Organic Futures: Struggling for Sustainability on the Small Farm

316 Pages·2017·8.087 MB·English

by  Fitzmaurice, Connor J.;Gareau, Brian J

YALE AGRARIAN STUDIES SERIES
JAMES C. SCOTT, Series Editor
The Agrarian Studies Series at Yale University Press seeks to publish outstand-
ing and original interdisciplinary work on agriculture and rural society— for
any period, in any location. Works of daring that question existing paradigms
and fill abstract categories with the lived experience of rural people are espe-
cially encouraged.
J AMES C. SCOTT, SERIES EDITOR
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the H uman
Condition Have Failed
Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of Amer i ca’s Favorite Food
James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland
Southeast Asia
Edwin C. Hagenstein, Sara M. Gregg, and Brian Donahue, eds., American
Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land
Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics
of Sight
Andrew Sluyter, Black Ranching Frontiers: African C attle Herders of the Atlantic
World, 1500–1900
Brian Gareau, From Precaution to Profit: Con temporary Challenges to Environmen-
tal Protection in the Montreal Protocol
Kuntala Lahiri- Dutt and Gopa Samanta, Dancing with the River: P eople and Life
on the Chars of South Asia
Alon Tal, All the Trees of the Forest: Israel’s Woodlands from the Bible to the Pres ent
Felix Wemheuer, Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union
Jenny Leigh Smith, Works in Pro gress: Plans and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930–1963
Graeme Auld, Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest,
Coffee, and Fisheries Certification
Jess Gilbert, Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal
Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove, eds., Climate Cultures: Anthropological
Perspectives on Climate Change
Shafqat Hussain, Remoteness and Modernity: Transformation and Continuity in
Northern Pakistan
Edward Dallam Melillo, Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-
California Connection
Devra I. Jarvis, Toby Hodgkin, Anthony H. D. Brown, John Tuxill, Isabel
López Noriega, Melinda Smale, and Bhuwon Sthapit, Crop Ge ne tic Diversity
in the Field and on the Farm: Princi ples and Applications in Research Practices
Nancy J. Jacobs, Birders of Africa: History of a Network
Catherine A. Corson, Corridors of Power: The Politics of U.S. Environmental Aid
to Madagascar
Kathryn M. de Luna, Collecting Food, Cultivating People: Subsistence and Society
in Central Africa
Connor J. Fitzmaurice and Brian J. Gareau, Organic Futures: Struggling for
Sustainability on the Small Farm
For a complete list of titles in the Yale Agrarian Studies Series, visit yalebooks
.c om/ a grarian.
CONNOR J. FITZMAURICE AND BRIAN J. GAREAU
Organic Futures
Struggling for Sustainability on
the Small Farm
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
Published with assistance from the
Louis Stern Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2016 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in w hole or in part,
including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying
permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without
written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity
for educational, business, or promotional use. For
information, please e- mail sales . press@yale . edu (U.S. office)
or sales@yaleup . co. uk (U.K. office).
Set in Janson type by Westchester Publishing Group.
Printed in the United States of Amer i ca.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936482
ISBN: 978-0-300-19945-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A cata logue rec ord for this book is available from the
British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-
1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To all the New E ng land farmers working hard to find
sustainable organic futures: thank you.
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction: Conventionalization, Bifurcation, and
Social Relationships on the Small Organic Farm 1
PART I | THE MARKET
one Making Sense of Organics: A Brief History 27
two Organic Hits the Mainstream 44
three Why Supermarket Organic M atters 62
PART II | THE LAND
Prelude: A Sense of Place 91
four Amid the Chard: Cultivating the Diverse Landscapes
and Practices of a New Eng land Organic Farm 106
five Who Farms? 139
six A Sea of Brown Bags and the Organic Label:
Organic Marketing Strategies in Practice 164
seven No- Nonsense Organic: Negotiating Everyday
Concerns about the Environment, Health, and
the Aesthetics of Farming 200
Conclusion: An Alternative Agriculture for Our Time 229
Appendix: Method and Approach 263
References 267
Index 289
This page intentionally left blank
PREFACE
The organic food consumed by the majority of Americans t oday
has strikingly l ittle in common with the organic food envisioned by
farmers resisting the advancement of industrial agriculture in the
1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. The countercultural activists of the 1960s and
’70s would have trou ble recognizing the bulk of organic food we
purchase today, as well as the bulk of farms where it is grown. What
most folks consider organic t oday might even be unrecognizable to
the organic consumer movement of the 1980s, which spent much
time advocating for a safer food system. Since the 1990s, the very
scale of the organic sector has grown to such an extent that organic
produce is vis i ble in virtually every grocery store in the United
States.
The growth of organic farming has been nothing short of re-
markable. Organic farming, once the ostensible stuff of Luddites,
iconoclasts, tree huggers, and hippies (a ste reo typical image still
prevalent among students in our universities, at the very least!), is
now a formidable mainstream feature of Amer i ca’s agricultural sys-
tem. Such remarkable growth has also brought equally remarkable
change. As organic farming has transitioned from a marginalized
set of alternative farming practices to a federally recognized niche
market within the agricultural mainstream, scholars and food activ-
ists alike have argued that the ecological and social ideals of the
movement have largely given way to economic rationality and pesti-
cide avoidance—at least in the corporate form of organic. Organic
farming was originally intended to be smaller, agro- ecological (i.e.,
harmonizing the agricultural landscape with its surroundings),
community- based and community building. Many would argue that
con temporary organic farming is now merely an agro- industry that
is averse to using chemicals, but very often folks continue to per-
ceive it as a “movement.”
ix