Engaging the Organic Conventionalization Debate - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 176

linkages that build social capital, because they are embedded in community (Lyson
and Guptill 2004 ;Morganetal. 2006 ; Hinrichs and Lyson 2008 ; Lyson et al. 2008 ).
This system grounded in agrarian values is more likely to be based on participatory
research methods and holistic conceptual frameworks with a transformative agenda
(National Research Council 2010 ). This holistic agrifood system would not only
enhance the agro-ecological dimensions of agriculture, but add the economic and
social legs to the stool of sustainable agriculture (Jordan and Constance 2008 ).
From a rural social sciences perspective, Lyson's ( 2004 ) “Civic Agriculture” is a
good model to start to relink agriculture and community: “Food from Somewhere”
(McMichael 2005 ) with transformative potential (National Research Council 2010 )
grounded in an agrarian perspective (Thompson 2010 ). Lyson argues Civic Agricul-
ture is the logical next step towards sustainable agriculture. The Ag in the Middle
regional fair trade value chains also do a good job of incorporating some of the
economic and social dimensions of sustainability (Lyson et al. 2008 ). Fair Trade
incorporates an ethical dimension to wealth creation and extraction along the value
chain, while regional addresses scale and structure issues. The region is probably
the appropriate unit of analysis for the development of sustainable agrifood systems
(Clancy and Ruhf 2010 ).
The organic conventionalization debate provides an interesting case for applying
sociology of agrifood conceptual frames to the historical trends in the structure of
organic production, marketing, and consumption. As organics is institutionalized
into the mainstream agrifood system, new labels, standards, and metrics are
exploding as part of a “beyond organics” push by the alternative agrifood movement
(Constance 2010 ). There is a new hope that these initiatives will reinsert the
transformative agenda and thereby address DeLind's ( 2000 ) concerns about the
lack of social dimensions of conventionalized organics. The state will continue to
play an important function in regulation, but especially at the global level, private
governance is replacing public government as the regulatory venue (Busch 2011 ).
Like organics, these organizational ventures will have to survive within a global
neoliberal political economic regime that favors capital over subordinate groups.
There is much interesting work for academics and activists interested in the
implications and predictive value of the Cali model. How can the transformative
agenda aspects of alternative agrifood initiatives be preserved in the face of
conventionalization? How can conventionalization and bifurcation be structured to
be more virtuous than vicious? These questions are the focus of the “Emancipatory
Question.” How can we vision and create value chains that protect the civil rights of
the actors who participate in the chain?
The contours of the new agrifood regime are in play, being contested by social
movements, corporate interests, nation-states, and supra-national organizations.
Organics provides a valuable case study of the dimensions of the contest. Agrifood
social scientists can make two important contributions to the conventionalization
debate. Through research we can provide a better understanding of the regulatory
regime for organics and alternative agrifoods. Through public sociology we can
volunteer to work with alternative agrifood organizations to create the holistic,
sustainable agrifood system.