This paper offers a case study based on qualitative research in the burley tobacco region of central Kentucky, where farmers are urged to diversify away from tobacco production. “Replacing” tobacco is difficult for economic and material reasons, but also because raising tobacco is commensurate with a locally valued way of doing masculinity. The focus is on these two questions: How can the doing of work associated with tobacco production and marketing be understood as also doing a particular masculinity? What does (...) an understanding of farm work as a simultaneous doing of gender illuminate about the challenges of diversification away from tobacco? Asking tobacco farmers to “grow something else” is also asking them to do gender differently, suggesting that the transition away from tobacco must be understood as a gendered transition. This research, focused primarily on male farmers who continue to raise tobacco, suggests the need for gendered research with women and men who have moved away from tobacco to other crops. (shrink)

In this article, we assess the generalizability of the feminist agrifood systems model developed by Sachs et al.. We ask to what extent might these findings generated from the study of Pennsylvania women farmers be generalized to other regions of the U.S. We define and situate the FAST theory to the Michigan, U.S. context in order to better understand how the shifts in agriculture and women’s roles in the U.S. based on our data, align or depart with that experienced by (...) women farmers in the northeast. We find that there are many similarities in the experiences of these two populations, but there are also some differences. Five primary differences in the two populations are articulated. Michigan women farmers appear to struggle to assert the identity of a farmer; struggle to access land via inheritance; are income dependent on males; often work in value-added production that does not challenge traditionally-coded ‘women’s work’; and perpetuate on-farm education/networks based on nostalgia which may further the distance between producers and consumers. We conclude with a brief discussion of what may account for these differences. (shrink)

This article explores how farming fathers frame fatherhood according to time-specific ideals. Based on interviews with fathers and their adult sons in Norway, findings show clear differences between the two generations concerning how fathers engage with their children and justify their practices. For the older generation, the major frames are “complementary gender roles,” “good farming practices” and “farm succession.” The current generation frames their fathering practices in “involved fathering,” “changing childhoods” and “intensive parenting.” Considering where the frames come from, it (...) is notable that the older generation refers to local cultural accounts of agriculture when justifying their fathering practices, while the frames used by the current generation are not farm related but refer to broader social and cultural accounts of their time. The framing perspective used in this article contributes to understanding the ideological transformation of agricultural fatherhood in a period in which the patriarchal contours of agriculture may be changing. (shrink)