Abstract
This article contributes to debates about the potential of alternative food networks and their contradictions using sustainability-oriented farmer training programs as a case study. I provide an empirical account of the political-economic structures at play in the construction of farmer trainings as a solution to the farming crisis, as well as the possibilities and tensions herein. I argue that that the main rationale framing the farming problem in the public-institutional discourse – namely the apolitical production of a scarcity of farmers – and its discursive usage in popular and institutional circles directs the solution towards the urgent production of more farmers who will farm sustainably and independently of the current structural conditions in which farming is embedded. On the ground, this apolitical ecology is sustained by philanthropism and consumption elitism. In addition, the making of FTPs as an intervention to solve the farming crisis is determined by neoliberal governance structures that promote the devolution of power into the NGO sector and responsibilization of individuals. I finally call for a broader and non-binary vision to alternatives, in which political ecology perspectives bring relevant tools and insights. The case of FTPs throws light into the particular governmentalities, forms of governing at-a-distance, and whiteness associated with sustainable farming and agriculture, and the way society thinks of it.Keywords: farmer training programs, emergent farmers, sustainable agriculture, alternatives, alternative food networks, NGOization of farming, power, privilege, California
Highlights
Since the 1980s, the industrialization and globalization of agriculture has led to a crisis in the farming sector, as illustrated by low farm incomes and low profitability for small farmers
It is difficult to know the exact number of existing FTPs, but in the period from 2009 to 2012, 119 such projects were awarded a Beginner Farmer and Rancher Development Program (BFRDP) grant from the U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA)
This study aims to contribute to the debate in political ecology on the possibilities of alternative food practices (AFNs) for radical socio-environmental transformation (Alkon and Agyeman 2011; Blumberg et al 2020; Calvário and Kallis 2016; Giraldo and Rosset 2018)
Summary
Since the 1980s, the industrialization and globalization of agriculture has led to a crisis in the farming sector, as illustrated by low farm incomes and low profitability for small farmers. Many factors have converged to make farmer training programs all the rage across the nation These include the putative loss of the American farmer, whose numbers declined 63% in the last century (Dimitri et al 2005); the concern with the loss of farmers of color due in greater extent to the coloniality of U.S agricultural policy (Almaguer 2009; Alkon and Agyeman 2011; GraddyLovelace 2017); and the romanticization of farming stemming from the recently reinvigorated sustainable agriculture movement (Guthman 2017b). This trend is motivated by environmental concerns over the sustainability of corporatized industrialized global agriculture which has reinforced the figure of the local small-scale or family farmer (Guthman 2014)
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