A Manifesto for a Progressive Land-Grant Mission in an Authoritarian Populist Era

Abstract

In this essay, we offer a manifesto for a progressive 21st century land-grant mission in an era of rising authoritarian populism in the United States. We explore the historical context of this mode of political engagement, argue that scholars based at land-grant universities are uniquely positioned to address this political moment, and offer examples of land-grant scholars who have embraced this political obligation directly. In the midst of the U.S. Civil War, the federal government provided grants of land to one college in every state to establish universities especially with extension-oriented missions committed to agricultural research and training; today, there are 76 land-grant universities. Just as the constitution of these universities at a significant moment in the country's history served a political purpose, the current political climate also demands a robust political response from contemporary land-grant scholars. Given the mandate for land-grant universities to serve their communities, how can a critical land-grant mission respond to the current political moment of emergent authoritarian populism in the U.S. and internationally? What responsibilities are entailed in the land-grant mission? We consider some strategies land-grant scholars are employing to engage with communities grappling most directly with economic stagnation, climate change, and agrarian dispossession. We also suggest that, amid the dramatically shifting political climate in the U.S., all scholars regardless of landgrant affiliation should be concerned with land-grant institutions' capacity to engage with the country's most disenfranchised populations as a means to pushing back against authoritarian populism.

Assemblage, food justice, and intersectionality in rural Mississippi: the Oktibbeha Food Policy Council

“…Thus, one of the main goals of some OFPC members became to better understand the intersectional complexity of this problem, and how to solve it. For some OFPC members, it became evident that some of the existing socioeconomic and racial disparities, were historic consequences of the structural orders in place which also included the complicated roles that some land-grant universities have had with some communities of color in the U.S. food system (see Goldstein et al 2019;Dunn et al 2019).…”

“…Therefore, it is important to consider how these institutions and community members can contribute to overcome consequences of inequities in the food system such as food insecurity and farmers' struggles, especially in the rural South where socioeconomic and racial marginalization has been a historical and prevalent problem. Currently, land-grant scholars' work is increasingly acknowledging and compensating for the ways in which the work of some 1862 land-grant universities could have been detrimental to some communities (especially, communities of color) in the past, by engaging and aligning with justice-oriented scholarship to overcome existing structural inequities in the food system (see Goldstein, Paprocki, and Osborne 2019;Dunn, Zabaw, and Williams 2019). To address some of these problems in Oktibbeha County, a collaborative group initially led by scholars from Mississippi State University (MSU) established the Oktibbeha Food Policy Council (OFPC) in 2016.…”

Democratizing CRISPR? Stories, practices, and politics of science and governance on the agricultural gene editing frontier

“…-Institutional history -Education and training in science is often limited to specific institutions, such as US land grant schools, in the case of agriculture. Access to S&T knowledge is therefore mediated by the racialized and gendered histories of these spaces (Williams and Williamson, 1988), as well as by industry influences over research that have not always served the public interest (Buttel and Busch, 1988;Goldstein et al, 2019). -Social priorities -Methods of science and technology lack connection to societal priorities and needs.…”

Transitioning to Sustainable Agriculture Requires Growing and Sustaining an Ecologically Skilled Workforce

“…Farmer-scientist collaborations like these resonated with the original mandate of the Land Grant University system-research, extension, and education "in the public interest"-which has become increasingly perverted under the influence of agribusiness (Warner et al, 2011). Although significant debate persists over the effectiveness of conventional agricultural extension systems for promoting agroecology (as opposed to Green Revolution practices), recent efforts to promote "a progressive land grant mission" (Goldstein et al, 2019) show the potential synergies between overcoming racism institutionalized in the LGU system (Williams and Williamson, 1988;Harper et al, 2009) and diversifying who can access agroecological skilling.…”