Meeting the Expectations of People and the Land: Enacting Sustainable Agriculture

View the project final report

• 2007 annual report

Commodities

Practices

• Sustainable Communities: analysis of personal/family life, quality of life, social networks, social psychological indicators

Meeting the Expectations of People and the LandPoet and farmer Wendell Berry defines sustainable agriculture as an agriculture that does not “deplete soils or people” and meets “the expectations of the land.” The proposed research will provide a deeper understanding of the sociology of expectations from within the context of farming as an occupation. The research will answer the questions of what farmers and potential farmers expect agriculture to provide for them, for their family and their community. Farmer expectations will be placed within the system of “the expectations of the land” and the expectations formed by the larger political, social, and economic structures of society. To create a baseline of farmer expectations the research will take advantage of a unique opportunity of using historical survey data carried out by a prominent Rural Sociologist. In the fall of 1948 William H. Sewell administered a questionnaire entitled The Occupational Plans of Wisconsin Youth to over 1800 high school juniors and seniors in three predominantly rural Wisconsin counties. With support from NCR-SARE 15 interviews of the original 1948 respondents, now in their 70s, will be conducted. Farming is an essential part of the ecological, economic, and social health of the North Central Region. Understanding farmer expectations will lead to better policy and programs encouraging farmers to stay in farming, pass their farms on to the next generation, and also entice new people into farming as an occupation and a livelihood.

The primary objective of the proposed research is to gain a deeper understanding of the sociology of expectations from within the context of farming as an occupation in Wisconsin. The research will answer the questions of what farmers and potential farmers expect agriculture to provide for them, for their family and their community. Farmer expectations will be placed within the system of “the expectations of the land” and the expectations of the larger society that buys and consumes agricultural products. In the short-term this project will inform ongoing and future initiatives and policy focused on keeping agricultural land in production. Such work is often focused on economic issues and environmental “services” provided by agriculture as a land use. This project will ensure that social issues of farmers, farm families, and farm communities will be better considered. The immediate-term outcome of this project is to better understand farmer expectations to create better policy and programs encouraging farmers to stay in farming, pass their farms on to the next generation, and also entice new people into farming as an occupation and a livelihood. And finally, the long-term outcome of this project is to have a vibrant agriculture that does not “deplete soils or people.”

The work described above will be summarized in a two-page fact sheet on agricultural expectations and its implications for agriculture that does not deplete “the soils or people.” This will be published, in-house, in hard copy form as part of the on-going Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems series of research reports. It will also be made available on the CIAS website. This research will also engage with current initiatives in the state and region to maintain farming as a viable livelihood, ecologically, economically, and socially. This engagement will ensure that the social aspects of farming, the sociology of expectations, will be considered in present and future policy and action.