Copyright © 2012 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance. Kremen, C., A. Iles, and C. Bacon. 2012. Diversified farming systems: an agroecological, systems-based alternative to modern industrial agriculture. Ecology and Society 17(4): 44. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ ES-05103-170444 Guest Editorial, part of a Special Feature on A Social-Ecological Analysis of Diversified Farming Systems: Benefits, Costs, Obstacles, and Enabling Policy Frameworks Diversified Farming Systems: An Agroecological, Systems-based Alternative to Modern Industrial Agriculture Claire Kremen 1, Alastair Iles 1 and Christopher Bacon 2 ABSTRACT. This Special Issue on Diversified Farming Systems is motivated by a desire to understand how agriculture designed according to whole systems, agroecological principles can contribute to creating a more sustainable, socially just, and secure global food system. We first define Diversified Farming Systems (DFS) as farming practices and landscapes that intentionally include functional biodiversity at multiple spatial and/or temporal scales in order to maintain ecosystem services that provide critical inputs to agriculture, such as soil fertility, pest and disease control, water use efficiency, and pollination. We explore to what extent DFS overlap or are differentiated from existing concepts such as sustainable, multifunctional, organic or ecoagriculture. DFS are components of social-ecological systems that depend on certain combinations of traditional and contemporary knowledge, cultures, practices, and governance structures. Further, as ecosystem services are generated and regenerated within a DFS, the resulting social benefits in turn support the maintenance of the DFS, enhancing its ability to provision these services sustainably. We explore how social institutions, particularly alternative agri-food networks and agrarian movements, may serve to promote DFS approaches, but note that such networks and movements have other primary goals and are not always explicitly connected to the environmental and agroecological concerns embodied within the DFS concept. We examine global trends in agriculture to investigate to what extent industrialized forms of agriculture are replacing former DFS, assess the current and potential contributions of DFS to food security, food sovereignty and the global food supply, and determine where and under what circumstances DFS are expanding rather than contracting. Key Words: agroecology; ecological diversification; food justice; food sovereignty; industrialized agriculture INTRODUCTION 2004, Tegtmeier and Duffy 2005, Montgomery 2007) and The Special Feature on Diversified Farming Systems (Kremen aquifers (Gordon et al. 2008) far more quickly than they can et al. 1012a) is motivated by a desire to understand how be replenished, and in their high use of fossil fuels (Lynch et agriculture designed according to whole-systems, agroecological al. 2011). These numerous environmental and social principles can contribute to creating a more sustainable, externalities create a huge economic cost that industrialized socially just, and secure global food system. “How to feed the food producers seldom pay. For instance, pesticide use alone world” is an increasingly urgent and looming concern voiced causes up to $10 billion in damage to humans and ecosystems by many people, from local community groups to national and in the United States every year (Pimentel 2005). Finally, international governing bodies. By 2050, the world population although the agricultural sector currently produces more than is projected to rise to 9+ billion and food demands to double enough calories to feed humanity, one billion people remain from current levels. At the same time, climate change, hungry and an additional one billion have micronutrient interacting with increasingly uneven access to declining oil, deficiencies (Welch and Graham 1999). This paradoxical water, and phosphorus supplies, will greatly exacerbate the situation occurs because many people still lack access to year-to-year unpredictability of agricultural production, sufficiently diverse and healthy food, or the means to produce potentially undermining the entire agricultural enterprise it, which is primarily a problem of distribution rather than (Cribb 2010, Childers et al. 2011). production (IAAKSTD 2009). As further evidence of this paradox, global obesity rates have more than doubled since Meanwhile, industrialized agricultural techniques are 1980 (WHO 2012), reflecting an overproduction of food in exacting a huge toll on surrounding environments, polluting industrialized countries that creates strong incentives for agri- waterways, creating dead zones in the oceans, destroying food companies to absorb excess food production into biodiverse habitats, releasing toxins into food chains, processed foods and to market and distribute them to endangering public health via disease outbreaks and pesticide customers in supersized portions (Nestle 2003). exposures, and contributing to climate warming (Horrigan et al. 2002, Tilman et al. 2002, Diaz and Rosenberg 2008, Marks This series of articles examines the proposition that diversified et al. 2010, Foley et al. 2011). Moreover, industrial agricultural farming systems, with their focus on local production, local methods are inherently unsustainable in mining soils (Lal and agroecological knowledge, and whole systems approaches 1Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management, University of California Berkeley, 2Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Santa Clara University Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ reduce negative environmental externalities and decrease management practices or land use changes), and natural social costs associated with industrialized monocultures, successional processes. Figure 1 presents the conceptual enhance the sustainability and resilience of agriculture, and model of a DFS. contribute significantly to global food security and health. AGROECOLOGY AND DFS DIVERSIFIED FARMING SYSTEMS DEFINED The term agroecology goes back more than 80 years and We refer to a farming system as “diversified” when it originally referred to the ecological study of agricultural intentionally includes functional biodiversity at multiple systems (Gliessman 2007). Much agroecological work seeks spatial and/or temporal scales, through practices developed to bring Western scientific knowledge into respectful dialogue via traditional and/or agroecological scientific knowledge. with the local and indigenous knowledge that farmers use in Farmers manage this functional biodiversity to generate managing ecological processes in existing agroecosystems critical ecosystem services to agriculture (Zhang et al. 2007). (Gliessman et al. 1981, Altieri and Toledo 2011). More At the plot (i.e., within-field) scale, diversified farming recently this hybrid science has evolved to include the social systems (DFS) may include multiple genetic varieties of a and economic dimensions of food systems (Francis et al. given crop and/or multiple crops grown together as 2003). Partly in response to the industrialized agriculture of polycultures, and may stimulate biodiversity within the soil the Green Revolution (Box 1), agroecology also came to mean through addition of compost or manure (Figure 1). By crops, the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices (see Box 2), we mean either annual or perennial crops, including tree crops. and became an integral component of various social At the field scale, DFS may include polycultures, noncrop movements seeking alternatives to industrial agri-food plantings such as insectary strips, integration of livestock or systems. Thus agroecology currently holds multiple fish with crops (mixed cropping systems), and/or rotation of meanings, and can refer to an inter- or transdisciplinary crops or livestock over time, including cover cropping and science, a set of sustainable farming practices, and/or a social rotational grazing. Around the field, DFS may incorporate movement (Wezel et al. 2009). DFS is not an alternative to noncrop plantings on field borders such as living fences and agroecology. Rather, DFS is a framework that draws from hedgerows. At the landscape scale, DFS may include natural agroecological, social, and conservation sciences to focus or semi-natural communities of plants and animals within the analytical and action-oriented attention toward farming cropped landscape/region, such as fallow fields, riparian systems in which cross-scale ecological diversification is a buffers, pastures, meadows, woodlots, ponds, marshes, major mechanism for generating and regenerating ecosystem streams, rivers, and lakes, or combinations thereof (see also services and supplying critical inputs to farming. Kremen and Miles 2012). The resulting heterogeneous Agroecological principles and methods can be used to evaluate landscapes support both desired (beneficial) components of DFS and to design or revive processes of diversification biodiversity and “associated biodiversity”; together these two (Altieri 2002). In this essay and series of articles, we explore elements make up agrobiodiversity (Perfecto et al. 2005). the ramifications of DFS for both ecological health and socioeconomic welfare, as well as examining the intersection Components of the agrobiodiversity within DFS interact with of DFS with existing industrialized agricultural systems, one another and/or the physical environment to supply critical supply chains, and national and international policies. ecosystem services to the farming process, such as soil building, nitrogen fixation, nutrient cycling, water infiltration, pest or disease suppression, and pollination, thereby achieving a more sustainable form of agriculture that relies primarily Box 1: upon inputs generated and regenerated within the Industrialized agriculture versus DFS agroecosystem, rather than primarily on external, often Most industrialized agricultural systems contrast with DFS in their nonrenewable, inputs (Pearson 2007, Shennan 2008). Spatial approaches to food production and managing production challenges. considerations are important, since different components of In general, industrial systems simplify ecosystems and utilize highly the system must be in sufficient proximity, at each relevant specialized, technical information with the goal of maximizing the scale, to create needed interactions and synergies. For profitability of a commodity crop or livestock on any given farm. Nonetheless, they do not necessarily maximize the total yield per example, the utility of intercropping for reducing belowground land area or energy use (Rosset 1999, Hefland and Levine 2004, soil disease depends on spacing the different crops such that Lynch et al. 2011). Many, but not all, large-scale food and agricultural their root systems interact (Hiddink et al. 2010). Similarly, companies, government agencies, and some university research and wild bee communities can only provide complete crop extension programs treat farmers as users of large-scale, intensive pollination services when a sufficient proportion of their technologies that can be applied universally across farms, irrespective natural habitat occurs within a given distance of crop fields of local variability and traditions of land management (Roling and (Kremen et al. 2004). A DFS is not only spatially Wagemakers 1998, Shennan 2008); in part, this may be responsible heterogeneous, but is variable across time, due both to human for lower net productivity per acre (Rosset 1999). The consolidated actions (e.g., harvest, crop rotations, fallows, and other food industry often draws farmers into supply chains that ultimately Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ Fig. 1. Conceptual model of a Diversified Farming System. Across ecological scales, DFS practices include the use of: (Red, plot scale) multiple genetic varieties within a single crop or livestock species, or multiple species intercropped, including agroforestry, and/or integration of livestock, (yellow, field scale), crop rotations, cover- cropping/green manuring, or fallowing, all examples of practices that vary the planting in a given field over time, (green, field perimeter scale), planting of hedgerows or grassy buffer strips around crops, (light and dark blue, landscape scale), inclusion of woodlots, meadows, pastures, riparian corridors and other natural or semi-natural habitats in the cropped area. These practices lead to spatially heterogeneous farming systems, from plot to landscape scale, that intentionally include some aspects of biodiversity, while supporting others unintentionally. By supporting this “agrobiodiversity” (green box), these farming practices promote critical ecosystem services, such as nutrient and water cycling, soil formation, pest and disease control and pollination, as designated by the lines joining each farming practice to each service. Across temporal scales, these farming practices plus the natural successional processes enhance agrobiodiversity and ecosystem services dynamically. provision far-away supermarkets and food processors, rather than that push individual farms to produce one crop variety in a specific subsistence and local markets (Watts and Little 1994, Goodman and way as part of a tightly integrated buyer-driven conventional supply Watts 1997, Clapp and Fuchs 2009). They may not have incentives chain (Roling and Wagemakers 1998, Raynolds 2004). Providing or autonomy to experiment with alternative management practices employment, livelihoods, and labor protections are far less important and crops because of contractual agreements with food companies, goals in industrialized production, since maximizing production and lowest cost production pressures, government subsidy schemes and reducing labor costs are the priority. Thus, industrialized agriculture regulations, path-dependent processes driving toward specialization, can play a role in declining rural employment and rural depopulation and/or technological constraints (Goodman and Watts 1997). (Hazell and Woods 2008). Collaboration among farmers across landscapes is usually seen as In industrialized agricultural systems, purposeful integration of unnecessary, since food companies often provide powerful incentives beneficial biodiversity may be viewed as impeding production (credit, processing facilities, seeds, technical assistance, and markets) efficiency by competing for land and resources (Foley et al. 2005). Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ Insectary strips, for example, reduce the cropped area and may biodiversity or sustain ecosystem services. While multifunctional hamper the planting and harvesting of monoculture fields. agriculture (MFA) aims at producing multiple amenities (e.g., food, Industrialized systems also tend to treat complex environmental biofuels, recreation, scenery) from a farm or landscape, thus requiring issues such as pests, weeds, livestock health, and soil fertility with some degree of crop, tree, livestock, or fish diversification, MFA one-off technological solutions, for example, through chemical does not always utilize agroecological approaches that support inputs or genetically engineered crops. Because such solutions are biodiversity and regenerate ecosystem services (Kleijn et al. 2006, often reductionist, they may engender additional problems, such as Stoate et al. 2009). Merely diversifying crops and livestock may not new and more virulent pests, pesticide accumulation in nontarget necessarily create the multiscalar, multitemporal ecological organisms, and pesticide-related public health impacts (Naylor and heterogeneity and biotic interactions that would support the full suite Ehrlich 1997, Letourneau and Bothwell 2008), such as increased of ecosystem services needed to support productive agriculture levels of attention deficit disorder in children in farming communities (Figure 1, see also Zhang et al. 2007, Shennan 2008). (Marks et al. 2010). Industrialized agricultural systems often trade DFS is similar to another concept, ecoagriculture, in recognizing that off short-term crop productivity for long-term ecological landscapes, not single farms, are important targets of land sustainability (Foley et al. 2005, Shennan 2008), for example, through management. Other concepts, such as climate-smart agricultural substituting technologies for ecosystem services (i.e., replacement landscapes or integrated watershed management, also make this link of natural regulation of pests with pesticides). In contrast, as a system (http://blog.ecoagriculture.org/2012/03/05/terminology/, accessed that relies primarily on internal regeneration of critical inputs or Mar 13 2012), each with their own particular emphasis. DFS ecosystem services (Figure 1), DFS must utilize holistic (systems- emphasizes how farming practices operating from plot to landscape oriented) rather than reductionist approaches to succeed (e.g., Barberi scales maintain functional biodiversity and thus ecosystem services. 2002). For example, diversified farms cannot trade off production Ecoagriculture emphasizes “landscapes in which biodiversity efficiency against maintenance of an essential service such as soil conservation is an explicit objective of agriculture” (Scherr and fertility, if soil fertility is to be generated from within the system. McNeely 2008:477). The DFS concept highlights the critical reciprocity underlying the ecoagriculture concept, that is, that the ecoagricultural landscape promotes biodiversity and in turn, critical components of biodiversity (i.e., functional biodiversity) promote agriculture through provision of ecosystem services. In summary, Box 2: DFS, while closely allied to all of these concepts, places more emphasis upon the relationship between functional biodiversity and DFS versus sustainable, organic, multifunctional and ecoagriculture ecosystem services. While the concept of diversified farming systems shares much in common with multifunctional, organic, and sustainable and eco agriculture, it differs from each of these concepts in at least one subtle but fundamental way. Unlike any of these other concepts, the premise of DFS is that, through farming practices designed to support functional biodiversity across spatial and temporal scales, the Fig. 2. Organic broccoli production as a monoculture in the necessary ecosystem properties providing critical inputs (services) Salinas Valley, California. Unlike a diversified farming to agriculture are supplied (Figure 1). While DFS generally exemplify system (whether certified as organic or not), this organic the characteristics of multifunctional, organic, sustainable, or production system is more like conventional industrialized ecoagriculture, the reverse may not always be true. agriculture, utilizing substantial off-farm inputs such as Specifically, the practices of DFS are the same as those utilized in purchased compost and other soil amendments, “organic” sustainable agriculture or agriculture that equitably balances pesticides, etc. Photo by Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer. concerns of environmental soundness, economic viability, and social justice within communities, across societies and into future generations (Allen and Sachs 1991, Kloppenburg et al. 2000). DFS should itself be ecologically sustainable because the farming practices that create a DFS maintain the underlying functional biodiversity that generates critical ecosystem services. However, a given farm can practice sustainable agriculture without being part of a DFS if situated within a homogeneous landscape that cannot provide ecosystem services that operate over larger scales, such as pest control or pollination (Tscharntke et al. 2005). In turn, a farm or landscape can use DFS strategies to increase ecological sustainability, but may not support social sustainability due to a lack of the institutions, attitudes, and actions that address these issues of justice and equity (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, Allen 2010). In principle, DFS should not require the use of pesticides or inorganic fertilizers and thus meets the definition of organic. However, the converse is not always true: organic agriculture is now often practiced in large-scale monocultures (Figure 2) that may do little to foster Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ DFS AS SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS further developing agroecology (Holt-Giménez 2006). These DFS are complex social-ecological systems that enable relationships continue to be critical to the growth of DFS in ecological diversification through the social institutions, new societal contexts and geographic locations. Since the practices, and governance processes that collectively manage 1980s, with the rise of the Campesino-a-Campesino and La food production and biodiversity (Pretty 1995, Pretty 2003). Via Campesina movements, institutions such as government As many political ecology scholars emphasize, ecosystems agencies, domestic and international NGOs, and universities are densely interconnected with social relationships (Robbins have become increasingly active in promoting and diffusing et al. 2010). Ecological variables such as soil, water, and agroecological principles through research networks and habitat help configure an array of farming practices, exchanges programs (e.g., in Cuba; Rosset et al. 2011). These actors have of food and resources, and landscape management decisions added new institutional dimensions to the social relationships that, in turn, influence the structure and function of the that help sustain DFS. ecosystem. Further, as ecosystem services are generated and An illustration of how social and ecological systems regenerated within a DFS, the resulting social benefits interpenetrate within DFS is in the Andean highlands, where (including a range of livelihood benefits, such as healthier indigenous farmers have managed their lands agroecologically diets and increased farmer autonomy) in turn support the for 3,000 years (Brush 1982). The ongoing interplay between maintenance of the DFS, enhancing its ability to provision human management and physical ecology has created a these services sustainably (Bacon et al. 2012). This interplay landscape of agroclimatic belts at different altitudes, each underlies numerous historically occurring and emerging DFS characterized by specific field rotation practices, terraces, and worldwide. Conversely, socio-political and economic irrigation systems, and the selection of specific animals, crops, processes such as the decrease of access and control over seeds and crop varieties (Altieri and Toledo 2011). Within these (often associated with the expansion of crop biotechnology) belts, traditional knowledge has helped sustain tremendous or increased dependence on commodity markets can intervene genetic diversity, by perpetuating adapted landraces and wild to disrupt such feedback cycles, thus weakening DFS. The relatives of crops. Social cooperation is essential to managing industrialization of agriculture has led to growing the verticality and heterogeneity of the Andean ecosystem. A homogeneity across food systems as farming techniques and barter economy based on reciprocity, for example, facilitated markets become more standardized (Beus and Dunlop 1990, complementary exchanges of plants and animals between Lyson 2004). As a consequence, the complex social ecological zones along the steep elevation gradient (Box 3). relationships underlying agriculture and ecosystem service provision have become less visible. Focusing on DFS can help farming communities, researchers, policy makers, and industry recognize and restore these relationships. Box 3: At their core, DFS depend on agroecological principles that The Andean highlands. Several Andean cultures, including the Inca, adopted a political are developed in and through the social relationships among economy known as the ayllu system (Argumedo 2008). Each ayllu working farmers, their communities and environments, and was an independent group with three levels of administration: the researchers, including ecologists, anthropologists, agronomists, family, multiple families in a shared territory, and multiple territories and ethnobiologists (Wezel et al. 2009). As seen in the Kreman in a larger organizing unit. Land was owned and managed et al. (2012) examples these principles take varied forms collectively, with an assembly of farmers coordinating crop depending on local conditions. To understand how DFS may production in active fields while fallow spaces were used for livestock develop, function, and evolve over time and space, the grazing. Thus, landscape ecology helped define a social system of particular context of each DFS needs to be studied, paying nucleated settlements, communal landholdings, and land particular attention to the politics and power relations that redistribution that reinforced the health of the ecosystem, a balance reflecting the Andean principles of reciprocity, duality, and reciprocally shape its ecological conditions. Many DFS were equilibrium (Godoy 1994). developed through traditional and indigenous farming knowledge and agrobiodiversity that was accumulated over On the Bolivian and Peruvian altiplano, entwined systems of social millennia (e.g., the milpa landscape in Mesoamerica; and ecological diversity still thrive. For example, forty kilometers outside of Cuzco, Peru, a group of six communities have organized Xolocotzi 1985). More recently, other DFS have been created themselves into an agroecological farming collective known as through targeted agroecological studies designed by scientists Parque de la Papa (“Potato Park”). Socio-politically, they are to solve particular problems (e.g., the push-pull system for attempting to reinvigorate the principles of the ayllu, with collective maize agriculture in Kenya; Khan et al. 2011). Historically, ownership of farmland, waters, pasture, and woodlands, and systems much knowledge about biologically diverse farming practices of cooperative labor (Agumedo 2008, also see, http://satoyama- has been created and shared through peer-to-peer learning initiative.org/en/case_studies-2/area_americas-2/the-ayllu-system-of- within traditional farming communities and, more recently, the-potato-park-cusco-peru/, accessed May 30, 2012). These also through their collaboration with researchers interested in communities feed and clothe themselves and also generate new livelihoods from tourism, seeds, and medicinal plants that in turn Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ enable them to maintain ecosystem services by being able to ways to be far more inclusive of diverse racial, gender, and implement DFS practices when many workers could otherwise be socioeconomic groups can help strengthen the social- forced to migrate to urban centers. They have made a precedent ecological basis of agriculture. setting agreement with the International Potato Center, a CGIAR (Consultative Group on Agricultural Research) research institute For instance, African-American growers once represented a based in Lima, Peru, to repatriate its seed collection for in situ sizable proportion of the U. S. farmer population, or one cultivation in the Potato Park. ANDES, the local NGO supporting million in 1910, declining to 18,400 by 1997, due to race their efforts, envisages this park as the first step in building an Andean discrimination and violence, lack of land tenure (due to food sovereignty zone. sharecropping practices), and multiple waves of economic migration from the South to urban centers (Reynolds 2002). In industrialized systems in both developed and developing Many of these black farmers used DFS practices; their countries, farmers must now negotiate with corporate food displacement helped create an opening for industrialized buyers, buy agrochemical and seed inputs from agents, seek monocultures. Now, many new farmers in rural and urban loans from bank officials, and work with agricultural extension areas are black, Latino, or Asian; there is evidence that these experts trained in pesticide use. Farmers rely on such farmers are more likely than their established peers to embrace relationships to compete effectively in supply chains and to sustainable agriculture practices if adequately supported manage changing ecological conditions, such as pest (National Academy of Sciences 2010). Immigrants such as the outbreaks. Nonetheless, these particular types of relationships Hmong may sometimes develop culturally relevant, more often push individual farms to increased dependence on banks, diversified food production enclaves within industrialized damaging livelihoods, and undermining collaborative social systems that preserve their traditions and provide livelihoods learning groups as farmers specialize in a single crop and (Brown and Getz 2011). African-American groups have maximize short-term yields through the use of external inputs, sought to reclaim and remold their rich heritage through urban to meet loan repayments. The economic pressures in these farming. They are developing new linkages between cities and tightly linked systems generally corrode ecosystem services, nearby rural areas, potentially helping recreate DFS. For which are the very foundation of support for potential DFS. example, Will Allen founded Growing Power, an urban Farmers in industrialized systems may also engage in farming NGO that serves disadvantaged neighborhoods in exploitative relations with immigrant or impoverished Milwaukee and Chicago, attempting to encourage youth of all laborers, paying inadequate wages and enforcing long hours, races to take up diversified farming. In Chicago, black activists helping perpetuate the apparent cheapness of food. and physicians have formed the Healthy Food Hub, a food aggregation NGO which sources produce from a historically Industrial production creates a number of “distances” between black farming community, Pembroke Township, about an producers and consumers (geographical, temporal, or cultural) hour from Chicago. These efforts show how people can such that information flow diminishes across the supply chain demand greater political agency in building a democratic DFS (Princen 2001). Thus within the industrial agri-food system, (Bacon et al. 2012). consumers remain relatively ignorant about the conditions of production, and would be less able to choose between products New quantitative and qualitative research is badly needed to based on sustainability criteria, if they value these, and to evaluate and critique the social benefits that DFS may provide exercise their buying power in favor of DFS. In turn, the risk in contrast to industrialized systems. In general, further perceptions of consumers and corporations may inhibit the analysis is needed to understand how the social elements of growth of DFS. For example, during the recent food safety DFS can help generate and regenerate ecosystem services, thus scare in fresh leafy vegetables in California, corporate buyers maintaining diversified farming systems. In turn, more insisted that growers remove native vegetation bordering research is required on the political and socioeconomic fields that might attract wildlife. This action was taken largely interventions that could help rebuild or sustain the social- to assuage consumer concerns, despite the lack of scientific ecological cycles that underlie DFS. support (Beretti and Stuart 2008). In alternative agricultural systems such as organic or low-input ALTERNATIVE AGRI-FOOD NETWORKS, FOOD farming, farmers can build particular forms of relationships SOVEREIGNTY AND JUSTICE that help sustain ecosystem services and social infrastructure DFS are often embedded in social, political, and economic more effectively. We discuss many of these relationships, conditions that differ from those accompanying industrialized including direct marketing, fair trade certification, and food monocultures (Box 1), particularly with respect to core justice movements. In developing and studying these stakeholders, markets, and distribution systems. Yet, DFS may alternative systems, however, researchers, policy makers, and not always be able to realize their potential social-ecological NGOs often neglect race, socioeconomic, and gender issues, benefits due to the lack of enabling environments. We explore or sublimate them into a broad social justice category. Finding how alternative agri-food networks (AAFN) and social Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ movements relate to DFS and assess their potential to both identify economic incentives to transform industrialized agri- maximize social benefits and promote DFS through their food into alternative systems that seek to produce and demands for food sovereignty and food justice. distribute healthy, environmentally sustainable, and socially just food. The agri-food systems approach reveals the interconnected systems of inputs, labor, land, capital, governance and The equitable treatment of producers is central to achieving knowledge that maintain specific types of agricultural broader adoption of DFS. If farmers are impoverished or are production, distribution, and consumption systems (Friedland forced to compete with subsidized producers or importers from 2001). The governance and structure of the food system the industrialized food system, they are less likely to sustain upstream from the farm, such as international agricultural diversified farming practices. Farmers markets are one trade liberalization policies that promote cheap food imports example of efforts that more equitably support small-scale from industrial into developing countries, government producers, as well as urban consumers. The estimated 7525 subsidies for fossil fuel-based agrochemicals and commodity farmer markets in the U.S. offer local civic outlets that may crops (Pimentel et al. 2008, Holt-Giménez and Patel 2009, generate social, economic, and cultural incentives for DFS Wise 2011) and irrigation projects that primarily benefit larger among local farmers while encouraging a more diverse diet landholders (Frampton 1979, Walker 2004), all help to of fresh foods among eaters (Lyson 2004, United States maintain the industrialized agri-food system (Clapp and Fuchs Department of Agriculture 2011a, Zezima 2011). Farmers 2009, Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). This system then creates markets can provide a mechanism for farmers to reach substantial obstacles to farmers seeking to use diversified consumers directly, educate them about DFS practices, and farming methods, generate value from ecosystem services, and bypass the processing and distribution infrastructure of the sell food products to viable markets. It also leaves consumers industrialized agri-food systems. Yet, while farmers markets and communities disconnected from the origins, qualities, and and other AAFNs may help develop and maintain DFS and the social and ecological consequences of the production of vice versa, they do not yet adequately recognize ecological their food, fuel, and fiber. diversification and sustainability as core values. Farmers markets often provide a venue for organic agriculture, but they In the same way that industrialized monoculture production rarely use ecological sustainability as a criterion for allowing systems are sustained by industrialized agri-food systems, producer participation, and such markets may also include diversified farming systems are frequently interdependent organic foods harvested from industrial monoculture (Payne with alternative agri-food networks (AAFNs) (Goodman and 2002). In addition, while farmers markets may improve equity Watts 1997). AAFNs work “against the logic of bulk [high for smaller scale growers, they may not provide equity for volume, low cost] commodity production, alternative food consumers. Although recent policies have sought to address networks redistribute value through the food chain, reconvene these challenges, less than 20% of farmers markets accepted ‘trust’ between producers and consumers, and articulate new food assistance vouchers in 2009 (Haering and Syed 2009). forms of political association and market governance” Farmers markets may not reach poorer socioeconomic groups, (Whatmore et al. 2003:289). They are often, but not always, due to both price and location. Efforts are underway to increase rooted in agroecological farming practices (Kloppenburg et the number of farmers markets accepting government food al. 2000, Gliessman 2007). assistance vouchers (Zezima 2009). AAFNs regularly use the trust and engagement generated In Northern countries, environmental justice advocates have through alternative forms of distribution to increase access to recently started to promote sustainable agriculture and/or healthy, fresh, and diverse foods among consumers while agroecology as part of a multipronged, holistic strategy for providing farmers with diverse revenue streams, and risk- pursuing food and environmental justice across the entire sharing and direct marketing strategies that cut the costs of production chain to remedy the environmental inequalities distribution and decrease reliance on industrialized agri-food associated with industrialized agricultural systems (Gottlieb systems. AAFNs generally emerge as partnerships connecting and Joshi 2010, Wittman et al. 2010, Alkon and Agyeman DFS farmers with citizens, consumers, governments, food and 2011). These inequalities can be traced back to how, under agricultural enterprises, and environmental and social justice what conditions, and by whom food is produced, processed, organizations through the development of various institutions distributed, and consumed, and the role of corporations and ranging from farmers’ markets, urban gardens, and governments in shaping these conditions. Food justice issues community-supported agriculture at local and regional scales, include the unfair treatment of workers in housing, health, and to fair trade producer cooperatives, slow food movements, and labor conditions (Shreck et al. 2006, Getz et al. 2008); peasant organizations at the global scale (Goodman et al. agrochemical exposure health risks to workers, communities, 2011). These partnerships represent a new wave of social and consumers (Pulido and Peña 1998, Galt 2008, Marks et activism as Northern and Southern communities and NGOs al. 2010, Harrison 2011, Peña 2011); loss of ecosystem increasingly focus on the politics and cultures of food, and services such as water and soil (Diaz et al. 2006, Corbera et Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ al. 2007); creation of pollution/wastes that affect surrounding decades, the food sovereignty movement has endorsed the communities (Osterberg and Wallinga 2004); lack of farm and agroecological approaches and the social process food worker access to healthy foods (Wirth et al. 2007); and methodologies promoted through the Campesino-a- loss of access to land (Wolford 2008). By addressing these Campesino movement (Holt-Giménez 2006). issues, food justice activism is evolving toward a strategy that Despite the potential of AAFNs such as farmers markets and encompasses both social justice and ecological sustainability fair trade networks to sustain and promote DFS, many (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). alternative agri-food activities have come to resemble the These local and national efforts are complemented by several industrialized agri-food systems they set out to transform. For international projects to create AAFNs and connect them to example, the dramatic growth in organic sales in the past two sustainable agriculture. One example is the global fair trade decades facilitated by product certification has promoted the movement, which aims to enable consumers, often in expansion of large-scale industrialized organic monocultures developed countries, to pay more equitable prices to cover the to supply this new demand (Guthman 2004, Bacon et al. 2012, full costs of production and ensure sustainable farmer see also Figure 2) even though the founding principles of livelihoods. Fair trade is not synonymous with DFS or organic agriculture included DFS practices (Box 2). sustainable agriculture because its criteria focus primarily on Alternative producers sometimes justify this by arguing that the social and economic aspects of trade and production. large-scale, industrialized methods are the fastest way to “scale However, the Mesoamerican smallholders who cofounded this up” alternative farming practices so that they can compete in movement with political and religious activists manage supply chains with conventionally managed systems (Box 4). agricultural systems that are far closer to DFS than industrial In search of new markets, many dominant food corporations monocultures (Bacon et al. 2008, VanderHoff Boersma 2009). have purchased and integrated successful organic producers Their shade coffee systems now often resemble native forests and alternative food companies into their product portfolios and help conserve biodiversity, reduce soil erosion, conserve (Kearins and Collins 2012). This trend of purchasing water, improve microclimates and resist hurricane damage “sustainable” product businesses is also observed in other (Perfecto et al. 1996, Lin 2007, Philpott et al. 2008a, b, Mendez sectors, such as personal care, paper, and cleaning chemicals. et al. 2010). Farmers’ connections to smallholder cooperatives A growing body of literature on green consumerism raises the and global fair trade networks also partially mitigated issue of corporate “greenwashing”. Researchers suggest that vulnerability to crashing coffee commodity prices (Bacon et expanding corporate control over alternative products can al. 2008). generate some benefits (e.g., reduced pesticide usage, cleaner production practices, and investments in social development). New social movements also increasingly promote Yet these changes may accelerate efforts to industrialize agroecology as central to their agenda for transforming the production rather than expand alternative systems (Goodman industrialized agri-food system at local, national, and global and Watts 1997). These developments call for careful scrutiny scales (Sevilla Guzmán 2006, Wolford 2008). In particular, a of the changing standards, price premiums, ingredients, farm food sovereignty agenda has emerged from the aspirations and level practices, and benefits to producers and consumers survival needs of smallholders and indigenous social (Bacon et al. 2008, Clapp and Fuchs 2009). movement leaders in the Global South (Windfuhr and Jonsen 2005, Rosset 2008). Food sovereignty (La Via Campesina 2009) refers to the right of local peoples to control their own agricultural and food systems, including markets, resources, Box 4: food cultures, and production modes, in the face of an Scaling up DFS and AAFN supply chains The issues of scale and scaling up are central in shaping the increasingly globalized economic system. This approach development of DFS, certification, and AAFN-driven supply chains contrasts with charity-based food security models that have (Sayre 2005). Scale refers to the size of a given farming operation, occasionally buffered human populations from famines whereas scaling up refers to the expansion of a farming practice in (Kaluski et al. 2002), yet do not address root causes of hunger the agricultural system as a whole. There is growing debate regarding and care little for how, where, and by whom food is produced the means of expanding agroecological practices across the (Wittman 2009, Wittman et al. 2010). It also contrasts with agricultural system. Some researchers, many firms, and policy dominant neoclassical trade liberalization policies that open makers argue that agri-food businesses will inevitably dominate up domestic markets worldwide to competition from alternative farming because they can implement alternative practices multinational corporations, which has often resulted in import at high levels of productivity more effectively than food movements and smallholder farmers (Burch and Lawrence 2005). In contrast, dumping, the erosion of smallholder livelihoods, and greater other research suggests that, in both developed and developing industrialization of agriculture (McMichael 2009). Food countries, smaller farms are more productive in comparison to larger sovereignty movements promote agrarian reforms, resist state operations, in part because they employ DFS practices (Netting 1993, and corporate land grabs, and critique proposals that contribute Rosset 1999). This effect may occur because farmers can exploit to farmer debt and dependence (Wittman et al. 2010). In recent every ecological niche in their diversified farms to achieve greater Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ productivity, whereas farmers on large-scale landholdings may lack diverse shade trees than Mesoamerican smallholders (Jha et this knowledge intensive ability (Altieri 2002, Gliessman 2007). al. 2011). Indeed, it remains unclear whether larger scale farms (e.g., farms exceeding $250,000 in sales in the U.S.) are even able to carry out In this light, many enterprises and organizations within the the ecological diversification that smaller farms have been able to rapidly mainstreaming AAFNs are now trying to restrengthen achieve while retaining high levels of productivity. Mechanization their connections to sustainable agriculture and their original associated with modern large-scale operations, for example, may social goals through innovative organizational reforms. They undermine ecosystem services. are de-emphasizing the certification systems that they once In principle, large landholdings, whether individuals, cooperative pioneered and moving toward food sovereignty and food groups, nucleated settlements, or common property regimes, are justice that promote the power of participants to control or better placed to implement DFS because of their resources and ability coordinate their parts of the larger food system. These trends to control, or coordinate across, a larger portion of the landscape. could enable the spread of DFS while simultaneously They could include multiple components such as pasturelands, row promoting the often overlooked social equity and participatory crops, orchards, and natural habitats within their own lands. In turn, process dimensions of sustainable agriculture (Allen and when a larger proportion of the landscape is managed with Sachs 1991, Alkon and Agyeman 2011, Bacon et al. 2012). agroecological practices, all growers can benefit from the enhanced However, until recently, these movements have represented ecosystem services that are produced, such as pest control and crop pollination services (Gabriel et al. 2010, Kremen and Miles 2012). relatively small countertrends compared to the dominant Conversely, the bigger an individual farm is, the more vulnerable it certified and organic components of the industrialized agri- could be to being co-opted into the industrial organic system and into food system. corporate ownership because of pressures to achieve greater Certifications and market-based incentives could (and likely economic returns. will) be an important component of many DFS oriented Whether large (as well as small) landholdings are able to practice transition processes. However, broader institutional support DFS may depend on farmers’ power to manage their lands, which is certainly needed. Furthermore, the leading sustainability reflects the pattern of ownership rights, farming styles, economic certifications increasingly do not appear to reward the diverse pressures, and farmer autonomy existing in a particular region. forms of ownership, management, and local collaboration that Various types of ownership, including farmer cooperatives, family companies, communal institutions, and absentee businesses, may be would be needed to ensure the landscape-scale nature of DFS, more or less supportive of DFS at different scales. Individual tenants, and their standards have become increasingly flexible (and for example, may be less willing to implement DFS where absentee lower in some aspects) as they increasingly include industrial landlords lack interest in ecological sustainability, or are subjecting production systems (Jaffee and Howard 2010). them to economic pressures (e.g., rent demands or debt repayment) that discourage DFS practices. In turn, different patterns of ownership could enable small-scale management across large landholdings that GLOBAL TRENDS IN AGRICULTURE can provide ecosystem benefits equivalent to smallholdings. One example is the Baix Llobregat Agricultural Park near Barcelona, Industrialized agriculture where an Agricultural Park Consortium comprising local and regional The expansion of large-scale industrialized monoculture governments manages a mosaic of landholdings (Bacon et al. 2012). systems of agriculture often occurs at the expense of more Further research is therefore needed to understand how DFS diversified farming systems. The widespread transformation performance may vary with scale, and whether scaling up can only of agriculture to large-scale monoculture systems began with follow a pathway akin to industrialized agriculture, or can be achieved the European colonial plantations of the 1500-1800s through giving greater power to diverse forms of management and (McMichael 2009, Perfecto et al. 2009), and expanded with landholdings across large regions. the mechanization of agriculture in the late 1800s and the introduction of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides by the mid In parallel, fair trade labeling organizations initially certified 20th century. By the 1960s, a wave of agricultural science and exports from smallholder organizations only, thus frequently technological innovations had created the “Green supporting DFS. However, recent changes to standards now Revolution,” an integrated system of pesticides, chemical allow transnational agricultural trade companies to export fertilizers, and genetically uniform and high-yielding crop certified Fair Trade products in direct and potentially unfair varieties that governments, companies, and foundations competition with the smallholder organizations that this vigorously promoted around the world (Evenson and Gollin system intended to empower (Bacon 2010, Jaffee and Howard 2003, Smil 2004). 2010). The dominant U.S. Fair Trade certification agency has ignored strong protests from smallholder farmer organizations In the subsequent fifty years, the expansion of industrialized in recently allowing large coffee plantations to sell certified agriculture increased global nitrogen use eightfold, Fair Trade coffee. For instance, a growing portion of Fair Trade phosphorus use tri-fold, and global pesticide production certified coffee sold in the U.S. now originates in Brazil and eleven-fold (Tilman et al. 2001). By 2000, Green Revolution Colombia in production systems supporting fewer and less crop varieties were broadly adopted throughout the developing Ecology and Society 17(4): 44 http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/art44/ world, e.g., circa 90% of Latin America for the area under production subsidies, and speculation by energy and wheat, and circa 80 % in Asia for the area under rice (Evenson commodity companies in both developing and industrial and Gollin 2003), and the world’s irrigated cropland doubled countries (Borras et al. 2011). in area (Tilman et al. 2001). Encouraged by a range of Although global estimates of the scale of industrial biofuel economic factors, including the incentives of U.S. federal production are difficult to make, the World Bank (Deininger commodity programs, the pressures of global market 2011) calculates that 36 million ha were dedicated to biofuel competition, neoliberal economic reforms, historically production (primarily maize, sugar cane, and oil crops) inexpensive synthetic inputs, and the advantages of economies globally in 2008, doubling the 2004 level. Oil palm production of scale, field and farm sizes increased in some areas, while in Indonesia and Malaysia indicates the emerging trajectory: noncrop areas in and around farms decreased, leading to higher aided by government policies and subsidies, oil palm levels of homogeneity at both the field and landscape scale plantations grew in Indonesia from 3.6 million ha in 1961 to (Cochrane 1993, Tscharntke et al. 2005, Liverman and Vilas 8.1 million ha by 2009 (McMichael 2010). The consequences 2006, Snapp et al. 2010). of the expansion of oil palm include ongoing displacement of Several recent signs of the continued expansion of industrial smallholders, increasing monoculture, and abandonment of agriculture are seen in the rapid growth of land grabs, biofuel food cropping, though the extent to which these effects are production, and plantations across the Global South. Land occurring remains uncertain (Dauvergne and Neville 2010, Li grabbing refers to the practice of agri-food companies, 2011). Across the Global South, oil palm and sugarcane commodity traders, pension funds, and nationally-owned plantations may provide only a tenth of the jobs when investment banks buying land in other countries for eventual compared to the livelihoods generated through smallholder large-scale food and resource production in response to food farming (Holt-Giménez 2007). security concerns and food speculation (McMichael 2010, Smallholder agriculture Borras et al. 2011, de Schutter 2011). For example, the Despite expansion of large-scale commercial agriculture, provincial government of Rio Negro in Argentina recently smallholders (< 2 ha) still make up 85% of circa 525 million agreed to lease up to 320,000 ha of land to Beidahuang, a farms worldwide (Nagayets 2005). Such farmers span a Chinese government-owned agri-food company, to produce spectrum from traditional, indigenous growers using no soybeans, wheat, and oilseed rape primarily for animal feed external inputs to those with heavy dependency on modern (GRAIN 2011). Negotiations occurred in secret and the seed varieties, fertilizers, and pesticides, but up to 50% of agreement was signed before it became public. Local farming smallholders are thought to utilize resource conserving communities are now organizing against the deal, contending farming methods (Altieri and Toledo 2011). While they that they will be displaced by the industrialized irrigation represent the bulk of the agricultural population, estimated at methods being planned. circa 2.6 billion people (Dixon et al. 2001), due to land Estimates of the global scale of land grabbing are scarce and inequalities they often do not control the bulk of the arable largely based on media reports. Whereas the International land (Nagayets 2005). These disparities are largest in South Food Policy Research Institute estimates that 20 million ha of America, (e.g., in Ecuador, smallholders constitute 43% of the land were sold for land grabs between 2005 and 2009, the farmers but use only 2% of the land) and least pronounced in World Bank calculates that around 57 million ha have attracted Africa (e.g., in Egypt, smallholders constitute 75% of the foreign interest (Von Braun and Meinzen-Dick 2009, farmers and use < 50% of the land). Another sign of Deininger 2011). intensifying inequalities is that mean farm size has decreased in many parts of Africa and Asia (e.g., from 2.3 to 1.6 ha from The expansion of large-scale commercial agriculture has also 1970 to 1990 in India), increasing the vulnerability of small caused deforestation of some of the most biodiverse forests in farmers and exacerbating the poverty in these regions, while the world, such as in the Amazon, for soybean production large landholdings are increasingly controlled by a small (Defries et al. 2008), and in Southeast Asian rain forests, for number of people (Nagayets 2005). oil palm (Wilcove and Koh 2010). Since the 1990s, particularly in Brazil and Indonesia where the greatest amount Despite poverty, the current contribution of small farms to of deforestation occurred, the agents of deforestation shifted global food production is significant. Herrero et al. (2010) from primarily smallholder to enterprise-driven agriculture for estimate that mixed crop and livestock systems supply 50% global markets (Rudel et al. 2009, De Fries et al. 2010). Much of the worlds’ cereal, 60% of the world’s meat and 75% of the recent forest loss, along with agricultural land conversion, can world’s dairy production. Much of this production is locally be attributed to the rapid growth in biofuel production, produced and consumed, and provides the main source of food centering in Southeast Asia and Latin America but expanding for the world’s 1 billion poor (defined as living on <$1/day). to Africa. Biofuel production is driven by mandates for Altieri (2004) considers that traditional indigenous agriculture renewable transport fuels, weak land use regulation, supplies 30 – 50% of the world’s food. Nagayets (2005)