Finally, some law and rural sociology/ag scholarship

For the six years I've attended the Rural Sociological Society's (RSS) Annual Meeting, I've been pressing for the production of more scholarship at the intersection of law and rural livelihoods--and specifically for more attention among rural sociologists to the role of law in the phenomena they study.  So, imagine my delight when I learned at the RSS meeting in August, 2013, of an article forthcoming in Rural Sociology titled, "Where's the Farmer?  Limiting Liability in Midwestern Industrial Hog Production."

Scholars largely assume that hog production is following the same industrialization process as the integrated poultry industry. Since the collapse of hog farming in the 1990s, academics have anticipated that producers will eventually become trapped in contracts that leave the integrator with full control over the production process. Embedded in this prediction is an assumption that hog farmers respond to these productive pressures individually. Our analysis of the Carthage Management System suggests a different path for the hog commodity chain. The Carthage Management System is a conglomeration of business management firms that bring finishing hog farmers together to form limited liability corporations (LLCs) in the breed-to-wean stage of hog production. We use a sociology of agrifood framework to suggest that the nuances of hog production encourage the use of what we call folding corporations to limit liability in ways that profoundly transform the family farm. Corporations and individual hog farmers alike employ this creative LLC structure to deflect responsibility for the risks of hog production. We identify how folding corporations externalize the costs of production onto rural communities. Additional research is needed to better understand unfolding farmer identities, legal protections for farmers, how widespread organizational structures like Carthage Management System are, and their consequences for rural communities and the industrialization process.

The paper's authors are Loka Ashwood, a PhD candidate at the University of Wisconsin in the Dept. of Community and Environmental Sociology, and Danielle Diamond and Kendall Thu, both of the anthropology department at Northern Illinois University.  I was fortunate enough at RSS 2013 to moderate a panel on which Ashwood presented her paper on "The Moral Economy of Land Loss," and I'm excited by the prospect of future work from a rural sociologist expanding the discipline in exciting cross-disciplinary ways, including by engaging law and legal processes.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.  

Does urban farmers' virtue differentiate them from rural ones?

I know the association of urban ag/slow food/organic/locavore movement with all things virtuous has been going on for some time, but just because the movement has proved so self-congratulatory (and mostly bourgeois) didn't necessarily make rural farmers the "bad guys."  I figured that, more than anything, the slow/local/urban ag craze was, at worst, implying (if only to those too myopic to look beyond their own food needs) that large-scale farmers (and, by extension, rural communities and populations) were (becoming) obsolete.  

But a story in the New York Times a few days ago left me wondering if the urban ag trend (the fruits of which I admit to regularly indulging from my suburban home in greater Sacramento, where many posh farmers markets surround me) also makes rural farmers look less virtuous, even a bit like "the enemy."  Kirk Johnson's story focused on what he called a new business model of farming, one marked by smaller-scale farms on the outskirts of cities, producing food primarily for metropolitan areas, including their fine dining establishments.  Johnson asserts:

[T]he movement toward local food is creating a vibrant new economic laboratory for American agriculture.  The result, with its growing army of small-scale local farmers, is as much about dollars as dinner:  a reworking of old models about how food gets sold and farms get financed, and who gets dirt under their fingernails doing the work.  

* * * 

Economists and agriculture experts say the "slow money" movement ... a way of channeling money into small-scale and organic food operations, along with the aging of the farmer population and steep barriers for young farmers who cannot afford the land for traditional rural agriculture are only part of the new mix.  

OK.  That's an interesting business story.  I have written here, here and here of some of these phenomena, e.g, the obstacles facing new farmers and the aging farmer population in the United States.

But then Johnson goes on to suggest that this small farm/locavore phenomenon is not only in opposition to intensive production agriculture, but also in opposition to rural places, which he seems to collapse into "big ag." Johnson writes

A looming shortage of migrant workers ... could create a kind of rural-urban divide if it continues, with mass-production farms that depend on cheap labor losing some of their price advantages over local grown food, which tends to be more expensive.  

[While] big agriculture ... struggle[s] to find willing hands ...[l]ocal farm sales are becoming more stable, predictable and measurable.

Johnson goes on to note that the USDA has adjusted upward the value of "local revenues" from food sales to $4.8 billion.  The adjustment came from including sales to stores and restaurants and not only those at "road stands and markets."  (I wonder if that prior accounting included urban farmers markets.  I've written some about the distinction between road stands and farmers markets here).  Johnson notes that the economic pathway for these small scale farms that sell their food locally is somewhat supported in the new farm bill (which a NYTimes editorial recently labeled "mediocre")

Certainly, a lot of locavore/organic/slow and boutique food is grown in urban, suburban and exurban locales.  Read more here.  What Johnson overlooks--especially in writing of a "rural-urban divide"--is that these more "virtuous" types of food are also grown in rural places.  I (and my students) have written of instances of this here, here, and here.  Also illustrative is Low Gap, Arkansas, shown in these two photos I took in May, 2012.  Low Gap is a wide spot in the road in Newton County, where I grew up.  Low Gap is not even a Census Designated Place; nor does it have a wikipedia entry.  (As the sign indicates, it is near Shiloh, a similarly obscure place).  So I was surprised a few years ago to see it listed as the provenance of food on the menu at the Greenhouse Grille, 80 miles away in Fayetteville, where I doubt that even 1 in 100 diners had previously heard of Low Gap, let alone know where it is.  Surely this is not a lone example of a small, rural farm producing organic food for an urban population (yes, Fayetteville is urban, part of the Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area) and--if the sign above is any indication--for its rural neighbors, too.  Ditto Rivendell Gardens, also in Newton County, pictured in this post.  It is probably not appropriate, then, to suggest that urban/suburban farmers have cornered the market on either virtue or small.  

One thing seems certain:  If urban farmers are now sole (or even primary) bearers of the badge of agricultural virtue, we have come a long way not only from the rural yeoman farmer of Thomas Jefferson's day, but also from that of my grandparents (read more here) and a fair number of rural folk still operating smallish farms across America.

Yes, I know I am a little sensitive about this, but food and ag are two of the only justifications that rural people and places have for their existence these days.  If they lose the virtue associated with these--if only rhetorically--to "the city," they arguably lose a lot.   

Plus, I just think Johnson's invocation of the rural-urban binary in this way is misplaced.  Or maybe his use just reflects a common lack of precision in how the terms "rural" and "urban" get used.  Many of the farms Johnson refers to are far enough outside the cities they serve to be in places that are rural by several definitions, or at least exurban.  Alternatively, when Johnson talks about small farms and urban ag, he may actually be thinking less about where the food is grown and more about who is consuming it.  And that is as much a matter of class as it is geography.  

P.S.  On July 8, 2012, the NYTimes published this story on the front page of the Business section, "Has Organic Been Oversized?" which disputes the popularly held connection between small and organic.  It also disputes, in a sense, the authenticity of the designation.  Here's a key paragraph:

As corporate membership on the board [that sets standards for organic labeled products] has increased, so, too, has the number of nonorganic materials approved for organic foods on what is called the National List.  At first, the list was made up of things like baking soda, which is nonorganic but essential to making things like organic bread.  Today, more than 250 nonorganic substances are on the list, up from 22 in 2002.  

Cross posted to Legal Ruralism.  

U.S. District Judge Rejects Organic Farmers' Suit Against Monsanto

U.S. District Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald, Southern District of New York, last week dismissed a lawsuit that a group of organic farmers, seed companies and food safety groups had filed in March, 2011, against agribusiness giant Monsanto Corporation. The plaintiffs acted preemptively, essentially seeking protection against lawsuits by Monsanto should the corporation sue for patent infringement based on the anticipated but unintended (and, indeed, undesirable) presence of genetically modified crops among their yields. The plaintiffs sought a ruling that that Monsanto's patent were invalid because they are "injurious." The plaintiffs claimed that Monsanto's practice was to "aggressively assert[]" patent claims against U.S. farmers. They plaintiffs alleged that Monsanto engages in "baseless litigation to intimidate farmers and restrict competition with its transgenic seed."

Buchwald rejected these arguments, writing:

There is no evidence that plaintiffs are infringing defendants' patents, nor have plaintiffs suggested when, if ever, such infringement will occur.

Indeed, Judge Buchwald found the plaintiffs' claims "unsubstantiated ... given that not one single plaintiff claims to have been so threatened." Judge Buchwald also found that the plaintiffs had "overstate[d] the magnitude of [the defendant's] patent enforcement." Monsanto brings an average of 13 patent-enforcement lawsuits each year. Judge Buchwald found this "hardly significant when compared to he number of farms in the United States, approximately two million."

In addition to fearing patent infringement claims by Monsanto, the organic farmers and other plaintiffs note that genetically modified organism (GMO) material also lowers the value of their product. Because of unavoidable cross-pollination, most organic corn in the U.S. contains between half a percent and two percent GMOs. Read more here.

The case is Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association v. Monsanto Co., 11-02163, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

Read NPR's coverage of the matter here. The Sacramento Bee ran this Monsanto Press Release.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism. Photo above: organic farm in Newton County, Arkansas.

Getting into farming (and staying there)

That's the topic of several recent stories out of California.

A few days ago, the San Francisco Chronicle ran this front-page story about the diminished profitability of cattle ranching, particularly in California where land prices are so high. The story features Tim Koopman of Sunol. It's no wonder his land is so pricey: Sunol is an unincorporated Census Designated Place... that happens to be in metropolitan Alameda County, home to City of Oakland and part of the Bay Area bubble. Koopman is the first of four generations of ranchers in his family to work off the ranch. His two sons also ranch--and they also earn their livings with careers other than raising cattle.

[A] number of American cattle families are throwing in their branding irons, either selling off their land or planting crops. While the price of beef is at record highs, the cost of doing business for some is impossible.

***

The shrinking beef supply is affecting consumers, who on average paid 10 percent more per pound for meat in 2011 than they did the year before, said Steve Kay, editor and publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, a trade publication based in Petaluma."

Kay added that consumer prices could rise another 10% in 2012. Still, demand has remained strong, with 14% of the U.S. beef supply exported in 2011.

Ranchers, agricultural experts and theUSDA cite a number of reasons for the beef decline: loss of grazing land to development or other farming purposes, the high cost of feed and energy and the fact that the average age of a rancher has crept up to 59 and their children don't necessarily want to take the reins.

Development of farm land, the resulting high cost of land, and aging farmers are also themes of this January story from the Sacramento Bee. It tells of a match-making scheme--matching, that is, farmers looking for land with plots to be farmed. Here's an excerpt from Carlos Alcala's story:

Putting farmers onto underused land was once a matter of creating homesteads.

Now it has entered the computer age, with nonprofits using the Internet to match farmland with growers.

***

[M]any landowners are hoping to preserve the land for agriculture, not development, and want to help young farmers--not large agribusiness.

It led to a dating service of sorts for farms.

***

Farm Link has online listings of about 80 land opportunities in the Central Valley and connections to around 800 would-be farmers.

Land opportunities can be as small as half-acre or as big as 800 acres.

There is an urban parcel in West Sacramento that the owner wanted productive, and orchard acreage in Apple Hill looking for someone new to take it over.

And that takes us to this story, which ran a few days earlier, focusing on a well-known Sacramento-area organic farm, Good Hummus, in neighboring Yolo County. Jeff and Annie Main, who own Good Hummus, are 61 and 59 years of age, respectively, and their children are pursing other careers. The Mains know they could sell their 20-acre farm for more than it's worth for agricultural purposes, but they don't want it to be developed. They specifically want it to be farmed. Edwin Ortiz's story explains the solution being pursued to keep the land for farming:

Enter the Davis and Sacramento natural food cooperates with "One Farm at a Time" solution.

Both stores are helping to raise funds to purchase an easement, through the oversight of the Yolo Land Trust, that would stipulate the Mains' property would remain a farm, in perpetuity. Such efforts are not common in California, since most easements demand only that land remains open space.

The goal is to raise between $300,000 and $400,000 from 40,000 customers who shop both stores, said Paul Cultera, general manager of the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op.

"This is a test model ... The idea is to do this and then move onto the next farm," Cultera said.

I am heartened to know of these grassroots efforts to save California farm land and to get and keep Californians farming. Only time will tell whether they succeed.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.

Rurality as a Dimension of Environmental Justice: Call for Papers

2014 Rural Sociological Society Annual Conference: “Equity, Democracy, and the Commons: Counter-Narratives for Rural Transformation.”

Location: New Orleans, Roosevelt Waldorf Astoria Hotel

Date: July 30th to August 3, 2014

Paper Abstracts due: March 3

Submission: Email abstracts (up to 350-words) to Loka Ashwood (ashwood@wisc.edu) and Kate Mactavish (kate.mactavish@oregonstate.edu) in lieu of an online submission.

Changing community and production dynamics in rural America make it a state-sanctioned site for some of the most hazardous and toxic industries of our time.  From its production treadmill, industrial agriculture has cast onto rural America a plethora of negative externalities:  mounting levels of air and water pollution, farm consolidation, and depopulation.   A range of extraction and other risky industries justify the siting of facilities in rural areas because of easy access to ample natural resources, sparse populations that reduce exposure risk, and the possibility of economic revitalization.  State and federal statutes (e.g., right-to-farm laws, the Federal Code of Regulations for Nuclear Operations) often permit these industries to target rural America based on past practice and low population levels.  

On an international level, cities serve as powerful hubs for the global economy, pulling resources away from less prominent urban and rural areas. The growing periphery within core countries, as well as continued resource extraction of rural places abroad, calls for increased attention to the rural facets of injustice in developed and developing countries.

We invite paper submissions that explore facets of rurality that help explain rural places’ vulnerability to environmental injustices from interdisciplinary perspectives, including (but not limited to) sociology, geography, law, anthropology, public health, and the environmental sciences. We are especially keen to receive papers from scholars working broadly on issues of environmental justice in order to foster conversation between those scholars and scholars whose focus is on rurality more generally.

Select papers from the proceedings and a wider call will be reviewed for potential publication in a special issue being considered by the Journal of Rural Studies.

Confirmed Panelist: Steve Wing, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Cross-posted to Legal Ruralism.