CHAPTER 7

From Commodity Agriculture to Civic Agriculture

Commodity Agriculture

As American agriculture turns down the path of a new century, we see that the independent, self-reliant farmer of the last century is rapidly disappearing from the rural landscape. Farmers, who were once the backbone of the rural economy, have been reduced to mere cogs in a well-oiled agribusiness machine. The real value in agriculture no longer rests in the commodities produced by farmers, but instead is captured by the corporately controlled and integrated sectors of the agri-food system that bracket producers with high-priced inputs on one side and tightly managed production contracts and marketing schemes on the other side.

The prime supporters of current agricultural policy in the United States have been the land grant colleges and universities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and more recently large, multinational agribusiness firms. The land-grant system was organized to bring the methods of scientific research to agriculture.¹ At U.S. land-grant universities, the emphasis in the classroom and research laboratory has been on commodity production. As different production-oriented agricultural disciplines were formed over the past 120 years such as agronomy, plant pathology, the animal sciences, plant breeding, and entomology, they broke apart “farming” bit by bit into disciplinary niches.

The goals were the same, however, across disciplines. In the plant sciences, attention was directed at increasing commodity yields by enhancing soil fertility, reducing pests, and developing new genetic varieties. Animal scientists, on the other hand, focused on health, nutrition, and breeding. The scientific and technological advances wrought by land-grant scientists were filtered through a farm management paradigm in agricultural economics that championed sets of “best management practices” as the policy blueprints for successful and presumably profitable operations.²

Agricultural policy at the national and state levels focuses primarily on commodities as units of observation, analysis, experimentation, and intervention. Farmers and farms have largely been overlooked by policy makers. Indeed, farmers are often reduced to workers whose primary tasks are to follow production procedures outlined from above. And farms are simply places where production occurs, devoid of connections to the local community or social order.³

Commodity agriculture has become synonymous with industrial agriculture. Many of the basic commodities that undergird the U.S. food system are produced on very large farms that are tied to large agribusiness firms through production contracts. Production contracts are especially prevalent among poultry and livestock farms.⁴

The entire system of commodity production is being propped up by large government subsidies. These subsidies favor some producers over others (usually large ones over small ones) and certain production practices over others (usually capital-intensive over organic). A recent report by Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation noted that “growers of corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans, and rice receive more than 90 percent of all farm subsidies, while growers of most of the 400 other domestic crops are completely shut out of farm subsidy programs.” The report continued: “farm subsidies in 2001 were distributed overwhelmingly to large growers and agribusiness, including a number of Fortune 500 companies… . The top 10 percent of recipients—most of whom earn over $250,000 annually—received 73 percent of all farm subsidies in 2001.”⁵

The shortcomings of a corporately controlled and managed food system have been revealed in many scholarly books and journal articles, as well as in the popular press.⁶ However, only recently has a civic agriculture paradigm emerged to challenge the wisdom of conventional commodity agriculture. The emerging civic approach is associated with a relocalizing of production. From this perspective, agriculture and food endeavors are seen as engines of local economic development and integrally related to the social and cultural fabric of the community.

Refashioning Farming to Fit the Marketplace

Civic agriculture brings together production and consumption activities within communities and offers consumers real alternatives to the commodities produced, processed, and marketed by large agribusiness firms. Civic agriculture is the embedding of local agricultural and food production in the community.⁷ Civic agriculture is not only a source of family income for the farmer and food processor; civic agricultural enterprises also contribute to the health and vitality of their local communities in a variety of social, economic, political, and cultural contexts. For example, civic agriculture increases agricultural literacy by directly linking consumers to producers. Likewise, civic agricultural enterprises have a much higher local economic multiplier than farms or processors that are producing for the global mass market. This means that money spent for civic products stays longer in the local community and is circulated among a wider range of individuals than are dollars spent for imported food produced by large corporations and sold in large supermarkets.

Civic agriculture is a locally organized system of agriculture and food production characterized by networks of producers who are bound together by place. Civic agriculture embodies a commitment to developing and strengthening an economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable agriculture and food production system that relies on local resources and serves local markets and consumers. The imperative to earn a profit is filtered through a set of cooperative and mutually supporting social relations. Community problem solving rather than individual competition is the foundation of civic agriculture.

In order to effect a shift to civic agriculture, it is critical that we recognize and address the fact that control of today's food system rests primarily with powerful and highly concentrated economic interests, and not with local communities or even government. Large-scale, well-managed, capital-intensive, technologically sophisticated, industrial-like operations have become tightly tied into a network of national and global food producers. These farms produce large quantities of highly standardized bulk commodities that are fed into large national and multinational integrators and processors. A few thousand very large farms account for most of the gross agricultural sales, but not necessarily farm income, for farm income is propped up by billions of dollars in farm subsidies. And the current political climate for agriculture, one that endorses biotechnology, free markets, global trade, and the growth of multinational corporations, is likely to make a change toward civic agriculture difficult.

Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community:
Tools for Change

While corporate interests are likely to continue to influence the food system in the direction of increased economic globalization, I believe that communities, organizations, local governments, and even individuals have many tools that can be used to begin to effect change and move toward a more civic agriculture. A new social blueprint for agriculture will come from below, not above. Civic engagement with the food system is taking place throughout the country as citizens and organizations grapple with providing food for the hungry, establishing community-based food businesses, and organizing food policy councils. Policies and programs at the local level that support the development of farmers’ markets, CSAs, organic production, agricultural districts, community kitchens, community gardens, and all sorts of direct marketing and on-farm processing will foster a more community-friendly and sustainable system of production and consumption. While diverse, these efforts have one thing in common: they are all local problem-solving activities organized around agriculture and food.

Communities can provide alternatives to the products of the global food system only if they develop the necessary infrastructure, maintain an adequate farmland base, and provide sufficient technical expertise so that farmers and processors can successfully compete in the local marketplace against the highly industrialized, internationally organized corporate food system. There is accumulating evidence that civic agriculture is emerging in those U.S. regions that have been hit hard by global competition. Many communities have already begun relocalizing parts of their food and agriculture systems.⁸

There is considerable room for local and state-level policy makers to operate and reinvent an alternative and more community-oriented food and agriculture system virtually everywhere. Already we are seeing the emergence and growth of social movements around local agriculture and food systems. Communities committed to civic agriculture are (1) encouraging local economic development efforts to support community-based food-processing activities; (2) fostering land use policies that protect active farm areas from random residential development; (3) enacting and enforcing zoning codes that allocate land into areas of nonfarm development, areas of natural preservation, and areas for agricultural production; (4) instituting institutional food acquisition practices that integrate local food production directly into the community: and (5) developing educational programs to increase agricultural literacy among both children and adults including school and community gardens, summer internship programs, and community-farm days.⁹ An effective agricultural development strategy for civic communities should be geared toward fostering problem solving. Policies to promote and strengthen regional trade associations, local agricultural districts, producer cooperatives, and other forms of locally based economic activity should be part and parcel of a comprehensive community-based agricultural development strategy. Communities would do well not to cede control of their agricultural sector to large, export-oriented, commodity farms and not to rely solely on big-box supermarkets for their food.

Civic Agriculture: Moving from the Marketplace to the Community

Over the past ten years, an accumulating body of research has begun to assess the benefits of smaller-scale enterprises on the level of civic and community welfare in the United States and elsewhere.¹⁰ Research results suggest that there may be many positive benefits to communities that embrace a community capitalism model of economic development.¹¹ Communities that nurture local systems of agricultural production and food marketing, as one part of a broader plan of diversified economic development, can gain greater control over their economic destinies. They can also enhance the level of civic engagement among their residents, contribute to rising levels of civic welfare and socioeconomic well-being, revitalize rural landscapes, improve environmental quality, and, ultimately, promote long-term sustainability.¹²

Civic agriculture, then, as one aspect of the civic community, becomes a powerful template around which to build non- or extramarket relationships between persons, social groups, and institutions that have been distanced from each other. Indeed a growing number of practitioners and academics across the United States are recognizing that creative new forms of community development, built around the regeneration of local food systems, may eventually generate sufficient economic and political power to mute the more socially and environmentally destructive manifestations of the global marketplace.¹³ A turn toward a more civic agriculture is both theoretically and practically possible. Indeed, the seeds have been sown and are taking root throughout the United States.