From Commodity Agriculture to Civic Agriculture - Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community - page 70

landscapes, improve environmental quality, and, ultimately, promote long-term sustainabil-
ity. 12
Civic agriculture, then, as one aspect of the civic community, becomes a powerful template
around which to build non- or extramarket relationships between persons, social groups, and
institutions that have been distanced from each other. Indeed a growing number of practi-
tioners and academics across the United States are recognizing that creative new forms of
community development, built around the regeneration of local food systems, may eventu-
ally generate sufficient economic and political power to mute the more socially and environ-
mentally destructive manifestations of the global marketplace. 13 A turn toward a more civic
agriculture is both theoretically and practically possible. Indeed, the seeds have been sown
and are taking root throughout the United States.