Local Ag + Local Community

Macias provides a pilot study on the impact of local agriculture on local communities, focusing upon food equity, social integration, and natural human capital. Local agriculture has been growing in significance as consumer protection and environmental concerns of industrial food production have been more widely acknowledged. Economic and geopolitical costs have also risen to the height that “food miles” are being counted. For these and a myriad of other reasons, “food citizenship” or “civic agriculture” is on the rise. Through farmers markets, community-supported agriculture, and local agriculture, embedded relationships are formed between the consumer and the farmer. Intervale, a sustainable agriculture project in Burlington, VT is the focus. The sociological components of local agriculture are: food equity, the quality of food available across socio-economic lines; social integration, in contrast to the growing decline in community participation (Durkeim’s theory of anomie, 1951) and the rising consumer identity; and natural human capital, a portable asset in which we invest time and resources over a lifetime to increase our knowledge of the natural world.

Thomas Macias, “Working Toward a Just, Equitable, and Local Food System: The Social Impact of Community-Based Agriculture.” Social Science Quarterly vol 89, no 5 December 2008: 1086-1101.