Agriculture and Human Values最新文献

{"title":"Glimpses of embodied utopias, why Moroccan and Swiss farmers engage in alternative agricultures","authors":"Andrea Mathez","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10598-9","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10598-9","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Geographies of food are not only shaped by political economic forces but also by individuals who resist dominant ways of subjectivation. Based on ethnographic research on forty-seven agroecological farms in Switzerland and Morocco, this article proposes a philosophical reconsideration of the role of utopia, hope and enchantment in shaping people’s actions. It contributes to the understanding of the emotional, spiritual and embodied experiences that lead farmers to engage in alternative agricultures at the margins of state planning and agro-industry. The adoption of an etic research approach to ‘alternativity’ allows me to capture ‘quiet alternativities’, or farming experiences with beneficial socio-ecological outcomes but which are not represented as alternative or disruptive by the farmers themselves. This is especially important for Swiss and Moroccan farmers who do not always identify with a social movement or express any explicit opposition to agricultural policies and the dominant agri-food system, although their practices may effectively incorporate an alternative experience from where to envision different agri-<i>cultures</i>. Drawing from diverse conceptions of utopia, hope and enchantment, I unravel different manifestations of utopia as mental creations of ‘no-where’ and as embodied experiences of ‘no-when’. This enables me to attend to ‘quiet expressions’ of hope manifested not in speech but in daily practices and to discuss farmers’ motives to engage in alternative agricultures, despite a sometimes bleak outlook. I theorise these multiple experiences as ‘glimpses of utopias’ to explore the embodied and embedded dimensions of utopia to broaden what utopia can mean beyond purely speculative thinking.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"227 - 240"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10598-9.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141828521","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":"A buzzword, a “win-win”, or a signal towards the future of agriculture? A critical analysis of regenerative agriculture","authors":"Kelly R. Wilson,&nbsp;Mary K. Hendrickson,&nbsp;Robert L. Myers","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10603-1","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10603-1","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>As the term regenerative agriculture caught fire in public discourse around 2019, it was promptly labelled a buzzword. While the buzzword accusation tends to be regarded as negative, these widely used terms also reflect an important area of growing public interest. Exploring a buzzword can thus help us understand our current moment and offer insights to paths forward. In this study, we explored how and why different individuals and groups adopt certain key terms or buzzwords, in this case the term “regenerative agriculture”. We used an interpretivist approach to understand how “regenerative agriculture” is being constructed, interpreted, understood, and employed, drawing from 19 semi-structured interviews conducted with farmers, researchers, private companies, and NGO/nonprofits. Several interviewees felt that regenerative agriculture is making an important societal shift in thinking towards addressing major issues like climate change and parity in our food and agricultural systems. However, farmers in particular felt that the term is being greenwashed, coopting the work they do, and even diluting the meaning. We also found that regenerative agriculture is being advanced as mobilizing “win-wins”—for farmers, for consumers, for society—but that this discourse may be veiling the political and economic agendas of the big companies using the term. Our findings further illustrated the debates over standardizing the term regenerative agriculture, with some contending that there should be room for “continuous improvement” but others felt it is meaningless without a definition.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"257 - 269"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10603-1.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141646291","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":"Valuing farmers in transitions to more sustainable food systems: A systematic literature review of local food producers’ experiences and contributions in short food supply chains","authors":"Grace O’Connor,&nbsp;Kimberley Reis,&nbsp;Cheryl Desha,&nbsp;Ingrid Burkett","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10601-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10601-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Industrial food systems are being increasingly challenged by alternative food movements globally that advocate for better environmental, social, economic, and political outcomes as part of societal transitions to more sustainable food systems. At the heart of these transitions are local food producers operating within shorter food supply chains, their experiences, and their knowledge of ecologically sustainable food production, biodiversity and climate, and their communities. Despite their important contributions to the resilience of food systems, society and ecology, local food producers' experiences and knowledges are often undervalued, ignored, or inaccurately reflected. This systematic literature review identifies the values, motivations, and concerns as key elements of the experiences of local food producers within short food supply chains across literature globally, their contributions to social-ecological resilience, and discusses how these experiences and contributions can influence transitions to sustainable food systems. Eighty-five research articles were distilled from 5 databases and thematic analysis revealed four major themes: (1) concerns for exploitative operating contexts and hidden labor expectations within short food supple chains, (2) local food producers’ value and need for social networks, (3) their environmental values, connections, and concerns, and (4) how they can value and be motivated by alternative models but are concerned by their economic viability. This review also observed an important paradox within local food producers’ experiences showing that whilst farming is a demanding profession and lifestyle, they can feel a deep fulfilment when they live and work in harmony with their values and motivations. This systematic review is significant for how it values and synthesizes the experiences of local food producers and the diverse personal, social, ecological, and economic contributions that local food production has for social-ecological resilience of communities. By better communicating these experiences and contributions to decision-makers, policy makers and planners, this research can have major implications for enabling societal transitions that are fairer and more just in ways that empower, protect, and privilege local food producers’ voices.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"565 - 592"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10601-3.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141652909","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":"Make the desert bloom—imaginaries, infrastructure, and water-land entanglement in desert agriculture in Israel","authors":"Liron Shani","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10607-x","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10607-x","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Understanding the meaning of land–water entanglement is increasingly important today, in an age of climate change and desertification. Despite the close ties between water and land, literature largely focuses on each of them separately or ignores the attempts to disconnect them. This paper examines the connections and disconnections between water and land in the southern desert of Israel in the shadow of political use and environmental disaster. Drawing on ethnographic research, the paper explores the challenges and successes of intensive agriculture in arid regions, and how water allocation plays a crucial role in making the desert bloom. Weaving between the theoretical framework of 'agricultural infrastructure' and 'water-land imaginations', the paper separates between the different imaginations that enable the various dimensions of the water-land entanglement, the efforts made to expand the connection or disconnect them, and between their political, environmental and cultural realization as infrastructures. Overall, this paper provides insights into the ways by which Imaginations, infrastructures and land–water entanglement shape human-environmental interactions in arid regions and agriculture projects in the Anthropocene era.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"303 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10607-x.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141662071","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":"Correction: Between “better than” and “as good as”: mobilizing social representations of alternative proteins to transform meat and dairy consumption practices","authors":"Claudia Laviolette,&nbsp;Laurence Godin","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10604-0","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10604-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1907 - 1907"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141680372","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":"Ashok Gulati, Kavery Ganguly, Harsh Wardhan, (Eds): Agricultural value chains in India: ensuring competitiveness, inclusiveness, sustainability, scalability, and improved finance","authors":"Eliaza Mkuna","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10602-2","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10602-2","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1911 - 1912"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141685208","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":"Exploring mental systems within regenerative agriculture: systems thinking and rotational grazing adoption among Canadian livestock producers","authors":"Brooke McWherter,&nbsp;Kate Sherren","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10597-w","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10597-w","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Regenerative agriculture is an approach that places soil conservation at the center of its practices. As part of this approach, regenerative agriculture seeks to address concerns related to environmental and socio-economic dimensions of food production through the promotion of a range of best management practices. While regenerative agriculture has received support at various levels in many countries, including Canada, adoption remains low. Systems thinking strength has been recognized as facilitating farmer adoption of several regenerative agricultural practices including rotational grazing (RG). However, few approaches have examined multiple types of systems thinking nor the breadth of a system which may underlay the diverse ways that systems thinking influences agricultural practice adoption and persistence. Furthermore, few studies have taken a quantitative approach into understanding how different systems are emphasized by adopters of RG within the context of systems thinking. Using survey data from program participants in a national producer training program, we explored the use of two measures of systems thinking, systems thinking strength and diversity of a system in RG adopters. Our research highlights how the inclusion of the breadth of systems farmers consider can help us better understand RG adopters and support efforts to recruit new adopters. Furthermore, our results suggest that adopters are not homogenous in the types of systems they emphasize in their farming nor in the strength of their systems thinking. Future training programs can utilize these insights to leverage existing system emphases of RG producers and integrate them in the development of training programs to attract potential adopters.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"213 - 226"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496690","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":"Saving, sharing and shaping landrace seeds in commons: unravelling seed commoning norms for furthering agrobiodiversity","authors":"Emil Sandström,&nbsp;Tove Ortman,&nbsp;Christine A Watson,&nbsp;Jan Bengtsson,&nbsp;Clara Gustafsson,&nbsp;Göran Bergkvist","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10581-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10581-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>One of the major challenges facing agricultural and food systems today is the loss of agrobiodiversity. Considering the current impasse of preventing the worldwide loss of crop diversity, this paper highlights the possibility for a radical reorientation of current legal seed frameworks that could provide more space for alternative seed systems to evolve which centre on norms that support on-farm agrobiodiversity. Understanding the underlying norms that shape seed commons are important, since norms both delimit and contribute to what ultimately will constitute the seeds and who will ultimately have access to the seeds and thus to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported. This paper applies a commoning approach to explore the underpinning norms of a Swedish seed commons initiative and discusses the potential for furthering agrobiodiversity in the context of wider legal and authoritative discourses on seed enclosure. The paper shows how the seed commoning system is shaped and protected by a particular set of farming norms, which allows for sharing seeds among those who adhere to the norms but excludes those who will not. The paper further illustrates how farmers have been able to navigate fragile legal and economic pathways to collectively organize around landrace seeds, which function as an epistemic farming community, that maintain landraces from the past and shape new landraces for the present, adapted to diverse agro-ecological environments for low-input agriculture. The paper reveals how the ascribed norms to the seed commons in combination with the current seed laws set a certain limit to the extent to which agrobiodiversity is upheld and supported and discusses why prescriptions of “getting institutions right” for seed governance are difficult at best, when considering the shifting socio-nature of seeds. To further increase agrobiodiversity, the paper suggests future seed laws are redirected to the sustenance of a proliferation of protected seed commoning systems that can supply locally adapted plant material for diverse groups of farmers and farming systems.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1825 - 1840"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10581-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142810859","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":"How agricultural producers use local knowledge, climate information, and on-farm “experiments” to address drought risk","authors":"Adam J. Snitker,&nbsp;Laurie Yung,&nbsp;Elizabeth Covelli Metcalf,&nbsp;R. Kyle Bocinsky,&nbsp;Neva Hassanein,&nbsp;Kelsey Jensco,&nbsp;Ada P. Smith,&nbsp;Austin Schuver","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10582-3","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10582-3","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of drought in many parts of the world, including Montana. In the face of worsening drought conditions, agricultural producers need to adapt their operations to mitigate risk. This study examined the role of local knowledge and climate information in drought-related decisions through five focus groups with Montana farmers and ranchers. We found that trust and risk perceptions mediated how producers utilized both local knowledge and climate information. More specifically, producers relied on local knowledge in drought-related decisions, regarding their own observation and past experience as trustworthy and not particularly risky. In contrast, climate information and seasonal climate forecasts in particular were regarded as risky and untrustworthy, largely due to a perceived lack of accuracy. Since producers tended to be risk averse, especially given market and climate uncertainties, they rarely relied on “risky” climate information. At the same time, producers actively managed risk and tested out new technologies and practices through processes of trial and error, what they called “experimenting,” which enabled them to build firsthand knowledge of potential adaptations. In the context of uncertainty and risk aversion, programs that reduce the financial risk of experimenting with new technologies and adaptive practices are needed to enable producers to develop direct experience with innovations designed to mitigate drought risk. Further, scientists developing climate information need to work directly with farmers and ranchers to better integrate local knowledge into climate information.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"41 4","pages":"1857 - 1875"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142810858","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":"Marginality in the berry fields: hierarchical ordering of food and agrarian systems in Norway","authors":"Greta Juskaite","doi":"10.1007/s10460-024-10600-4","DOIUrl":"10.1007/s10460-024-10600-4","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Although being essential to sustaining food production, migrant workers continuously find themselves at the bottom of the social and power hierarchy in food and agrarian systems around the world. Effects and origins of hierarchical ordering in food and agrarian systems increasingly gather public, political, and academic attention, however, how it matters for these systems remains little understood. As such, this paper aims to understand how hierarchical ordering shapes migrant worker marginality and links it to the contemporary formations of food and agrarian systems. To do so, this paper explores engaged and embodied dimensions of disadvantaged migrant worker realities. This is done by drawing on research conducted in Norway, mainly consisting of interviews with migrant agri-food worker and farmers, as well as ethnographic data from Norwegian berry farms and supporting document analysis. The analysis reveals a complex picture of the power and reach of hierarchical ordering as it directly and indirectly impacts migrant workers in the Norwegian berry fields, as well as ideas around narrow divisions in food and agrarian systems and society more broadly that are implicated in naturalizing and internalizing such ordering. Following these insights, the paper proposes a theorization of food and agrarian systems as hierarchical projects– structures that find their foundations in patterned ordering that arranges and regularizes power hierarchies on the count of differences.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":7683,"journal":{"name":"Agriculture and Human Values","volume":"42 1","pages":"241 - 255"},"PeriodicalIF":3.5,"publicationDate":"2024-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10460-024-10600-4.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143496968","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}