{"title":"Unpacking “the surprise chain”: the governance of food security during the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne, Australia","authors":"Rachel Carey, Maureen Murphy","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10629-5","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10629-5","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Food systems are being affected by multiple shocks related to climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical events. Food prices and food insecurity are rising globally as a result, raising questions about the effective governance of food security during shocks. This paper critically examines the governance of food security in Melbourne, Australia during a major food system shock, the COVID-19 pandemic. It draws on document analysis and 34 stakeholder interviews with 41 participants from government, industry and civil society between May 2020 and March 2021. The paper examines the role of these actors in governance mechanisms for two important aspects of food system governance during the COVID-19 pandemic, continuity of food supply and delivery of emergency food relief. Clark et al.’s (2021) “governance engagement continuum” is used to show how civil society groups were excluded from these formal governance mechanisms, instead establishing their own spaces of “self-governance”. The resilience aims associated with these governance mechanisms are also analyzed using Zurek et al.’s (2022) “three R’s” (robustness, recovery and reorientation) framework. Our study highlights the significant role of food industry actors in the continuity of food supply and delivery of emergency food relief, and it shows the vulnerabilities of emergency food relief that depends on industry food “surpluses” as a model for addressing food insecurity during food system shocks. We conclude that greater government leadership is needed in the governance of food security during food system shocks, and in implementation of legislative and policy approaches that are grounded in the human right to food.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"107 - 120"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10629-5.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496658","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}
Julia C. D. Valliant, Marie T. O’Neill, Julia Freedgood
{"title":"Bipartisan creation of US Land Access Policy Incentives: states’ efforts to support beginning farmers and resist farm consolidation and loss","authors":"Julia C. D. Valliant, Marie T. O’Neill, Julia Freedgood","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10619-7","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10619-7","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Since 1983, legislators and advocates have introduced Land Access Policy Incentives in twenty of the fifty United States. These bills share a demographic goal: to fund land rental or purchase for young and beginning farmers and ranchers. States’ efforts to facilitate land access are part of a global movement to support farmers’ entry into agriculture and to resist farmers’ increasing exclusion from land. We examine the policy creation processes of nine states to describe how coalitions and government leaders are translating their values around land access barriers into policy tools whose political appeal is broad. The bills often pass unanimously, and enrollments are strong: about 2,000 young and beginning US farmers and ranchers will purchase or rent farms this year through a few states’ land access policy programs. We trace the themes from interviews with 66 of the bills’ authors and advocates, and their documentation and media coverage, to demonstrate the values that bipartisan coalitions enlist to construct successful bills and the compromises that make them politically feasible. The coalitions’ values turn on the threats of rising land costs, farm expansion or consolidation, and land conversion out of agriculture. As a group, the policies serve broadacre farming operations while leaving specialty crop farms largely unserved. Two states have endeavored to include all farmers of color among their policies’ beneficiaries. Our findings demonstrate tradeoffs of states’ current Land Access Policy Incentives and suggest next steps for research and advocacy to inform policy development to support next generation farming opportunities.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"421 - 439"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10619-7.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496915","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":"Vincanne Adams: Glyphosate and the swirl: An agro-industrial chemical on the move","authors":"Arif Purwanto Kaban","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10632-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10632-w","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1915 - 1916"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142811013","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}
Martina Spörri, Maria Haller, Nadja El Benni, Gabriele Mack, Robert Finger
{"title":"How farmers’ self-identities affect agri-environmental transition in Grassland Use: a mixed method study in the Swiss Alpine Region","authors":"Martina Spörri, Maria Haller, Nadja El Benni, Gabriele Mack, Robert Finger","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10608-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10608-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Agri-environmental policies programmes mainly focus on economic incentives for the agri-environmental transition in grassland use. However, barriers rooted in farmers’ self-identities, which determine their behavioural intentions toward environmentally friendly practices, are often unaddressed in policy design. We conceptualise two self-identity gradients, productivist–multifunctionalist–conservationist and traditionalist–innovationist, to analyse drivers and barriers of agri-environmental transition processes among farmers. In order to grasp the complex multidimensional and hierarchical concept of self-identity as initially proposed by Stryker (<i>Journal of Marriage and Family</i> 30: 558–564, 1968), our analysis comprises a triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods on a comprehensive dataset of 75 interviews with Swiss alpine grassland farmers. Through the semi-deductive coding of responses to open questions (revealing hierarchical aspects) and a factor analysis of closed, Likert-scale questions (revealing multidimensional aspects), we positioned each farmer along the conceptualised self-identity gradients. Our framework allows to explain contradictory behaviours exhibited by farmers: Our results revealed a mismatch between the farmers’ prevailing conservationist-innovationist self-identity and their actual intensification behaviour. This mismatch can be explained by the discrepancy between the individual self-identity and the prevailing productivist–innovationist idea of a good farmer, on which farmers continue to base their decisions. Within this discrepancy, however, lies the potential for a shift in the idea of what constitutes a good farmer and a consequential agri-environmental transition.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"319 - 332"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10608-w.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496728","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":"Family farms through the lens of geopolitics: rethinking agency and power in the Baltic borderlands","authors":"Diana Mincytė, Renata Blumberg","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10613-z","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10613-z","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines the role of geopolitics, including armed conflict, in family farming. Drawing on critical approaches to geopolitics in geography and anthropology, we situate the dynamics of family farming in the context of multiscalar struggles over territory and political sovereignty. Our historically and geographically situated approach shows how geopolitical positionality engenders vulnerabilities as well as political potential for alternative development by shaping labor and gender dynamics in farming households. Empirically, our research provides an illustrative example of the Baltic states, especially Latvia and Lithuania, which have been situated within geopolitical fault lines for centuries. Focusing on four different historical periods, we demonstrate how the dynamics of family farming in the Baltic states—characterized by the persistence of smallholder family farms and specific land ownership patterns with women owning almost half of farms—are partly a result of the multiscalar geopolitics manifesting itself in violent colonial histories. Our analysis also reveals how various geopolitical power interplays in borderlands can lead to devastating consequences, while simultaneously creating pathways for alternatives to the capital-intensive, environmentally destructive, and socially exploitative corporate food regime. Overall, our research underscores the complex ways in which geopolitical (in)security undergirds labor and gender in farming households.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1317 - 1333"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142810866","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}
Sanne K. Djojosoeparto, Muriel C. D. Verain, Hanna Schebesta, Sander Biesbroek, Maartje P. Poelman, Jeroen J. L. Candel
{"title":"Harnessing the potential of public procurement for the protein transition – perceived barriers and facilitators","authors":"Sanne K. Djojosoeparto, Muriel C. D. Verain, Hanna Schebesta, Sander Biesbroek, Maartje P. Poelman, Jeroen J. L. Candel","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10610-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10610-2","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Shifting dietary patterns from animal-based proteins to more plant-based and alternative protein sources – the protein transition – is urgently needed to improve planetary and human health. Public food procurement is considered to be an effective policy instrument to accelerate the protein transition and to be a potential game changer towards a sustainable food system. However, this potential has remained far from leveraged, and it is largely unknown which barriers and enablers exist in that context. Therefore, this study aimed to gain insight into the barriers and facilitators that are perceived by relevant stakeholders when implementing the protein transition in public food procurement. Our study was conducted in the Netherlands, because of the policy goals set by the Dutch government with regard to the protein transition (50% of the proteins consumed should include animal-based proteins and 50% plant-based proteins by 2030) and because the extent to which the protein transition has been included in the food procurement of Dutch (semi-)public organizations is still largely unknown. However, findings are also relevant for other countries. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants from a wide range of (semi-)public organizations (e.g., universities, hospitals, governments), in 2022. Five main themes of barriers and facilitators were identified: (1) support and motivation, (2) food availability and offerings, (3) financial considerations and incentives, (4) policies, processes, and contracts, and (5) environmental factors. The insights from this study can strengthen the scientific evidence base and can serve as a foundation for future research. Moreover, the insights can be beneficial to officials working in (semi-)public organizations to effectively design and execute their procurement process, and can help policymakers in policy development to foster (semi-)public organizations to implement the protein transition in their own contexts.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"351 - 368"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10610-2.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496885","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":"Divergent approaches to the ‘family farm’: celebrate, reform, or abolish?","authors":"Michaela Hoffelmeyer, Kathleen Sexsmith, Leland Glenna","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10628-6","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10628-6","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>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.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1309 - 1316"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142810855","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":"From mangroves to womangroves to feminist foodscapes: (en)gendering research on indigenous food livelihoods in the Solomon Islands","authors":"Heide K. Bruckner, Mary Tahu Paia","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10634-8","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10634-8","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Pacific Island communities are facing rapid changes to their food systems in the context of globalization, environmental degradation and climate change. While in urban areas residents face a rapid nutrition transition, in rural environments, concerns are being raised about how to best maintain traditional food systems that are nutritious and sustainable. Mangrove forests are part of biodiverse food environments that support rural communities in the Pacific, but they are often overlooked in food system research because they occur between sea and land, and because gleaning mollusks and invertebrates from mangroves are considered mere subsistence practices carried out by women. In this paper, we draw from a feminist foodscape approach in feminist political ecology to discuss qualitative fieldwork from mangrove-adjacent communities in the Solomon Islands. We highlight the socio-ecological importance of mangrove foodscapes, along with the gendered and generational aspects of how environmental and food system change are experienced differently by community members in Marovo Lagoon. While conservationists are increasingly interested in the potential of mangroves for carbon sequestration, this research addresses the critical need to engage with mangroves’ social, cultural and gendered aspects– towards intertwined goals of gender equity, biodiversity and indigenous food sovereignty in the Pacific.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"507 - 525"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10634-8.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496884","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":"Digital technology and on-farm responses to climate shocks: exploring the relations between producer agency and the security of food production","authors":"Carol Richards, Rudolf Messner, Vaughan Higgins","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10624-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10624-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Recent research into climate shocks and what this means for the on-farm production of food revealed mixed and unanticipated results. Whilst the research was triggered by a series of catastrophic, climate related disruptions, Australian beef producers interviewed for the study downplayed the immediate and direct impacts of climate shocks. When considering the changing nature of production under shifting climatic conditions, producers offered a commentary on the digital technology and data which interconnected with climate solutions deriving from both on and off the farm. Perceptions of digital technologies were mixed. Some viewpoints outlined how data driven climate solutions supported on farm planning and decision making, helping to manage climate risks and shocks. However, alongside these narratives, concerns were raised about satellite-based sustainability surveillance and their implications for producer agency. These concerns include the data-informed actions of non-farming third parties, such as bank loan call-ins for properties perceived to be a climate risk, remote surveillance of ground cover, and the commercial re-appraisal of pastoral lands as carbon sinks. Digital solutions to climate shocks thus emerge as inherently ambivalent, a response to shocks and a potential catalyst for renewed crisis. Drawing upon the theoretical lens of relationality, we argue that digital data are increasingly entangled with other material and non-material elements that may disrupt and/or reconfigure the management of farming and with that, the future security of food production. In some instances, data-based solutions to climate risks and shocks present even greater risks to producer agency than climate risks and shocks themselves.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"53 - 67"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10624-w.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496917","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":"Katrin Bohn and Mikey Tomkins: Urban food mapping: making visible the edible city","authors":"Mohammad Reza Khalilnezhad","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10631-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10631-x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1913 - 1914"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142811213","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}