Divergent approaches to the ‘family farm’: celebrate, reform, or abolish?

Abstract

As the United Nations declared the beginning of the “Decade of Family Farming” in 2017, scholars were increasingly questioning the romanticized and uncritical use of the term to mask some structural inequalities, including patriarchal ownership, colonialism, heteronormativity, family and child labor exploitation, poor labor standards, and environmental destruction. This introduction to a special symposium on the family farm differentiates scholarly approaches to studying family farming into three categories: celebratory, reformist, and abolitionist. After summarizing the papers included in this special issue, this introduction contends that it may be time to move beyond biological and marital relations when analyzing the most effective ways to solve social and environmental problems related to agricultural production.