Other agricultures of scale: Social and environmental insights from Yakima Valley hop growers

Comi, Matt

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.10.041

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Rural sociology arose in tandem with the land-grant university system and has long used a sociological lens to develop both original and applied research on rural society with an emphasis on agricultural change and natural resource use [ 87 , 88 , 89 ]. Rural sociology also has a long history of situating health, agriculture, technology change, and climate change, though rarely across all four of these domains [ 9 , 10 , 21 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 ]. One of the strengths of Rural sociology is the discipline’s willingness to adopt ‘toolkits’ from other disciplines based on the diverse and intersecting needs of this interdisciplinary field.…”

Section: Social Science’s Contributions To the Environmental-technolo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the field of agricultural health and safety has studied both the role of weather and the role of automation in shaping agricultural populations’ health and safety outcomes [ 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ], climate change and rapid automation are dynamic, not static, forces—bringing on novel challenges, such as higher heat, less predictable local weather patterns, new plant, chemical, and machine technologies; all of which augment the nature, safety, and risks associated with farm work. Increasing global surface temperature has dramatically shifted local environments and produced a number of agricultural challenges from crop adaptability to systems resilience and to owner/operator and worker health and safety [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. In parallel, increasing automation has been a hallmark of the industrialization and digitalization of agriculture, promising to lower the negative health, safety, and economic externalities of labor in agriculture [ 11 , 13 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Automation, Climate Change, and the Future of Farm Work: Cross-Disciplinary Lessons for Studying Dynamic Changes in Agricultural Health and Safety

Comi

Becot

Bendixsen

2023

IJERPH

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In this review, we first assess the state of agricultural health and safety research as it pertains to the dynamic challenges facing automating agriculture on a warming planet. Then, we turn to social science fields such as rural sociology, science and technology studies, and environmental studies to leverage relevant insights on the introduction of new technologies, environmental risks, and associated workplace hazards. Increased rates of automation in agriculture alongside new risks associated with climate change create the need for anticipatory governance and adaptive research to study novel mechanisms of worker health and safety. The use of the PRISMA framework led to the 137 articles for our review. We identify three themes in the literature on agricultural health and safety: (1) adoption outcomes, (2) discrete cases of health risks, and (3) an emphasis on care and wellbeing in literature on dairy automation Our review led to the identification of research gaps, noting that current research (a) tends to examine these forces separately, instead of together, (b) has not made robust examination of these forces as socially embedded, and (c) has hesitated to examine the broad, transferable themes for how these forces work across industries. In response to these gaps, we suggest that attention to outside disciplines may provide agricultural health and safety research with a toolset to examine needed inquiry into the multiplicity of experiences of rural stakeholders, the industry specific problems arising from automation and climate change, and the socially embedded aspects of agricultural work in the future.

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Section: Social Science’s Contributions To the Environmental-technolo...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automation, Climate Change, and the Future of Farm Work: Cross-Disciplinary Lessons for Studying Dynamic Changes in Agricultural Health and Safety

Comi

Becot

Bendixsen

2023

IJERPH

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“…At present, the research on the development of agricultural marketing under the perspective of "Internet+" is in the initial stage at home and abroad, and certain results have been achieved. e current situation of online marketing of agricultural products in the world and the experience of online marketing of agricultural products in other countries are fully integrated [13]. In addition, researchers also discuss the logistics and distribution system of agricultural products marketing and follow the development of the Internet, in order to promote the rapid development of the world's agricultural products online marketing [14].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupling of Agricultural Product Marketing and Agricultural Economic Development Based on Big Data Analysis and “Internet+”

Xiao

Wang

Tsai

2021

Mobile Information Systems

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In the era of “Internet+,” the increase of agricultural products sales can be achieved by creating and joining e-commerce platforms. Most of the farmers in China are self-employed and cannot form an industrial scale. With the rise of “Internet+” background research, the combination of this technology and the marketing of agricultural products has become a new marketing model under the deep integration of different fields. Based on the marketing of products under the background of “Internet+” and using marketing theories, this paper reviews the development of marketing of agricultural products under the background of “Internet+,” including the Internet infrastructure, the establishment of logistics system, the formation of branding, and the deep processing of agricultural products. The paper reviews the development of agricultural marketing under the background of “Internet+,” including the Internet infrastructure, establishment of logistics system, branding, and deep processing of agricultural products. The marketing mode of agricultural products under the background of “Internet+” is proved, and the development of agricultural products marketing under the background of “Internet+” is discussed from various angles, and insights into how to improve it are proposed from five aspects. After excluding the influence of environmental factors through the improved three-stage SE-DEA model, the mean value of TE of comprehensive efficiency of agricultural information allocation increases from 0.773 to 0.832, the mean value of SE of scale efficiency increases from 0.844 to 0.9219, and the mean value of PTE of pure technical efficiency adjusts from 0.9087 to 0.9058. The mean value of pure technical efficiency (PTE) was adjusted from 0.9087 to 0.9058. Compared with the parametric method, DEA does not require a specific production function to be set in advance, and it is also difficult to select a suitable production function in advance for complex problems.

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“…Technological innovation in agriculture over the last half‐century has become a contested and politicised domain that has been shown to often produce environmental and social harms in pursuit of immediate gains in productive capacity (Bronson, 2019; Esteva, 1996; Jasanoff, 2007; Kloppenburg, 1988). However, gains in farmer autonomy and involvement of large farmers as directors of breeding programmes and other technology innovations have resulted in case‐specific gains in environmental adaptive capacity and farmer profitability (Comi, 2020b; Stock & Forney, 2014). Hop growers in the Yakima Valley are one such group that have directed their own breeding programmes and produced a more profitable and somewhat more environmentally resilient model for an agriculture of scale in their region (Comi, 2020b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, gains in farmer autonomy and involvement of large farmers as directors of breeding programmes and other technology innovations have resulted in case‐specific gains in environmental adaptive capacity and farmer profitability (Comi, 2020b; Stock & Forney, 2014). Hop growers in the Yakima Valley are one such group that have directed their own breeding programmes and produced a more profitable and somewhat more environmentally resilient model for an agriculture of scale in their region (Comi, 2020b). This change has also had impacts on an industry that was previously dominated by small, low‐earning farms obliged to sell on the global commodity market.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Comi

2023

Sociologia Ruralis

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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.

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Other agricultures of scale: Social and environmental insights from Yakima Valley hop growers

Cited by 11 publications

References 19 publications

Automation, Climate Change, and the Future of Farm Work: Cross-Disciplinary Lessons for Studying Dynamic Changes in Agricultural Health and Safety

Automation, Climate Change, and the Future of Farm Work: Cross-Disciplinary Lessons for Studying Dynamic Changes in Agricultural Health and Safety

Coupling of Agricultural Product Marketing and Agricultural Economic Development Based on Big Data Analysis and “Internet+”

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

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