Farmers who tinker: Grounded alternatives to incrementalism and the growth imperative

Abstract

While hop yards have historically been small‐acreage operations with high levels of infrastructure, North American hop growing has increasingly followed a neo‐plantation model of high‐acreage and high‐automation farms. These large hop yards often have highly developed marketing and breeding components, and these growers’ practices have reshaped the hop marketplace. Within this landscape are a scattered group of mostly small‐to‐medium‐scale farmers who also grow this labour‐intensive, high‐cost, high‐infrastructure agriculture good. These farmers eschew many of the normative methods employed by large‐scale hop growing, breeding and marketing operations and instead tinker with inputs and infrastructure to improvise meaningful ways to maintain viability without growing larger. While many of these operations are medium‐sized growers, their ability to rethink the growth model of agriculture by engaging in immediate‐term on‐farm innovation and tinkering solutions illustrates an alternative approach to incrementalism when considering stepwise solutions for improving financial and environmental sustainability in quality‐focused fruit, vegetable and herb production in North America, Europe and elsewhere.