such communities at least, the long-term effects of restructuring are negative for workers and their communities overall, and are particularly disadvantageous for women and older workers.     

Distribution-free subset selection for incompletely ranked data

In market research and some other areas, it is common that a sample of n judges (consumers, evaluators, etc.) are asked to independently rank a series of k objects or candidates. It is usually difficult to obtain the judges' full cooperation to completely rank all k objects. A practical way to overcome this difficulty is to give each judge the freedom to choose the number of top candidates he is willing to rank. A frequently encountered question in this type of survey is how to select the best object or candidate from the incompletely ranked data. This paper proposes a subset selection procedure which constructs a random subset of all the k objects involved in the survey such that the best object is included in the subset with a prespecified confidence. It is shown that the proposed subset selection procedure is distribution-free over a very broad class of underlying distributions. An example from a market research study is used to illustrate the proposed procedure.     

Does Class Consciousness Exist in Rural Communities? The Impact of Restructuring and Plant Shutdowns in Rural Canada1

Abstract This paper examines qualitative data on class consciousness derived from a study of corporate restructuring and the impacts of layoffs in rural Ontario communities. In particular, the study examines how the rural environment might impinge on the development of class consciousness among the workers there in the context of severe economic stress brought on by plant shutdowns. It is argued that an ideology specific to a farm and small town environment plays a significant role in shaping their response to crisis. The more standard predictors of class consciousness such as age, gender, past union membership, and employment status are also considered. The paper aims to deepen our understanding of the seemingly contradictory belief structures of working class people.     

Non-linear canonical correlation analysis with a simulated annealing solution

An exploratory tool is introduced to examine potential non-linear relation-ships between two sets of variables, X andY, in a sample of multivariate data. Simulated annealing is applied to find canonical coefficient vectors a and b such that a squared non-linear correlation between a'Xand b'Y is maximiSed. A measure of non-linear correlation is developed for this optimization which utilies a nearest-neighbor regression estimate for the unknown functional relationship. In addition to examining potential relations between the canonical variables, this method can identify the important variables in each set.