Gender and Agricultural Imagery: Pesticide Advertisements in the 21<sup>st</sup> Century Agricultural Transition

Kroma, Margaret M.

doi:10.1525/cag.2002.24.1.2

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Particularly in the post-World War II (WWII) era, pesticides were billed as indispensable for an increasing agricultural productivity, a rising standard of living, and American Cold War superiority (Mart, 2015: 11). During the Cold War, the technopolitics of pesticides linked racialized and colonial discourses of modernity and progress (Wenzel, 2014), with gendered ideologies of the “control of nature” (Kroma, 2003; Merchant, 1983). That We May Live was no exception.…”

Section: “Absolute Necessities To Our Way Of Life”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South

Williams

2018

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article situates pesticides as technologies marked by both continuities and discontinuities from previous modes of agrarian racism in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta, a plantation region of the United States South. Attention to the historical-geographical specificity of pesticide intensification, I argue, provides the means to understand pesticide intensification as a mode of what I term agro-environmental racism. Anti-Black racism shaped the politics of pesticides, underpinning policies and material practices that were destructive of both the environment and human welfare in the Delta and beyond. The structures and ideologies of plantation racism helped position the Delta as one of the most pesticide-intensive sectors of U.S. agriculture during the mid-20th century—a particularly consequential period for both the intensification of pesticides and the formation of contemporary environmentalism. Pesticides were defended by agro-industrial interests as technologies supporting agricultural production—and particularly that of cotton, the most pesticide-intensive commodity crop. Simultaneously, they were figured as technologies crucial to a normative way of life. Although pesticides were articulated without explicit mention of race by the 1960s, I argue that the freedom struggle activism of the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union and Fannie Lou Hamer provide context necessary to explain the pesticide politics of the Delta’s plantation bloc. These mobilizations to enact more just, sustainable, and livable geographies were an indictment of a plantation politics which put the health of cotton and profitability of plantations above all else.

show abstract

Section: “Absolute Necessities To Our Way Of Life”mentioning

confidence: 99%

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South

Williams

2018

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…1 Spring 2006 focus on the commercial agricultural activities of male farmers rather than on the broad array of agropastoral, silvicultural, and reproductive activities that make up the labor of farm families. Kroma's (2002:2) engaging analysis of the symbolic appropriation of cultural images of nature and gender in Midwestern farm magazines.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

"Feeding the Nation" and "Protecting the Watershed"

Paulson¹,

DeVore²

2006

Culture & Agriculture

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Tensions between efforts to preserve threatened ecosystems and efforts to improve the life conditions of people who inhabit such areas are of increasing concern in environmental science, policy, and practice. In our research with farmers in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil, we have identified a range of forces, factors, and ideas that influence how farmers develop production strategies and make choices about resource use that have consequences for local environmental conditions and human well‐being. This article aims to support collaborative work between organizations investing in conservation efforts and local peoples inhabiting sites of conservationist concern by drawing attention to farmers discussions of, and responses to, these factors. The article advances a framework for considering the beliefs, needs, and aspirations of local stakeholders together with diverse contextual factors that influence their decisions and productive activities.

show abstract

“…Numerous scholars have identified the ways that agribusiness industries, such as chemical, seed, and farm machinery manufacturers, have used images of conventional farming masculinity in their marketing strategies (see Kroma ; Kroma and Flora ). However, nearly 20 years ago, Berit Brandth (:132) questioned whether the conventional farming masculinity of Western agriculture—represented by a rugged, strong, solitary farmer who dominates nature through his manual labor—might be being replaced by a more white‐collar or “business‐like” masculinity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manipulated Masculinities: Agribusiness, Deskilling, and the Rise of the Businessman‐Farmer in the United States

2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study we examine how the agribusiness industry works to manipulate conventional farming masculinities in the United States to facilitate agricultural deskilling, a process that has serious implications for the future of sustainable agriculture uptake among American farmers. Through analyzing one year's worth of advertisements in three conventional farming magazines and through conducting participant observation and interviews at the second largest indoor farming show in the United States, we examine the ways in which agribusiness companies, such as chemical, seed, and farm machinery manufacturers, represent farmers and farming masculinities in their advertisements and marketing materials. We observe a shift occurring among certain agribusiness sectors away from representations of a rugged, strong, solitary farmer, who dominates nature through his manual labor, to depictions of a “businessman” farmer, who farms in collaboration with certain qualified partners (i.e., company representatives). We ultimately argue that these new representations of farming masculinity aim to more deeply entrench conventional farmers' dependence on chemical inputs and agribusiness products by promoting a process of deskilling, effectively alienating the farmer from the land.

show abstract

Gender and Agricultural Imagery: Pesticide Advertisements in the 21^st Century Agricultural Transition

Cited by 4 publications

References 20 publications

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South

"Feeding the Nation" and "Protecting the Watershed"

Manipulated Masculinities: Agribusiness, Deskilling, and the Rise of the Businessman‐Farmer in the United States

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Gender and Agricultural Imagery: Pesticide Advertisements in the 21st Century Agricultural Transition

Cited by 4 publications

References 20 publications

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South

“That we may live”: Pesticides, plantations, and environmental racism in the United States South

"Feeding the Nation" and "Protecting the Watershed"

Manipulated Masculinities: Agribusiness, Deskilling, and the Rise of the Businessman‐Farmer in the United States

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Gender and Agricultural Imagery: Pesticide Advertisements in the 21^st Century Agricultural Transition