Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
largely been overlooked by policy makers. Indeed, farmers are often reduced to workers
whose primary tasks are to follow production procedures outlined from above. And farms
are simply places where production occurs, devoid of connections to the local community or
social order. 3
Commodity agriculture has become synonymous with industrial agriculture. Many of the
basic commodities that undergird the U.S. food system are produced on very large farms that
are tied to large agribusiness firms through production contracts. Production contracts are es-
pecially prevalent among poultry and livestock farms. 4
The entire system of commodity production is being propped up by large government sub-
sidies. These subsidies favor some producers over others (usually large ones over small ones)
and certain production practices over others (usually capital-intensive over organic). A recent
report by Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation noted that “growers of corn, wheat, cot-
ton, soybeans, and rice receive more than 90 percent of all farm subsidies, while growers of
most of the 400 other domestic crops are completely shut out of farm subsidy programs.” The
report continued: “farm subsidies in 2001 were distributed overwhelmingly to large grow-
ers and agribusiness, including a number of Fortune 500 companies… . The top 10 percent
of recipients—most of whom earn over $250,000 annually—received 73 percent of all farm
subsidies in 2001.” 5
The shortcomings of a corporately controlled and managed food system have been re-
vealed in many scholarly books and journal articles, as well as in the popular press. 6
However, only recently has a civic agriculture paradigm emerged to challenge the wisdom
of conventional commodity agriculture. The emerging civic approach is associated with a re-
localizing of production. From this perspective, agriculture and food endeavors are seen as
engines of local economic development and integrally related to the social and cultural fabric
of the community.
Refashioning Farming to Fit the Marketplace
Civic agriculture brings together production and consumption activities within communities
and offers consumers real alternatives to the commodities produced, processed, and marketed
by large agribusiness firms. Civic agriculture is the embedding of local agricultural and food
production in the community. 7 Civic agriculture is not only a source of family income for
the farmer and food processor; civic agricultural enterprises also contribute to the health and
vitality of their local communities in a variety of social, economic, political, and cultural con-
texts. For example, civic agriculture increases agricultural literacy by directly linking con-
sumers to producers. Likewise, civic agricultural enterprises have a much higher local eco-
nomic multiplier than farms or processors that are producing for the global mass market. This
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