Strategies to overcome barriers to the development of sustainable agriculture in Canada: The role of agribusiness

MacRae, Rod; Henning, John C.; Hill, Stuart B.

doi:10.1007/bf01965613

Cited by 57 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…For example, researchers have examined a variety of farmer and farm attributes such as age, education, orientation to risk, perception of environmental problems, farm size, and profitability (Allen and Bernhardt, 1995;McNairn and Mitchell, 1991;Saltiel, Bauder and Palakovich, 1994). The impact of agricultural markets and prices and state policies, programs and services have also been examined extensively (Macrae, Henning and Hill, 1993;Wimberly, 1993).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable Agriculture and Conservation Tillage: Managing the Contradictions*

Hall¹

1998

Canadian Review of Sociology

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L'auteur examine dans cet article l'élaboration d'un discours sur l'agriculture, qui encourage l'adoption d'un travail de conservation du sol comme agriculture écologiquement durable. L'analyse débute par l'argument selon lequel ce discours est né dans les années 1980, en réponse aux conséquences sur l'environnement de l'agriculture classique. On soutient ensuite que l'attention portée au travail du sol plutôt qu'à d'autres solutions de rechange quant à ces impacts, attention qui doit être comprise dans le cadre d'une analyse plus large des développements politico‐économiques dans le domaine de l'agriculture au Canada. On a déterminé que les intérêsts contradic‐toires des divers secteurs de l'industrie agroalimentaire, en ce qui concerne le maintien de l'utilisation de produits chimiques coûteux et le contrôle des prix payés aux agriculteurs dans le contexte de la crise économique de l'agriculture, jouaient un rôle essentiel dans l'attention portée au travail du sol. On soutient que le travail de conservation du sol permet de régler ces contradictions de deux façons. Tout d'abord, le travail de conservation du sol a fourni une base pour affirmer que les problèmes de pollution chimique et d'épuisement du sol étaient en train d'être résolus sans que soient nécessaires des changements plus substantiels dans le système de production à base chimique. Enfin, il offrait aux agriculteurs un moyen et une raison de réduire les coûts de production devant les crises constantes relatives aux prix et a la rentabilité des fermes. This paper examines the development of a discourse within agriculture which promotes the adoption of conservation tillage as environmentally sustainable farming. The analysis begins with the argument that the discourse emerged during the 1980s as a response to the environmental impacts of conventional agriculture. It is then argued that the focus on tillage practices over other alternative solutions to these impacts must be understood within a broader analysis of the political‐economic developments in Canadian agriculture. The contradictory interests of the various sectors of agribusiness capital, both in sustaining the use of expensive chemical inputs and in controlling the prices paid to farmers within the context of the farm economic crisis, are identified as playing a vital role in shaping the focus on tillage practices. It is contended that conservation tillage offered a means of mediating these contradictions in two ways. First, conservation tillage provided a basis for the claim that chemical pollution and soil depletion problems were being resolved without the need for more substantial changes in the chemically‐based production system and, second, it gave farmers a means and a rationale for cutting production costs in the face of continuing crises in prices and profitability at the farm gate level.

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confidence: 99%

Sustainable Agriculture and Conservation Tillage: Managing the Contradictions*

Hall¹

1998

Canadian Review of Sociology

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“…For example, in farmer cooperatives, actual agricultural production happens on smaller farms with the associated benefits of small-scale production such as increased biodiversity, higher productivity in terms of total farm output, more vivid rural and even national economies [57,58]. At the same time, by acting collectively also small farmers can take advantage of economies of scale and economize on transaction costs [59,60], which are important arguments in favor of large-scale agricultural production [61][62][63]. Consequently, farmer organization in cooperatives is one way to integrate both the demand for production on smaller units of the agroecological-ruralist position and the demands for large-scale agriculture of the techno-economic position.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Is Sustainable Agriculture? A Systematic Review

et al. 2015

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Abstract:The idea of a sustainable agriculture has gained prominence since the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987. Yet, the concept of sustainable agriculture is very vague and ambiguous in its meaning, which renders its use and implementation extremely difficult. In this systematic review paper, we aim to advance understandings of sustainable agriculture from a social science and governance perspective by identifying areas of complementarity and concern between emerging definitions of sustainable agriculture. For this purpose, we conducted a structured literature review in combination with a cluster analysis in order to (1) identify the overall ideas and aspects associated with sustainable agriculture; (2) detect patterns and differences in how these ideas and aspects are adopted or applied; (3) evaluate how the different ideas and aspects of sustainable agriculture are combined in the scientific debate, and assess whether these different conceptions match with those that have been claimed to exist in the debate. There are two valuable outcomes from this research. The first is a framework for understanding the components of sustainable agriculture. The second outcome is in highlighting ways for actors involved with sustainable agriculture to deal with the complexity and multiplicity of this concept in a constructive manner.

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“…Although were not the first to question the transformative ability of organics(see Clunies-Ross 1990;Friedmann 1993;MacRae et al 1993;Clunies-Ross and Cox 1994;Rosset and Altieri 1997;, their research in California was the first to systematically document the structural trends taking place in organics. As organics moved beyond its niche status in California, agribusiness entered the market to capture the monopoly rents associated with the price premium .…”

Section: Conventionalization and Bifurcationmentioning

confidence: 99%