Agriculture and Human Values最新文献

The logic of the corporate food regime requires a system of labour based on migration. Free trade agreements have entrenched a drive for ever-expanding export agriculture and resulted in both a devastation of peasant agriculture, creating migrant workers, and an increased need for temporary labour on Canadian farms. Family farmers in Canada face labour challenges exacerbated by the current food regime and, for some, the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) is seen as an answer to those challenges. However, the SAWP is based on systemic exploitation of migrant workers. This paper seeks to assess the role of migrant labour in Canadian food systems and reveal the contradictions, tensions, and possibilities of farmers acting in solidarity with migrant farmworkers by exploring the formation and political direction of the National Farmers Union’s Migrant Worker Solidarity Working Group (MWSWG).

The “small farm” is regarded by numerous agrifood scholars and practitioners alike as an antidote to everything unjust and deleterious about modern food and agricultural systems, central to agroecological transitions, sustainable food futures, land and social justice, and food sovereignty. Despite its prominence in movement and academic discourse and debates on these subjects, however, this key character is textured with considerable murkiness given the wide and conflicting array of farm sizes, scales, practices, and socioecological relations of production it is mobilized to represent. The goal of this paper, then, is threefold: to articulate and analyze how the term “small farm” is defined (or not), deployed, and contextualized across a sample of recent articles in major agrifood and agrarian studies journals, to discuss the implications of its inconsistent usage, and to offer reflections for improved clarity. I find that “small farm” is rarely defined, when it is defined a justification is poor or lacking, and its purported qualities and characteristics are myriad and contradictory. As both chaotic and inconsistent, the term suffers from far less empirical and theoretical utility than its high mobility otherwise suggests, problematizing its centrality in normative debates about agrifood transformations. While it is not the goal of the current paper to resolve whether “small is good”, I engage that debate closely when calling for greater definitional specificity and consideration of size and scale as relative and relational, ideas that, I hope, suggest discursive and conceptual paths out of this morass.

In this commentary we focus on the significance of social infrastructure for food system resilience by drawing on the insights and experiences from our positions as emergency management practitioners and land-grant university social science food system researchers working with emergency management agencies, food system and food security organizations. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and in the years since, as a group we have worked in a shared learning model to research and reflect on the lessons we can take from COVID-19 to create more resilient food systems that are better prepared for future shocks, disruptions, emergencies, and disasters. As applied scholars and practitioners, our first goal in this commentary is to synthesize the emergency management and disaster (EMD) and food system literatures with our research examining the on-the-ground experiences shared by emergency management and food security practitioners in Ohio tasked with responding to the COVID-19-induced food systems crisis. Our second goal is to demonstrate the often overlooked, undervalued, and underinvested core role institutional and group social connections and relationships play in effective responses to acute and chronic emergencies and disasters, and how this social infrastructure is the bedrock on which efforts to strengthen food system resilience depend. Finally, we lay out a path forward and articulate the need to value the role of EMD and social infrastructure in food systems resilience funding and public policy priorities.

Drained peatlands are a major source of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in Germany. To eliminate a large proportion of these emissions, they need to be rewetted, which requires substantial change in land use. Respective plans are causing conflict between stakeholders and are subject of a political debate. This article analyses frames in the debate on the future use of currently drained peatlands in Germany by studying public textual communications from political stakeholders between 2019 and 2022. Three frames are identified: (1) an environmental frame, emphasising environmental protection, which is most commonly used by environmental interest groups, the government and in party communication; (2) an entrepreneurial frame, portraying farmers as change makers, which is mainly used by a landscape management association, but also in government communication; (3) a socio-economic threat frame, which perceives farmers as threatened by peatland rewetting policies, and which is mainly present in farmers’ associations. All actors recognise peatland rewetting as an effective climate change mitigation measure. Most actors also agree that land users have a role to play in the process of reducing emissions from agricultural peatlands. While the environmental and socio-economic threat frames assign land users a rather passive role in the land-use change process, the entrepreneurial frame portrays land users as agents of change. We conclude that politicians, policy makers and other stakeholders may benefit from strengthening and refining an entrepreneurial frame. Such a frame would consider the opportunities and challenges of future peatland uses and facilitate land user agency, reconciling economic and environmental objectives.

Food insecurity is a pressing public health issue in Canada, with Alberta exhibiting higher rates than most other provinces. Financial constraints are widely recognized as the primary driver for households. Political discourses also shape how food security is addressed within the province. Using Hansard records, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of legislative debates on food insecurity in Alberta, Canada, from 2019 to 2023. We identified four hegemonic discourses: agricultural mythmaking and settler colonial origins, economic development as a solution to food insecurity, food insecurity as an individual’s responsibility, and food banks as an acute solution to food insecurity. We also examined the policy implications of these discourses, particularly as they relate to the deserving versus undeserving poor. We conclude by discussing discourses that were absent in the records, including a recognition of food justice frameworks. Our findings highlight the limitations of Alberta’s current legislative debate and suggest the need for structural, equity-focused solutions that address the root causes of food insecurity. This paper contributes to a growing literature analyzing policy and practice related to food insecurity alleviation across Canada.

Biodiversity, crucial for resilient agri-food systems, is declining at an unprecedented rate, largely driven by agricultural practices. In response, scientists and policymakers have called for a transition towards biodiversity-enhancing food systems, emphasizing the need for a systemic change that includes the consumer. However, as the term biodiversity is relatively new and complex, there have been worries whether broader publics understand and value biodiversity enough to support conservation practices or alter their consumption. By using associations as a means to access broader mental representations, the study explores how people make sense of the term biodiversity. Participants of a survey (N = 1971) on biodiverse food production and consumption in the Netherlands were asked to list 5–7 associations they had with biodiversity. Thematic content analysis was performed on the associations elicited, and themes were further validated with focus group discussions (N = 24) on biodiversity. The associations elicited revealed that participants mostly associate biodiversity with species diversity, with a focus on animals and plants. Many viewed biodiversity as valuable for ensuring a quality of nature and life, but some expressed scepticism or negative connotations, considering biodiversity a “hype” or questioning biodiversity loss. Lastly, associations showed that the relation between agricultural practices and biodiversity was understood both in terms of the negative consequences agriculture could have on biodiversity, as well as how it could contribute to enhancing biodiversity. Next to providing more deliberative and diverse perspectives on biodiversity and conservation, such insights could be essential for identifying how the public could be more engaged in the transition towards biodiversity-enhancing food systems.

Making agri-food systems in Europe more sustainable often requires systemic change. Transformative rather than incremental change is difficult if agri-food systems are locked into unsustainable practices by a range of institutional, cultural, social and financial factors that create mutually reinforcing barriers to change. Institutionalised public policies tend to further stabilise the established system through multiple feedback effects, bolstering unsustainable path dependencies. Co-design has been discussed as an innovative approach to developing operational options in agri-food systems. However, co-design methods have rarely been applied to develop policy options. This paper presents the experiences with a policy co-design process for the envisioned sustainability transformation of conventional pork production in Brandenburg, Germany. Combining an agri-food system perspective with the policy co-design literature, we developed (1) a process template for a participatory policy co-design process to overcome barriers and lock-ins along the three levels of policy mixes: objectives, instruments and calibration; and (2) a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of this process and its output. The successful implementation of the policy co-creation process in the case study constitutes a proof of concept. An unexpected limitation was that full specification of instrument calibrations was not realistic. In policy processes, this is typically part of hard negotiation processes. The systematic analysis of the participatory development of policy options along the three levels of policy mixes confirms and refines the possible role of co-design approaches for public policies in the transformation of agri-food systems.

In the United States, food system inequities are the result of generations of systematic disparities in social, political, and economic opportunity and are disproportionately borne by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. The Food Scholars Project aims to expand equity in food systems education and leadership by building a resilient cross-institutional partnership between faculty and students at the University of Georgia (UGA, a predominantly White Land-Grant Institution) and Spelman College (an historically Black college). This embedded case study examines critical reflections collected with 28 UGA faculty, staff, and graduate students who participated in one or more multi-day professional development workshops focused on supporting critical praxis in mentoring and pedagogy in the context of food systems education. Results indicate that professional development can affect educators’ self-awareness, knowledge, and intentions related to culturally responsive education and mentoring. Each workshop had unique learning objectives; yet across workshops, participants identified areas of learning that challenged their preconceived assumptions about equity in higher education, how to support student success, and their own positionality and power as mentors and educators. Participants engaged in productive struggle to integrate new and challenging ideas, and they critically examined their responsibility to enact their values through their mentoring and teaching praxis. Finally, across workshops, participants committed themselves to actionable steps toward equity in food systems education and ongoing learning within a nascent community of practice.

The most recent changes in the US Census of Agriculture (CoA) have caused substantial increases in the number of farmers. At the same time, by including lifestyle and residential operations, the CoA also obfuscates the degree of consolidation in the agricultural sector. The goal of this paper is to illustrate the issues associated with the current CoA classifications by outlining their historical trajectory since 1974, when the current definition of a farm was adopted. Though the characterization of a farm has remained the same for over half a century, the definition of operators and the farm sector as a whole have changed dramatically. To help understand the problems this has created, CoA data is juxtaposed with other agricultural statistics such as surveys of landowners and workers. This illuminates two issues. First, it shows the broad changes that have occurred in US agriculture, and the importance of actors beyond the farmer/operator in the sector. Second, it clarifies the need for consistent information that treats farming as an economic sector to aid the policy-making process and provide clear information to the public. The paper concludes with a range of proposals on how to improve the usefulness of agricultural statistics that include integration of existing data with targeted surveys that more holistically represent the reality of US agriculture today and consistently incorporate landowners and farm workers, and the creation of an independent statistical agency to more efficiently develop, manage and disseminate information about the US agricultural sector.