What makes organic agriculture move: protest, meaning or market? A polyocular approach to the dynamics and governance of organic agriculture

Abstract

Many different actors have hopes and aspirations for the future of organic agriculture. They have different perspectives on organic agriculture with different understandings of what it is and what makes it move. Each perspective entails a certain understanding of organic agriculture featuring certain concepts and values and a particular logic or rationality. It is important to acknowledge this heterogeneity when investigating the dynamics and governance of organic agriculture. We suggest a polyocular approach that facilitates a comprehensive and balanced understanding of organic agriculture by enabling us to handle different perspectives reflexively. To illustrate this approach we describe three significant perspectives on organic agriculture based on protest, meaning and market. No perspective is the 'right' one and, we claim, different perspectives on organic agriculture cannot be merged to one. We hope that polyocularity as a general analytical tool, and the three specific perspectives, will be helpful in understanding the future development of organic agriculture and how it may be influenced.Keywords: organic farming, regulation, perspectives, reflexive, actor network, semiotics, conventionalisation, values. Biographical notes: Hugo Fjelsted Alrøe is a Senior Scientist at the Danish Research Centre forOrganic Food and Farming. He holds a graduate degree in horticulture and a Ph.D. in systemic research methodology and ethics from the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University, Copenhagen. His main research interests are in philosophy of science with a focus on crossdisciplinary research, research communication, the role of reduction and values and the systemic involvement of science in its subject areas; systems theory; semiotics; and ethics and value inquiry in relation to sustainability, precaution, ecological justice and organic agriculture. He has written numerous research articles in these areas and recently co-edited the book "Global Development of Organic Agriculture: Challenges and Prospects". Currently, he is manager of a work package on identifying and integrating values in the EU research project "Organic Revision" that is to support the revision of the EU regulation on organic agriculture.

Cover Crops as an Agroecological Practice on Organic Vegetable Farms in Wisconsin, USA

“…Studies conducted across the globe have posed the question of the movement of organic agriculture toward conventionalization and away from its more agroecological foundations [84][85][86][87]. From our assessment using cover cropping as a model agroecological indicator, this phenomenon does not appear to be occurring on Wisconsin's organic vegetable farms.…”

Concepts and Strategies of Organic Plant Breeding in Light of Novel Breeding Techniques

“…In the 1990s, more and more conventional farmers converted to organic agriculture not only because of the organic values and societal pressure to reduce environmental risks but also as there was a growing market on local and global scale for organically produced and processed food [32]. That development finds its recognition in the forming of public regulation for organic agriculture on the European level and in addition public and private labels on national level mostly following the norms and standards that results from the organic values set by IFOAM.…”

Conventionalisation of organic farming practices: from structural criteria towards an assessment based on organic principles. A review

“…Research has also addressed the potential of organic farming to contribute to endogenous rural development, through fostering direct producer-consumer relationships (e.g., Moore, 2008;Renting et al, 2008;DuPuis and Gillon, 2009) or through service provision (e.g., Darnhofer, 2005;Schermer, 2006;Frederiksen and Langer, 2008;Lobley et al, 2009). Finally, a number of researchers have analysed the influence of legal regulations as well as of the entry of agribusiness and supermarkets into the organic food chain (e.g., Allen and Kovac, 2000;Alrøe and Noe, 2008;Tomlinson, 2008). However, as Lamine and Bellon (2009) have shown, there has been little dialogue between the agricultural and social sciences as well as a general lack of emphasis on the trajectories of organic farms and the understanding of transitions.…”

“…This in no way denies the importance of sophisticated, comprehensive studies of food networks (e.g. Goodman, 1999;Green and Foster, 2005;Brand, 2006;Lockie et al, 2006;Follett, 2009), nor does it indicate that we are not aware of the fact that all farmers operate within a larger political and economic framework that affects their agronomical practices (e.g., Allen and Kovach, 2000;DeLind, 2000;Guthman, 2004b;Thomas and Groß, 2005;Obach, 2007;Alrøe and Noe, 2008;Tomlinson, 2008). We also fully acknowledge the importance of consumer motivations (Lockie et al, 2002;Bähr et al, 2004;Padel and Foster, 2005;Holt, 2006) and the role supermarkets can play (Burch and Lawrence, 2005;Konefal et al, 2005) in the development of organic farming.…”