Search results

Agriculture remains the primary source of employment and income for most of the rural populations of Southern Africa (Hachigonta et al. 2013). When focusing on the political economy of agriculture and food in the region, Europe and European legislation have played a dominant role in both the past and the present. All the countries under discussion were impacted by colonial rule, and at present there is a significant disparity between commercial and smallholder agriculture. While the disparity is one of the consequences of colonialism and South African apartheid policies in the region, this disparity is exacerbated by current European Union (EU) trade policies. With future challenges related to climate change, combined with declining EU market access and struggles to better integrate smallholders into income generating activities, the Southern African region is in need of a new map with which to navigate towards a future that ensures a vibrant agricultural sector.

In recent years agricultural animal welfare standards have increasingly been placed on the agenda of international, regional, and national governance bodies, as well as private agrifood organizations. Standards, long the domain of economists, are now recognized as one of the most significant emerging practices for governing food, and as such, a growing number of scholars have focused on the role that powerful actors have in setting standards and the distributional benefits of standards implementation. However, much of the existing literature relies on consumer-demand arguments for explaining the rise of animal welfare standards. This article uses sociological neo-institutionalism, specifically institutional isomorphism, to reveal that agrifood organizations are either forced by large food retailers, or by the demands of interacting with other complex organizations, to adopt animal welfare standards in an effort to maintain access to markets, political power and legitimacy. Further, due to the continuing uncertainty surrounding the definition of agricultural animal welfare and the standards and techniques used to ensure compliance, the evidence supports the theory that organizations will model themselves after similar organizations in their field that they perceive to be more legitimate or successful.

Calls for United States energy independence and concerns about dwindling fossil fuel reserves have drawn national attention to the search for viable sources of alternative energy. One such source is offshore wind power generation. Offshore wind farms have already proven successful in Europe and Australia, but none yet exist off the coasts of the United States. A private proposal to build such a facility off the coast of Massachusetts has faced strong opposition. Debate exists as to whether the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act permits the federal government to lease areas of the Outer Continental Shelf for alternative energy development. Oil and gas extraction developments authorized under the Act have allowed accelerated development at the expense of the environment. This Note argues that a current proposal to amend the Act to include wind power generation facilities does not address the problems encountered by oil and gas developments, and calls for entirely new legislation.

Agricultural science and farm-based technologies have been important forces behind the dramatic rise in agricultural production in the industrial world during the 20th century, as well as in large portions of the developing world (Stanton, 1998). In the United States, mechanisation, improved seeds and breeds, chemical inputs, and other scientifically inspired production technologies and techniques are often credited with productivity gains (Dimitri, Effland & Concklin, 2005). In past decades, agricultural science and technology have contributed to the productivist goals of maximising production while seeking the greatest efficiency from inputs. However, there have always been tensions and contradictions because the distribution of risks and benefits has not been even. Despite these insights, recent shifts in the political economy of agricultural science and technology indicate a trend that favours the private sector and global markets, a 241 Leland Glenna and Elizabeth P. Ransom move that tends to exacerbate some of those underlying and persistent tensions and contradictions. We explore these issues by examining how these political-economic shifts are affecting agricultural science and technology in industrialised and developing nations.

AbstractWomen are increasingly the target of agricultural development programs aimed at reducing poverty and food insecurity, especially in sub‐Saharan Africa. Some feminist scholars argue that such efforts are driven more by concerns about the efficient use of resources than the rights of women and do little to transform gendered power relations. We examine how development interventions that target women affect household well‐being, especially food insecurity, empower women, and transform gendered power relations. Our study uses the case of the Gates Foundation funded East Africa Dairy Development (EADD) program in Uganda. Our methods include the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index survey and in‐depth interviews of women farmers and key informants, within the EADD program. We argue that the livestock sector provides critical insights into women's empowerment because livestock are not "socially neutral" in their gendered effects. Our study found that: (1) ownership of dairy cows enhanced important dimensions of women's empowerment and gender equity that benefited women and households; (2) women's labor responsibilities for dairy cows disempowered some women by increasing their time poverty and; (3) ownership of dairy cows provided a means for women to disrupt entrenched social norms related to gender roles within the household and agriculture.

This fourth Rural Sociological Society decennial volume provides advanced policy scholarship on rural North America during the 2010's, closely reflecting upon the increasingly global nature of social, cultural, and economic forces and the impact of neoliberal ideology upon policy, politics, and power in rural areas. The chapters in this volume represent the expertise of an influential group of scholars in rural sociology and related social sciences. Its five sections address the changing structure of North American agriculture, natural resources and the environment, demographics, diversity, and quality of life in rural communities. ; https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1103/thumbnail.jpg

The articles in this second special issue of the International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food on private agri-food standards consider key issues involved in the shift from government to governance within agri-food systems. The first special issue, published in February 2013, focused on 'the contestation, hybridity and the politics of standards' (Bain et al., 2013, p. 1). The articles in the first issue complicated our understanding of the relationship between public and private standards by examining the politics associated with their formation, implementation, and outcomes. At the same time, the first special issue drew attention to the diversity of private standards, and the spaces that exist – or get created – for actors to contest the values, content or outcomes of such standards. These are important themes, revisited in the second special issue. However, the concern with the politics of standards is extended through more systematic attention to the relationship between standards, certification, and the governance of agri-food supply chains.

Standards are an omnipresent yet generally taken-for-granted part of our everyday life (Higgins and Larner, 2010a; Timmermans and Epstein, 2010; Busch, 2011). Until recently, standards within the agri-food sector were typically dismissed (if thought of at all) by social scientists as rather benign, technical tools, primarily of interest to specialists concerned with facilitating markets and trade. Over the past decade, however, this assessment has changed considerably and many agri-food scholars now view standards as a useful entry point for analysing and understanding our social and material world. The degree of interest today is reflected in the fact that our call for papers on private agri-food standards attracted so many high-quality submissions that we are publishing this special issues in two parts. In part, this shift in interest reflects the influence of science studies and its concern with studying 'mundane' and taken-for-granted objects and practices (Higgins and Larner, 2010b). Here scholars take inanimate objects seriously, to understand, for example, how non-human actors such as standards allow humans to 'act at a distance' (Latour, 1987), thereby ordering relations across time and space. Many agri-food researchers are also concerned with the rise of private food standards developed by global retailers and non-government organizations, including understanding the role that these standards might play in coordinating and governing production and consumption relations within the context of globalization (Giovannucci and Ponte, 2005; Hatanaka et al., 2005; Mutersbaugh, 2005; Tallontire et al., 2011).

Agrifood scholars working within a political economy framework increasingly draw upon the concept of governance to analyze the regulation of global agricultural and food systems. An important limitation of this approach is that it fails to explain how governance strategies are legitimated. Drawing on three diverse cases that span three continents, our paper examines how standards makers appeal to technoscientific norms and values to establish both credibility for their standards and their authority in constructing them. These cases explore the development and implementation of a standard requiring complete elimination of a tart cherry insect pest in the United States; the process of establishing and maintaining red meat hygiene standards in the processing and retail sectors of South Africa; and the role of GLOBALGAP standards for pesticide residues in protecting worker health and safety in the Chilean fresh fruit export sector. These cases illustrate how appeals to technoscience mask controversy and vested interests and allow actors to exclude, conceal, and mystify possible alternatives; and they demonstrate the value that science and technology studies can bring to bear in understanding agrifood governance.