Engaging the Organic Conventionalization Debate - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 165

lowering of farm-gate premiums, and a weeding out of some lifestyle producers
(Guthman 2004c ; see also Smith and Marsden 2004 ). The farm-gate price squeeze
creates further pressure to intensify.
Agro-industrialization affected all organic growers due to the incorporation of
organic premium values in land prices that forced growers to farm more intensively
to pay for the land. (Guthman 2004c ). In California, state supports for irrigation,
cheap labor, and agro-technologies enhanced intensification, i.e., more crops per
year in less time, which is then capitalized into land values. The industrial “organic
lite” model constrained the continuance of the “deep organic” lifestyle model.
For Guthman ( 2004c , p. 525) this paradox “is hardly the recipe for the spread of
sustainable agriculture”. She noted that conventionalization was not necessarily
inevitable, but rather it would take creative state policies to blunt the trend of
agro-industrialization in organics. For Guthman, it were these wider processes of
agro-industrialization that casts doubts on the long-term viability of the “multiple
paths to sustainability” put forth by Campbell and associates.
Smith and Marsden ( 2004 ) provide some support for Guthman's point by
documenting the emerging negative trend in organics in the UK whereby the “farm-
gate price squeeze” restricts the positive contribution of organic agriculture as a
means to rural development. They link the squeeze to the growing oligopsonistic
position of major supermarkets in organic retailing, a phenomenon associated with
conventional food supply chains whereby the supermarkets increasingly “drive the
chain” and producers have to adopt more intensive production strategies to compete
with imports and stay in business. Price wars to gain market share generated
lower prices paid for organics resulting “farm-gate price squeeze” that drove the
smaller/indigenous producers out of business. Left to the free market, the “value
capture” of organics had shifted from producers to retailers. They predicted that
without supportive government policies, organics would lose its contributive role
regarding rural development.
Lockie and Halpin ( 2005 ) conducted an empirical assessment of the Australian
organic sector to evaluate to what degree conventionalization was inevitable
or was there room for social movement resistance and/or strong state-support
to avoid Guthman's prognosis. Their research problematized the bifurcation
between small-scale/artisanal/lifestyle/deep organic producers and large-scale ex-
conventional/industrial/shallow organic producers as part of conventionalization.
Although noting differences across commodities, they found little support for
bifurcation. Most operations sold a small amount of production direct to consumers
and the rest in indirect markets. Motivations and attitudes about organic farming
were different across groups, but it was more related to intensity of support for
organics rather than direction. They found no evidence of increasing polarization
into expanding large operations and marginal small operations, but again with
notable differences across commodities. Lockie and Halpin ( 2005 ) conclude
that while the expansion in Australia fits the “agro-industrialization thesis” of
conventionalization (Guthman 2004a ), there is no evidence regarding bifurcation
that the smaller farms are being marginalized. These findings are “sufficient to