Since 1997 there has been a significant increase in the number and percentage of Kansas farmers who are women. Using Reskin and Roos’ model of “job queues and gender queues” I analyze changes in the agricultural industry in Kansas that resulted in more women becoming “principal farm operators” in the state. I find there are three changes largely responsible for women increasing their representation in the occupation: an increase in the demand for niche products, a decrease in the average farm (...) size, and greater societal acceptance of women as farmers. This study adds to the growing literature on women principal farm operators in developed countries, and is among the first to explore why women are becoming a larger percentage of the occupation in the United States. (shrink)

This qualitative study examines the relevance of self-determination theory to explain retention and attrition in community supported agriculture (CSA). Using a focus group study of CSA members, we examined whether belonging to a CSA supports basic psychological needs for autonomy, competency and relatedness. We found that it did for continuing members. However, for those who did not renew, membership reduced their sense of autonomy, competency, and relatedness. For continuing members, the intensity of their involvement did not affect their needs satisfaction, (...) though it did influence how those needs were met. Continuing CSA members were also intrinsically motivated and internalized extrinsic motivations. (shrink)

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives are spaces where diverse work relations are performed. From a postcapitalist perspective, these initiatives attempt to create alternative-capitalist and non-capitalist work relations next to capitalist ones. While analyses of work relations in CSA abound, it remains uncertain how such diversification is made possible and how it is shaped by the micro-politics of and power relations in these initiatives. This paper addresses this gap by analysing how power shapes transformations to postcapitalist work relations in CSA. It provides (...) substantial empirical evidence of multiple manifestations of power enabling or constraining postcapitalist work relations through a comparative case study of three CSA initiatives in Portugal. Results show that while CSA creates postcapitalist work relations that are non-alienated, non-monetised and full of care, they insufficiently unmake unbalanced power relations established in capitalist work relations. This paper argues that, when establishing postcapitalist work relations, the selected CSA initiatives could benefit from actively deconstructing internal hierarchies, de-centralising decision-making power from farm owners and addressing oppressive power relations that are ossified in their local and cultural context. (shrink)

Rural queer studies, viewed through the lens of relational agriculture, offer critiques of heteropatriarchal norms in farming and highlight strategies used by queer farmers to manoeuvre discrimination and thrive in rural areas. This paper responds to recent calls for further scrutiny of the experiences of gender and sexually underrepresented groups in community-supported agriculture (CSA). It investigates the empowerment of rural queer people in CSA Guadiana, South Portugal, through the experiences of 12 queer members. I collected data through participant observation, semi-structured (...) interviews and a focus group and analysed them through open coding, followed by focused coding. Results indicate that CSA Guadiana, despite not originally designed for this purpose, facilitates various forms of empowerment and active engagement among queer members, particularly influenced by the leadership of queer producers and recurrent gatherings in queer-owned farmland. Three key lessons of queer empowerment in CSA Guadiana emerge from the analysis and contribute to debates on the politics of recognition, queer community action and visibility in the rural context: (i) self-confidence to perform queerness may be restricted to a selective rural community; (ii) partnerships between producers and co-producers may enable reciprocal queer empowerment; and (iii) queer leadership in agri-food community action may quietly represent gender and sexual diversity in the countryside. These findings offer the rural queer literature novel insights into the complexities, contradictions and limitations of empowerment experienced by queer farmers, artisanal food producers and consumers in a rural CSA. (shrink)

Notions of care for humans and more-than-humans appear at the margins of the sustainability transformations debate. This paper explores the merits of an ethics of care approach to sustainability tr...

This paper uses a multiple case study approach to researching people’s everyday lives and experiences of six community farms and gardens in diverse settings in China and England. We argue that collective understandings of community are bound up in everyday action in particular spaces and times. Successful community farms and gardens are those that are able to provide suitable spaces and times for these actions so that their members can enjoy multiple benefit streams. These benefits are largely universal: in very (...) different situations in both England and China, CSA members make strong connections with the land, the farmers and other members, even in cases where they rarely visit the farms and gardens. This suggests that community farming and gardening initiatives possess multi-dimensional transformational potential. Not only do they offer a buffer against industrialised and remote food systems, but they also represent therapeutic landscapes valued by those who have experienced time spent at or in connection with them. Our findings indicate that—regardless of location or cultural context—these benefits are durable, so that people who have been engaged in multiple activities at a community farm or garden continue to enjoy these benefits long after most of their engagement has ceased. (shrink)

Since its origins as an academic newsletter, _Agriculture and Human Values_ has evolved to be one of the leading journals publishing critical scholarship of the food and agricultural system. This essay illustrates and comments on the evolution of the scale and scope of research published in the journal over the years.

Sustainability has become a powerful discourse, guiding the efforts of various stakeholders to find strategies for dealing with current and future social-ecological crises. To overcome the latter, we argue that sustainability discourse needs to be based on a critical-emancipatory conceptualization. Therefore, we engage two such approaches—environmental justice approaches informed by a plural understanding of justice and feminist political economy ones focusing on care—and their analytical potential for productive critique of normative assumptions in the dominant sustainability discourse. Both of these approaches (...) highlight aspects of sustainability that are particularly relevant today. First, although sustainable development was conceptualized from the outset based upon a twofold notion of justice (intra- and intergenerational), the integration of justice in the dominant sustainability discourse and praxis often manifests merely as a normative aspiration. Meanwhile, the environmental justice and care approaches offer conceptualizations of justice that can act as a powerful lever and as transformation-strategy. Second, the dominant sustainability discourse largely remains within a neoliberal economic framework that continues to promote economic growth as the means to reach prosperity while neglecting the bases of every economy: care work and nature. Its focus lies solely on paid work and the market economy. By integrating (a) social and ecological ‘reproductivity’ (unpaid care and subsistence work as well as nature) and (b) democratic processes for just distribution of environmental burdens and benefits, as well as participatory equity in relevant decision making, feminist political economy and environmental justice approaches offer substantial strategies towards building humane, just and caring societies. (shrink)

This paper focuses on examining the dynamic nature of community supported agriculture (CSA) and the real-world experiences which mark its contours, often making it distinct from the early idealized CSA “model.” Specifically, our study examines the narratives of the farmers of Devon Acres CSA over its duration, in tandem with a survey of recent shareholders in order to understand and explain its evolution. The framework we develop here shows that this CSA is largely characterized by instrumental and functional beliefs and (...) practices, with some elements in the collaborative mode. A key contribution of this research is the development of a framework which helps to highlight the relative fluidity and patchwork quality of CSA participant positions over time. At Devon Acres, the real-world factors and issues influencing CSA evolution are seen to be products of both the local and larger contexts, evident in such areas as shifts in farmer learning and adaptation, differences between beliefs and practices in member volunteer efforts, and changes in farm and resource conditions. With respect to CSA more broadly, we argue that the reality of dominant food system context and site-specific influences on CSA development compels us to rework our attachment to early idealized “model” traits. Expansion in CSA numbers, evidence of adaptation and situated learning, and retention of the local and organic as core traits, speak to the pragmatic yet transformative potential of CSA contribution to food system change. (shrink)

. Some problems and possibilities of caring. Ethics, Place & Environment: Vol. 13, The Ethics of Care, pp. 113-130. doi: 10.1080/13668791003778800.

Writing on care highlights that caring is full of both problems and possibilities. Caring for others can be a source of pleasure and fulfillment, but it can also be undervalued and denied, a source...