Agriculture and Human Values最新文献

Agricultural systems in the Upper Midwest region of the US are highly productive by some measures. Yet at the same time, these systems do not adequately sustain farmers, rural communities, or land and water resources. This challenge has contributed to calls for transformations to enhance sustainability and reduce the vulnerability of conventional agrifood systems. A socio-technical transformation of this size and complexity will require a collective effort among a network of actors. In other contexts, collaborative processes to encourage collective action among diverse network actors have been stymied by lock-in mechanisms (e.g., institutional, material, and cognitive). Here we examine network actors’ perceptions of the current barriers and problems facing the agrifood system of the Upper Midwest and opportunities for change and solutions for creative destabilization to overcome lock-in. Using interviews with network actors and the Constant Comparative Method, we identified salient barriers, including shared concern over limited resources to facilitate change and differences in actors’ vision for change. Yet many participants appeared to agree on solutions to destabilize prevailing industry resistance to change, including shifting power to farmers, providing resources for farmers to leverage their discursive legitimacy, and challenging cognitive sources of lock-in.

Local food policy councils (FPCs) have formed as spaces for public participation and collective activism with a potential to democratize food systems, and as such have been explored in research as vehicles to realize normative concepts like food democracy. However, food democracy is a multi-dimensional term that conveys different ideas for policy and practice depending on how the meaning of democracy is understood. By using a Q-methodology approach to identify shared democracy viewpoints of individuals in US-based FPCs, this study addresses the question: which norms and ideas of food democracy resonate with practitioners, and how do these perspectives on the meaning of democracy reflect political and practical realities for FPCs in the US context? Sixteen representatives of FPCs across the country ranked 30 statements related to democracy in food systems in an online Q-study and provided expository exit-survey responses. Through interpretation of results, four democracy viewpoints were identified and elaborated, which were: 1) social justice-oriented, 2) results-oriented, 3) redistribution-oriented, and 4) local value chain-oriented fooddemocracy. These nuanced democracy perspectives contribute to the distinct, situated understandings of food democracy from practitioners’ point of view, but taken together, construct a shared concept of food democracy as working to diffuse either-or thinking in a polarized US food policy context and create an opportunity for more inclusive, equitable food systems despite structural barriers.

Society’s increasing disconnection from nature, both on individual and collective levels, is often defined as a root cause of current environmental crises and biodiversity loss. This disconnection also affects food consumption practices and understanding of food supply chains and systems. For this reason, human-nature connectedness (HNC) is widely recognized in global sustainability agendas as a way to fight unsustainable practices and behaviors. However, there is still limited knowledge on how strengthening this relationship can create opportunities for a systemic change in food consumption and production. Moreover, recent studies and approaches to nurture HNC fall short on encompassing multisensory experiences and embodied knowledge. In this paper, we apply arts-based interventions (ABI) to study HNC in relation to place-based food practices in Biella, Italy. Specifically, we draw on the five types of connections to nature (material, experiential, cognitive, emotional, and philosophical) to explore the HNC of individuals. The results show that engaging in artistic practices and awakening one’s senses can deepen one’s understanding of and connection to a local landscape and its biodiversity, leading to more environmentally friendly food practices. This approach is thus valuable for nurturing deep leverage points in sustainability transitions on a scale of local food practices. This development provides a comprehensive understanding of how individuals can reconnect to place-based landscapes while mobilizing agency towards more responsible and environmentally conscious food production and consumption (SDG 12).

Australian farmers face an array of challenges impacting mental health, such as extreme climatic events, market uncertainties, technological dependence, regulatory demands, and social isolation. Regenerative agriculture (RA) has been suggested as a way for farmers to improve wellbeing by integrating natural systems, continuous evaluation, and adaptation—while benefitting from the socio-cultural aspects of farmer relations—for sustainable food production. This rapid review of the literature aims to synthesise evidence on the relationship between RA practices and farmer mental health and wellbeing. The review encompassed 9 databases (n = 13795 articles) and 3 sources of grey literature (n = 209 studies). The final 44 items included in the review demonstrated that regenerative agricultural practices have gained recognition for environmental benefits and that the impact on farmers’ mental health has started to be explored. Findings show underlying tensions in the transition process from conventional farming practices to RA—including notable phases of triggering, accepting alternatives, adopting, and adapting. Although evidence is still scarce and limited in its scope, tailored mental health intervention and prevention strategies need to consider farmers’ vulnerability during these RA transition phases. Importantly, farmers need different supports at different phases of the system.

This article focuses on the regulatory use of digital technologies in agriculture to mitigate water pollution caused by farming practices. Initially designed to optimize fertilization practices in France, satellite data and advising tools have gradually been promoted, sold, and used as technical intermediaries to help farmers comply with the Nitrate Directive. At the crossroads of the sociology of digital agriculture, environmental studies, and STS, this article analyzes the impacts of this digital intermediation on the regulation and contributes to academic debates on the engagement of digital agriculture with the environment, and on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) greening. Studying both the design and the uses of the FARMSTAR consulting service among scientists, businesses, and crop farmers in France through interviews and observations, the article shows that digitization opens up legal by-passes into the regulation: farmers equipped with this satellite data can justify fertilization practices that circumvent the environmental law and prioritize their production goals aligned with agro-industries. This opens new research questions about the deregulatory capacities developed by dominant actors through digitization, and on the way industries weaken environmental regulation through a strategic use of science.

Social support is a crucial protective factor for mental health, including for farmers. Farmers’ social support has been associated with greater psychological well-being and reduced distress. However, little research has focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or queer (LGBTQ+) farmers and few studies have examined the role of social support for LGBTQ+ farmer mental health. The current study presents findings from analysis of survey data (N=148) and semi-structured interview data (N=17) to better understand United States (U.S.) LGBTQ+ farmers’ mental health experiences and the role of social support. Greater LGBTQ+ companionship was associated with less farm-specific stress, less LGBTQ+ victimization, fewer anxiety and depressive symptoms, and decreased suicide risk. Greater connection to LGBTQ+ friends and community were each associated with fewer poor mental health outcomes. Findings elucidate how LGBTQ+ farmers’ experiences of farm-related stress and LGBTQ+ victimization negatively impact mental health, while LGBTQ+ companionship is a form of social support that positively influences mental health. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in agriculture should question family and relationship-related assumptions and work to be inclusive of diverse family structures and relationships to ensure their work is supportive of LGBTQ+ farmers.

The success of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) depends on alignment between global aims and local decision-making. Presently missing are analyses that explain how local decision-making determines efforts to prompt transformational change. Specific to SDG2 (i.e., Zero Hunger), disregard for local decision-making manifests an endemic misrepresentation of agricultural extension as a means for achieving increased ‘production and/or productivity’. Engagements were undertaken with 390 cassava farming households in Northwest Cambodia, enabling analysis of how smallholders determine the success of global efforts to intensify production. The findings uncover the adoption of ‘ngeay sruol’ farming (translation: convenience), defined as low-input and low-cost decision-making guided by risk-aversion. Both individually and collectively, smallholders lower their risk-taking and thereby refuse extension seeking to increase production and productivity. The smallholders remain open to production and productivity, but not when required to assume significant risk to their lives and livelihoods. Going beyond generic calls for improved global-local alignment or value chain access, ngeay sruol demonstrates the deterministic, past-future prefiguration of smallholder agency, which is likely to be encountered by top-down efforts to feed the world by 2030.

In recent years, crop diversification has been promoted among management strategies demonstrating beneficial impacts on agricultural productivity and ecosystem health, thus providing a pathway toward sustainable agricultural futures. However, while some research has explored the conditions that enable or support systems that are both diverse and productive, there remains a need for further study to deepen our understanding across different regions and contexts. We address this gap by examining influencing factors and contexts that result in systems with high crop productivity and contrasting crop diversity trajectories. We conducted in-depth interviews with fifty agricultural stakeholders across four U.S. counties in two different regions, each pair of counties representing opposing trends in cropping system diversity since 2008. Our analysis identified five groups of factors that consistently influenced crop selection decisions and agricultural system change, encompassing economic, social, policy, techno-managerial, and biophysical factors. Our findings demonstrate more similarities than dissimilarities in the factors influencing farmer crop selection decisions across all counties. Subtle differences derived from how certain crop selection factors – such as climate variability, soil type, labor dynamics, and policies – interacted within specific contexts. Our findings suggest that biophysical variability and historical legacies of diverse cropping contribute to current patterns of diversification, with larger populations and alternative market demands further supporting diverse agricultural systems. This work reinforces the need to account for the dynamic contexts at local and regional levels in research and intervention aimed at promoting crop diversification.

This paper explores the relationships, tensions, and contradictions inherent in the phrase “food is political.” The concepts of “matters of fact,” “matters of concern,” and “matters of care” play critical roles in the argument. Arguing that agrifood debates arise from diverse relationalities that sit in tensions according to their “style” of fact and concerns, a thought experiment is conducted, proposing a figure and four archetypes. While the exercise may seem contrived, its value lies in surfacing the various ways these matters—of fact, concern, and care, respectively—interrelate, often in tension. To convey this value and further illuminate each archetype, the conceptual framework is employed to unpack the raw milk debate, which has recently gained national (US) attention. The paper concludes by suggesting the abandonment of the view that agrifood systems must be “fixed,” proposing recommendations that embrace ambiguity and tension. We must stay with the trouble, representing a significant departure from agrifood imaginaries that continue to present phenomena such as food, health, disease, and nutrition in black-and-white (e.g., good/bad, safe/unsafe) terms.