By Elodie Reed
But as University of Vermont Extension Assistant Professor of Community Development Ike Leslie points out in a new paper for Society & Natural Resources, "alternative agriculture" participants, and their contributions toward these social and environmental goals, range widely.
Leslie, who also has faculty affiliations with the Institute for Agroecology, the Food Systems Graduate Program and the Gund Institute for Environment at UVM, presents this alternative agriculture range as a continuum between environmental- and social-oriented practices and market-driven practices. And by identifying where specific farmer subgroups land on the continuum for issues like toxic chemicals, biodiversity, soil health, and food security, they argue it becomes possible to understand the larger economic and political structures that influence whether agriculture makes the world a healthier place.
"While we know which alternative farming practices address global environmental goals... it is another challenge to scale their use, especially across multiple global goals at once," Leslie writes. They add that their paper is an attempt to "spotlight leverage points for structural change."
Leslie's analysis is based on existing food systems literature and a case study of six types of alternative farmers in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. By putting this information together, they observe, for example, how export organic farmers might replace toxic inputs with non-toxic alternatives, but still use industrial practices like monocropping because that provides the highest and most immediate economic return.
Source : uvm.edu