Agriculture Movement Research Articles

Ukrainian organic products market: state and prospects of development

The development of the organic market in the world requires conducting a research on the problems that accompany this process. Such studies are becoming more popular and apply not only to organic products market at the global level, but also at the local level. In order to identify global problems, the state and trends of the organic products markets in the USA, Germany, France, Britain as the biggest national markets were analyzed on the basis of the data characterizing the state of organic products market in Ukraine and in the world, provided by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FIBL) and the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM). The research of the state and trends of the Ukrainian organic market and agricultural production development was conducted, and using the SWOT analysis methodology and the principles laid out in the PEST analysis, its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats were identified. Within each element, social, environmental, economic and financial constituents have been grouped, providing a possibility to understand which factor is determining in terms of sustainable development. It enabled to make a conclusion that the Ukrainian market remains small in size, entailing significant risks, first of all, for producers, as its further development requires a significant all-round support from the state both from the financial point of view and from the point of view of active promotion of sustainable development ideas and education of the population on the importance of consuming quality products, taking care about their health and, as a result, contributing to the improvement of the environment.

Governing urban gardens for resilient cities: Examining the ‘Garden City Initiative’ in Taipei

With rising concerns for food security and climate adaptation, urban gardening and urban agriculture have emerged as a rising agenda for urban resilience around the world. In East Asia, a variety of initiatives have emerged in recent years with different levels of institutional support. Focusing on Taipei, where a vibrant urban agriculture movement has been unleashed in recent years, this article examines the ongoing outcomes of the city’s new ‘Garden City Initiative’, which supports the establishment of urban gardens including community gardens, rooftop gardens and school gardens. Based on interviews and participant observations during the initial period of advocacy, planning and implementation between 2014 and 2017, this study examines the background of the programme, the involvement of governmental and non-governmental actors and the programme’s ongoing implementation. Based on the findings, the article further reflects upon their implications for the practices of urban governance in the face of contemporary environmental, political and social challenges. The case of Taipei suggests a model in which policy formation and implementation may require opportunistic actions involving a variety of actors and organisations in both institutions and the civil society. Rather than dramatic changes or instant institutional realignment, the effort may require strategic adaptation of the existing bureaucratic structure, while mobilising its strengths and resources. In addition, despite the critical role of civil society organisations, the Taipei case also illustrates a considerable public-sector investment, distinct from the predominant model of neoliberal governance that has been associated with urban gardening programmes elsewhere.

Farm Biosecurity at backyard poultry of Bangladesh and its role in spread of HPAI

Objective: We have conducted this study to characterise the movement and contact patterns of poultry in Bangladesh that could be associated with transmission of newly-introduced subtypes of avian influenza virus in two districts of Bangladesh as well as to summarise the patterns arising from the network analysis in a way that can inform the parameterisation of spatially explicit stochastic models of transmission of newly-introduced subtypes of avian influenza virus in the two types of areas.Introduction: Bangladesh is a South Asian country with large human and poultry populations which is highly affected with frequent outbreaks of both high and low pathogenic avian influenza since 2007. Very few studies have been carried out to reveal the farm biosecurity at backyard poultry that might have contributed to the spread of avian influenza in Bangladesh, specially rural areas. Therefore, we aimed to characterize biosecurity practices of poultry farm including the movement of live birds which is a well-known risk factor for the geographic dissemination of the virus among poultry flocks and personnel hygiene of poultry workers for rapid detection and effective risk management of incursion of HPAI and LPAI viruses.Methods: This cross sectional survey was carried out using pretested questionnaire in backyard Poultry holdings of Kalkini Upazila of Madaripur district in Dhaka division which has a relatively low proportion of commercial poultry farms and high proportion of backyard poultry holdings.1-mode and 2-mode social network analysis was also carried out to show the farm to farm movements. From each primarily selected farm, details of the last 2 movements of live poultry along with source/destination details was collected with pre-tested questionnaire. Later, data was stored in Epi-Info, analysed with STATA 14 and UCINET. 315 backyard HH from 2 villages of Kalkini Upazila, Madaripur District were randomly selected.Results: The study revealed that majority backyard farm owners do not maintain the standard biosecurity measures whereas a significant amount of the study included farms rear multiple poultry species. No poultry workers found to use any personal protective equipments (PPEs) while cleaning the litter/mats (Figure 2). The farms with multiple poultry species feed them in same container and keep them in same shed which is a major risk factor for disease transmission.Movement patterns differed in a number of aspects (Table 1) and this information is useful for the establishment of the movement parameter settings in a simulation model of avian influenza incursion.Conclusions: The findings on farm biosecurity practices and movement pattern from this study will support to develop risk-based surveillance and contingency policies as well as to minimize the spread between poultry units and also from poultry to people for novel AI viruses in Bangladesh.

Seven myths of organic agriculture and food research

Organic agriculture and food research (OAFR) is well established and there is an ongoing and vibrant discussion about the future research needs of organic farming. However, reviews of the research features of OAFR have been less common. During the editorial work on a collection of book sections about the state of the art of OAFR, we felt that the differences between the ideals of OAFR and the actual research practices invited critical debate. In this article, we label these differences—somewhat provocatively—as myths about OAFR. We identified seven myths: (1) OAFR follows a systemic research approach, (2) OAFR is guided by the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements Principles and organic regulations, (3) research priorities are defined in collaboration with practitioners, (4) transdisciplinarity is a key strategy in OAFR, (5) OAFR produces results that are directly applicable in practice, (6) the methods applied in OAFR differ fundamentally from those in research on conventional farming, and (7) organic researchers are fully integrated in the scientific community. We assume that our reflections will also inspire a broader discourse in the light of Organic 3.0, where a critical review of research practices should be central for the future development of OAFR.

Genetic variability in the humoral immune response to bovine herpesvirus-1 infection in dairy cattle and genetic correlations with performance traits

Bovine herpesvirus-1 (BoHV-1) is a viral pathogen of global significance that is known to instigate several diseases in cattle, the most notable of which include infectious bovine rhinotracheitis and bovine respiratory disease. The genetic variability in the humoral immune response to BoHV-1 has, to our knowledge, not ever been quantified. Therefore, the objectives of the present study were to estimate the genetic parameters for the humoral immune response to BoHV-1 in Irish female dairy cattle, as well as to investigate the genetic relationship between the humoral immune response to BoHV-1 with milk production performance, fertility performance, and animal mortality. Information on antibody response to BoHV-1 was available to the present study from 2 BoHV-1 sero-prevalence research studies conducted between the years 2010 to 2015, inclusive; after edits, BoHV-1 antibody test results were available on a total of 7,501 female cattle from 58 dairy herds. National records of milk production (i.e., 305-d milk yield, fat yield, protein yield, and somatic cell score; n = 1,211,905 milk-recorded cows), fertility performance (i.e., calving performance, pregnancy diagnosis, and insemination data; n = 2,365,657 cows) together with animal mortality data (i.e., birth, farm movement, death, slaughter, and export events; n = 12,853,257 animals) were also available. Animal linear mixed models were used to quantify variance components for BoHV-1 as well as to estimate genetic correlations among traits. The estimated genetic parameters for the humoral immune response to BoHV-1 in the present study (i.e., heritability range: 0.09 to 0.16) were similar to estimates previously reported for clinical signs of bovine respiratory disease in dairy and beef cattle (i.e., heritability range: 0.05 to 0.11). Results from the present study suggest that breeding for resistance to BoHV-1 infection could reduce the incidence of respiratory disease in cattle while having little or no effect on genetic selection for milk yield or milk constituents (i.e., genetic correlations ranged from -0.13 to 0.17). Moreover, even though standard errors were large, results also suggest that breeding for resistance to BoHV-1 infection may indirectly improve fertility performance while also reducing the incidence of mortality in older animals (i.e., animals >182 d of age). Results can be used to inform breeding programs of potential genetic gains achievable for resistance to BoHV-1 infection in cattle.

Performing alternative agriculture: critique and recuperation in Zero Budget Natural Farming, South India

This article explores how 'Zero Budget Natural Farming', an Indian natural farming movement centered on its founder and guru Subhash Palekar, enacts alternative agrarian worlds through the dual practices of critique and recuperation. Based on fieldwork among practitioners in the South Indian state of Kerala and on participation in teaching events held by Palekar, I describe the movement's critique of the agronomic mainstream (state extension services, agricultural universities, and scientists) and their recuperative practices of restoring small-scale cultivation based on Indian agroecological principles and biologies. Their critique combines familiar political-ecological arguments against productionism, and the injustices of the global food regime, with Hindu nationalist tropes highlighting Western conspiracies and corrupt science. For their recuperative work, these natural farmers draw, on one hand, on travelling agroecological technologies (fermentation, spacing, mulching, cow based farming) and current 'probiotic', microbiological, and symbiotic understandings of soil and agriculture. On the other hand, they use Hindu nativist tropes, insisting on the exceptional properties of agrarian species native to, and belonging to India. I use the idea of ontological politics to describe the movement's performances as enacting an alternative rural world, in which humans, other-than-human animals, plants, mycorrhizae, and microbes are doing agriculture together.Keywords: agricultural anthropology; alternative agricultures; naturecultures; critique; ontological politics; small-scale cultivators; India; Kerala; Subhash Palekar

Fiery Joe: The Maverick Who Lit Up the West by Kathleen Carlisle

Reviewed by: Fiery Joe: The Maverick Who Lit Up the West by Kathleen Carlisle George Hoffman Kathleen Carlisle, Fiery Joe: The Maverick Who Lit Up the West (Regina: University of Regina Press 2017) Joe Phelps arrived in Saskatchewan from Ontario in 1908, when he was nine years old. The Phelps family homesteaded near Wilkie, west of Saskatoon. George Phelps, his father, like thousands of settlers from Ontario and elsewhere, came to the West filled with determination and confident of success in this land of [End Page 279] opportunity. Reality, however, soon set in. Those pioneers who survived on the land, and many did not, faced a hostile natural environment and sold the wheat they produced into a complex international market dominated by what one farm leader referred to as commercial pirates. It was not a life for the faint hearted. Joe Phelps, the subject of this biography, was a part of the next generation of Saskatchewan farmers which faced this situation and attempted, with some success, to construct a social and economic system that would alleviate problems and provide a degree of security for farm families. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Phelps dedicated his life to this task. It led him in the 1920s to the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association, the Farmers' Union of Canada, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, and the United Farmers of Canada (ufc). In the 1930s, he was involved in the creation of the Farmer-Labour Party and the Saskatchewan Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (ccf). By then Phelps clearly was a part of the left wing of the broader farm movement and had become what Seymour Martin Lipset in his study of the ccf would call an agrarian socialist. Phelps was elected a ccf member of the provincial legislature in 1938 and was re-elected in 1944 as a part of the sweep that brought Tommy Douglas and the ccf to power. He served as Minister of Natural Resources in the Douglas government from 1944 to 1948 and was at the centre of several controversial measures involving ventures in public ownership and resource development in northern Saskatchewan, gaining the reputation of a fiery left-wing maverick. At least partly as a consequence, he was defeated in the 1948 provincial election. Phelps then turned back to the farm movement and built the Saskatchewan Farmers' Union (sfu) into a formidable force in the 1950s. In the years that followed, he played a leading role in the creation of the Western Development Museums in the province. To the end of his life, he remained devoted to collecting and preserving the farm machinery which had been so essential to the agricultural era in the West of which he had been a part. Kathleen Carlisle's book is an interesting and well-written account of Joe Phelps' remarkable career. It is largely based on Phelps' papers, government records, interviews, and other unpublished material. The research in regard to Phelps' contentious years as Minister of Natural Resources is particularly impressive. The book adds to our knowledge of the Saskatchewan farm movement, the Saskatchewan ccf, and the early years of the Douglas government. What is especially clear is that Phelps' ideas and the policies he advocated were rooted in Saskatchewan's rural economy. Thus he saw the Wheat Pool, the ufc and sfu, socialism, the ccf, Crown Corporations, and the possibility of a publicly-owned oil industry as ways of providing farmers with a measure of security or of making what was still an overwhelmingly rural province less dependent on the vagaries of a wheat economy. As the title of the book suggests, Carlisle places considerable emphasis on Phelps' colourful personality in her story. One cannot understand or appreciate Joe Phelps without doing so. Various words can be used to describe him, which help explain both his successes and failures: hard working, dedicated, relentless, fearless, impatient, impulsive and difficult. Two of my favorite anecdotes from the book, which tell much about Joe Phelps, are the following. While president of the Saskatchewan Farmers' Union in the 1950s, Phelps wrote and presented a number of briefs to the board of the Canadian Grain Commission. They were lengthy, detailed, and filled with criticism, as he...

Assessing agroecosystem sustainability in Cuba: A new agrobiodiversity index

The main constraint to sustainable agrarian development in Cuba has been a poorly balanced agrobiodiversity in its agroecosystems. This is the result of mainstream agrarian policy that focuses on sugarcane monocropping, following the principles of modern agriculture as promoted over the last 50 years. This paper discusses the development of a new Index of Agrobiodiversity (IDA), a tool used to identify the extent to which agroecosystems are sustainable, based on their agrobiodiversity. It describes the research carried out to identify the index components, how the index was developed and how its efficiency was assessed. The paper also presents a practical experience whereby agroecosystems from Cuba’s urban agriculture movement were measured. Our analysis suggests that the Index of Agrobiodiversity is a valid proposal: its main success lies in the fact that few material and human resources are needed, and that the required information is generated through the work of local farmers themselves. Moreover, the results can encourage farmers to increase agrobiodiversity in their agroecosystems. Please refer to Supplementary Materials, Full text Spanish version of this article, for a full text Spanish version of this article.

Conservation agriculture: A climate-smart approach to achieve zero hunger

Soil erosion resulting from soil tillage during the traditional crop cultivation process has forced us to look for alternatives and to reverse the process of soil degradation. The structural degradation of the soils due to heavy tillage with machineries results in the formation of crusts and compaction and leads to soil erosion. With the continuation of this process for a long term leads a reduction of soil organic matter also. Soil organic matter, a crucial element for the stabilization of soil structure, also provides nutrients to crop. Therefore, most soils degrade under prolonged intensive arable agriculture. Hence, to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture conservation agriculture (CA) plays a key role. With three basic principles, viz., minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotations CA aims at improved livelihoods of farmers especially most urgently required by smallholder farmers, those facing acute labour shortages. CA is not a new system to introduce; truly speaking it is a product of the collective efforts of a number of previous agricultural movements which includes no-till agriculture, agro-forestry, green manures/cover crops, direct planting/seeding, integrated pest management, and conservation tillage mainly. It holds tremendous potential for all sizes of farms and agro-ecological systems. It is mainly aimed at reducing the effort and cost of farming in a way that protects and improves agricultural soils.

Occupational diversification in the rural sector between 2003 and 2013: some observations

The rural occupational structure of the Indian economy has witnessed a change between 2003 and 2013. Understanding the occupational diversification is the central part of understanding the nature of transitionary process in Indian economy. Focusing on the two different methods of occupational classification, the present article is an attempt to explain the patterns of diversification of the rural Indian economy. The questions raised here are: Is the share of household in the farm sector reducing, if yes, who is diversifying from the farm sector, which occupational groups are increasing their share. The present study uses the National Sample Survey’ (NSS) unit level data on Household Debt and Investment and identifies three different important partial movements in the rural Indian economy. One is the significant decline in the share of ‘Other’ household in the non-farm sector. These households might be the households with surplus who moved out of rural sector to the urban sector. The second movement is the decline in the share of agricultural labour households and movement towards increasing share of cultivators/self-employed in agriculture on the one hand and the growth of ‘Other Labour’ on the other hand. The third movement, if the mixed household represents plural households, is an increase in the mixed households in the ‘Other Labour’ category within this group. It has a larger policy implication.

Is urban agriculture urban green space? A comparison of policy arrangements for urban green space and urban agriculture in Santiago de Chile

Urban green spaces are crucial for citizens’ wellbeing. Nonetheless, many Latin American cities struggle to provide sufficient and equitable green space distribution for their citizens. By looking at the Chilean capital Santiago as an example, this paper examines whether the growing urban agriculture movement provides a feasible opportunity to increase public urban green space access. It does so by using the policy arrangement approach to analyse change and stability in two policy domains: urban green space planning and urban agriculture. The paper investigates urban green spaces and urban agriculture and the role of practitioners, urban planners and policymakers. The analysis found opportunities for urban agriculture to facilitate the expansion of urban green spaces in Santiago if policy mechanisms enable private or public spaces to be maintained by citizen organizations. Such mechanisms may, however, encounter resistance from public agencies, as it is unresolved who is involved and who benefits from urban agriculture. The paper concludes that urban agriculture is an opportunity for urban greening in Santiago, although changes are needed in how green areas are planned and conceived. Additionally, urban agriculture should not be understood as a substitute for parks but as a complementary form of green space provision with a distinctive value.

Cuban and Danish Agriculture, The Rochdale Principles, and the Renovation of Socialism

In 2011, the Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution announced Cuba's intentions to decentralize state power and economic decision-making, shift toward a mixed economy, and channel up to one-third of state workers to worker-owned cooperative enterprises and the small business sector. As socialist theory requires movement away from state-centered and toward mixed economies, I examine Danish and Cuban cooperative agricultural movements, evaluating them with respect to the Rochdale Principles of cooperative production, to identify appropriate economic production forms for democratic, participatory socialism within the context of globalization. This study argues first that, to maximize efficiency, cooperative production processes must remain entirely in the hands of cooperative federations. Second, a culture of economic democracy is reinforced by the democratic principles of cooperative work. Third, an income tax would function as a more appropriate way for the Cuban state to obtain a share of returns from agricultural cooperatives than the current production quota system, to avoid disrupting cooperative incentive structures. Fourth, cooperatives can perform well in any industry, at all levels of technological development, and should be considered a dominant model for socialism. Finally, although the Rochdale Principles are based on economic and social justice, these principles and their practical application must be continually refined through further experimentation and research.

The ‘Hungry Gap’: Twitter, local press reporting and urban agriculture activism

AbstractThis paper is concerned with how urban food activists related to the media during 2015, when Bristol was the European Green Capital (EGC), how they represented themselves and how others represented their agenda. Our intention is to inform the debates on urban agriculture (UA) and, more specifically, to contribute to discussions about ‘scaling up’ UA. To achieve this, we adopt a form of analysis that rests on Castells’ insights about contemporary protest movements, the media and the role of communication technologies in constituting social power. By using Bristol, a city with a well-developed and studied urban agriculture movement, we suggest new areas for consideration that focus on the importance of communication in the development of the movement. Our study relied only on publicly available data; newspaper reports about the EGC and a sample of the social media used by the urban food networks in the city. We found that the mass media was mainly concerned with reporting topics other than food and that urban food was not a salient issue in their coverage. The Twitter network we analyzed was a loose constellation of different communities, which shared materials that were mostly concerned with creating a shared, normative picture of urban food. By considering the structure of these forms of media, we can observe the assembly of the forms of communication and their content. The paper concludes that the self-representation of urban food networks at that time reveals a narrow focus of interest. This emphasis may have contributed to the lack of connection within the city between potential allies. Our conclusion supports similar research findings in neighboring communities, which have observed the limited connections of urban food networks to the circuits of power and influence.

Genetic diversity of Phytophthora capsici recovered from Massachusetts between 1997 and 2014

Phytophthora blight caused by Phytophthora capsici limits the production of cucurbits and peppers in the United States and is a growing threat to sustainable vegetable production in New England. Little is known about the genetic diversity of P. capsici in New England, and a total of 210 P. capsici isolates from 18 sites were genotyped using 46 single nucleotide polymorphism markers, revealing 85 unique and 34 repeated multi-locus genotypes. Both mating types were recovered from 7 of the 18 locations. Isolates with identical genotypes (clonal lineages) ranged from 2 to 16. Three clonal lineages were recovered from multiple sites within the same year, although none were recovered across multiple years. Bayesian clustering revealed individuals with a complex genetic cluster composition. This, coupled with a high outcrossing rate (mean t = 0.87) and no clear clustering in principal coordinates analysis, suggests outcrossing among the populations. Phylogenetic and genetic distance analysis indicate differentiation based on farm location and movement among farms may be infrequent. There was no obvious differentiation based on cucurbit, tomato or pepper hosts.

The Learning of Compost Practice in University

The compost as one of the topics of the Urban Farming Movement in Bandung city, Indonesia. The preliminary study aims to obtain a description of the performance capabilities and compost products made by students with STREAM (Science-Technology-Religion-Art-Mathematics) approach. The method was explanatory sequential mixed method. The study was conducted on one class of Biology Education students at the one of the universities in Bandung, Indonesia. The sample was chosen purposively with the number of students as many as 44 people. The instruments were making Student Worksheets, Observation Sheets of Performance and Product Assessment, Rubric of Performance and Product, and Field Notes. The indicators of performance assessment rubrics include Stirring of Compost Materials and Composting Technology in accordance with the design. The product assessment rubric are a Good Composting Criteria and Compost Packaging. The result of can be stated most students have good performance. However, the ability to design of compost technology, compost products and the ability to pack compost are still lacking. The implication of study is students of Biology Education require habituation in the ability of designing technology.

Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food. By Michaela DeSoucey. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. xx+270. $29.95.

<i>Contested Tastes: Foie Gras and the Politics of Food</i>. By Michaela DeSoucey. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016. Pp. xx+270. $29.95.

Movement and contact patterns of long-distance free-grazing ducks and avian influenza persistence in Vietnam.

Presence of ducks, and in particular of free-grazing ducks, has consistently been shown to be one of the most important risk factors for highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreaks which has compromised poultry production in South-East Asia since the early 2000s and continues to threaten public health, farmers’ livelihood and food security. Although free-grazing duck production has been practised for decades in South-East Asia, there are few published studies describing this production system, which is suspected to play an important role in the maintenance of avian influenza viruses. This study aimed at describing quantitatively the long-distance free-grazing duck production system in South Vietnam, characterising the movement and contact patterns of the duck flocks, and identifying potential associations between farming practices, movement and contact patterns and the circulation of avian influenza viruses. We conducted interviews among stakeholders involved in the free-grazing duck production system (duck farmers, transporters and rice paddy owners) in combination with a virological cross-sectional survey in South Vietnam. Results show that both direct and indirect contacts between free-grazing duck flocks were frequent and diverse. The flocks were transported extensively across district and province boundaries, mainly by boat but also by truck or on foot. A third of the investigated flocks had a positive influenza A virology test, indicating current circulation of avian influenza viruses, but none were positive for H5 subtypes. The age and size of the flock as well as its location at the time of sampling were associated with the risk of influenza A circulation in the flocks. These findings should be considered when developing risk assessment models of influenza virus spread aimed at informing the development of improved biosecurity practices leading to enhanced animal health, sustainable animal production and reliable income for farmers.

“To allow farming is to give up on the city”: Political anxieties related to the disposition of vacant land for urban agriculture in Detroit

ABSTRACTDetroit has a vibrant urban agriculture movement as well as an abundance of vacant land, much of which has come into city ownership through foreclosure. Despite the presence of a land bank and a supportive agricultural ordinance, growers struggle to gain long-term access to and ownership of land on which to farm. Using in-depth interviews with growers and their advocates, community development experts, and city and land bank officials, I discuss the specific challenges that urban growers face and related anxieties communicated by city and land bank officials. Anxieties include commonly held perceptions of the polarity between “urban” and “agriculture,” as well as a fear that agriculture may not last. In the absence of an updated master plan, another anxiety relates to land disposition serving as the de facto vision for the city’s future. These anxieties reflect the dominance of growth regime frameworks in current governance. I outline the elements of an alternative framework that weaves together agriculture and redevelopment and discuss its prospects at least for the near term.

The Myth of the Peasant in the Global Organic Farming Movement

Organic farming activists have promoted the idea that ancient peasant wisdom informed the basic principles or Albert Howard’s Indore method, and of organic farming generally. The myth of the peasant origins of organic farming has influenced environmental activists and historians alike and concealed the remarkable contributions of Albert Howard and his first and second wives, Gabrielle and Louise Howard. A few statements made by Howard himself, and by his second wife, Louise, inspired the myth of peasant origins of organic wisdom. But a closer look at the published and unpublished writings of the Howards show that the formulation of the Indore method, which lies at the heart of organic farming, is a strict scientific protocol with its roots in the scientific work of Albert Howard and his cohorts.

Cooperatives and alternative food networks in Italy. The long road towards a social economy in agriculture

In the context of a special issue of the Journal of Rural Studies on more-than-economic motivations for farmers’ cooperation, this article aims to analyse the tensions and contending views of the cooperative movement in Italy with special attention to the agricultural sector and to the emergence of the new model of social cooperatives in the last decades of the 20th century. We interpret this emergence and its codification in law as the decoupling of more-than-economic motivations of cooperation from the mainstream Italian cooperative sector and their reinstatement in a new, but separate model of social cooperation more closely linked to community- and solidarity-oriented initiatives.The presence of institutional tensions and frictions hints at the fact that cooperatives have a multi-faced nature expressed in the not always easy co-existence of a cooperative economy and a cooperative movement. After the II World War, as Italian cooperatives in general and particularly agricultural cooperatives moved towards a productivist model and a ‘competitive market’ paradigm, the more-than-economic aspects have continued to inspire movements for social and community economies. In the 1990s the social economy project was appropriated but somehow ‘sanitized’ by the cooperative movement through the legally sanctioned establishment of social cooperatives and their confinement to specific sections within national cooperative federations. Later on, while the emergence of social cooperatives has had little influence on the functioning and orientation of traditional agricultural cooperatives and federations, the reinstatement of a social function for agriculture has taken place at the much more fluid interface between social cooperation, on the one hand, and civic agriculture movements rooted in alternative food networks and community-oriented initiatives, on the other. It is only recently that the cooperative movement has tried catch up with the new paradigms of alternative agriculture and rural development through the experimentation at regional level of the cooperative di comunità (community cooperatives), that operate to re-affirm the role of multifunctional and multi-stakeholder cooperatives in rural/territorial development.