Civic Markets: Alternative Value Chain Governance as Civic Engagement
E. Melanie DuPuis, Department of Sociology, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California
Both conventional and organic farmers are facing an increasingly diversified marketing
environment. Increasingly, farmers are becoming market strategists. This is in marked
contrast to the commodity-based marketing system of the past, where in many cases
farmers had a choice of a few stable market “outlets.” Rural development policy has
therefore made it a goal to help farmers develop marketing strategies to respond to this
new marketing environment.i Because organic markets are growing, they have become a
key factor in rural development strategies to increase farm income. These efforts often
revolve around helping farmers answer the question: “Which markets will continue to
expand and which are already flooded with providers?”
However, organic markets are particularly diverse; there are many different kinds of
markets that require different marketing strategies and the dynamics of these markets are
poorly understood. Research has shown that the growth of large-scale industrial organic
agriculture has left smaller farmers without access to the major markets, since
supermarkets prefer to deal with these larger firms.ii In other words, even though the
market for organic food may be expanding, smaller organic farmers are no longer able to
gain access to the commodity chain that represents that market. These farmers are
therefore turning to alternative markets and in many cases they are seeking to create or
expand new markets so as to maintain a place where their product can go and where they
can receive a price that pays them for their labors.
Whether a farmer seeks to find their one marketing niche and dedicate their entire
production to that niche, or if he or she decides to pursue a diverse set of marketing
strategies, meeting the demands of several different types of customers, it is important for
them to understand what makes organic markets, or any markets, work. What makes
organic markets particularly complex is their dynamism. Sometimes, rather than
discovering which markets have more “room,” some farmers have expanded sales by
working to create new markets that sell to new customers. Rural development strategies
that take this approach tend to emphasize training individual farmers to build their
entrepreneurial skills. However, once again, understanding “market growth” is more than
creating entrepreneurs, it also requires understanding the dynamics of a variety of
markets. This requires asking the broader question: “What makes this market work?”
While many see “free markets” as a way to move beyond the strictures of bureaucratic
regulation, in fact, as institutional economists and economic sociologists have maintained
for many decades, no market functions without to a set of rules of behavior.iii Without
these rules, markets cannot exist. These rules are commonly referred to as market
“governance.” However, very little work on organic markets, or food chains in general,
have focused on the issue of governance. This paper basically lays out a research agenda
to understand organic market governance.
Draft Session Paper – Organic Agriculture Workshop, USDA, ERS, October 6-7, 2005
Final Papers to be Published by Crop Management, Summer, 2006
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The Nature of Governance
According to John Humphrey and Hubert Schmitz of Britain’s Institute of Development
Studies, governance is “the inter-firm relationships and institutional mechanisms through
which non-market co-ordination of activities in the [marketing or “value”] chain is
achieved.”iv In other words, “markets” here do not necessarily mean just buyers and
sellers, it also means a network of other actors that affect the exchange of commodities,
including government, NGOs and consumers, organized or not. Needless to say, the
actor(s) that get to formulate the rules are often those with the greatest amount of power
in the network, as in the case of large growers taking over much of the organic market.
Humphrey and Schmitz and Raphael Kaplinsky discuss the types of control or power that
large buyers have over the system, which enable these actors to gain most of the value
(profit) from the system. These authors describe marketing chains – the many
transactions between producer and consumer – as “value chains” in which some actors
gain more of a commodity’s value, because of the power they exercise in the chain. In
particular, they note the increasing supermarket control of food purchasing, which
enables these actors to have increasing control over value/profits. One hears constantly,
for example, that Wal-Mart is the largest buyer of produce, including organic produce.v
Value-chain governance, therefore, involves issues of power, both economic and
political.vi
From this perspective, the recommended rural development policy option is to help
farmers gain more say over their role in the value chain. This is probably most prominent
in EU rural development policy at the moment.vii However, current discussion in EU
rural development circles also revolves around the question: “Should organic producers
fight to maintain access to the conventional value chain (re-gain the ability to sell to
supermarkets) or should they focus on selling to alternative market niches?” This is a
major step forward in understanding marketing strategies, since it goes beyond the
exploitation of market niches. However, the idea of market strategy as deciding what
“market niche” to participate in implies that the road to gaining a stable livelihood in the
value chain is by discovering some premade consumer demand and meeting this demand.
The market governance perspective, in contrast, sees markets as dynamic process in
which markets are based on social rule-making. To the extent that this rule-making is a
public process, the creation of market governance is a form of civic practice. Consumers
and producers come together to negotiate the way commodities are made and sold, and
“supply” and “demand” is the mutually constituted product of these interactions, not an a
priori construct.viii I would like to argue, therefore, that rural development policymakers
need to see market governance as a socially embedded process based to some extent on
civic engagement. That is, markets created by public decisions are what I call “civic
markets.” This is a somewhat different perspective than current value chain perspectives,
which see actors in value chains as involved primarily in a private set of bilateral
interactions to meet a priori demand.
The idea that civic engagement is a part of market governance combines two major
sociological perspectives. First are the notions of civic engagement most prominently put
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forth by Robert Putnam and Robert Bellah. Tom Lyson and Neva Hassenein have
recently applied these ideas to the idea of “civic agriculture.” Second are the ideas of
economic sociologists, as well as institutional and political economists, who have argued
that markets are socially and politically embedded, that all markets are a product of the
social context in which they exist. The creation of market governance rules is therefore a
public social activity. Sociologists talk about a “public sphere” a social arena in which
people discuss possible social rules, including market rules, and implement them.
Sociologists (and institutional economists) tend to study the ways in which these rules get
created and implemented. They also tend to look at who wins and who loses from
particular market governance structures. In other words, sociologists are often interested
in the fairness, or “social justice,” of particular market governance systems.
The important question from the civic market perspective is, how do sellers and buyers
engage in a public conversation about the rules around the exchange of a particular
commodity? The implication here is that civic engagement can create markets and that
there are a number of potential markets that can come out of civic processes.ix Actors
who participate in these alternative “civic” markets have some say in the governance
rules of those markets and are expected to follow the rules that apply once they are set.
Civic markets are those that are created through a relatively transparent public
conversation. Water and electricity markets, for example, are often civic markets, that is,
the rules of the transactions are set through public processes that are participatory.x
Organic markets are not necessarily civic markets. As Raynolds has noted, organic
farmers – particularly in the less developed world -- are often faced with organic rules
that they had no role in creating.xi Organic farmers face a set of rules about how they
interact with nature, but unlike fair trade governance systems there are very few rules
about how they interact with buyers.
Many USDA publications talk about these alternative markets, and they have been a part
of the state sponsorship of farmer entrepreneurship for a while. Direct marketing,
farmers markets, CSAs, farm stands, etc., are frequently mentioned as marketing
alternatives. More recently, localized and ethical or “fair-trade” markets have also
emerged as potential alternatives. What has been missed in the studies of these
alternative markets is the civic governance aspect, and the fact that many of these
markets have civic engagement aspects that need to be understood if they are to survive
and grow.
Of course, new forms of market contracting have also arisen, making farmers become
“flexibly specialized” producers of customized products for particular purchasers. These
are basically private contract systems that are arranged on a bilateral basis. “Market
governance” refers to the more public forms of exchange in which the rules are
transparent and are generally open and available to a larger group of buyers and sellers.
From this perspective, it is possible to see that each organic market has its own form of
governance; that is, they each follow a distinct set of rules. Each also has their own
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dynamic, which will affect how and whether these markets will expand and remain
profitable.
Of course, what is fair and what is not fair is also something that gets discussed and
decided upon in the public sphere. People tend to disagree about what is fair and what is
unfair. A set of market governance structures reflect a group of people who have agreed
with each other about the fairness of the system enough to agree to participate in this
system, assuming they are not being coerced. Coercion does not always entail violence:
when I stop at a highway rest stop and am not able to find healthy food, and I have no
other access to food, I tend to feel like I am being coerced, although it is a “soft”
coercion. Lack of alternatives can therefore be a form of coercion.
The rest of this paper will review a number of current alternative markets, talk a bit about
the governance structures of these markets and how these market rules are the product of
particular social contexts. These social contexts are the product of particular agreements
between buyers and sellers in the public sphere. These agreements have their own
embedded controversies, their own ways in which fairnesses and unfairnesses arise. The
extent to which each of these alternatives markets expand is to a great extent dependent
on whether or not buyers and sellers find them worth participating in because they offer
them a better – or more fair – deal.
The intent here is to provide initial information that could form the basis of more
substantial and rigorous research. These initial musings are the result of my own active
participation in various local food and farm institutions for the last 17 years. I was a
founder of the Farm and Food Project in Albany, New York and I have worked closely
with the Santa Cruz County Food Policy Forum. I also try to work as closely as I can
with agricultural researchers and other professionals involved in the food system of Santa
Cruz County. Finally, I try to talk to as many farmers as I can, often in contexts like the
Eco-Farm Conference, which takes place every year only an hour’s drive from my house.
I call what I do participant observation, which means that I try to do as much as possible
of what anthropologist Clifford Geertz calls “deep hanging out.” For this reason, much
of my empirical observation stems from my previous experience in New York as well as
my current experience in California, particularly the Central Coast. I am fortunate to live
in Santa Cruz County, which has one of the highest percentages of organic farmland
under cultivation of any county in the US. Ironically, it also has one of the highest
percentages of pesticide use. It does, in fact, provide me with a great real-life laboratory
in which to study the social context around the governance of alternative markets. My
applied work in both New York and in California has been around the development of
alternative market governance structures.
Added to this is my historical background on the formation and implementation of U.S.
milk market orders. As I argue in a recent paper with Daniel Block, milk market orders
were a form of localized governance and we can learn a lot about food relocalization
projects by understanding their history. Because of this research background, my own
work on contemporary market governance has focused primarily on rules around
relocalization.
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Finally, I will also draw upon other research currently being carried out on organic
commodity chains to deepen the description of governance systems in each of these
markets. While much of this work does not specifically address the issue of governance,
it is possible to glean some conclusions about this topic from this research.
CSAs
Most of the rules around CSA membership are based on a private, bilateral contract.
However, these contracts often involve a set of rules of behavior that affects the entire
membership of the CSA. Those rules are often set by the grower or informally between
the grower and the members of the CSA. However, according to the report “CSAs
Across the Nation” 28% of all CSA have a kind of governing board, generally called a
Core Group.xii Therefore, consumer and producer membership depends not just on the
writing of a check, but also on a set of group-set rules.
Some of these rules are part of a contract between the member and the farmer. Others
tend be more informal. For example, according the CSA report mentioned above, more
than three-quarters of all CSAs put together events that go beyond the provision of
produce, such as festival days for members, tours, etc. While these are not part of the
contract, I can personally tell you that if my CSA farmer in New York cancelled her
strawberry festival without explanation, members would complain. In addition, as a Core
Group member of a CSA and of a local food policy group in NY, I helped put on events
that advertised CSAs to potential members – CSA “sign up days” that supported the
farmer – and other CSA farmers in the area – by bringing in more members. There were
never any formal rules that we were to take on this responsibility, but it did represent
informal rules of trust and mutual acceptance of responsibility for the maintenance of the
CSAs in the area.
More formal rules often involve things like whether or not a member is expected to put in
labor hours on the farm or at the pickup points. There are also often specific rules of
behavior for members at pickup points, in terms of maintaining cleanliness, controlling
noise and other things such as the ability to trade off unwanted produce with others. In
addition, approximately half of the CSAs have a subsidized share program so that lowincome families can participate as members.xiii
Member-farmer commitments to acquire land has also been a part of CSA governance in
some cases. Because access to quality land is difficult and costly in many places, some
CSAs have become increasingly involved in gaining access to land for the CSA farmer,
and sometimes sharing in land costs. This involves, obviously, another layer of rules of
behavior between the consumers-landowners and the farmer.xiv
Another governance aspect of CSAs that have Core Groups actively involved in farm
budget decisions is the issue of farmer salary. In these governance structures, the annual
membership fee paid the farmer a collectively-determined specific salary over the costs
of growing. However, exactly what fee would maintain membership at what salary was a
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constant source of worry. When I left the Core Group of my CSA, the farmer’s salary
was still below the poverty level. If I remember correctly, she also didn’t have health
insurance at the time. I still marvel that she remains a CSA farmer, despite the poor
wages she receives for the major effort she puts in every year feeding her members.
Clearly, health care and the need for a secure retirement are issues that farmers want to
address with CSA members but often can’t.
In these various cases, decisionmaking, especially in those CSAs that do not have Core
Groups, is often by “exit or voice.” In other words, members leave the CSA or they just
make noise and hope the farmer listens. Farmers, in turn, if they cannot achieve their
goals of health or income security, or other management issues with members, also shut
down their farms or move to other types of farm markets. Smaller issues are a constant
topic in newsletters (written by farmers of by Core Groups), with or without various
forms of sanction (‘please remember to…or we may no longer be welcome here as a
pickup point next year).
More information needs to be collected on exactly how CSAs create and implement
governance structures. The issue of whether or not to have a core group, and the extent
to which that group has decision-making ability, is a current topic of conversation among
CSA farmers.
Farmers’ Markets
The governance issues around farmer’s markets are dauntingly large and generally not
adequately understood. There has been very little generalized research around the
governance structures of farmers markets and this is a potentially very rich field of study.
In part, the richness comes from the pure variety of rules – set by municipalities, business
associations, etc -- around farmers market governance. For example, some markets have
rules about how far away a farm can be from the market (another issue to be addressed in
the market localization section) and what can be sold. Others certify if the farmers
produce all the products they sell in the markets. Organic only farmers markets rely
primarily on a farm’s organic certification for compliance with organic rules, but may
certify the farm’s “producer only” status. Unlike CSAs, nearly all farmers markets have
governing boards. The members of the market are the farmers, not the consumers,
although consumers, along with local business members and others, are often members of
the governing boards. However, there has been no comprehensive survey of these
practices.xv
Farmers’ markets, like CSAs, are a form of food system relocalization and the section on
this topic will continue the discussion of this form of market.
Fair Trade and other Ethical Marketing
So much has been written recently about fair trade that I cannot even begin to address the
issues that have emerged in these studies. What I can do is say how important these
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studies are; even though fair trade represents only a small fraction of global commodity
chains, it is the arena in which civic markets are developing, both in terms of standards
and the processes by which those standards are set. Some of the best economic
sociological work has been done by Patricia Allen and Christopher Bacon at UCSC,
Laura Raynolds and Peter Taylor at Colorado State University, and Claire Hinrichs of
Pennsylvania State University. The following is a short summary of governance issues at
the largest scale possible. I can only refer you to the work of these authors for a more
intense look at fair trade issues.xvi I would argue that a synthesis of this work is needed in
order to gain more understanding of fair trade as alternative governance.
Fair trade markets involve an alternative systems of marketing with their own market
governance system. Because “fairness” is the prevailing idea behind these markets, civic
engagement is generally part of the process. Whether or not that engagement is
symmetrical, however, differs from one fair trade market to the next. In many cases,
consumers determine what the rules of fairness will be, and then work with farmers who
are willing to work within those rules. However, as recent studies by the authors listed
above have shown, a “fair” market is not easy to define and is therefore generally a
constant topic of public conversation among actors in the commodity chain.xvii Once
again, actors participate through both “voice” and “exit” strategies; they either try to
make a system that does not work for them more “fair” or they leave the chain and
participate in other markets.
Much of the research in this area has focused on whether fair trade actually “helps”
farmers. Issues of market governance are only beginning to come to the fore, particularly
in relation to coffee markets.
Civic Markets as Small/Artisanal Farm Support Policy
In some cases, especially in the EU, alternative governance systems have worked to
increase small farmers’ access to markets, especially in the light of lack of access to
major, often oligopolistic, buyer systems that prefer to work with small number of large
producers. xviii In some cases, the efforts have been to enable small third world farmers to
gain access to EU markets.xix In other cases, policymakers are interested in protecting
artisanal and territorially-based specialty food producers.xx These are civic markets in
that they involve public discussion about who participates in the market and what they
get from participation. In general, the idea is to create new “value chains” in which
actors (both consumers and producers) who have less power in conventional value chains
are able to gain more power and therefore gain more benefit from the system, either in
terms of greater profits or in terms of getting the quality of food they desire.
While some of these programs focus primarily on providing assistance to farmers to enter
conventional markets, there are also projects that attempt to create new value chains that
follow different market governance rules. Often these alternative value chains meet up
against government regulations, particularly those protective of sanitation. This is
particularly true in the case of raw milk artisanal cheeses and other highly perishable
products. Dairy grading, pricing and market governance systems create different value
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chains out of milk. xxi Not surprisingly, different chains enable vastly different forms of
dairy production with very different uses of natural resources as well.xxii Jo Banks and
Terry Marsden have argued that the conventionalization of organic has had a negative
impact on alternative marketing channels. Civicly-engaged market governance
discussions could hold the key to the creation of such alternative governance structures.
Market Localization Projects
It is almost a mantra among smaller organic farmers on the Central Coast of California,
where I now live, to say that they are refocusing their marketing efforts to their local
communities, often with community support and often organized through local food
policy councils. It’s important to note that the agriculture in California has always been
oriented to out-of-state markets. The organic sector has been no exception, even for
smaller farmers. However, according to local farmers, large scale industrial organic
agricultural firms have become the preferred suppliers to supermarkets and other larger
organic food buyers, such as Whole Foods. As a result, a number of smaller California
growers have lost access to these markets.
In response, many of these farmers state that they are turning increasingly to their local
home markets for customers. In some cases, these farmers are now participating more in
farmers markets or have organized CSAs. However, many farmers markets no longer
have space for new farmers, or the governance structure limits access to other farmers
selling the type of produce they sell. As a result, in my town, one group of farmers has
started an uncertified farmers market, sometimes referred to the “guerilla farmers market”
in a parking lot of a retail plaza. This farmers market has a very different governance
structure than the certified farmers market downtown. The guerilla market is a
cooperative of local organic farmers. They agree among themselves what they can sell
and how they will sell their products. In certified markets, this is the provenance of the
governing board. The guerilla market relies on coop membership rules to maintain a
“producer only” status, not certification from the State. In some cases, agreements are
made between the coop members to allow a member to sell the produce of another farmer
(or a crafted food product, such as dried fruit or honey).
The number of farm stands has also risen, particularly along coastal Route 1, which has a
great deal of tourist traffic. However, these stands may also have reached a saturation
point. The governance structure of farm stands is probably the closest to “wild West”
standards. Signs on the highway make claims about organic or “no spray” fruits and
vegetables, although evidence of certification of claims is often slim. The general
governance system appears to be “let the buyer beware.” However, farm stands do fall
under direct marketing regulations, which can be either state or county regulations. For
example, Washington State publishes a directory of direct marketing regulations, which
includes the following table:
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However, the social context in which these rules are created and implemented, the
consistency of rules between regions, and whether other more formal or informal nonstate rules exist between farm stand sellers and buyers has not been researched.
However, these stands can be under various rules about zoning, sanitation and other city
rules that apply to local businesses.
The lack of local alternative markets, due to saturation of CSA, farm stands and farmers
markets, has led to new community-based efforts by coalitions of farmers and consumers,
to create new local market opportunities. Like fair trade, sociologists have identified this
movement as a cutting edge of new governance structures in the food system and it has
therefore been the subject of much study, including some rather critical articles by myself
with David Goodman.xxiii We argue that consumer movements concerned about injustice
in the food system often see the re-localization of the food system as a cure-all for
inequalities. In fact, as we argue, local politics can be pretty unjust as well. We argue
that careful attention needs to be paid to governance structures and the types of processes
by which people create and implement these structures, understanding that certain forms
of governance may be more equitable than others. We argue that people have to
approach these problems “reflexively,” that is, by being aware of potential unfairnesses in
the ways decisions tend to get made and while no process can be totally fair, that constant
attention to issues of fairness is important, especially in situations where people define
“fair” differently.
We are therefore very much interested in how these processes of relocalization take place
on the ground, with real people in real places. To that end, I have been involved with the
local food policy group in Santa Cruz County. This local group has developed a kind of
structured public discussion that grew out of a non-violent communication movement
called the “World Café Forum.” In the Forum the group has held so far, we have
structured public conversation to try to give participants an equal chance to have their
voices heard in a non-threatening environment which involves active listening and nonjudgemental behavior. Projects emerge from these groups or groups pursuing various
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projects attend in order to gain input about ways to carry out what they are doing in a way
that is both more successful and more fair.
Food Policy Groups (FPG), in general, have been the main institutional umbrella under
which relocalization projects have taken place.xxiv FPGs vary greatly in their structure
and activities from one place to the next. They can be organized by state, county or city
(or sometimes all three). In many cases, however, FPGs have taken as a main mission
the expansion of local markets for local farmers.xxv These projects are usually created in
conjunction with consumers who are seeking to resolve a particular food issue they face.
For example, many FPGs are involved in starting or assisting “Farm to School Programs”
in which farmers provide produce directly to school cafeterias, as a way to improve
nutrition and to educate students about good eating.xxvi Piecemeal communication
between farmers and each school district, however, is resource-intensive. In Santa Cruz,
the FPG is closely aligned with local office of the statewide Community Alliance for
Family Farms (CAFF), which is attempting to create a consortium of farmers who can
work with a consortium of public institutions that are involved in feeding, from schools
to prisons, to enable more local produce to make their way into the local institutional
feeding process.
Finally, the “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” organization, which is, ironically, a national group
that has in some ways put a single “face” on the marketing of local food, has emerged as
an extremely successful segment of the project to grow markets for local farmers through
a professional advertising campaign. While not confined to organic markets, in many
cases organic farmers are featured in these campaigns.xxvii Much of the research on this
organization has yet to be published.
In all of these situations, the question remains: “Who will be responsible for setting up
the rules of interaction between local consumers and local farmers? To what extent will
these rules remain fractured between sub-groups and to what extent will that fracturing
lessen the growth of the local food market. Or will this utterly devolved form of
governance work?” One issue in Santa Cruz County is the large number of small food
NGOs working – and sometimes competing -- to enhance the growth of local organic
markets. This, of course, is not the situation in many other places where community food
NGOs are non-existent.
One of the most important unresolved rules of local market governance is the question of
a definition of “local.” As my work on milk market orders indicates, the definition of
what is a local market for a particular set of consumers (in milk generally referred to as a
“milkshed”) is an intensely political decision. People have died defending their right to
sell into city milk markets, in other words, defending their right to be defined as “local.”
For farmers attempting to preserve a highly risky and often marginal livelihood, the fact
that others may have access to spaces in the local farmers market while others don’t can
lead to bitterness over what is perceived to be an injustice. Exactly how to create
governance structures about access to farmers market spaces that are as fair as possible is
one of the justice challenges faced by the food relocalization movement. In some cases, a
question that needs to be asked is: are the farmers who have access to the market
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representative of the racial diversity of farming in the surrounding area? Or, do farmers
market governing boards give access to certain less-than-representative groups of people?
Another question that needs to be asked about setting the rules of local food market
governance is: who will have a say in this process? Will this commodity chain be, in the
words of Gerry Gerrefi, consumer or producer-driven? Also, who will do the work and
will this work be mainly volunteer? Will consortiums work or will relocalization mostly
depend on the growth of individual CSAs selling to individual families?xxviii How will
governance issues vary by community context?” In other words, the question of organic
market growth at the local level is shot through with governance issues that have not been
adequately understood, much less resolved.
Conclusion
This overview of market governance issues as they affect the growth of organic markets
has brought up many more questions than answers. However, what is known at this point
can lead to some tentative conclusions.
First, governance is not just a set of regulations. It is the process by which regulations
are formed, the underlying formal (legal) and informal (community consensus) authority
upon which the rules are based, who gets to form them and how they are implemented. It
also includes informal rules of behavior that are commonly understood between actors in
the market. The social context “embedding” these markets is therefore very important
and more attention needs to be paid to the social embedding of organic markets to
understand how and when they will grow and how and when market governance
structures help or hinder their growth.
Secondly, fairness is an important issue in the creation of market governance structures.
If people think governance is unfair, they may exit the system. Many people talk about
food localization as the creation of networks of trust. However, as David Goodman and I
have recently argued, “trust” tends to be “black-boxed,” that is, everyone talks about trust
but no one ever says directly what trust is and how you can recognize it when it exists.xxix
It is necessary to open up this box to understand the micropolitics of local networks.
Understanding market governance structures is one way to do this, to thereby understand
how and when the rules of interaction are set in ways that allow fairness and trust.
What people involved in the creation of new organic markets don’t seem to be aware of,
however, is the extent of conceptual governance resources available from other
commodities with well-developed governance structures, such as water and electricity.
While there are many differences between these commodities, the exchange of these
products all occur in arenas where markets have rules, and a process for public input into
those rules. For water, those rules often take place at a local “watershed” level that
sometimes overlaps with the local foodshed. We would do well to draw upon the
expertise of those who have been involved in those market governance structures for
many decades.
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In our interest to expand market opportunities for organic farmers, we therefore need to
recognize that the expansion of local organic markets will require the setting of marketexpanding governance structures that will involve more public interaction between
farmers and local consumers. Unfortunately, as someone who has been inviting farmers
to local consumer events for years, I realize farmers can feel that going the extra mile of
schmoozing with consumers can seem like yet another stress on their already
overwhelmingly work-filled lives. Farmers who are interested in growing their local
markets need to talk to each other to learn how to interact with local consumers in ways
that are not only sane but efficient and maybe even pleasurable. Consumers also need to
figure out how to interact with farmers in ways that do not simply exhaust everyone.
This may sound like an unimportant point, but I’ve sat at many consumer-led local food
policy meetings in which farmers, glassy-eyed with farmwork exhaustion, were clearly
wondering why they were there. Consumers in these organizations often have day jobs,
too, and many are active in representing other political aspects of their lives beyond food.
We need to come up with processes that create governance structures that are
straightforward and easy, while being respectful of both diverse views and limited
amounts of time.
How do we do this? Well, for the groups I have belonged to, the number one rule – you
might call it a kind of governance structure – is that people meet around food. I gained
that insight from a group in Berkeley in the 1980s called the “Radical Garden Party.”
This was a group of burned-out activists who loved to garden and cook but who were
completely opposed to ever attending another meeting in their lives. (They were, by the
way, the group that came up with the phrases, “Give peas a chance” and “Freeze the
zukes.” They also ran the Berkeley Farmers Market for many years.) Their first and
foremost rule was to never have meetings, only potlucks. Our Food Policy Forums have
gone one better: we provide dinner to anyone who wants to attend. In that way, we
respect a person’s time and repay them for their willingness to lend a hand by giving us
their input and perspective. Utilizing a combination of volunteer chefs and activist-cooks
utilizing farmer-donated produce, we have done some great eating while participating in
some excellent conversations. The food and the talk have both been delicious.
For an overview of organic market growth, see Dimitri and Greene, 2000, “Recent
Growth Patterns in the U.S. Organic Foods Market. ERS, Markets and Trade Division
and Resource Economics Division, Agriculture Information Bulletin Number 777.
ii
For an overview of the “conventionalization” of organic agriculture and the control of
organic markets by increasingly larger producers, see Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams,
UC Press, 2004, see also Barkley, 2002.
iii
For an overview of this argument, see articles by Alfred North, Oliver Williamson, and
Mark Granovetter.
iv
John Humphrey and Hubert Schmitz “Governance in Global Value Chains.” Institute
of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2000.
v
Howie, 2004.
i
Draft Session Paper – Organic Agriculture Workshop, USDA, ERS, October 6-7, 2005
Final Papers to be Published by Crop Management, Summer, 2006
12
Raphael Kaplinsky and Mike Morris. “A Handbook for Value Chain Research.”
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2000.
vii
See DuPuis and Goodman (2005 and forthcoming) for an overview of the differences
between US and EU rural development policies around value chains.
viii
For an overview of the idea of food chains as mutually constituted processes, see
Goodman and DuPuis, 2002.
ix
For an overview of organic and sustainable agriculture markets as a process of civic
engagement, see Thomas Lyson, Civic Agriculture, Penn State University Press.
x
For an overview of electricity market governance, see Carl Pechman, Governing Power,
Kluwer Press, for an overview of water markets see Brent Haddad, Rivers of Gold, Island
Press.
xi
See footnote vii.
xii
Daniel Lass, G.W. Stevenson, John Hendrickson, and Kathy Ruhf, “CSAs Across the
Nation: Findings from the 1999 CSA Survey.” Center for Integrated Agricultural
Systems, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2003,
http://www.cias.wisc.edu/pdf/csaacross.pdf. Once again, some of my knowledge in this
area is based on my own experience. I was at one time a member of a CSA Core Group,
for Janet Britt’s CSA of the Hudson-Mohawk in Schaghticoke, NY.
xiii
Lass, et al., “CSA’s across the Nation.”
xiv
Trauger Groh and Steven McFadden, Farms of Tomorrow Revisited. (Biodynamic
Association).
xv
For an overview of research carried out on farmers markets between, see Allison
Brown, “Farmers‘ market research 1940–2000: An inventory and review.” American
Journal of Alternative Agriculture 17(4): 167-176, 2002, and Neil Hamilton “Farmers
Markets: Rules, Regulations and Opportunities” at www.statefoodpolicy.org.
xvi
See, for example, Allen P, 2004 Together at the Table: Sustainability and Sustenance
in the American Agrifood System (Pennysylvania State University Press, State College,
PA); Bacon C, 2005, "Confronting the Coffee Crisis: can Fair Trade, organic and
specialty coffees reduce small-scale farmer vulnerability in northern Nicaragua?" World
Development 33: 497-511; Barham E, 2002, "Towards a theory of values-based labeling"
Agriculture and Human Values 19: 349-260; Goodman M K, 2004, "Reading Fair Trade:
Political Ecological Imaginary and the Moral Economy of Fair Trade Foods." Political
Geography 23: 891-915; Raynolds L, 2000, "Re-embedding global agriculture: the
international organic and fair trade movements" Agriculture and Human Values 17: 297309; and Shreck A, 2005, "Resistance, Redistribution, and Power in the Fair Trade
Banana Initiative" Agriculture and Human Values 22: 17-29. The Fair Trade Resource
Network has an excellent list of research articles on fair trade:
http://www.fairtraderesource.org/bib-journalarticles.html
xvii
Lisa Bunin, “Organic Cotton: The Fabric of Change.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University
of California Santa Cruz, 2001.
xviii
For an overview of these efforts see Perpetua McDonough and Patrick Commins,
“The Promotion and Marketing of Quality Products from Disadvantaged Rural Areas.”
End of Project Report, Project # 4485, EU FAIR Programme, December 2000. EU
studies and projects were mostly concerned with the expansion of markets for small
vi
Draft Session Paper – Organic Agriculture Workshop, USDA, ERS, October 6-7, 2005
Final Papers to be Published by Crop Management, Summer, 2006
13
“quality” food producers (generally producers of artisanal products like cheeses and
wines) rather than organic producers.
xix
For a thorough overview and exploration of the contradictions and difficulties of these
efforts, see Suzanne Friedberg, (2004) Green Beans and Food Scares, Oxford University
Press.
xx
See, for instance, Barham E, 2003, "Translating terroir: the global challenge of French
AOC labeling" Journal of Rural Studies 19: 127-138 and Marsden T, Smith E, 2005,
"Ecological entrepreneurship: sustainable development in local communities through
quality food production and local branding" Geoforum 36: 440-451.
xxi
For an overview of the public discussion around milk market orders see E. Melanie
DuPuis, Nature’s Perfect Food and E. Melanie DuPuis and Daniel Block, (2002) “Rings
of Contention: Classical Geography and the Politics of Milk” Association of American
Geographers, Annual Meeting, March.
E. Melanie DuPuis and David Goodman, (2005) “Should We Go Home to Eat?:
Toward a Reflexive Politics of Localism” Journal of Rural Studies 21: 359-371, DuPuis
and Goodman (forthcoming) “Just Values or Just Value?: Rethinking the Local in AgroFood Studies, in Terry Marsden and Jonathan Murdoch (Eds.) “Between the Local and
the Global (Kluwer Press), and E. Melanie DuPuis and Daniel Block, (2002) “Rings of
Contention: Classical Geography and the Politics of Milk” Association of American
Geographers, Annual Meeting, March.
xxiv
For an overview of Food Policy Councils, see publications by the Drake Agricultural
Law Center: www.statefoodpolicy.org.
xxv
In California, farmers tend to refer to themselves as “growers” but for the sake of
consistency, I will refer to all agricultural producers as farmers for this paper.
xxvi
For an overview and critique of Farm-to-School Programs, see Patricia Allen and
Julie Guthman (forthcoming) “From ‘Old School’ to ‘Farm to School’: Neoliberalization
from the Ground Up.”
xxvii
For an overview of Buy Fresh, Buy Local, see ongoing work by Patricia Allen, Clare
Hinrichs and Julie Guthman.
xxviii
I am thinking of consortiums differently here than cooperatives. As mentioned
above, organic sales coops usually are not focused singly on local markets. They are
looking to expand their ability to sell into markets in general.
xxix
See endnote iii.
xxiii
Draft Session Paper – Organic Agriculture Workshop, USDA, ERS, October 6-7, 2005
Final Papers to be Published by Crop Management, Summer, 2006
14