Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
in the US, including a thorough review of the debates over, and perspectives on
several political issues related to the “conventionalization” of organic farming, Doug
Constance, Jin Young Choi, and Damian Lara draw on empirical evidence from
Texas to reflect on the transformative potential of organic. The conventionalization
of organic production has attracted substantial attention in the agrofood literature in
recent years. Some authors note a dilution from deep-organics to organic lite; others
see little evidence of such dilution and critique the concept of conventionalization
as being over-stated and not taking into account national differences. Within the US,
recent changes in USDA policies regarding organics indicate an increase in support
for organic conversion in the face of expanding consumption but lagging domestic
production. Constance et al. use results from research on a representative sample
of Texas commodity producers to engage the conventionalization thesis. More
specifically, they investigate pragmatic conventional producers, those producers
who identify themselves as conventional but have an interest in organic production,
across a set of structural and attitudinal variables related to organic agriculture.
The authors argue that the dynamics of worldwide organics offers valuable insights
into the contours of a new food regime that is being contested by social move-
ments, corporate interests, nation-states, and supra-national organizations. The
paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of organic entry by pragmatic
conventional producers for the conventionalization debate.
draw on research undertaken by the transdisciplinary ARGOS program that com-
pares the sustainability of organic, integrated and conventional farming/orcharding
in the dairy, sheep/beef and kiwifruit sectors of New Zealand. They observe that
organic farmers can contribute to the resilience of the organic sector more fully
when they are recognized as “good farmers” in their local communities, as well
as by others in the sector. The authors examine three themes. First, studying
organic farming in isolation limits the understanding of its broader contribution.
By comparing different management systems within and across sectors (sheep/beef,
dairy, kiwifruit) one can see the contributions that organics can make to the
primary sector as a whole. Second, organic farmers and their farms contribute to
the resilience of the food system. Resilience implies adaptability and redundancy
at many levels - farm/farmer, community, national and global. They suggest that
organic farms and farmers perform a useful function as part of a resilient farming
system because they introduce alternative practices, provide alternative possibilities
to non-organic farmers, and expand the diversity of products produced by an
agriculture sector. Third, the extent to which organic farmers are likely to influence
the resilience of a given supply network is related to their relative level of acceptance
as good farmers. The good farming literature suggests that the status of 'good
farmer' is awarded by farmers to other farmers who follow cultural rules established
over time by the farming community and government policies/regulations. Based
on ARGOS studies in three agricultural sectors the authors demonstrate that in the
kiwifruit sector, organic management is one of many models of 'good orcharding'
while organic practices challenge the precepts of 'good farming' in the other
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