Thirty years after the birth of organic agriculture in California, the industry looks more than ever like the agribusiness model it set out to oppose. The early dream of producing food in ecologically sustainable ways has withered under multiple pressures, but an analysis by a geographer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggests that government subsidies would help restore the organic movement as a force for environmental and social transformation.
"The organic industry in California has largely replicated what it set out to oppose," said Julie Guthman, assistant professor of community studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of the forthcoming book Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California
(Berkeley: UC Press, 2004).
Guthman will discuss her analysis during the 24th Annual Ecological Farming Conference January 21-24, the world's foremost sustainable agriculture conference, at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove. Guthman's workshop, entitled "Impacts and Implications of Concentration in the Organic Industry," is scheduled for Friday, January 23, at 10:30 a.m. Guthman, a faculty affiliate of the UCSC Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems, is part of a contingent of sustainable agriculture experts from UCSC who will be presenting during Eco-Farm...
Corporate buyouts of smaller organic operations are a visible sign of change in the organic industry, but Guthman insists that the paradox of organic is much more complex than a story of "big versus small, or good guys versus bad guys. I call it a trilemma, because it's about what growers need, what consumers need, and what workers need."
