Women and Small Farm Revival: The Division of Labor and Decision-Making on Maine's Organic Farms

Abstract

Reacting to the intensified contradictions of the capitalist food system, many agrarian activists seek to revitalize family labor farms, to make agriculture ecologically sustainable, to renew the social and economic life of rural communities, and to create an unalienated labor process. While the agrarian movement is fragmented along lines of ideology, issue priorities and tactics, it is fundamentally in the populist tradition. This problematic of neo-populism, with its contradictory progressive and petty bourgeois tendencies, provides the context for an analysis of production relations on Maine's organic farms. The division of labor and decision-making authority on these farms is shown to conform closely to the age-old pattern of male dominance. Evidence from a survey of small commercial organic farms suggests that most women face a "double," and some a "triple burden" of farm, household and off-farm labor; that their work is more proletarian than that of males; and that their contributions to the family's means of subsistence and capital accumulation are not systematically correlated with participation in farm decisions. These preliminary findings are not sufficient to argue that small organic farms are patriarchal or that women (and children and wage workers) are exploited. But that thesis is consistent with the data, suggesting that farms in the new agrarian movement are not likely to be a force for transformation of the relations of dominance and subordination that characterize both capitalism and petty commodity production.

The Moral Economy Is a Double‐edged Sword: Explaining Farmers’ Earnings and Self‐exploitation in Community‐Supported Agriculture

“…Yet, CSAs fit a populist notion of agriculture (cf. Vail ) that celebrates simple commodity production, rather than being explicitly anticapitalist (e.g., by questioning the profit motive, private property, and/or the organization of production based on exploiting a nonowner class). CSA shares often have an exchange value, usually a price per week, and fulfill the definition of commodity exchange: “In so far as the process of exchange transfers commodities from hands in which they are non‐use‐values to hands in which they are use‐values, it is a process of social metabolism” (Marx , 198).…”

Transformations in Agricultural Non-waged Work: From Kinship to Intern and Volunteer Labor: A Research Brief

“…As Kubik explains, "Typically, women farmers are not paid for [various types of household and farm work] even though it subsidizes the farm and frees up a large potion of the farm's consumption costs" (Kubik, 2005, p. 87). However, in the Canadian context the reproduction of farms through unpaid family work has perhaps reached its limits as family members are increasingly either abandoning farm life entirely and/or are engaging in off-farm work, which, as many have noted, doesn't necessarily mean relief from their on-farm activities (Vail, 1981;Whatmore, 1991).…”

The indispensable nature of wives' work for the farm family enterprise

“…The expectations held by the family virtually ensure their emigration. Daughters seldom inherit the farm, rather they have to marry into ausually anotherfarm (Kohl, 1978;Vail, 1982;Bennett, 1982). 'Farmer' remains a male occupational label despite the increasing participation of women in agriculture.…”

“…Over the years, numerous case studies on women in farming have been conducted (Sawer, 1973;Taylor, 1976;Hoiberg and Huffman, 1978;Pearson, 1979). More recently, women's work in agriculture has attracted considerable attention in different countries, including Canada (Smith, 1986;Ireland, 1983;Koski, 1982, Vail, 1982Bush, 1982). However, this literature has not considered all of the conceptual implications of the omission, underestimation or de-emphasis of wives' work in agricultural households.…”