Agriculture and Human Values最新文献

{"title":"Food system transformation, politics, and emotions: affective dissonance and (Un)making capitalism in the Western Balkans","authors":"Emma Haske","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10879-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10879-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This article explores the political doing of emotions in the making and unmaking of capitalism in food system transformations. While the depoliticized tendency of sustainability transition studies and the field’s neglect of emotions in processes of change are increasingly recognized, this article emphasizes how emotional (de)legitimization and the depoliticization of sustainability transformations are intertwined in ways that naturalize capitalism and uphold oppressive systems. Drawing on feminist standpoint epistemology and the concept of affective dissonance — a felt gap between lived experience and dominant narratives — an (auto-)ethnographic narrative analysis is conducted in a Western Balkan agricultural development project initiated by the foundation of a major agri-food company and its scientific partner. The analysis reveals a controversy between capitalist narratives of techno-optimism and modernization advanced by the project initiators, and underrepresented narratives of small- and medium-scale farmers that expose a gap between hegemonic optimism and lived experiences of pessimism and structural injustice. Auto-ethnographic evocative storytelling shows how emotions were mobilised by the company and its scientific partner to prevent a film screening intended to make these controversies visible and open reflexive dialogue. By exposing how emotional (de)legitimization along the lines of West/East and Modern/Traditional upholds power over more-than-capitalist narratives, this article concludes that affective dissonance can serve more-than-capitalist transformations as embodied knowledge for plural onto-epistemologies and transition pathways, as well as for forms of collective political mobilization rooted in affective solidarities that move beyond managerial control and alienating identity binaries.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-026-10879-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147738533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fermentation as food pedagogy: insights into how teaching fermentation facilitates engagement with the food system","authors":"Madhura Rao,&nbsp;Ashley Thuthao Keng Dam","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10869-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10869-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>This paper explores the pedagogical potential of fermentation as a tool to support critical engagement with food systems among urban European consumers. Drawing on the food pedagogy framework developed by Park et al. (2022), the study analyses qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 13 fermentation educators operating across eight European countries. The analysis examines how fermentation workshops may contribute to building awareness about food systems, enabling enjoyment and social connection, encouraging experiential practice in everyday life, and prompting action for change. Our findings suggest that fermentation enables sensorial and reflective learning, allowing learners to not only learn about food preservation and microbial action on food but also about the broader social, environmental, and political dimensions of contemporary food systems. However, this engagement is shaped by contextual and structural factors. Fermentation workshops in European cities seem to primarily attract white, educated, middle-class women, raising questions about access, inclusion, and the reproduction of privilege within alternative food spaces. Drawing on insights from critical food studies and feminist literature, we discuss how fermentation education intersects with discourses of ethical consumption and gendered responsibility related to foodwork and sustainable living. Overall, we observe that while fermentation workshops create space for urban consumers to meaningfully engage with food and food systems, they also mirror broader inequalities that characterise the very same systems. The paper concludes that for fermentation to become a more inclusive and impactful pedagogical tool, attention must be paid to questions of access, representation, and accountability.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-026-10869-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"State-led farm to school interventions target multiple leverage points for sustainability transformation","authors":"Megan L. Resler,&nbsp;Christy Getz,&nbsp;Heidy Paniagua,&nbsp;Gail Feenstra,&nbsp;Gwenaël Engelskirchen","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10874-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10874-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Farm to school (FTS) initiatives have, in recent decades, witnessed a surge in popularity across the US as one response to the unjust and unsustainable trajectory of corporate consolidation in industrial food systems. Bounded by the US school food system, this case study applies the leverage points framework to the work of a within-state actor group tasked primarily with supporting the grantees of a state administered FTS grant program, which funded 375 grassroots FTS projects across California between 2021 and 2024 with an unprecedented $86.8 million public investment. Using theory-driven thematic analysis of in-depth interviews (<i>n = 13</i>), the study examined how interventions implemented by these actors fostered transformation within the US school food system. We find that while their work was most concentrated at two leverage points, tightly knit interdependencies between interventions reached almost all levers of transformation across the leverage points spectrum. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of within-state FTS positions as a lever of change within the context of other, complementary, interventions. The study also constructs a catalogue of 61 concrete elements of the US school food system, serving as a practical tool for a range of FTS actors seeking to design more effective future research, policy, and practitioner strategies for accelerating sustainability transformation within the US school food system.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-026-10874-w.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Integrating social-ecological attributes into the sustainable livelihoods approach: a multidimensional framework for tackling resilience in agroecosystems","authors":"Marcos H. Easdale","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10878-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10878-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Resilience is a key concept for understanding the sustainability of agroecosystems, reflecting their capacity to absorb disturbances, adapt, and transform under environmental and social challenges. I propose an integrated framework that combines socio-ecological attributes —structural and functional characteristics influencing system dynamics— with the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach to analyze resilience in agroecosystems. The framework defines system dimensions as combinations of attributes and capitals, emphasizing cross-dimension interactions and feedbacks that can either reinforce resilience or amplify vulnerabilities. By linking ecological functions with human agency, the approach informs the design of adaptive strategies, strengthens sustainability, and guides transitions toward more resilient and adaptable farming systems.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Looking back to move forward: historical Agroecology and reciprocity in Ecuador and Bolivia","authors":"Amaya Carrasco-Torrontegui,&nbsp;Carlos Andrés Gallegos-Riofrío,&nbsp;Ernesto Méndez,&nbsp;María Quispe,&nbsp;Mabel Pintag,&nbsp;Renato Pardo Valenzuela,&nbsp;Milka Caranqui,&nbsp;Nils McCune,&nbsp;Gabriela Bucini,&nbsp;Teresa Mares,&nbsp;Colin Anderson","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10865-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10865-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Broad analyses of social change often overlook the lived experiences of rural Indigenous communities. This paper connects historical agroecology with Participatory Action Research, through collective memory and historical analysis, to examine agroecological transitions in Indigenous communities in Ecuador and Bolivia. The study uses decolonial inquiry to investigate how historical events and sociocultural dynamics shape contemporary food systems, employing river-of-life exercises (with 25 and 27 participants, respectively), 15 interviews per country, participant observation, and archival research. Results highlight that reciprocity-based customary institutions guide social and ecological dynamics shaping landscape and connecting the local to broader solidarity economies. Findings reveal that Caliata adopts a transformative, self-determined path, while Chigani Alto follows an incremental, reformist trajectory within institutional structures. These cases confirm that agroecological transitions are historically grounded and culturally rooted, the ancestral “past” is present. We propose that this approach to Historical Agroecology provides a replicable, culturally appropriate framework for guiding food system transitions.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transitioning to agricultural sustainability in the context of settler-colonialism: insights from the intersection of indigenous and Western knowledge systems","authors":"Peter Andrée,&nbsp;John Reid","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10882-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10882-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>In settler-colonial states that seek to recognize Indigenous rights, such as Aotearoa New Zealand (ANZ), the transition to agricultural sustainability must draw upon the insights of both Indigenous knowledge, in this case <i>mātauranga Māori</i>, and Western knowledge systems. This was the premise behind the ‘Sustainability Transition Challenge <i>Wānanga’</i> that took place in 2023 under the leadership of the Indigenous people of Ōtautahi (Christchurch), Ngāi Tūāhuriri. Grounded in <i>wānanga</i> as an Indigenous knowledge sharing methodology, this discussion paper explores five themes pertinent to the emerging sustainable agriculture transition in ANZ: 1) the importance of embracing <i>te ao Māori</i> (Māori worldview) in knowledge production related to sustainability; 2) the role of Indigenous leadership in sustainable agriculture; 3) the place of traditional/customary food practices and environmental management approaches within sustainable agri-food transitions; 4) the centrality of renewing <i>mana whakahaere</i> (governance); and 5) the importance of celebrating and sharing successes. Our discussion of these themes suggests future research on agri-food transitions in settler-colonial contexts pay greater attention to the key role of Indigenous property rights, co-governance models that acknowledge these rights, and the potential for catchment-level initiatives for operationalizing these approaches. We call on sustainability transition researchers to bring to the fore more stories of successful Indigenous-led transition experiments in settler-colonial contexts to mitigate political tensions that arise at the community level, allow lessons to be learned from, and inspire further change informed by both Indigenous and Western knowledge systems.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pragmatic progress? Trade-offs and seed choices in Tajikistan","authors":"Michael Spies,&nbsp;Irna Hofman","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10855-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10855-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Seed features prominently in the polarised academic and policy debates about the future of agriculture. In this article, we examine maize and cotton farmers’ seed decisions in Tajikistan, where the Soviet-era ideal of industrial modes of agriculture continues to influence farming practices, but where interventions by international actors, along with new paradigms, increasingly affect seed systems. What factors affect farmers’ seed choices, and what notions of agricultural progress do their strategies reveal? Based on extensive fieldwork in lowland Tajikistan, we examine these questions, drawing on political ecology and transition studies scholarship. We consider the state, the market, technology, and crop characteristics and illuminate starkly contrasting seed preferences for maize and cotton. Farmers opt for high-yielding hybrids for the former and relatively low-quality local seed for the latter. In order to explain this apparent inconsistency in seed choices, we address the importance of attending to the context shaping farmers’ seed decisions. These choices reflect pragmatic rather than paradigmatic strategies and challenge presumed dichotomies of distinct development pathways associated with local versus improved seed.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13083465/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147721406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assembling solutions: digital platforms, community food insecurity, and the politics of food justice","authors":"Pascale Joassart-Marcelli,&nbsp;Fernando J. Bosco,&nbsp;Keavy McFadden","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10873-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10873-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Digital food platforms are increasingly promoted as innovative responses to persistent community food insecurity, with various applications promising to reduce waste, enhance access, and optimize food systems through efficiency and digital connectivity. This paper critically examines how these platforms frame the problem of community food insecurity and construct solutions, asking to what extent their interventions align with the principles of food justice, namely recognition, redistribution, and procedural inclusion. Using the concept of assemblage, we analyze five smartphone-based platforms operating in San Diego and explore how human and non-human actors, including users, data, algorithms, institutions, and discourses, come together to enact specific ontologies of change. We find that digital food platforms tend to reproduce individualized, market-based logics that prioritize behavioral change and optimization over structural transformation. Embracing the notion of food desert, these platforms frame solutions as addressing “gaps” in access through logistical fixes, behavioral incentives, and expert-driven “ecosystems” designed to mobilize underused assets. In these narratives, food insecurity becomes a problem of efficiency to be solved by better coordination, data, and expertise, rather than a structural issue rooted in class and racial inequities. While recognizing the flexibility of assemblages and the potential for user reappropriation, we argue that dominant platform interventions currently fall short of advancing food justice. Our findings call for more grounded, participatory, and justice-oriented approaches to digital food governance that center community agency, collective ownership, and the deeper politics of food access and equity.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Gender roles and women’s empowerment in dairy farming: A case from Indonesia","authors":"Vyta W. Hanifah,&nbsp;Alexandra Peralta,&nbsp;Rida Akzar","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10875-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10875-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Most research on women’s empowerment in agriculture focuses on households that rely on crop farming activities and livestock systems. Despite an estimated 12 million dairy farms in the Global South, less is known about women’s empowerment in dairy farming. Recognising the unique structure of dairy production, we adapted the Abbreviated Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (A-WEAI) to include dairy-specific tasks across four domains: production, resources, income, and leadership, offering an adapted tool to examine women’s empowerment in dairy farming. This study draws on survey data from 435 husband-wife couples in smallholder dairy households in West Java Province, Indonesia. Using a modified A-WEAI, our calculation suggests that, although both women and men in dairy households are generally empowered, women exhibit higher levels of empowerment than men. However, looking at the individual indicators that construct the index, women are less empowered in specific domains. For example, in the leadership domain, women participate less in dairy cooperatives, which provide key services such as access to market, inputs and training. Sensitivity analysis using different thresholds (80%, 70%, and 60%) showed that while women’s empowerment levels remained unchanged, men’s varied considerably. This variation reflects the key role women play in managing household income in Southeast Asian societies, highlighting the importance of context-specific interpretation of metrics. These findings reflect the gendered division of responsibilities in dairy farming households and highlight the need to adapt women’s empowerment indicators to specific farming systems and interpret them within the local institutional and cultural contexts in which they are measured.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-026-10875-9.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bridging knowledge through Buddhist temples: knowledge co-production in adaptive co-management of agricultural landscapes in Thailand","authors":"P. Sae-heng,&nbsp;Q. Li,&nbsp;S. Sereenonchai,&nbsp;A. Knierim","doi":"10.1007/s10460-026-10888-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-026-10888-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div>\u0000 \u0000 <p>Farmers in Thailand face increasing challenges from water-related disasters, prompting the implementation of the Khok Nong Na (KNN) model under the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) to promote integrated water and land management in the agricultural landscape. This study employs the adaptive co-management approach to examine the connections between diverse stakeholders and knowledge types in Thai Buddhist agricultural landscape management. Scholars emphasised the integration of science and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), as well as the roles of bridging organisations in knowledge co-production, which is a crucial factor in enhancing adaptive capacity. However, the literature still offers a limited understanding of the roles of faith-based institutions in natural resource management. This study, therefore, aims to investigate the roles of Buddhist temples as bridging organisations in the management of the Buddhist agricultural landscape and how their faith-based networks contribute to knowledge co-production. Using two good-practice case studies, i.e. agriculture–forest landscape management in Chiang Rai and rain-fed rice landscape management in Ubon Ratchathani, we examine the role of Buddhist temples through two brokerage mechanisms: bridging organisations and networks. The findings reveal that Buddhist temples play a moderating role in fostering trust among government officers, local communities, and other stakeholders. Faith-based networks and other contributing factors, including shared religious values, religious educational methods, and knowledge-brokerage roles, enhance social learning and collaboration, thereby contributing to both individual and collective adaptive capacity. Additionally, this study provides empirical evidence on the potential influence of faith-based institutions in shaping the dynamics and equality amongst diverse knowledge systems in knowledge co-production.</p>\u0000 </div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"43 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.6,"publicationDate":"2026-04-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-026-10888-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147737683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}