Agriculture of the Middle

Stevenson, G. W.; Clancy, Kate; Kirschenmann, Fred; Ruhf, Kathryn

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_357-2

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In this way, a distinction is made between the role of "value" and "values"; USDA Agricultural Marketing Service uses the shorthand "food values chains" (Diamond et al, 2014). Building from the national Ag of the Middle 4 research that is focused on midsize farm viability, academics and practitioners started working together in 2003 and introduced the concept of values-based food supply chains as strategic alliances among midsize farms, ranches, and other agrifood businesses that "(a) handle significant volumes of highquality, differentiated food products, (b) operate effectively at multi-state, regional levels, and (c) distribute profits equitably among the strategic partners" (Stevenson, Clancy, Kirschenmann, & Ruhf, 2014). The key premise is the equitable distribution of profits among partners (e.g.…”

Section: What Ismentioning

confidence: 99%

A contemporary concept of the value(s)-added food and agriculture sector and rural development

Clark

Jablonski

Inwood

et al. 2020

Community Development

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The changing structure of agriculture strains the historically close relationship between commodity agriculture and rural development. Meanwhile, growth in consumer interest for differentiated, value-added products has the potential to create community economic development opportunities. However, the evidence regarding the benefit of value-added programs for broader community wealth is mixed. We argue that the mixed findings result, in part, from differences in how "value-added" is defined. Value-added agriculture has been conceptualized in many ways. Taking a USfocused approach, we first review four main concepts: value-added, short food supply chain, values-based supply chain, and civic agriculture. Building on these, we present our definition of a value(s)added food and agriculture sector, incorporating three features: (1) Consumers make purchases that simultaneously provide utility and enable a price premium; (2) the shared principles among firms and their relational arrangement support the distribution of the value, and thus the premium, across the chain and between owners and employees (the use of "principles" or "values" prompts the "(s)" in our definition); and (3) supply chain actors have a demonstrated commitment to the community. We discuss how this definition contributes to debates in, and has implications for, community economic development policy.

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Section: What Ismentioning

confidence: 99%

A contemporary concept of the value(s)-added food and agriculture sector and rural development

Clark

Jablonski

Inwood

et al. 2020

Community Development

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“…Although there is no single institutionalized scale for evaluating agriculture in the U.S., research categories and regulatory thresholds generally distinguish between very small‐scale, direct‐sale producers, and very large‐scale, wholesale producers. Despite a few notable exceptions (Lyson, Stevenson, and Welsh ; Stevenson et al ), “the middle” ends up largely defined by default, with little attention by either researchers or policy‐makers to the varied practices, experiences, and values of the middle. And while these “scale‐making projects” are ideological in nature, they have material consequences for the mid‐scale producers being left behind (Tsing ).…”

Section: Framing “Agriculture Of the Middle”mentioning

confidence: 99%

Confronting the Goldilocks Problem: Encountering “The Middle” in Anthropological Studies of Food and Agriculture

Thompson¹,

Stinnett²

2018

Culture Agric Food & Envi

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Globally, and in the U.S., agricultural and food systems are increasingly bifurcated into large and small-scale operations. Our ethnographic work indicates that there is a great deal of creativity and innovation between these poles, but this is largely being overlooked in agricultural research and policy where "the middle" is largely subject to erasure. Although constructs of scale are ideological in nature, they have material impacts across actors and networks. In this context, there is a critical need for theoretical and ethnographic work that seeks to understand the vast middle. Anthropologists are poised to bring the depth of contextualized, materially focused, process-oriented ethnography to understanding how agriculture and food systems are experienced and navigated, in highly heterogeneous ways-at the thresholds of scale, and in the interconnections of networks. To illustrate, we draw upon our ethnographic research in the meat industry and with farm to school initiatives. [scale, agriculture of the middle, food systems, ethnography, networks]

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“…Kirschenmann et al (2008) argue that the decrease in midsize farms is due to market structure: small farms using direct markets and large farms using established supply chains, leaving midsize farms without well-specified markets. The term "disappearing middle", referring to the declining number of midsize farms in the US agriculture, was first defined in 1980s (Stevenson et al 2014). However, its relevance is controversial.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How economic conditions changed the number of U.S. Farms, 1960–1988: A replication and extension of Gale (1990) to midsize farms in the United States and abroad

Sant’Anna

Katchova

2022

Applied Eco Perspectives Pol

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We replicate and extend the analysis of Gale (1990) to provide insight into the role of economic conditions on farm distributions in the United States and abroad. Our underlying hypothesis is that the effects of the economic factors on the change in farm numbers remain the same (direction wise) for different times, farm sizes, and countries/regions. We investigate the role of economic conditions on the disappearing middle farms.We extend the analysis to include the time period 1960-2020 and more economic factors, estimate the models by farm size categories, using seemingly unrelated regression, and apply it to international settings (Brazil and the Eurozone). We find no evidence to support the disappearing middle farm hypothesis, despite a declining trend in the number of US midsize farms. The role of economic factors changes according to farm size and country. Economic factors (e.g., population, financial stress, and infrastructure) are important to explain the increase in small and midsize farm

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Agriculture of the Middle

Cited by 5 publications

References 4 publications

A contemporary concept of the value(s)-added food and agriculture sector and rural development

A contemporary concept of the value(s)-added food and agriculture sector and rural development

Confronting the Goldilocks Problem: Encountering “The Middle” in Anthropological Studies of Food and Agriculture

How economic conditions changed the number of U.S. Farms, 1960–1988: A replication and extension of Gale (1990) to midsize farms in the United States and abroad

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