Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-jwnkl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-08T23:11:32.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social and political influences on agricultural systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2008

David W. Archer ,
Julie Dawson ,
Urs P. Kreuter ,
Mary Hendrickson  and
John M. Halloran
David W. Archer*
Affiliation:
USDA-ARS, 803 Iowa Avenue, Morris, MN 56267, USA.
Julie Dawson
Affiliation:
Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA.
Urs P. Kreuter
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA.
Mary Hendrickson
Affiliation:
University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA.
John M. Halloran
Affiliation:
USDA-ARS, Orono, ME, USA.
*
*Corresponding author: archer@morris.ars.usda.gov
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Agricultural systems are situated within social and political environments that have tremendous influence on how they operate. If agricultural systems are to be sustainable, it is critical to understand how they are influenced by social and political factors. An expert panel approach was used to identify and rank the importance of social and political factors on agricultural systems in the US and to provide some insights into their impacts, interactions and mechanisms of influence. The panel identified a wide range of social and political factors that affect agricultural systems. The factors were divided into three categories: internal social factors, external social factors and political factors. Factors from each of the three categories were highly ranked, indicating that no single category dominated the others. Although there were contrasting views about the importance of some factors, there was strong consensus about many of them. Globalization and low margins that require increased scale and efficiency were identified as the two most important factors affecting agricultural systems. Several newly emerging factors were identified as well as factors needing further research. A comprehensive understanding of these factors is imperative to help guide scientific research so that beneficial discoveries are accepted and used, and to ensure that policy decisions enhance the future sustainability of agricultural production.

Keywords

socialpoliticalagriculturesustainability
Type
Research Papers
Information
Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems , Volume 23 , Special Issue 4: Principles of Integrated Agricultural Systems , December 2008 , pp. 272 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Vanclay, F. and Lawrence, G. 1994. Farmer rationality and the adoption of environmentally sound practices; a critique of the assumptions of traditional agricultural extension. European Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension 1(1):59–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Vanclay, F. 2004. Social principles for agricultural extension to assist in the promotion of natural resource management. Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture 44(3):213–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Lambin, E.F., Turner, B.L., Geist, H.J., Agbola, S.B., Angelsen, A., Bruce, J.W., Coomes, O.T., Dirzo, R., Fischer, G., and Folke, C. 2001. The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths. Global Environmental Change 11(4):261–269.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Capistrano, D., Samper, C., Lee, M.J., and Raudsepp-Hearne, C. (eds) 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Multiscale Assessments. Vol. 4: Findings of the Sub-global Assessments Working Group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Island Press, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
5 National Agricultural Statistics Service, US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Washington, DC. 2005. Trends in US agriculture. Available at Web site http://www.usda.gov/nass/pubs/trends/ (verified 23 June 2006).Google Scholar
6 Hobbs, F. and Stoops, N. 2002. Demographic trends in the 20th century. Census 2000 Special Reports Series, CENSR-4. US Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
7 Johnson, K.M. 1999. The rural rebound. Reports on America. Vol. 1, No. 3. Population Reference Bureau, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
8 Dimitri, C., Effland, A., and Conklin, N. 2005. The 20th century transformation of U.S. agriculture and farm policy. Economic Information Bulletin. EIB-3. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
9 McGranahan, D.A. 1999. Natural amenities drive rural population change. Agricultural Economic Report. AER-781. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
10 Smithers, J., Joseph, A.E., and Armstrong, M. 2005. Across the divide (?): reconciling farm and town views of agriculture–community linkages. Journal of Rural Studies 21(3):281–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
11 National Agricultural Statistics Service. 2004. 2002 Census of Agriculture. Vol. 1, Geographic Area Series Part 51. National Agricultural Statistics Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
12 Hoppe, R.A. and Wiebe, K. 2002. Land ownership and farm structure. Agricultural Resources and Environmental Indicators. AH722-1.3. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
13 Kalaitzandonakes, N. and Hayenga, M. 1999. Structural change in the biotechnology and seed industrial complex: theory and evidence. In: Lesser, W.H. (ed.). NE-165 Conference on Transitions in AgBiotech: Economics of Strategy and Policy, 24–25 June 1999, Washington DC. p. 217–227.Google Scholar
14 Hendrickson, M. and Heffernan, B. 2005. Concentration in agricultural markets. Department of Rural Sociology, University of Missouri, MO. Available at Web site http://www.foodcircles.missouri.edu/CRJanuary05.pdf (verified 23 June 2006).Google Scholar
15 Jerardo, A. 2004. The U.S. ag trade balance … more than just a number. Amber Waves 2(1):36–41.Google Scholar
16 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Synthesis. Island Press, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
17 Shapouri, S. and Rosen, S. 2005. Food security assessment. GFA-16. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
18 World Health Organization. 2000. Nutrition for health and development: a global agenda for combating malnutrition. WHO/NHD/00.6. World Health Organization.Google Scholar
19 National Center for Health Statistics. 2005. National health and nutrition examination survey. Available at Web site http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes.htm (verified 23 June 2006).Google Scholar
20 Drewnowski, A. 2003. Fat and sugar: an economic analysis. The Journal of Nutrition 133(3):838S–840S.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
21 Blisard, N., Lin, B.-H., Cromartie, J., and Ballenger, N. 2002. America's changing appetite: food consumption and spending to 2020. Food Review 25(1):2–9.Google Scholar
22 DeNavas-Walt, C., Cleveland, R.W., and Webster, B.H. Jr 2003. Income in the United States: 2002. Current Population Reports P60-221. US Census Bureau, US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
23 Jones, A.F. Jr and Weinberg, D.H. 2000. The changing shape of the nation's income distribution. Current Population Reports P60-204. US Census Bureau, US Department of Commerce, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
24 Freshwater, D. 2002. Applying multifunctionality to U.S. farm policy. Staff Paper No. 437. Department of Agricultural Economics, University of Kentucky.Google Scholar
25 Schweikhardt, D.B. and Browne, W.P. 2001. Politics by other means: the emergence of a new politics of food in the United States. Review of Agricultural Economics 23(2):302–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 de Koeijer, T.J., Wossink, G.A.A., van Ittersum, M.K., Struik, P.C., and Renkema, J.A. 1999. A conceptual model for analysing input-output coefficients in arable farming systems: from diagnosis towards design. Agricultural Systems 61:33–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 Van Calker, K.J., Berentsen, P.B.M., Giesen, G.W.J., and Huirne, R.B.M. 2005. Identifying and ranking attributes that determine sustainability in Dutch dairy farming. Agriculture and Human Values 22(1):53–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 Geist, H.J. and Lambin, E.F. 2001. What drives tropical deforestation? A meta-analysis of proximate and underlying causes of deforestation based on subnational case study evidence. LUCC Report Series 4. Land-Use and Land-Cover Change International Project Office. University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.Google Scholar
29 Van Calker, K.J., Berentsen, P.B.M., Romero, C., Giesen, G.W.J., and Huirne, R.B.M. 2006. Development and application of a multi-attribute sustainability function for Dutch dairy farming systems. Ecological Economics 57(4):630–658.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
30 Poyhonen, M. and Hamalainen, R.P. 2001. On the convergence of multiattribute weighting methods. European Journal of Operations Research 129(3):569–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
31 Bottomley, P.A. and Doyle, J.R. 2001. A comparison of three weight elicitation methods: good, better, best. Omega 29(6):553–560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 Labovitz, S. 1970. The assignment of numbers to rank order categories. American Sociological Review 35(3):515–524.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 Lowry, R. 2006. Concepts and applications of inferential statistics. Available at Web site http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/webtext.html (verified 23 June 2006).Google Scholar
34 Tegtmeier, E.M. and Duffy, M.D. 2004. External costs of agricultural production in the United States. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 2(1):1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
35 Batie, S.S. 2003. The mutifunctional attributes of northeastern agriculture: a research agenda. Agricultural and Resource Economics Review 32(1):1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
36 Hellerstein, D., Nickerson, C., Cooper, J., Feather, P., Gadsby, D., Mullarkey, D., Tegene, A., and Barnard, C. 2002. Farmland protection: the role of public preferences for rural amenities. AER-815. Economic Research Service, US Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
37 Bromley, D.W. 2000. Can agriculture become an environmental asset? World Economics 1(3):127–139.Google Scholar
38 Heffernan, W.D. and Hendrickson, M.K. 2002. Multi-national concentrated food processing and marketing systems and the farm crisis. Presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, Boston, MA, 14–19 February 2002. Available at Web site www.foodcircles.missouri.edu.paper.pdf (verified 29 September 2006).Google Scholar
39 Bruce, D.M. 2002. A social contract for biotechnology: shared visions for risky technologies? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 15:279–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 Guptill, A. and Wilkins, J.L. 2002. Buying into the food system: trends in food retailing in the US and implications for local foods. Agriculture and Human Values 19:39–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
41 Borlaug, N.E. 2000. Ending world hunger. The promise of biotechnology and the threat of antiscience zealotry. Plant Physiology 124:487–490.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
42 Anderson, K. 2005. Interactions between trade policies and GM food regulations. Discussion Paper No. 0514. University of Adelaide Centre for International Economic Studies, Adelaide, SA, Australia.Google Scholar
43 Peters, C.J. 2000. Genetic engineering in agriculture: who stands to benefit? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 13(3–4):313–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
44 Saul, J.R. 2004. The collapse of globalism and the rebirth of nationalism. Harper's Magazine 308(1846):33–43.Google Scholar
45 Kollock, P. 2006. WTO upholds US challenge to European ban on biotech foods. DTN. February 9. Available at Web site www.AgDayta.com (verified 14 February 2006).Google Scholar
46 Cochrane, W.W. 1958. Farm Prices: Myth and Reality. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.Google Scholar
47 Zulauf, C.R. 1986. Changes in selected characteristics of US farms during the 1970s and early 1980s: an investigation based on current and constant dollar sales categories. Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics 18(1):113–122.Google Scholar
48 Levins, R.A. and Cochrane, W.W. 1996. The treadmill revisited. Land Economics 72(4):550–553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
49 Blank, S.C. 2003. Where is American agriculture in its ‘life cycle’. Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics 28(3):396–418.Google Scholar
50 Ikerd, J. 1999. The small farm revolution. Presented at 2nd National Small Farms Conference, St. Louis, MO, 12–15 October 1999. Available at Web site www.ssu.missouri.edu/Faculty/JIkerd/papers/STL-SFC.html (verified 23 June 2006).Google Scholar
51 Levins, R.A. 2001. An essay on farm income. Staff Paper P01-1. Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN.Google Scholar
52 Archer, D.W., Pikul, J.L. Jr, and Riedell, W.E. 2003. Analyzing risk and risk management in cropping systems. In: Hanson, J.D. and Krupinsky, J.M. (eds). Proceedings of the Dynamic Cropping Systems: Principles, Processes, and Challenges. Bismarck, ND. p. 155–164.Google Scholar