Civic Ag

Thomas Lyson has coined the term “civic agriculture” meaning: embedding of local agriculture and food production in the community. Picture the farmers’ markets, small-scale food processors, community gardens, and organic farmers. Civic agriculture is characterized by an orientation towards local markets; an integral part of rural communities; concerned with quality and value-added products; smaller in scale and more labor/land intensive; reliance on local, site-specific knowledge; and dependence on direct markets. In his monograph, Lyson traces the development of American agriculture and their subsequent artificial separation from social contexts. As Brewster Kneen argued, agro-businesses have distanced the food system, dividing the people from where their food is produced. Lyson also outlines and illustrates the theoretical grounding of civic agriculture. He argues that civic agriculture will likely become an enduring feature of the agricultural landscape as it fills the geographic and economic spaces that have been passed by or largely ignored by the industrial agro-food system.


Constance, Douglas. Review of Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community Thomas A. Lyson Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2004. In Agriculture and Human Value (2007): 24: 127-128.