Navigating the Middle Ground: Anthropological Investigations of Agricultural Practice and Scale
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: In a 2009 blog post, Gene Logsdon, the self-proclaimed “Contrary Farmer” noted, “So there's nothing new under the sun. Farming begins with small holdings and then slowly graduates to larger and larger units until it falls apart. Or starts with large holdings and breaks up into small ones and then repeats the cycle over and over again.” The statement conjures a vision of a pendulum, swinging between two disparate points. Those end points of the spectrum are the focus, and the time in between is just empty air. The inevitable swinging trajectory of scale, as well as the contrast of “big” versus “small” farming are enduring narratives associated with agriculture. Linked with each are particular strategies, politics, and moral positions that result in the appearance of a binary structure that consistently pits practitioners and supporters of each against each other. As anthropologists, we are well versed in complicating binary myths. We look for connecting threads and points of overlap that undermine simplistic, two-sided narratives. Thus, the “Agriculture of the Middle” provides fruitful opportunities for anthropological and ethnographic investigation. In this special issue, we present five original research articles, one research report, and one commentary that illuminate new conceptual approaches and theoretical expansions related to the middle ground of agricultural production. Field sites include research farms, meat-processing facilities, produce farms, and intermediaries. Authors therefore consider marketing channels, aggregation and distribution entities, porous local boundaries, and on-farm strategies to expand our thinking about “mid-sized” agriculture in the United States. In doing so, they encourage us to focus less on arbitrary moral or political designations associated with particular scales of production and elucidate the myriad ways that farmers adapt practices to ensure a “just right” approach to their particular social, ecological, and economic environments. Also in this issue, James R. Veteto reviews James C. Scott's 2017 book, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Veteto highlights the reasons why this book should prove useful to anthropologists and archaeologists interested in early state-making and the origins of agriculture. Scott summarizes emerging archaeological research and brings these data into conversation with recent theoretical trends, including multispecies ethnography, the ontological turn, and debates about the Anthropocene. Veteto assesses Scott's contributions, and argues that this book provides insights that can help us better understand the past and inform the current project of dismantling oppressive social institutions. By examining human experiments in agriculture and state-making in the past and in the contemporary moment, the articles in this issue emphasize the ways that historical and ethnographic research can help trouble long-standing [false] assumptions, elucidate new possibilities, and generate critical conversations that can lead to positive social and environmental change. The authors in this issue show us the many ways that “the middle” matters.
DOI: 10.1111/cuag.12224
Authors: Brandi Janssen, Megan Styles
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2903460224