15 pages, via Online journal, Scholars are increasingly calling for the environmental issues of the industrial agricultural system to be addressed via eventual agroecological system-level transformation. It is critical to identify the barriers to this transition. Drawing from Henke’s (Cultivating science, harvesting power: science and industrial agriculture in California, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008) theory of “repair,” we explore how farmers participate in the reproduction of the industrial system through “discursive repair,” or arguing for the continuation of the industrial agriculture system. Our empirical case relates to water pollution from nitrogen fertilizer and draws data from a sample of over 150 interviews with row-crop farmers in the midwestern United States. We find that farmers defend this system by denying agriculture’s causal role and proposing the potential for within-system solutions. They perform these defenses by drawing on ideological positions (agrarianism, market-fundamentalism and techno-optimism) and may be ultimately led to seek system maintenance because they are unable to envision an alternative to the industrial agriculture system.
Borchers, Bryce (author), Roucan-Kane, Maud (author), Alexander, Corinne (author), Boehlje, Michael D. (author), Downey, W. Scott (author), and Gray, Allan W. (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2012
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 187 Document Number: D00983
Identifies farm market sectors that may represent opportunities as farm structures change: ruralpolitans, mature farmers, farm operators with spouses working off-farm, traditional farms and commercial farms.
