Ryan E. Galt

The Moral Economy Is a Double-edged Sword: Explaining Farmers’ Earnings and Self-exploitation in Community-Supported Agriculture

Abstract In this article I develop a political economic understanding of community-supported agriculture (CSA). I first develop the relevance of three concepts—economic rents, self-exploitation, and social embeddedness—to CSA and then introduce a framework that relates CSA farmers’ earnings to the average rate of profit, economic rents, and self-exploitation. I then examine qualitative and quantitative data from a study of 54 CSAs in California’s Central Valley and surrounding foothills to explain the wide range of farmers’ earnings in relation to the characteristics of production of CSAs, the social embeddedness of CSAs, and the farmers’ motivations and rationalities. Qualitative data from interviews are used to interpret the results of an ordinary least squares regression analysis showing that (1) farmers’ age, number of employees, and type of CSA strongly shape farmers’ earnings; (2) the moral economy of CSA cuts both ways economically, allowing for the capture of economic rents but more often resulting in self-exploitation because of farmers’ strong sense of obligation to their members; and (3) farmers’ motivations are diverse, but tend toward low and moderate instrumentalism, meaning that earning an income is often not a high priority relative to other values. The conclusion recommends the need to recognize alternative rationalities but also to discuss and confront strong self-exploitation in alternative food networks because of the broader political economic context in which they exist.

Practicing food justice at Dig Deep Farms & Produce, East Bay Area, California: self-determination as a guiding value and intersections with foodie logics

This article describes Dig Deep Farms & Produce, a food justice organisation and urban farm working to stimulate local economic development, create jobs, and improve the quality and accessibility of food in Ashland and Cherryland in Californias Bay Area. Their practices are based on self-determined values although they take a flexible, anti-essentialist approach to foodie logics, which are prominent and problematic in the Bay Area. The case study then examines specific practices and strategies, as well as intersections with foodie logics, in three arenas – values determination, strategic partnerships, and foodways – that help to cultivate food justice and highlights key characteristics of food justice work: emphasising self-determination and working to fundamentally change the economic and social conditions of food apartheid.

Subversive and interstitial food spaces: transforming selves, societies, and society–environment relations through urban agriculture and foraging

By way of introduction, we turn to an excerpt from Ryan Galt’s field notes from a field trip taken by his undergraduate food systems class in November 2012: In a neighbourhood park in Oakland, in the East San Francisco Bay Area of California, we stand waiting for Max, a member of Phat Beets Produce, a collective of people dedicated to promoting food and social justice through food provisioning, activism, organising, and popular education. Max shows up, has us identify ourselves and tell everyone our favourite band and a favourite vegetable that starts with the same letter. He then explains to us the historical origins of the Black Panther Party in the neighbourhood, their role in creating what is now the nationwide school lunch program, and how some of the current efforts of the collective are aimed in part at creating a cultivated landscape that is literally carved out of the city park’s former lawns of Bermuda grass. Like other similar efforts around the country, this example of “guerrilla gardening” includes diverse vegetable beds, an area for compost, and planting fruit-producing (not just ornamental) trees that community members harvest. The produce at Phat Beets looks great, is well-cared for, and absolutely free to anyone who wants to harvest it. And harvest it they do: vegetables and fruits are being utilised by people coming from around the park. Max tells us stories about what this newly cultivated space has done for people in the neighbourhood. He then takes us to a building being renovated into a community kitchen at the Crossroads, a centrally located former commuter light rail junction next to main street. He tells us that its parking lot already hosts a regular farmers market and swap meet, and that the renovated building will serve as a community gathering place, a restaurant, and as infrastructure where local food artisans and vendors can create, sell, barter, and/or share their wares. Already a local seafood community supported agriculture (CSA) program has asked to use the space in the before-dawn shift, when little other use of the space will be occurring. This example illustrates a shift happening in many urban food systems, where millions of people are rethinking and changing how we use contemporary urban spaces in relation to food. In contrast to patterns of urban development over the past many decades, where generations of city planners have been blind to or fervently discouraged primary productive activities within urban boundaries, gardeners, farmers, and foragers are once again investing their work and resources into their communities, and in the process, (re)making urban spaces (see Hynes 1996, Lawson 2005 for a broader discussion of past movements). And these actors are getting a great deal out of it – food, relationships, well-being, economic savings, jobs and wages, a sense of self-efficacy, (re)new(ed) green spaces, environmental connections, and many other things. These practices and spaces are transforming selves and relationships, social and socio-ecological, at multiple levels.

Gearing up to support urban farming in California: Preliminary results of a needs assessment

According to the United States Census, California is the most urban state in the nation. Although there are many outstanding examples of urban farms in California, in general, urban agriculture (UA) has been slower to gain momentum here than in some other states with large urban populations. Over the past several years, urban agriculture’s popularity in California has begun to escalate, with strong emerging interest in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles and other metropolitan communities. One challenge for urban farmers and municipal decision makers engaged with UA in California has been limited availability of relevant information and technical assistance. A new project team at the University of California Cooperative Extension, part of the Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources (UC ANR) is working to develop web-based educational resources that will be grounded in a needs assessment that is currently underway. The needs assessment includes a literature review, an internal survey of UC ANR personnel, and community clientele interviews. This paper will report on preliminary findings and analyses of the needs assessment, particularly how UC ANR personnel are engaged with UA, and what tools they think would best serve urban farmers. We suggest implications for those involved with UA, such as personnel of land-grant universities, local governments and non-profits seeking to address the needs of urban farmers in an environment of constrained resources.

Facilitating competency development in sustainable agriculture and food systems education: a self-assessment approach

The need to develop students’ professional and personal competencies via sustainable agriculture and food systems education has recently received much attention; however, implementing competency-based education is challenging. This paper demonstrates how educators can approach identifying and teaching foundational competencies and assessing their students’ competency development. Using the case of a Food Systems class in an undergraduate Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major at a US land-grant university, we discuss the philosophical and practical aspects of implementing competency-based education and analyse data from students’ use of a competency self-assessment framework in 2009 and 2010. We demonstrate specific analyses that instructors can use for assessing competency development in other contexts. The analysis and results from the case, discussed in depth, demonstrate that the use of these types of competency-based frameworks provides rich opportunities for multiple analyses that can connect teaching practices to specific learning outcomes and objectives. The resulting detailed dataset allows for focused improvements of teaching practice, from specific elements to entire courses. More broadly, we conclude that competency self-assessments serve several important purposes, including communication of a commitment to learner-centred teaching, instructors’ accountability to their own goals and articulation with other parts of the curriculum.

An emerging signature pedagogy for sustainable food systems education

Concerns are growing over the ability of the modern food system to simultaneously achieve food security and environmental sustainability in the face of global change. Yet, the dominant tendency within university settings to conceptualize and address diverse food system challenges as separate, disconnected issues is a key barrier to food system transformation. To address this fragmented approach, educators in North American institutes of higher education have begun new degree programs, specializations and certificates related to food systems. These programs, which we term sustainable food system education (SFSE) programs, have a common goal: to support post-secondary students across a range of disciplines in developing the knowledge, skills and dispositions to effectively address complex challenges in the food system. Graduates of these programs will be able to engage in collective action towards transforming the food system. As educators participating in flagship SFSE programs, we identify common pedagogical themes evident in SFSE programs, including our own. We then propose a signature pedagogy (SP) for sustainable food systems education. Signature pedagogies are conceptual models that identify the primary elements by which professional education in a specific field is designed, structured and implemented. On the basis of our analysis of SFSE programs, we identified systems thinking, multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity, use of experiential learning approaches and participation in collective action projects as central themes within a SFSE SP. By making these themes and their function explicit within a pedagogical framework, we seek to spur critical and creative thought regarding challenges of professional education in the field of sustainable food systems. Scholars and practitioners are encouraged to review, critique and implement our framework to advance the dialogue on SFSE theory and practice.