From Subsistence to Production - Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community - page 15

In the realm of farming, agricultural economists have focused virtually all their attention
on the “economically efficient” production and marketing of selected “standard” commod-
ities. Not all commodities have attracted the same amount of attention by the agricultural
establishment. Those commodities that can be “mass-produced” in accordance with the pre-
cepts put forth by the neoclassical production function and that articulate with standardized
mass markets have garnered most of the attention. Thus, for example, there are detailed eco-
nometric analyses of the production practices for all the major market-oriented commodities
such as corn, wheat, and soybeans, and considerable research time and money are devoted to
fine-tuning these models.
Nonstandard varieties or commodities that have not achieved “economies of scale” be-
cause they are too embedded in household or community relations to get an “economically
unencumbered” reading, have been largely ignored by the conventional agricultural commu-
nity. Maple sugar, cedar oil, and various direct-marketed fruits and vegetables, for instance,
are commodities that have historically been and continue to be important livelihood activities
for many farm households and farm communities in the Northeast. However, these commod-
ities have been overlooked by mainstream agricultural economics and treated in the academ-
ic literature as either “marginal” or “peripheral” farm enterprises. From a neoclassical, mar-
ket perspective the income generated from maple, cedar, and direct marketing is small vis-à-
vis the receipts from standardized, bulk commodities like milk, corn, or soybeans; yet cedar,
maple, and direct-marketing activities help sustain, and in many instances totally support,
many rural households, even though these activities cannot be easily quantified or categor-
ized. The production of maple sugar and cedar oil and the direct marketing of fruits and ve-
getables are deeply embedded in the social fabric of the region and households of the North-
east.
In short, the picture of rural life presented to us by neoclassical economics, whether of its
agriculture or nonagricultural aspects, is framed in terms of well-defined markets and con-
structed categories of land, labor, capital, and management, which are organized to fit the
production function. These categories typically do not articulate with the community and
household relations that can and do structure everyday economic activities. Although eco-
nomists using such models could ignore the community contexts and social relations that are
part and parcel of local economic life, they could not make them disappear. The embedded-
ness of economic life, ignored by mainstream economics for the past hundred years, surfaced
about three decades ago in the writings of development specialists who observed that, des-
pite very low labor-force participation rates in many Third World countries, as measured by
official statistics, most able-bodied men and women were engaged in all sorts of “economic”
activities.