Search

Organizational assumptions embedded in the production function of neoclassical economics have served to structure production agriculture in the United States for the past 100 years. The narrow focus of the production function on the inputs of land, labor, capital, and management and the use of on-farm profitability as the primary definition of sustainability have come under attack from sustainable agriculturalists, who argue that the social and environmental consequences of production are as important as the economic outcomes. Using diversity of crops harvested as an indicator of sustainability, the production function is operationalized to inform the debate between the conventional, neoclassical model of production and the alternative, sustainable model. Census of agriculture data from 1978, 1982, and 1987 are used in both cross-sectional and temporal models. Results show that increases in expenditures for equipment and machinery, prevalence of corporate farms, higher rates of tenancy, and the prevalence of large farms are associated with lower levels of diversity at the county level. Conversely, higher levels of diversity are found in counties with greater farm labor expenses, where there are more medium-size farms, and where farmers are more likely to farm full-time.

Neoclassical theory in economics has served as the guiding paradigm for agricultural development in the United States. At one level, this model emphasizes the substitution of capital in the form of machinery and chemicals for land and labor. At another level, the paradigm calls for the introduction of mass production techniques, such as product standardization and the routinization of labor processes. Using data on dairy farms and dairy processors from the 50 states, the neoclassical model accounts for changes in productivity on dairy farms; however, the model is less useful in accounting for changes in dairy farm structure. To explain changes in structure, recent neostructural theory that links the structure of markets to the structure of production is used. It is concluded that persistence of family-size dairy farms may rest more on developing and protecting markets for the milk they produce than with tinkering with the neoclassical model.

This study compares the logic of agricultural production across two dairy farming communities in the Northeast using a measure of agricultural performance as the dependent variable. Both communities have similar farm structural and environmental characteristics, but significantly different levels of agricultural performance. Our analysis indicates that dairy farmers in both communities are following the same basic path toward the optimization of milk production, but achieving quite different results. A comparison of structural factors shows that the high-production community is in a more advantageous position than the low-production community in terms of opportunities for formal education, access to markets, and proximity to an urban center. Acknowledgment of structural differences across agricultural communities is crucial to the development of adequate sociological theory, agricultural policy, and extension programming.

Food waste comprises a significant portion of the waste stream in industrialized countries, contributing to ecological damages and nutritional losses. Guided by a systems approach, this study quantified food waste in one U.S. County in 1998–1999. Publications and personal interviews were used to quantify waste from food production, processing, distribution, and consumption. Approximately 10,205 tons of food waste was generated annually in this community food system. Of all food waste, production waste comprised 20%, processing 1%, distribution 19%, and 60% of food waste was generated by consumers. Less than one-third (28%) of total food waste was recovered via composting (25%) and food donations (3%), and over 7,000 tons (72%) were landfilled. More than 8.8 billion kilocalories of food were wasted, enough to feed county residents for 1.5 months. This case study offers an example of procedures to quantify and compare food waste across a whole community food system.

The US food retailing industry continues to concentrate and consolidate. Power in the agriculture, food, and nutrition system has shifted from producers to processors, and is now shifting to retailers. Currently, only eight food-retailing corporations control the majority of food sales in the United States. Expanding on previous research by Lyson and Raymer (2000, Agriculture and Human Values 17: 199–208), this paper examines the characteristics of the boards of directors of the leading food retailing corporations and the indirect interlocks that bind the food retailers into a corporate community.

The effect on rural communities of shifts in US agriculture toward a system dominated by large-scale industrial production is a central problematic in the sociology of agriculture. Despite the importance of agriculture structure and practice to US society, most research on this topic has been confined to specialized journals. And though research in this area has found negative effects on rural communities from agricultural industrialization, there is a dearth of inquiry into public policy remedies. Using data on 433 agriculture-dependent counties in the USA, we find that counties in states with laws that limit nonfamily corporate entry into farming score higher on important welfare indicators, and that the laws mitigate negative impacts on rural communities from industrial farming.

Commodity agriculture and civic agriculture represent two distinct types of farming found in the U.S. today. Commodity agriculture is grounded on the belief that the primary objectives of farming should be to produce as much food/fiber as possible for the least cost. It is driven by the twin goals of productivity and efficiency. Civic agriculture, on the other hand, represents the rebirth of a more locally oriented agriculture and food system. Using data from the 1992 and 1997 Censuses of Agriculture and other secondary data sets, we examine factors and conditions associated with the presence and growth of both types of agriculture. Our findings show that civic agriculture is associated with particular commodities and with specific social, economic and demographic characteristics of localities. Commodity agriculture, on the other hand, is more sensitive to the classic economic factors of production, namely, land, labor, and capital.

Research on the decline of public life in the United States has largely overlooked the role of Main Street retailers that provide public spaces for the maintenance of informal social ties. A central factor shaping the viability of small retailers is the development of big box chain stores that offer one-stop shopping and price out smaller competitors. Although prior studies have considered the transition from small to large retailers as a national phenomenon, arguing for the importance of place effects, we document the spatial variation in this process for nonmetropolitan counties in the United States. We hypothesize that the economic downturns in agriculture and manufacturing during the 1980s, combined with suburban sprawl into nonmetropolitan counties, facilitated the decline of small retailing in specific locales. Employing data from the 1977–1996 U.S. County Business Patterns, we test our hypotheses concerning the spatial variability in the decline of small retailing. Our results point to a m...

The ten largest food and beveragecorporations control over half of the food sales inthe United States and their share may be increasing.Using data from a range of secondary sources, weexamine these corporations and their boards ofdirectors. Social and demographic characteristics ofboard members gleaned from corporate reports, thebusiness press, and elsewhere are presented.Information on interlocking corporate directorates andother common ties among members of the boards ofdirectors show that US based food and beveragecorporations are tied together through a web ofindirect interlocks.

This paper examines ways in which rural landscapes and communities in the Northeast have been, and continue to be, impacted by global and local food marketing systems. We provide a historical overview of globalization in agriculture and the food system and the relationship of these changes to other economic, technological and social changes. We present two food system models–“global” and “local”–representing contrasting socioeconomic paradigms, or understandings of the true and proper relationship between economy and society. Finally we explore some of the theoretical and real-life impacts of global and local food systems on landscapes in the Northeast, and discuss implications for achieving long-term agricultural sustainability.

Agricultural sustainability is challenging ‘conventional’ or ‘mainstream’ agriculture as the dominant organizing paradigm for teaching research, and outreach in American land grant universities. However, not all faculty members subscribe to the tenets of sustainable agriculture. This paper examines how a sample of faculty members from all land grant universities in the U.S. view sustainable agriculture. Results show that, in the minds of agricultural academics, agricultural sustainability is closely aligned with enhancing environmental quality. It is less closely tied, for them, to increasing profitability for farmers or with improving the quality of life in rural areas. Results vary by academic discipline and by personal background characteristics.

This paper explores issues of agricultural sustainability in relation to arguments to sustain the family labor farm and the theoretical justification for the recent increase in smallerscale milk processors and differentiated dairy product markets. Using a population of New York State dairy farm households, we identified farm structural variables that influence farmers' use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers and their consideration of intensive rotational grazing. Milk sales, division of hired labor on the farm, and ownership arrangements are found to be interrelated and predict relative use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers within a “conventional” confinement feeding system. Marketing strategies predict production practices within a confinement feeding system less reliably but do predict whether the farm has considered adopting an intensive grazing system. Farms that have higher saks, that use hired labor more extensively, and that are not single family operations are more likely to use chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Farms that sell to differentiated markets are more likely to look favorably on an eventual switch to an intensive rotational grazing system.

We build on earlier work by Mills and Ulmer in which characteristics of the local economic base, particularly establishment size, were related to civic welfare. They posit that small business is ‘good’ for local community welfare, whereas big business is ‘bad’ for it. Data from County Business Patterns and various population censuses are used to examine this issue for US nonmetropolitan counties. With regression procedures adjusted for spatial autocorrelation across counties, we find support for the Mills and Ulmer hypothesis for three measures of civic welfare.

The production function from the neoclassical economic model with its focus on short term profitability has organized agriculture for the last 100 years. Recently, proponents of sustainable agriculture have criticized the production function assumption that land, labor, capital, and management are freely substitutable for each other. These proponents have focused instead on the social relations in which agriculture is embedded, appropriate technology, and agricultural diversification. Crop rotations, with their many benefits, have become an important marker for distinguishing sustainable production practices from conventional ones. This paper uses data from a survey of potato producers in New York State to examine the social structural factors relating to potato rotations. These rotations are diverse, indicating that the factors of production are conditioned by social, cultural, political, and environmental factors. The production function appears limited as a tool for understanding farmer practices.

Farmers' markets are important but inadequately studied contributors to local economies. They allow individual entrepreneurs and their families to contribute to the economic life of local communities by providing goods and services that are not readily available through formal, mass markets, and they bring producers and consumers together to solidify bonds of local identity and solidarity. Using data collected from 115 farmers' market vendors in three regions of New York in 1993, we examined the characteristics and operations of three categories of vendors: full-time growers, part-time growers, and non-grower artisans and craftspeople. Drawing on theories of mass production and mass markets, we show how farmers' markets represent intermediate social structures that bridge the formal and informal sectors of the economy.

n recent years, the advantages of large-scale, mass production have been called into question across a spectrum of industrial sectors (Adams and Brock 1986, Best 1990, Piore and Sabel 1984). Within agriculture, the spread of large-scale, industrialized production is dislodging both a longstanding social system rooted in family farming and an agroecological system characterized by extensive land use, low levels of external input, plant and animal diversity, and regional selfsufficiency (National Research Council 1989a, Pimentel 1988). Historically, entrepreneurial, smallscale units of production mixing family assets and management with seasonal or permanent hired labor typified US agriculture. In recent years, however, vertically integrated, industrialized farming has begun rapidly displacing production dominated by single families. Wallace (1987) dates the onset of agricultural industrialization to the 1880s. Today, the 5% of farms that are the largest account for more than 50% of sales (Marion 1986). Concentration of production is most advanced in poultry, fruits, veg

Agriculture in the United States today increasingly operates in two separate spheres: large, corporate-connected commodity production and distribution systems and small-scale farms that market directly to consumers. As a result, midsize family-operated farms find it increasingly difficult to find and reach markets for their products. They are too big to use the direct marketing techniques of small farms but too small to take advantage of corporate marketing and distribution systems. This crisis of the midsize farm results in a rural America with weakened municipal tax bases, job loss, and population flight. Food and the Mid-Level Farm discusses strategies for reviving an "agriculture of the middle" and creating a food system that works for midsize farms and ranches. Activists, practitioners, and scholars from a variety of disciplines, including sociology, political science, and economics, consider ways midsize farms can regain vitality by scaling up aspects of small farms' operations to connect with consumers, organizing together to develop markets for their products, developing food supply chains that preserve farmer identity and are based on fair business agreements, and promoting public policies (at international, federal, state, and community levels) that address agriculture-of-the-middle issues. Food and the Mid-Level Farm makes it clear that the demise of midsize farms and ranches is not a foregone conclusion and that the renewal of an agriculture of the middle will benefit all participants in the food system--from growers to consumers. Thomas A. Lyson was Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Development Sociology at Cornell University until his death in 2006. He was the author of Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community. G. W. Stevenson is Senior Scientist with the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin-- Madison. Rick Welsh is Associate Professor of Sociology at Clarkson University.

Agricultural biotechnologies are anchored to a scientific paradigm rooted in experimental biology, whereas sustainable agriculture rests on a biological paradigm that is best described as ecological. Both biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are associated with particular social science paradigms: biotechnology has its foundation in neoclassical economics, but sustainability is framed by an emerging community-centered, problem-solving perspective. Fundamentally, biotechnology and neoclassical economics are reductionist in nature. Sustainability and community problem-solving, however, are nonreductionist. Given these differences, we might see the development of two rather distinct systems of food production in the near future.

This paper adds to the current dialogue in our discipline regarding the challenge of expanding nonacademic employment opportunities for sociologists and training our students for such employment. The argument is made that this challenge should be seen as an opportunity for us to demonstrate the relevance of our knowledge and expertise to society and to advance the intellectual development of our discipline. Moreover, the achievement of these benefits does not require sacrificing the distinctive intellectual core of sociology as a humanistic liberal arts discipline. To help bridge the gap between academic and nonacademic cultures, several interrelated strategies are suggested that address issues of marketing and public relations, as well as curriculum revision. The internship, as a key feature of “applied” programs, is crucial in terms of both training students and facilitating our contacts with potential employers.

A sample of southern college students is used to investigate race and sex differences among nine Likert-type sex role attitudes. Results show that black and white men share a similar sex role orientation while black and white women also share a similar world view. There were only two instances where blacks were notably different from whites. First, blacks were more likely to feel that a woman's real fulfillment in life comes from motherhood, and second, blacks were more likely to feel that it was appropriate for a mother with school-age children to work.

Using data collected from sixty-five nonacademic employers, who either advertised in the ASA Employment Bulletin between January 1979 and January 1981 or who registered with the employment service at the ASA annual meetings in 1979 or 1980, we examine what nonacademic employers are looking for when they recruit sociologists, how they recruit such employees, what tasks employers assign sociologists, and what they perceive to be the major shortcomings of sociologists they have hired. Guiding the inquiry is our belief that programs and policies for expanding nonacademic job opportunities and the arguments for increasing the emphasis placed on applied sociology in graduate training have been more concerned with molding individuals to fit certain perceived occupational roles outside of academia than with training sociologists. We suggest that an uncritical acceptance of the nature of demand in the current labor market may ultimately lead to a deskilling of the sociological profession and the homogenization of the nonacademic labor markets open to social scientists.

Using data published by the U.S. Office of Education, shift-share analysis is used to examine changes in the number and proportion of bachelor's degrees awarded in seven curriculum areas in the historically black and the historically white land grant colleges in the South between 1967 and 1977. Our guiding hypothesis suggested that recent pressure brought by the federal government to enhance programs at black land grant colleges coupled with the opening-up of a wide spectrum of traditionally white occupations would result in a broadening of the areas of study pursued by students at the black land grant colleges. Results show that, in general, students are pursuing a wider range of curriculums in the black land grant schools than in the past. Especially notable are increases in business, engineering, and the social sciences, while the number of education degrees has declined dramatically.

Using data from various United States and New Zealand censuses and drawing on theories of industrial transformation, this paper examines how women's occupational employment changed during the 1970's. Shift-share analysis is used to decompse changes n occupational employment into three components: (1) industrial shift efficiency; (2) occupational mix effects ; and (3) interaction effects. Results show that industrial transformation, per se, (i.e., the growth of service sector industries) was a less important factor in creating occupational opportunities for American and New Zealand women than changes in the technical division of labor within industries.

Shift-share analysis is used to provide a descriptive explanation of the changes in curriculum areas in which women received bachelor's degrees between 1966 and 1976. The purpose is to assess the extent to which women have moved into male-dominated fields and consequently prepared themselves for employment in traditional male occupations. Data are from reports published by the U.S. Office of Education. Results show that seven of nine traditional male curricula had net increases of women between 1966 and 1976, along with 7 of 10 sex neutral areas and two of four traditional female areas. The net increase of women in traditional male areas, however, was greater than the increase in either sex neutral or traditional female areas.

Using data collected from a random sample of South Carolina farm families, this research assesses how participation of husbands and wives in off-farm jobs is related to (a) various structuralfeatures of the farm unit andfarm household, (b) the selection of a particular set offarm enterprises, (c)farm management practices, and (d) patterns offarm decision making. Discriminant analysis is used to articulate differences among four "types" of farm families based upon the off-farm labor statuses of the husband and wife. Results show that the husband's involvement in off-farm work is more important than the wife's in influencing the organizational and operational characteristics of the farm.

This comparative study deals with the selection of teaching as a career goal. To comprehend the meaning of observed differences in the relative popularity of teaching vis-a-vis other professional career alternatives, the general patterning of status ambitions is also explored. Sex and class differentials hold cross-nationally and are maintained with other variables controlled. A career in teaching is an important means for lower status youths and girls in general, to achieve a modest degree of upward social mobility. As entree into teaching becomes more competitive, this traditional "escape valve" for rural young people will become increasingly less accessible and, consequently, may lead to a decline in the proportion of rural youth seeking college educations.