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Agric Human Values 2022 31;39(2):791-807. Epub 2022 Jan 31.

Department of Agri-Food Economics and Consumer Sciences, Université Laval, 2425 rue de l'Agriculture, Quebec, QC G1V 0A6 Canada.

Short food supply chains have become the focus of considerable research in the last two decades. However, studies so far remain highly localized, and claims about the economic and social advantages of such channels for farmers are not backed by large-scale empirical evidence. Using a web survey of 613 direct-market farmers across Canada, this article explores the potential economic and social benefits that farmers derive from participating in short food supply chains. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Mar 22:1-13. Epub 2022 Mar 22.

Unit Policy and Markets in the Agro-Food Sector, Faculty of Landscape Management and Nature Conservation, Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Schicklerstraße 5, 16225 Eberswalde, Germany.

An increasing number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the German organic agri-food sector involves citizens through different community financing models. While such models provide alternative funding sources as well as marketing opportunities to SMEs, they allow private investors to combine their financial and ethical concerns by directly supporting the development of a more sustainable food system. Due to the low level of financial intermediation, community financing is characterized by close relations between investors and investees. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 22;39(1):281-300. Epub 2021 Jul 22.

Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Hallerstrasse 12, 3012 Bern, Switzerland.

Senegal is among the few African countries that counts with an important agroecological movement. This movement is strongly backed up by a network of transnational partnerships and has recently matured into an advocacy coalition that promotes an agroecological transition at national scale. In this article, we investigate the role of transnational links on the empowerment potential of agroecology. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 9;39(1):217-232. Epub 2021 Jul 9.

Institute for Food and Resource Economics, University of Bonn, Meckenheimer Allee 174, 53115 Bonn, Germany.

Increasing farmers' acceptance and adoption of environmentally beneficial farming practices is essential for mitigating negative impacts of agriculture. To support adoption through policy, it is necessary to understand which types of farms or farmers do or do not (yet) apply such practices. However, farmers are not a homogeneous group and their behavior is subject to a complex array of structural, socioeconomic, and socio-psychological influences. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Mar 3:1-20. Epub 2022 Mar 3.

Clean Water Action, 1315 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, 19107 USA.

Michigan is a critical agricultural state, and small family farms are a crucial component of the state's food sector. This paper examines how the race/ethnicity of the family farm owners/operators is related to farm characteristics, financing, and impacts of the pandemic. It compares 75 farms owned/operated solely by Whites and 15 with People of Color owners/operators. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Feb 24:1-20. Epub 2022 Feb 24.

Centre for Agroecology Water & Resilience (CAWR), Coventry University, Coventry, CV8 3LG UK.

Recent literature demonstrates the contribution of short food supply chains (SFSC) to regional economies and sustainable food systems, and acknowledges their role as drivers for sustainable development. Moreover, different types of SFSC have been supported by urban food policies (UFP) over the few last years and actors from the food chain became part of new institutional settings for urban food policies. However, evidence from the sustainability impact assessment (SIA) of these SFSC in urban contexts is limited. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Feb 3:1-8. Epub 2022 Feb 3.

Department of Environment and Development, University for Peace, San José, Costa Rica.

The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the global food insecurity crisis, disproportionately affecting the consumers, farmers, and food workers (UN in Policy brief: impacts of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition, 2020, https://www.un.org/sites/un2. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Jan 28:1-12. Epub 2022 Jan 28.

Department of Sociology, MS 071 Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Waltham, MA 02453 USA.

This paper offers a critical analysis of program evaluation in contemporary urban agriculture. Drawing on data from an exploratory study designed at the request of and in collaboration with urban agriculture practitioners in Massachusetts, it describes both their critiques of extant practices of program evaluation and their visions for alternative ways of telling the story of their work. Related, it explores practitioners' interest in building capacity for policy advocacy, working collectively to create transformative social change, and, related, establishing new kinds of relationships with state and philanthropic funders. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Jan 27:1-12. Epub 2022 Jan 27.

Department of History, Virginia Polytechnic and State University, 431 Major Williams Hall (0117), 220 Stanger Street, Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA.

COVID 19 has exacerbated and underscored structural inequalities and endemic vulnerabilities in food, economic, and social systems, compounding concerns about environmental sustainability and racial and economic justice. Convergent crises have amplified a growing chorus of voices and movements calling for new thinking and new practices to adapt to these shifts, mitigate their impact, and address their root causes through far reaching changes in social and economic life and values, including breaking with the free market paradigm. In the face of a historic choice between transition or multiple systems collapse that deepen injustice and threaten planetary survival, I make the case for expanding on liberatory tendencies in Extension programs to build capacities for response-ability to transition toward more just and sustainable futures. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 Jan 27:1-14. Epub 2022 Jan 27.

Sterling College, 16 Sterling Drive, Craftsbury Common, VT 05827 USA.

While the agricultural knowledges and practices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and women have shaped agriculture in the US, these knowledges have been colonized, exploited, and appropriated, cleaving space for the presently dominant white male agricultural narrative. Simultaneously, these knowledges and practices have been transformed to fit within a society that values individualism, production, efficiency, and profit. The authors use a decolonial Feminist Political Ecology framework to highlight the ways in which the knowledges of Indigenous, Black, and women farmers have been and are being colonized; a tradition that makes alternative agriculture a predominantly white space. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 Dec 15;38(4):893-909. Epub 2021 Feb 15.

Environmental Health and Engineering, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St., Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.

Humans, animals, and the environment face a universal crisis: antimicrobial resistance (AR). Addressing AR and its multi-disciplinary causes across many sectors including in human and veterinary medicine remains underdeveloped. One barrier to AR efforts is an inconsistent process to incorporate the plenitude of stakeholders about what AR is and how to stifle its development and spread-especially stakeholders from the animal agriculture sector, one of the largest purchasers of antimicrobial drugs. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 9;39(2):701-713. Epub 2021 Nov 9.

Department of Geography, Environment, and Geomatics, Arrell Food Institute, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road E., Guelph, ON N1G2W1 Canada.

In recent years, interest has increased in regenerative practices as a strategy for transforming food systems and solving major environmental problems such as biodiversity loss and climate change. However, debates persist regarding these practices and how they ought to be defined. This paper presents a framework for exploring the regenerative potential of food systems, focusing on how food systems activities and technologies are organized rather than the specific technologies or practices being employed. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 2;39(2):809-826. Epub 2021 Nov 2.

Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney, Bldg 10, 235 Jones St, Ultimo, NSW 2007 Australia.

Agriculture occupies 38% of the planet's terrestrial surface, using 70% of freshwater resources. Its modern practice is dominated by an industrial-productivist discourse, which has contributed to the simplification and degradation of human and ecological systems. As such, agricultural transformation is essential for creating more sustainable food systems. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 1;39(1):1-4. Epub 2021 Nov 1.

Virginia Tech, 282 Litton-Reaves Hall (0343), Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA.

In this 2021 AFHVS Presidential Address, Kim Niewolny provides a brief foray into the onto-epistemic framing of critical praxis for sustainable food systems transformation. Niewolny proposes we engage in the creative entanglement of critical praxis and the social imaginary to "unthink" the orthodoxies that govern our ideas of the possible. She offers several possibilities as pathways toward a food system that embodies health equity, ecological justice, land sovereignty, and human rights, including: (1) agroecological research and movement building; (2) food, farm, and health policy; (3) food and farm system worker protections as public health and human rights concerns; (4) intersectional food justice scholarship and curriculum; (5) narrative-led, community-based, and action-oriented methodologies as multi-dimensional inquiry; (6) and multi-sector and multi-racial coalitions as dynamic networks that challenge linear, neoliberal, and technical-rational practices. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 27;39(2):633-644. Epub 2021 Oct 27.

Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, 950 Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610 USA.

Despite decades of action to reduce global malnutrition, rates of undernutrition remain stubbornly high and rates of overweight, obesity and chronic disease are simultaneously on the rise. Moreover, while volumes of robust research on causes and solutions to malnutrition have been published, and calls for interdisciplinarity are on the rise, researchers taking different epistemological and methodological choices have largely remained disciplinarily siloed. This paper works to open a scholarly conversation between "mainstream" public health nutrition and "critical" nutrition studies. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 14;39(2):605-616. Epub 2021 Oct 14.

Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Guttman Community College, CUNY, New York, NY USA.

Many low-income college students are barred from food assistance for no reason other than the fact that they are pursuing a college education. Based on 22 interviews that capture the experiences of food insecure college students as they attempt to navigate SNAP, this study shows how low enrollment in the program and food insecurity are the predictable outcomes of policy decisions intended to restrict access to both free public higher education and public assistance in the 1980's and 1990's and were shaped by the racialized politics of deservingness. By documenting the barriers students encounter attempting to access food assistance, this study shows how these policies play out in the lives of students at the City University of New York (CUNY) today. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 3;39(2):573-588. Epub 2021 Oct 3.

RCE Graz-Styria - Centre for Sustainable Social Transformation, University of Graz, Heinrichstraße 18, 8010 Graz, Austria.

It is widely accepted that overcoming the social-ecological crises we face requires major changes to the food system. However, opinions diverge on the question whether those 'great efforts' towards sustainability require changes or merely systematic ones. Drawing upon Brand and Wissen's concept of "imperial modes of living" (Rev Int Polit Econ 20:687-711, 2013; The imperial mode of living: everyday life and the ecological crisis of capitalism, Verso, London/New York, 2021), we ask whether the lively debates about sustainability and 'ethical' consumption among producers and consumers in Germany are far reaching enough to sufficiently reduce the imperial weight on the environment and other human and nonhuman animals. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 25;39(2):827-838. Epub 2021 Sep 25.

Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids & Allendale, MI USA.

This paper offers observations on people's lived experience of the food system in Michigan during the early Covid-19 pandemic as an initial critical foray into the everyday pandemic food world. The Covid-19 crisis illuminates a myriad of adaptive food behaviors, as people struggle to address their destabilized lives, including the casual acknowledgement of the pandemic, then anxiety of the unknown, the subsequent new dependency, and the possible emergence of a new normal. The pandemic makes the injustices inherent in the food system apparent across communities, demonstrating that food injustice destabilizes all members of the food system, regardless of their social location. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 3;39(1):315-338. Epub 2021 Sep 3.

College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD) of China Agricultural University, No. 2 West Yuanmingyuan Road, Haidan District, Beijing, 100193 People's Republic of China.

This paper examines the situation of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers from Myanmar during the Covid-19 pandemic. It looks at the circumstances of the migrants prior to the global health emergency, before exploring possibilities for a post-pandemic future for this stratum of the working people by raising critical questions addressed to agrarian movements. It does this by focusing on the nature and dynamics of the nexus of land and labour in the context of production and social reproduction, a view that in the context of rurally rooted cross-border migrant workers necessarily requires interrelated perspectives on labour, agrarian, and food justice struggles. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 24;38(4):943-961. Epub 2021 Aug 24.

Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, Penn State University, Armsby Bldg, University Park, PA 16801 USA.

The emergence of the "4th Industrial Revolution," i.e. the convergence of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, advanced materials, and bioengineering technologies, could accelerate socioeconomic insecurities and anxieties or provide beneficial alternatives to the status quo. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 23;39(1):385-403. Epub 2021 Aug 23.

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program/Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California, 2801 Second St., Office #262B, Davis, CA 95618 USA.

In the last few decades, the emergence of mid-scale, intermediated marketing channels that fall between commodity and direct markets has attracted growing interest from scholars for their potential to preserve small and mid-sized farms while scaling up alternative agrifood sourcing. When such mid-scale supply chains are formed among multiple business partners with shared ethics or values related to the qualities of the food and the business relationships along the supply chain, they may be termed "values-based supply chains (VBSCs)." Most of the research on VBSCs to date has relied primarily on a case study approach that investigates the performance of VBSCs from the perspective of VBSC founders or leaders. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 24;39(1):301-314. Epub 2021 Jul 24.

Independent scholar, Edinburgh, UK.

Analyses of household urban agriculture have demonstrated a wealth of personal, economic, social, moral or political uses for self-provisioned food, yet have often understood the practice itself as merely a production process. This 'means-to-an-end' perspective is especially pronounced in studies of locations undergoing economic hardship. Urban gardening in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union has been framed as an element of an informal economy, enabling household savings, access to informal networks and avoidance of industrial goods deemed ethically dubious. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 24;39(1):371-383. Epub 2021 Jul 24.

International Studies and Spanish, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA.

Rosario, Argentina, a city of more than one million people strategically located on the Paraná River in the heart of a fertile agricultural region, is home to a significant industrial corridor where ongoing urbanization for industry, including that associated with the port complex and agroexport industries, vies for real estate space with peri-urban and urban farming production. The city is also the site of thriving municipal programs seeking to change food production and consumption outcomes through urban and peri-urban agriculture projects rooted in agroecology. This paper identifies the socio-natures critical for the formation and endurance of these agroecology assemblages. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 14;38(4):1181-1199. Epub 2021 Jul 14.

Department of Geography, Environment and Geomatics, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road East, Guelph, ON N1G2W1 Canada.

We describe how the set of tools, practices, and social relations known as "precision agriculture" is defined, promoted, and debated. To do so, we perform a critical discourse analysis of popular and trade press websites. Promoters of precision agriculture champion how big data analytics, automated equipment, and decision-support software will optimize yields in the face of narrow margins and public concern about farming's environmental impacts. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 15;39(1):95-117. Epub 2021 Jun 15.

2323 E. Iliff Ave, Denver, CO 80210 USA.

Farmers markets can offer solutions to several of the biggest problems besetting the US food system: fair prices to farmers; healthy, fresh food for consumers; direct contacts between consumers and farmers; food for food deserts; support for local economies. Awareness of these benefits led us to study the farmers markets of Greater Cincinnati. Markets grew rapidly in the early 1980s, peaked in 2012, and declined 17% by 2018. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 7;38(4):1139-1159. Epub 2021 Jun 7.

Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Vermont, 63 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, VT 05405 USA.

Veganic agriculture, often described as farming that is free of synthetic and animal-based inputs, represents an alternative to chemical-based industrial agriculture and the prevailing alternative, organic agriculture, respectively. Despite the promise of veganic methods in diverse realms such as food safety, environmental sustainability, and animal liberation, it has a small literature base. This article draws primarily on interviews conducted in 2018 with 25 veganic farmers from 19 farms in the United States to establish some baseline empirical research on this farming community. Read More

Agric Human Values 2022 30;39(1):65-78. Epub 2021 May 30.

Department of Sociology, STN CSC, University of Victoria, PO Box 3050, Victoria, BC V8W 3P5 Canada.

Craft food and beverage makers regularly emphasize transparency about the ethical, sustainable sourcing of their ingredients and the human labour underpinning their production, all of which helps elevate the status of their products and occupational communities. Yet, as with other niche ethical consumption markets, craft industries continue to rely on employment conditions for agricultural workers that reproduce inequalities of race, class, and citizenship in the dominant food system. This paper interrogates the contradiction between the exaltation of craft cidermakers' labour and the devaluation of farmworker labour by assessing how craft beverage actors make sense of inequalities facing manually skilled agricultural workers. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 May 2:1-4. Epub 2021 May 2.

Virginia Tech, 282 Litton-Reaves Hall (0343), Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA.

In this essay, Kim Niewolny, current President of AFHVS, responds to the 2020 AFHVS Presidential Address given by Molly Anderson. Niewolny is encouraged by Anderson's message of moving "beyond the boundaries" by focusing our gaze on the insurmountable un-sustainability of the globalized food system. Anderson recommends three ways forward to address current challenges. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 26;38(4):1201-1213. Epub 2021 Apr 26.

Sustainable Consumption Institute and Department of Sociology, University of Manchester, Booth St W, Manchester, M15 6PB UK.

COVID-19 has brought to light the severity of economic inequalities by testing the capacity of the poorest families to make ends meet. Food insecurity has in fact soared all over the UK, with many people forced to rely on food support providers to not go hungry. This paper uses a unique dataset on 55 food support organizations active in Greater Manchester during the first COVID-19 wave, and 41 semi-structured interviews with food aid spokespersons and stakeholders, to shed light on what they overcame, the complications and drawbacks of the food emergency response plan put in place. Read More

Agric Human Values 2021 9;38(3):611-614. Epub 2021 Apr 9.

Department of Health Sciences, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Rd, Thunder Bay, ON P7B 5E1 Canada.

Molly Anderson's 2020 Presidential Address for the Agriculture and Human Values Society, is a bold call to action that considers the scope and depth of the challenges facing global food systems. This call has particular relevance to scholars who are closely aligned with struggles for food justice and food sovereignty. In this discussion piece, I suggest additional nuance that builds and expands on Anderson's three opportunities for "pushing beyond the boundaries". Read More