The Interplay of Conventional and Organic - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 155

Jones concludes that the values of the Australian movement today are similar to
those followed in the past, and continue to focus on ecology and health. But she
also observes that organic is moving toward input based agriculture. Compared to
the IFOAM Principles, the Australian movement has not specifically address the
principles of fairness and care, either in their early years or today. This is consistent
with many other observations in this volume.
Brock and Barham discuss the diversity among Amish farmers with respect
to adopting organic practices and their understanding of a range of issues in
the agrofood chain. Amish farmers justify their ethical participation in either
conventional or organic agriculture in largely anthropocentric and altruistic terms
based on Christian values. They describe organic practices largely in terms of
stewardship and traditional techniques. But they do not see the IFOAM Principles as
especially relevant for their organic practices. In contrast, many social and spiritual
ideas and values, and especially in Christian doctrine, were understood to support
the organic movement (Massingham 1942 ; Balfour 1943 ; Conford 1988 ). Christian
and spiritual values continue to influence the ideas that many farmers have about
their occupation (Stock 2007 ).
However, only a few organic farms exist within the Amish communities, and
Amish values tend to be concerned more with modern, visible and mechanized
agricultural practices (e.g., the tractor), the use of chemical fertilizers and hybrid
seeds. Amish farmers raise animals and grow crops similar to their non-Amish
neighbors who follow conventional farming practices. Amish farmers keep their
interactions with public and government representatives to a minimum. In this
regard, organic certification or registration requirements can be problematic. More-
over, the public differentiation created by the organic price premium represents a
publicly recognized differentiation that jeopardizes the values of the community.
The authors conclude that Amish religious beliefs allow individual farmers to follow
different practices based on different understandings of the relationship between
humans and nature.
To summarize the four contributions: organic is in a process of differentiation.
The intensification of production has become dominant, but is context specific
in order to consider the ecological dimension. Further, social and cultural values
often risk playing a secondary role in organic practices. Constance et al. and Hunt
et al. confront issues on the border of organic and conventional. In examining
the organic movement and its multiple relationships with conventional agriculture,
they bring in a new perspective. Instead of focusing solely on the convention-
alization of organic agriculture, they consider the similarities or connections of
organic with conventional practices, and how government policy has shaped these
connections.
These two chapters offer different perspectives on the co-existence of con-
ventional and organic in which farmers could work together, share information,
or explore new opportunities for promoting organic as part of broader rural
development strategies. In both contributions, the limited government subsidies and
specific support for conversion hampers to the willingness to convert to organic as
well as the relationships between organic and conventional farmers. Hunt et al. show