Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
were simply ignored or glossed over by most observers. Ethnographic accounts of production
agriculture reveal a richly textured set of intertwined household, community, and economic
relations. Norms of reciprocity within farming communities, for example, are evident every-
where, though they are seldom integrated into the economic calculus of the farm business.
The following exchange recorded in Waucoma Twilight, an ethnography of a small rural vil-
lage in northeastern Iowa, illustrates this point.
JEROME : I think people should work together, it should be not just one person working. That's my
idea about a farmer, you know. If you got a little trouble, your neighbor comes over and helps
you quick, or you go over and help him, just like a little family, the whole bunch of them a fam-
ily, you know.
RITA : It's one big family.
JEROME : You know, so they all kind of work together, not just I work this now and you work that,
you stay on your side of the fence and I'll stay on mine. If you kind of mix up together, you all
get along better than if you don't do that. 30
At the community level, farmers' markets, community-supported agriculture, community
kitchens, and U-pick operations represent the organizational, associational, and institutional
characteristics of the civic economy. Like community gardens, these enterprises bridge the
economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of community life. Their effects and be-
nefits are not easily tallied by economists. Yet we would all be poorer for their absence.
In summary, there are many examples that illustrate the extent to which the economic ter-
rain in rural areas is much more “textured” than the economists would have us believe. The
production-driven, market-based system of conventional agriculture espoused by the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the land-grant universities is being increasingly challenged
by producers and consumers who hold to a broader vision of how economic enterprises are
integrated into and contribute to household and community. For example, the sustainable ag-
riculture movement represents an attempt to embed the economics of agricultural production
within an environmental, community, and household context. By giving environmental and
social factors equal footing with economics, proponents of sustainable agriculture are chal-
lenging the assumption that the economic aspects of farming should be the sole driving force
in dictating how our food and fiber are produced. 31
Despite the emerging recognition that a civic economy can be found in most communities,
there are powerful forces that continue to push the agriculture and food system down the path
toward increased consolidation and concentration. I turn to these trends in the next chapter.
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