‘‘Chasms’’ in agrifood systems: rethinking how we can contribute

William H. Friedland

Accepted: 10 December 2007 / Published online: 5 March 2008

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

Abstract The reaction to conventional agriculture and

food systems has generated a host of alternative social

movements in the past several decades. Many progressive

agrifood researchers have researched these movements,

exploring their strengths, weaknesses, and failures. Most

such research is abstracted from the movements them-

selves. This paper proposes a new way of self-organization

that, while fulfilling traditional university demands on

researchers, will provide research support for progressive

agrifood movements by transcending the boundaries of

disciplines and individual universities.

Keywords Agrifood activism � Agrifood networks �Agrifood research � Alternative social movements

Introduction

One agrifood and two institutional chasms combine to

provide a distinct opportunity for university agrifood

researchers to contribute to buttressing the burgeoning

alternative agrifood movements while fulfilling our clas-

sical missions to teach, research, and provide public

service. This opportunity will require making existing

research networks—our ‘‘invisible college’’—more effec-

tive and, in the process transform our networks into

‘‘visible colleges.’’ While the approach suggested is cen-

tered on agrifood, it can be applied to other research

clusters as, for example, natural resources and environ-

ment, community, etc.

Consider events such as the September 2006 contami-

nated California spinach, the rash of Chinese poisoned pet

food and animal fodder of May 2007 and poisoned drugs

and toothpaste of June 2007, in all of which Hazard

Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) procedures

failed to protect consumer safety.

Individual cases such as spinach or animal food might

be considered ‘‘fault lines’’. But these are part of a

sequence which, when generalized, should be defined as

food ‘‘horror stories’’ in which people and animals sicken

and die. This suggests the structural chasm of the large-

scale globalized industrial agrifood system. It also reflects

the global scale of agrifood systems dominated by trans-

national corporations, with decision-making remote from

any democratic participation by World Trade Organization

‘‘technical’’ committees.

This globalized system has generated a reactive host of

movements—organics, Fair Trade, localism, farmers’

markets, Slow Food, community supported agriculture

(CSAs)—to name only a few. Each movement is individ-

uated, but taken together, they represent a broadly based

alternative movement juxtaposed to the conventional agri-

food system (Allen et al. 2003; Morgan et al. 2006).

Observing the alternative movements, various resistant

strategies are notable with some successful and others

inconsequential, co-opted, or subverted. Shreck (2002,

p. 12) notes that ‘‘Discontent with the present configuration

is manifested in an impressive and diverse range of new

initiatives ….’’ Summarizing the literature on the alterna-

tive movements leads me to conclude that some have

achieved significant success, some have made mistakes that

robbed them of some of their effectiveness, and some have

succeeded based on supporters whose interests lie in

W. H. Friedland (&)

Department of Community Studies, 302 Oakes College,

University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064,

USA

e-mail: friedla@ucsc.edu

123

Agric Hum Values (2008) 25:197–201

DOI 10.1007/s10460-008-9116-2

directions that movement’s founders may have not

anticipated.

Organics, for example, has been the most successful but it

made a primordial error when the movement turned to the

state to effect regulation. Fair Trade avoided that mistake and

succeeded by limiting its focus to production, leaving mar-

keting to the private sector. This did little to democratize

production at the farm level. Slow Food, a movement still

growing, helped resuscitate small-scale artisanal farm pro-

duction but its membership convivia (local membership

groups) have provided a refuge for ‘‘foodies’’ interested in

improving their ability to gourmandize.

This paper utilizes the burgeoning alternative agrifood

movements and proposes approaches that there is a need to:

• bring to the fore problems-centered, coherently orga-

nized, progressive, applied research intended to be used

by these movements, in effect subverting the dominant

paradigm1 by undermining barriers established by

disciplines and individual universities;

• make visible and coherent the already existing networks

of the invisible colleges (Crane 1972) in which many

agrifood researchers are involved in order to focus their

intellectual efforts on specific problems or topics.

The goal should be to establish knowledge-creation

visible ‘‘colleges’’—clear, conscious, active, transdisci-

plinary, and transuniversity networks of researchers who,

while fulfilling individual responsibilities in our universi-

ties also aim at supporting alternative agrifood social

movements. This support should provide research, educa-

tion, and applications oriented to progressive alternative

movements and strengthen organizations in civil society.

Most research universities, through business and engi-

neering schools, provide research useful to mainstream

institutions; why shouldn’t progressive researchers perform

similar functions for progressive social movements?

Problems-centered research groups

The utility of disciplinary training for doctoral students is

clear: students learn focused ways of doing research to

create new knowledge. In this respect, disciplinary training

has proven itself; it tells students that there are distinct

ways of understanding what is going on in the world. Most

social science disciplines share a common intellectual

heritage although each usually duplicates instruction in

theory and methods.

Each discipline also establishes limits or blinders by

emphasizing certain approaches whereas most intellectual

problems transcend any single discipline. Disciplinary

limitations begin to break down at the doctoral level when

it becomes necessary for students to utilize extra-disci-

plinary resources. We accept the idea of such exposure but

we less actively incorporate it into the educational process.

Most professional societies organize their meetings

around distinct problem areas. In the 2007 Rural Socio-

logical Society annual meeting, for example, three topical

areas—agrifood, natural resources, and community—

predominated (of 86 panels, agrifood had 25 panels, natural

resources 12, community 11, the three totaling 56% of all

panels). Most papers dealt with problems that transcend the

discipline of rural sociology. Agrifood, as a network, has

sequenced since its inception through a series of agrifood

crises dealing with family-based units of production,

globalization, food production methods (organics, confined

animal feeding operations, etc.), the integration of pro-

duction and consumption, and consumer agency.

Many agrifood researchers have recently focused

attention on alternative movements, publishing research

results in such journals as Rural Sociology, Agriculture &

Human Values, Sociologia Ruralis, the Journal of Rural

Studies, and several geography and planning journals—all

part of our ‘‘invisible college’’. After initially seeking

understanding of individual alternative movements, the

examination of problems of alternative movements has

begun. Most recently researchers have begun to critique

them, recognizing that the movements have not fulfilled

some of their original intentions. Critically supportive

scholars have indicated their hopes that some of the ori-

ginal orientations might yet be rescued.

In organics, for example, activists and researchers have

made clear their dissatisfaction with the subversion of

original goals by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and

the Food and Drug Administration. As organic production

grew 20% annually, the sector was invaded by large agri-

businesses that have, with the connivance of government

agencies, eroded the original orientations of the organics

pioneers and the USDA-appointed National Organics

Standards Board, a process which has continued to the time

of writing. Organics originally took a problematic step

when, concerned about ‘‘organic’’ labeling, protagonists

turned to the state to enforce regulation. This gave control

to an unsympathetic—indeed hostile—agency; USDA had

a long history of encouraging agribusiness rather than

supporting alternatives.

1 The dominant paradigm within which most social science academ-

ics function is substantially limited by disciplines and the individual

campuses where we conduct our academic lives. Although there are

organizational forms that transcend both, discipline and campus

remain major obstacles to researching interdisciplinary problem areas

within the agrifood—and many other—arenas. And most of us set

self-restrictions by not seeking more active collaboration with

colleagues in our informal networks. ‘‘Subverting the dominant

paradigm’’ suggests a more deliberate attempt to transcend these

boundaries.

198 W. H. Friedland

123

Fair Trade has had remarkable growth with large-scale

southern agricultural products such as coffee, tea, and

bananas. The movement has focused on pushing economic

benefits to producers, abandoning control of the whole

chain of production-consumption and concentrating on

producer-to-wholesaler segments of each commodity sys-

tem, leaving wholesale-to-retail to capitalist markets. Fair

Trade activists have been aware of the lack of understand-

ing of the movement’s principles at the grassroots but little

has been done about it as they focused on expanding con-

sumption. Most alternative movements created by activists

have attracted the attention of researchers, some supportive,

others hostile. Activists typically discuss movement prob-

lems among themselves but less often engage in public

discussions about problems. This often falls to sympathetic

university researchers who, because of the injunction to

‘‘publish or perish’’, write papers for academic publication.

Some analyses can be useful to movements, developing

a critique that implies that something might be done to

overcome problems. Few academic researchers, however,

proceed to (1) systematic comparison of movements and

their problems that might suggest where strategic or tacti-

cal omissions/mistakes were made, inadequate assessments

of external conditions, and what might be learned from

successes or deficiencies of the other movements; and (2)

applying research to movements to improve their

performance.

Making visible the ‘‘invisible’’ colleges

Crane (1972) identified ‘‘invisible colleges’’ of researchers

spread among different universities and disciplines sharing

scholarly discourse around specific issues. Crane’s study

focused on natural science networks but similar groupings

exist in the social sciences and humanities. An invisible

college is a cluster of researchers, usually consisting of

individuals and/or groups that work to some degree together.

In the social sciences and humanities, more often than not,

research is conducted mainly by individuals although some

joint projects are undertaken. The unifying principle of the

‘‘college’’ is a focus on a particular theme or problem.

In the late 1970s, a new farm crisis gave rise to the

invisible college that became the agrifood cluster in the

(U.S.) Rural Sociological Society (RSS) and the Interna-

tional Sociological Association (ISA). Members researched

a series of agrifood issues for the past three decades. There

has been a shared normative understanding among network

members that aspects of conventional agrifood systems are

unsatisfactory. While network members usually adhere to

the positivist injunction about value neutrality, most are

unhappy at the economic concentration in agrifood and the

environmental consequences of conventional agriculture.

There may be less agreement as to what to do about these

and other problems but most agrifood network researchers

who have studied Concentrated Animal Feeding Opera-

tions (CAFOs), for example, recognize that this economic

concentration creates miserable living conditions for con-

fined animals and CAFO neighbors.

Most agrifood researchers welcomed the burgeoning

alternative movements, some with varying levels of activism

(Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002), some with just sympa-

thy. Some translated these concerns into organized research

programs such as the Center for Fair and Alternative Trade

Studies at Colorado State University (Taylor et al. 2005;

Raynolds et al. 2007). Others have functioned as individual

supporters or supportive critics of the movements (for

organics see Allen 2004; Guthman 2004; Getz and Shreck

2006; for localism see Kloppenburg et al. 1996; for sup-

portive and critical comments see Hinrichs 2003; Allen and

Guthman 2006; Born and Purcell 2006; for Slow food see

Gaytan 2004). Only occasionally have agrifood researchers

actively sought to convey research results to ‘‘their’’

movements in an applied way. This argument is made by

Bevington and Dixon (2005) who support close researcher

attachment to ‘‘their’’ movements. While sympathetic to

their approach I disagree about the closeness of attachment.

Researchers should develop attachments to movements but

some degree of detachment is critical. Researchers should

protect their critical edge; complete involvement frequently

gets caught up in crises and obliterate the edge necessary for

critical analysis. Each researcher-activist, of course, must

find her/his own comfort level with the degree of attachment.

Reviewing publications in preparation for this paper, I

noted names of agrifood researchers who, in my estima-

tion, were supportive of the alternative movements and

have some degree of a progressive orientation and prob-

ably would appreciate seeing their research applied to

alternative movements. The list, on the basis of the papers

reviewed, included 88 colleagues—and this does not

include an estimated 100+ similar colleagues around the

globe. This invisible college and graduate students asso-

ciated with these researchers, should we organize

coherently, could produce significant results for the alter-

native movements. Inclusion of graduate students would be

vital in building the visible college.

The Alternative Organization in Civil Society (AOCS)

college2

What might a visible college look like? There is no existing

model (to my knowledge) of what I have proposed; how-

ever, the Harvard Business School (HBS) provides a

2 This name can serve until a better alternative is found.

‘‘Chasms’’ in agrifood systems 199

123

suggestion. HBS has been an elite training ground for

business administration majors, using the case method,

researching businesses that have succeeded or failed. This

involves understanding internal structures, character of

products and production systems, external conditions and

market forces, regulation, growth strategies, etc. Research-

ers interested in alternative movements could build case

examples of success, failures, problems that could be used

in preparation of PhD students and to generate comparative

analyses of movements. In a panel concluding the 2007

Rural Sociological Society meeting on ‘‘Transformation of

the RSS’’, I argued for abandoning ‘‘rural’’ and ‘‘socio-

logical’’ from the Society’s name and being reborn as the

Alternative Organization in Civil Society (AOCS).

Faculty researchers and graduate students have the

potential of introducing significant change in how we

function in our universities, with distinct strengths and

weaknesses. The agrifood network has approximately 150–

200 faculty with deep research experience and knowledge of

a range of literatures. We know a lot about social move-

ments, industrial and organizational structures, the character

of consumption, etc. Most of us are also caught up with

instruction, research, self-regulation, and public service

responsibilities. We become increasingly set in our ways as

we age, accumulate seniority, and our enthusiasms and

energy levels modulate. Graduate students are younger,

enthusiastic, much less cynical, interested, and often anxious

to so something about improving the world’s condition.

They are less knowledgeable about disciplines, methodol-

ogies, or the historical and current experiences of their

research focus.

Graduate students currently find faculty member(s) to

work with through exposure in classrooms where they learn

disciplinary canons and methodologies to shape disserta-

tion interests. Usually they discover faculty members with

some related interests and most advisors try to find other

faculty approximating student interests; most, however, do

not think about colleagues at other universities and disci-

plines who might advise students better since this is seen as

an imposition. Rarely, some outsider may fit the research

interests of a graduate student so well that such a colleague

is included, if only as an ‘‘external examiner.’’

Were we to consciously seek to integrate colleagues and

graduate students in the invisible college, new possibilities

could open; researchers anywhere the world and from other

disciplines could be included. Why shouldn’t graduate stu-

dents with clear intellectual trajectories study with physically

remote professors in real time face-to-face interaction, despite

existing administrative procedures that discourage incorpo-

rating experts beyond our ‘‘home’’ universities?

The intent would be to draw in colleagues who would

agree to engage in face-to-face, real-time communication

via Internet-based programs in which two (or more) people

can see and talk to each other as one might meet a student

in one’s office in a regular appointment. This would bring

researchers and graduate students into closer relations that

could lead to better collaborative activity. I am aware of the

myriad of problems that would be created were such

practices to be begun. Space limitations preclude an

exploration of these problems but I do not believe them to

be insuperable.

Adopting this approach could have significant benefits;

it could improve graduate education, make our colleges

visible, and increase contacts between alternative move-

ments and researchers. It could encourage graduate

students toward application of research findings, assuage

faculty guilt about their failures to do something ‘‘real,’’

and potentially improve the performance of alternative

movements and even possibly strengthen civil society to

help keep state and market forces somewhat at bay.

Conclusion

Many of us would agree that the list of problems in agri-

food, not to speak of the world generally, is endless and

there is little we can do about them in our individual

capacities. We can act in such matters as citizens but, as we

have learned through participation, this provides relatively

little efficacy or satisfaction, no matter how much we work

for a particular goal. We also have analytic capabilities that

are manifested in our academic research

The approach I am suggesting is that we seek to function

consciously and reflexively where we work (and get paid

for this work), adhering to the norms of our institutions

(i.e., teach, research, and publish [or perish]) so that we

find means of producing greater efficacy in movements

with which we have some affinity.

Instead of taking refuge in ennui by complaining about

how hard we work, how difficult it is to deal with parking

or the machinations of our administrators, we find outlets

for ourselves and our students by exploring new ways of

working. We should begin informally; I hesitate recom-

mending an onslaught on graduate councils of our univer-

sities, let alone our administrators. But we can reshape the

agrifood network, for example, consciously, deliberately,

and openly, encouraging our network and graduate students

to participate in an AOCS approach and build experience

so that we can eventually confront the formal apparatuses

in which we are embedded and bring the invisible college

into formal visibility.

A popular California bumper sticker reads: Subvert the

dominant paradigm. Here is an opportunity to engage in

constructive ‘‘subversion’’ that fits the paradigm in which

we all function—the university. It also promises better

education and research and potentially more effective

200 W. H. Friedland

123

social movements in the continuing struggle to increase

democratic participation and other progressive measures.

Acknowledgements I appreciate helpful comments from Lou

Swanson, Ray Jussaume, Larry Busch, and two anonymous reviewers.

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Author Biography

William H. Friedland is Professor Emeritus at the University of

California, Santa Cruz where his research continues on commodity

systems, wine and grapes, the globalization of agriculture and food,

and exploring ways to strengthen alternative social movements to

subvert the dominant paradigm.

‘‘Chasms’’ in agrifood systems 201

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