{"title":"From paralyzing to actionable futures: Facilitating farmer participation in water conservation through a multiscalar horizoning work approach","authors":"Holly Brause PhD","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12314","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cuag.12314","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In the Mesilla and Rincon Valleys of southern New Mexico, prolonged drought, climate change, increased competition for water, and an ongoing lawsuit with Texas over groundwater pumping create precarity in regard to long-term water resources for agricultural production. As the sector that uses the most water in New Mexico, agricultural participation in water conservation is critical. Using ethnographic data, along with the key concepts of horizons of the future and scale, I examine barriers to addressing water-scarce futures in the present. Ultimately, I argue that adding a multiscalar approach to the established framework of “horizoning work” can generate collaborative water conservation efforts with localized, temporally limited scopes to facilitate farmer participation in efforts to address water-scarce futures.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"46 1","pages":"3-10"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141435593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Andrew Flachs, Ankita Raturi, Megan Low, Valerie Miller, Juliet Norton, Celeste Redmond, Haley Thomas
{"title":"Digital tools for local farmers: Thinking with spreadsheets in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"Andrew Flachs, Ankita Raturi, Megan Low, Valerie Miller, Juliet Norton, Celeste Redmond, Haley Thomas","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12316","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cuag.12316","url":null,"abstract":"<p>With the emergence of social distancing, the shutdown of schools and restaurants, and increased anxieties about in-person farmers markets in early 2020, local farmers and food distributors quickly pivoted to digital tools to manage their farms and connect with buyers. In this paper, we explore the role of a seemingly simple digital tool in shaping alternative agrarian relations during the pandemic-induced local food boom: the spreadsheet. Through interviews with farmers and food distributors across urban, periurban, and rural landscapes in the United States (U.S.), we show how spreadsheets and other digital tools have helped farmers manage demand during the COVID-19 pandemic while also presupposing costs, benefits, and efficiencies for these alternative agricultural food spaces. Ultimately, many local farmers found themselves pursuing goals of simplicity, labor efficiency, and expansion-oriented growth as they made sense of their farm data. Reflecting on these values, and the spreadsheet data underlying them, became a point of tension for farmers who place a high importance on diversification, stability, and interpersonal interactions. By attending to how these data are tracked, we gain deeper insights into how farmers and other stakeholders think about agrarian futures: who does the work, what gets planted, who's buying, and who benefits.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"46 1","pages":"36-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cuag.12316","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141435649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethnic elder poverty: Miao household livelihoods and elderly self-sufficiency practices in Midwest China","authors":"Shuangyan Guo, Andrew Canessa","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12312","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12312","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Within the existing literature on livelihoods, there is a paucity of research examining the livelihood of the elderly from ethnic communities, and of the few studies on elderly livelihoods, scholars tend to focus on their agricultural labor engagement and ignore other forms of activity. In this study, we investigate the elderly livelihood choices and the multiple survival practices in a Miao town in China's Midwest, which was chosen as the first case for the Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) program. Using the dual lenses of age and ethnicity, we describe the history of household livelihoods in the region, and how agricultural participation, the production of ethnic artisan goods and ritual practices are uniquely employed by Miao elders (compared to their Han peers) to achieve self-sufficiency. We consider how being Miao has certain advantages in tackling elder poverty. Alongside agricultural labor, Miao elders can engage in recognized handicrafts for sale; they can also engage in customary ritual practices as a recognized ethnic minority which would otherwise be prohibited and contribute to social cohesion. This is the first anthropological study conducted in Midwest China that centers on the livelihood and practices of age-advanced group with an ethnic identity in a globally aging context.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 2","pages":"55-68"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cuag.12312","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138571074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Nuestra ciencia as transborder ecological knowledge and survival","authors":"Anneleise Azúa","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12311","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cuag.12311","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article frames what one of my collaborators calls <i>nuestra ciencia</i> (our science) as a concept that expresses a transborder worldview based on region-specific scientific land and healing practices. I trace the ways Indigenous science came into fierce conflict with the twentieth-century wave of Anglo settler-colonial land grabs in south Texas and how the resulting force of mass agriculture enabled mass destruction and biodiversity loss in the region. It offers an environmental, archival, and ethnographic analysis of <i>curanderismo</i> (Mexican traditional medicine) as science and explores its relationship to settler colonialism, environmental degradation, and processes of racialization in relation to health, science, and medical technologies, as well as tracing the ongoing material record of its practice. I frame Mexican transborder healing traditions (<i>curanderismo</i> and plant medicine) as serious social, scientific, and ecological processes. I make it clear that although this practice is often considered a Mexican tradition, de-Indigenized <i>mestizos</i> also practice, exploit, and appropriate it, while its roots lie in Indigenous lifeways and knowledge.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 2","pages":"37-44"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-09-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89918292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The natural wine phenomenon and the promise of sustainability: Institutionalization or radicalization?","authors":"Pablo Alonso González, Eva Parga-Dans","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12310","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cuag.12310","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Natural wine is produced with organic grapes without the use of additives. As a social phenomenon, it comprises rural winemakers and urban consumers interconnected by a vibrant global community of distributors, bloggers, experts, and associations. Despite its continuous growth since the early 2000s, the movement has sparked global public interest since the French recognition of the <i>vin méthode nature</i> certification in 2020. Here we delineate the evolution of the natural wine phenomenon from its origins to its current situation. It will be argued that rather than a social movement or an alternative food network, natural wine can be better understood as a food phenomenon exhibiting a sustainable alternative mode of production and consumption that unites a loose coalition of diverse actors. In exploring the constant tensions involved in the ongoing redefinition of natural wine by social actors, we will analyze their different understandings of locality, naturalness, and ethical food production.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 2","pages":"45-54"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cuag.12310","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89187103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The trouble with perspective shifting in human consciousness Bitter Shade: The Ecological Challenge of Human Consciousness. By Michael R. Dove, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 2021. In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua . By Sophie Chao, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2022.","authors":"Rebecca Ann Dudley","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12309","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cuag.12309","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 2","pages":"69-71"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135187600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“People Around Here Like Their Fruits and Vegetables”: Eating, Growing Food, and Food Sovereignty in Eastern Kentucky","authors":"Annie Koempel PhD, MA, RD, LD","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12305","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores community-based food production and sharing practices in eastern Kentucky that are often obscured by dominant neoliberal paradigms and market-based solutions. I begin with an orientation to eastern Kentucky, which is nestled in the mountains of central Appalachia, and its history of economic precarity and subsistence. Next I introduce my methods, followed by discussions of food sovereignty. Through the presentation of ethnographic evidence from participant observation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews in eastern Kentucky, I illustrate an extant “quiet food sovereignty”—community-based food production that is overlooked by institutions and unrecognized by practitioners as constituting food sovereignty. I argue that any push to marketize growing, gathering, and/or hunting food in eastern Kentucky is not the solution to economic precarity or poor public health in that part of the state. As I illustrate, small farming (or large farming, for that matter) is not an economically viable (although socially and culturally valuable) option in the United States. Instead, I argue for local and federal efforts that support community food sovereignty.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 1","pages":"12-20"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50122766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Just Desserts: The Morality of Food Waste in America","authors":"Joshua Reno Ph.D., Kelly Alexander Ph.D","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12304","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Food, waste, and food waste are embroiled in a wide array of political and moral debates in the United States today. These debates are staged across a range of scales and sites—from individual decisions made in front of refrigerators and compost bins to public deliberations on the U.S. Senate and House floors. They often manifest as a moral panic inspiring a range of Americans at seemingly opposed ends of the political spectrum. This article contrasts three distinct sites where food waste is moralized, with the aim of deconstructing connections between discarded food and consumer ethics. In doing so, we argue that across the contemporary American social strata, food waste reduction efforts enfold taken-for-granted ideas of moral justice, or theodicy, that foreground individual responsibility and, as a result, obfuscate broader systemic issues of food inequality perpetuated by late stage capitalism.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 1","pages":"1-11"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-06-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50122771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Practicing ecological citizenship through community supported agriculture: Opportunities, challenges, and social justice concerns","authors":"Manoj Misra PhD","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/cuag.12306","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Green political theorists often highlight local food systems as an exemplar of ecological citizenship. Nevertheless, the topic has received scant systematic and critical treatment within green political theory. Although local food initiatives generally tend to be environmentally friendly, not all such initiatives lead to better environmental outcomes, nor can they be essentially characterized as citizenship practices that foster social justice. This article argues that a situated analysis is necessary to understand how a particular local food initiative promotes ecological citizenship. Through a qualitative study of community supported agriculture (CSA) participants in the greater Edmonton region of Canada, this article analyzes the civic virtues nurtured by this community and interrogates the extent to which their everyday practices resemble ecological citizenship. It concludes that discursive and structural limitations prevent the Edmonton CSA community from achieving meaningful diversity and addressing social justice concerns within its realm.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"45 1","pages":"21-33"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"50144862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pericapitalist world-making: Kitchens, gardens, and care in Wisconsin dairies","authors":"Sophie D'Anieri","doi":"10.1111/cuag.12298","DOIUrl":"10.1111/cuag.12298","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article illustrates how Mexican farmworkers in Wisconsin dairies negotiate forces of capitalist oppression through the production, preparation, sharing, and consumption of food. Engaging Anna Tsing's “pericapitalism,” I argue that farmworkers create spaces within and beside capitalism that enable strategies of care, relationships of solidarity, and the remaking of worlds. These practices facilitate not just farmworkers' survival within exploitative systems but also their ability to flourish. Critically examining the notions of agency, victimhood, oppression, and resistance that dominate narratives of Mexican migrant labor, this article draws from feminist ethnography to illuminate the various ways that farmworkers in Wisconsin dairies negotiate relationships to food, gardening, and cooking in order to create durable and livable worlds.</p>","PeriodicalId":54150,"journal":{"name":"Culture Agriculture Food and Environment","volume":"44 2","pages":"143-150"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2023-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cuag.12298","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84171507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}