The need as indicated by stakeholders

As American agriculture turns down the path of a new century, farmers, as mutually supporting, yet independent, and self-reliant members of 20th century rural communities are rapidly disappearing from the rural landscape. Farmers, who were once the backbone of the agricultural economy, have been reduced to mere cogs in a well-oiled agribusiness machine. Relatively little of the value added in agriculture accrues to farmers for the agricultural commodities they produce. Instead, it is being captured by corporately controlled and integrated sectors of the food system that bracket producers with high priced inputs on one side and tightly managed production contracts and marketing schemes on the other. Independent food production for sale on the open market is giving way to vertically coordinated value chains that articulate large-scale farm corporations through production contracts. As the number of small and medium scale farms continues to decline, rural communities throughout the U.S. are facing uncertain futures.

We popularly assume that a global food system provides both food opportunities (e.g. coffee and bananas) and food security (consistent supply) through the efficient trade of food products. However, large scale crises such as international embargos, bioterrorism, and war have required many countries, including the U.S. during World War II, to rely on their regional, local, and even household-scale agricultural resources for sustenance. Global interdependence of the current scale is unprecedented. Moreover, global trade introduces diseases and pests which undermine food system stability and resilience. Smaller and more localized scale crises such as factory closings, a drop in wholesale commodity prices, or a familys loss of medical benefits place increased demands on emergency food services (soup kitchens, food banks) and subsistence production (gleaning, public and backyard gardens). Therefore, while a global food system provides advantages that we take for granted, the model also poses economic and food security vulnerabilities to individuals, communities, and nations alike. Sustaining the environmental land base, production diversity, and capacity of skills in the food system to grow, harvest, process, and consume has historically increased the flexibility with which communities respond and adapt to changes in political economies outside their direct control.

In the wake of increasing corporate control and the corresponding vulnerabilities in the food system, an alternative agricultural paradigm has emerged to challenge the wisdom of conventional production agriculture on a global scale. Some growers, processors, distributors and retailers are seeking to re-localize production through a diversity of strategies. One strategy is direct marketing of local products to households, stores, restaurants, and institutions. Another is linking value-adding components of food production at the local level. These kinds of agriculture and food endeavors are engines of local economic development, fostering a greater community capacity for entrepreneurship, business development, and cooperation for mutual benefit. Socially, food system activities that are smaller in scale and more localized increase the opportunities for individuals and families to participate in shaping the food system they depend upon. They also provide spaces for community interaction and cultural expression. Also, by strengthening or maintaining local agriculture, these initiatives enhance the aesthetic and environmental aspects of rural landscapes.

Communities can provide alternatives to the global food system by developing economic and social infrastructure, instituting policies for maintaining a farmland base, and providing technical expertise to farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers. This kind of integrated strategy is necessary to compete against or co-exist with the highly industrialized corporate food system. Many communities have begun to meet the challenge of re-localizing parts of their food systems. There is accumulating evidence that fostering a local agriculture sector that serves community needs (a more civic agriculture) has reaped many social as well economic benefits for communities (Lyson, 2000). What is not well known, however, is how to sustain these local food systems in a globalizing environment.

In this project, we propose several interrelated objectives for examining ways to sustaining local agriculture and food systems in a globalizing environment. We will examine the policies, projects and events that are transforming local food systems. We shall explore the ways local communities are responding to the forces of globalization and look at the diverse contributions of local food systems to the community. Throughout the project, we will collaborate with food system stakeholders to identify high priority information needs. The goal of this project is to increase systematic knowledge of how communities can generate, support, and benefit from more localized food systems.

Justification

The importance of the work, and what the consequences are if it is not done:

Industrialization, the motor behind production agriculture for nearly a century, has proceeded unevenly, but relatively unabated from the 1920s through today, propelled by mechanization, the increased use of chemicals (i.e., synthetic fertilizers and pesticides), and most recently, advanced biotechnologies. Over the past 50 years, farms have become larger in size and fewer in number. Land is being used more intensively and yields per acre have increased dramatically. The amount of farmland has decreased, while mean capital investments on each farm have increased. At the same time, farms have been woven into ever tighter and even more limited, and less free, marketing channels.

After World War II, the contours of a truly global food system began to emerge as nationally organized food corporations grew in size. Beginning in the 1980s, a wave of mergers resulted in a tremendous consolidation of power in the food sector (Heffernan 1999). The large multinational food corporations that came out of these mergers have increasingly become the locus of control for organizing and coordinating the production, processing and distribution of food.

Today, the sheer size of the multinational food giants has important consequences for farmers and their farms. As Hart (1992: 176) reflects,

Size brings economic power and this is particularly significant when set against the structure of the farming industry with its large number of relatively small producers. Some of the most dramatic recent changes in agricultural marketing reflect the power of these new markets to extract their requirements from the farming industry.

Large processors and retailers centralize their purchases of farm products. They seek large quantities of standardized and uniform products and they have considerable power in dictating how and where agricultural production takes place.

Drabenstott (1999) estimates that ....40 or fewer chains will control nearly all U.S. pork production in a matter of a few years, and that these chains will engage a mere fraction [italics added] of the 100,000 hog farms now scattered across the nation. In a similar vein, the CEO of Dairy Farms of America (the U.S.s largest dairy cooperative) Gary Hanman, recently noted that We would need only 7,468 farms [out of over 100,000 today] with 1,000 cows if they produced 20,857 pounds of milk which is the average of the top four milk producing states (Northeast Dairy Business, 1999: 11). The consequences are clear, ...supply chains will locate in relatively few rural communities. And with fewer farmers and fewer suppliers where they do locate, the economic impact will be different from the commodity agriculture of the past (Drabenstott 1999).

For farmers in the U.S. and elsewhere, the globalization of the food system means that a much smaller number of producers will articulate with a small number of processors in a highly integrated system. Similarly, food retailing has been undergoing the kind of concentration through vertical coordination seen in the processing sector, squeezing out local grocery store owners much like it has independent farmers (Guptill and Wilkins forthcoming; Hendrickson et al 2001).

As the agriculture and food system becomes more concentrated, it also becomes more vulnerable to disruptions and prone to accidents (Perrow, 1999). There are no perfect systems. The consequences of an accident or disruption are magnified in direct proportion to the size of the system. A production system organized around smaller units (i.e., family-size farms) is more resilient than a system organized around larger units. Accidents in systems with smaller units are easier to contain. This was illustrated quite dramatically in the 1970s when a toxic fire retardant, PBB, was inadvertently mixed into some bags of dairy feed in Michigan and distributed around the state. The result was that some dairy herds in the state ended up with large amounts of PBB in their milk, while others had none. When the milk was pooled, the level of PBBs was detectable throughout the food system, but at low enough levels that it was not lethal to the general public. However, if the structure of dairy farming in Michigan looked like California or Arizona, where a few very large producers account for almost all of the milk produced, the consequences of mixing a toxic substance into animal feed could have been much worse for both farmers and consumers (see Busch and Lacy, 1984; also http://www.niehs.nih.gov/oc/news/PBBlate.htm).

Further disconnecting food production from consumption by globally sourcing food could lead to other problems. Steven C. Blank, the author of The End of Agriculture in the American Portfolio (1998), argues that agriculture has offered minimal returns on investment (1.5%) for the last few decades, and as a result, its concentration and decline in the U.S. is likely to continue. Because of the squeeze between rising production costs in the U.S. and stagnant or declining prices on the global market, farmers must choose between price strategies (value-added, integration with processing) or cost strategies (reducing unit cost by increasing scale) to stay profitable. Despite the productivity and efficiency of American agriculture, the U.S. is no longer a low-cost producer. Food corporations will increasingly rely on cheaper producers elsewhere in the world. In short, Blank concludes, agriculture is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the U.S. economic portfolio.

Most researchers agree with Blank that the decline in American agriculture will continue without some intervention. However, some scholars, such as economist John Ikerd, have critiqued Blanks conclusion. In a series of paper presentations, Ikerd (2001a) argues that Blanks concepts of profit and opportunity cost do not apply in the same way to diversified, sustainable, family-scale farms, which take quality of life issues, ecological stewardship, and community life into account when making farming decisions. Ikerd (2001b) heralds the emergence of the New American Farm and predicts that a new generation of family farmers will replace the old industrial farming model with one based on principles of sustainability, diversity of crops and markets, quality over quantity, and community in the food system. Lyson (2000) terms this kind of approach civic agriculture, because it nests production in the local community.

A number of organizational forms have emerged or reemerged in recent decades that express the civic agriculture model. Farmers markets provide space for direct contact between local growers and shoppers and are an effective first step for communities seeking to develop a marketing outlet to promote stronger local food systems. Community and school gardens provide fresh produce to currently underserved populations, teach food production skills, and enhance community life. Organic farmers have pioneered the development of local marketing systems, and have also eschewed conventional, chemically intensive farming practices for those that focus on the long-term health of the soil. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects are forging direct links between consumer-members (often urban) and farm operations, giving growers guaranteed markets and members new connection to their food source. New generation grower﷓controlled marketing cooperatives are emerging to more effectively tap regional markets and pursue value-added activities. Agricultural districts organized around particular high-value commodities (such as wine) have served to stabilize farms and farmland in many areas of the U.S. Community kitchens provide the infrastructure and technical expertise necessary to launch new food-based enterprises. Specialty producers and on﷓farm processors offer products for smaller niche markets (deer, goat/sheep cheese, free-range chickens, organic dairy products, etc.). Small scale, off﷓farm, local processors add value in local communities and provide markets for 'civic agriculture' farmers. Emerging are efforts to link institutional markets in schools, hospitals, and prisons with small and medium scale producers. Efforts like these have the potential to nurture local economic development, enhance the working landscape, maintain diversity and quality in products, and provide linkages among producers, consumers and other food system stakeholders.

Despite the compelling case for more vibrant local food systems, contemporary efforts suffer from a lack of systematic knowledge on the forces affecting local communities, local responses to these forces, and the outcomes of those efforts. Without that knowledge, people and organizations engaged in local food system alternatives waste valuable resources in encountering preventable pitfalls. In this research we ask: How are trends towards globalization in agriculture expressed on the local level? How can local stakeholders effectively create stronger local food systems that serve community needs?

The technical feasibility of the research and the advantages for doing the work as a multi-state effort:

This research will require secondary and primary data gathered through qualitative and quantitative methods. Secondary data on agricultural, food system, and community structures at the county level are available from various sources. Census of Agriculture and Census of Population data are available at the county level in machine-readable form. Other federal and state level data sets, including the Economic Census and the Census of Governments, will also serve our efforts. Key informant interviews and random sample surveys will also be used to collect in-depth primary data about communities and their local food system initiatives.

This multi-state effort will compare localities across at least 12 states. Multi-state participation is important, because state and local variations are related to agricultural and food system vitality. Through a coordinated series of case studies we will be able to sample this regional variety more accurately, which will allow for greater generalization of findings at the conclusion of the research. Policies that affect local food systems operate across a variety of scaleslocal, state and national. Only through a comparative, multi-state research design can we assess how these nested, and sometimes conflicting, policies affect the sustainability of locally-oriented food system efforts.

Members of the research group have extensive experience in conducting research using both secondary and primary data. In addition, researchers represent a variety of disciplines, including rural sociology, nutrition and food sciences, consumer science, agricultural economics, agricultural communications, and plant science. Many project participants collaborated in Regional Research Project NE-185 and found the cross-state and cross-disciplinary collaborations to be instrumental in the success of the project.

This multi-state project will also provide the basis for undertaking state specific AES research and for developing new funded programs around specific objectives of the project. To carry out this project, participants will submit grant proposals to NRI (National Research Initiative), NSF (National Science Foundation), SARE (Sustainable Agriculture, Research, and Education) and other grant-making institutions.

What the likely impacts will be from successfully completing the work:

We expect that this research will result in increased knowledge and understanding about the forces that motivate and shape the formation of local food systems. We will investigate the problems that they are designed to address, how they are created and sustained, and the impact they have on the community level. This information will provide the basis for educating academics, citizens and stakeholder groups about some of the alternative strategies available in a globalizing economy to strengthen local food systems and how these strategies can best be supported. People and organizations will learn new ways to visualize and create community-based food systems.

More specifically, this project will:

(1) increase research knowledge from which to understand potential or ongoing change in the food system;

(2) create a starting framework for food system strategizing to improve food system sustainability;

(3) make policy recommendations for improving food system sustainability;

(4) promote better understanding among community leaders, educators, and other professionals of ways to engage with the food system to meet community goals and to build the capacity for a more stable food system infrastructure;

(5) promote more informed public discourse about the nature and impacts of different kinds of food systems;

(6) create new knowledge about intervention strategies to improve community environmental, economic and social health and to increase engagement in the food system; and,

(7) promote the expansion of existing markets and the creation of new markets and other outlets for locally produced food products.