Agricultural Expertise, Market Connections, and Rural Futures: Regional Perspectives on Resilience

In the face of rapid neoliberal globalization and climate change, agricultural communities across the globe have demonstrated creative ways to adapt and build resilience. Many of the articles collected in this volume are based on ethnographic research conducted in regions deemed peripheral from the standpoint of national and global markets—the Aysén region in Chile, the Parry Sound District in Ontario, rural Oaxacan villages impacted by labor outmigration, and pastoral communities in the Peruvian Andes. Others focus on regions recognized as central to agricultural production strategies at a national level—Indiana row-crop country and Alsatian vineyards. In both settings, the authors highlight the voices of people (or more-than-human actors) whose expertise and perspectives are frequently overlooked in both scholarship and policy processes. Together, these articles provide rich regional perspectives on how farmers, pastoralists, and non-human organisms contribute knowledge and labor within complex food production systems to make producer communities more resilient in the face of transition. Some of the articles also identify specific circumstantial barriers that explain why these actors/producers do not receive due recognition.

In, “Challenging Gendered Assumptions of Expertise in Pastoralist Development in the Peruvian Andes,” Allison Caine explores why women’s grounded expertise is ignored in development discourse, despite the fact that women’s knowledge could help us understand adaptation to local climate change. Caine shows that in development initiatives, this exclusion is not just a consequence of women’s lack of participation but is systematically embedded in the design and implementation of the development training programs and materials themselves. Due to the use of different linguistic registers, the legibility of women’s expertise is not recorded. Caine’s goal is to underscore women’s efforts in climate adaptability.

In Sanitary Crises and “No Contact” Aquaculture: Chilean Fish Farming During the Pandemic, Eric H. Thomas investigates the effects of COVID-19 on the industrial aquaculture sector in Southern Chile. Framing recent events within his long-term research in the Aysén region and the history of past crises impacting salmon aquaculture (e.g., sea lice and bacterial disease outbreaks), Thomas argues that COVID-19 should be viewed as a profoundly disruptive disaster, rather than a temporary crisis that can easily be solved. The pandemic reveals the ways that salmon aquaculture contributes very little to local livelihoods in remote coastal communities. Thomas explores the political and economic tensions exposed by the pandemic and provides insight into how anthropologists can investigate disasters as they unfold.

Nicholas C. Kawa draws on participant observation and interviews to examine farmer adoption of soil conservation methods in A “Win-Win” for Soil Conservation? How Indiana Row-Crop Farmers Perceive the Benefits (and Trade-offs) of No-Till Agriculture. Rather than approaching this topic through the lens of agricultural economics (as is typical in the broader literature), Kawa uses ethnographic methods to explore farmers’ perceptions of no-till in their own words, exploring their concerns about labor, ecological practice, and aesthetics. He argues that no-till agriculture is often viewed as a “win-win” in part because it does not challenge the industrial agricultural paradigm.

Mark Anthony Arceño adopts a multisensory approach and a multispecies framework in On Winegrowers and More-than-Human Workers in Ohioan and Alsatian Vineyards. Arceño describes in detail the roles played by birds, bees, and other species in the winegrowing process in several vineyards in Central Ohio and the Alsace region of France, asking us to consider their activities as overlooked forms of labor that should be incorporated in the idea of terroir. This article demonstrates how agricultural anthropologists can expand the boundaries of traditional ethnographic analysis to incorporate new sensory data and examine the ways that food producers communicate with these “more-than-human” workers.

In The Effects of Migration on Peasant Agricultural Systems: Oaxacan Villages, Between Remittances and Market Integration, Ismael Vaccaro and Edith Ortiz Díaz combine fieldwork with a multicausal explanatory framework to examine the effects of outmigration and associated remittances on landscape and crop choice in rural indigenous Zapotec villages in the Northern Sierra region of Oaxaca state (Mexico). They also use family genealogies to show how change affects certain communities. Depopulation, remittances, and infrastructural improvements through road construction have changed agricultural practices (e.g., the abandonment of hard-to-grow staple crops) and lead to growth in forest cover in the landscape. Households have also been able to minimize risks associated with agricultural production.

In Agricultural Persistence and Potentials on the Edge of Northern Ontario, Elizabeth Finnis presents ethnographic data from a region often overlooked in analyses of Canadian agriculture, the Parry Sound District, Ontario. Finnis focuses on the ways that farmers in this district, some with long family histories in agriculture and others who are new to farming, view agricultural futures and potentials in this “peripheral” area. Drawing on the lived experiences and perspectives of these farmers, she identifies forms of critical policy and infrastructural support that are needed to ensure agricultural viability in this region.

Also in this issue, Andrea Rissing and Nicholas C. Kawa review Alex Blanchette’s Porkopolis: American Animality, Standardized Life, and the Factory Farm. Instead of a standard book review, Rissing and Kawa engage in a conversation about the text and its contributions to ethnographic research on industrial agriculture. The result is a compelling dialogic review that captures their delight (and disgust) in engaging with Blanchette’s work on factory hog farming. We look forward to publishing more pieces that push the boundaries of the traditional book review format.

Sarah Davenport reviews the timely volume, Black Food Matters: Racial Justice in the Wake of Food Justice, edited by Hanna Garth and Ashanté M. Reese. Davenport argues that the authors contributing to this volume provide a model of liberatory scholarship. The authors explore the role that food plays in resistance and community-building processes for Black people, resist the reification of colonialist approaches, and thoughtfully engage with the work of previous Black and indigenous scholars.

Shanara Mercer, Claire Patrick, and Nicole D. Peterson have also co-authored an engaging review of Katie S. Martin’s Reinventing Food Banks & Pantries: Tools to End Hunger. Their shared interest in this book comes from their involvement with the food bank on the UNC Charlotte campus. They conclude that the book offers valuable suggestions for those involved in running “hunger relief centers” (a new term for food banks that shifts the focus away from simple food provisioning toward more profound structural interventions) and anthropologists researching food justice.