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Although 97% of U.S. farms are “family-owned,” little research examines how gender and sexual relationships – inherent in familial dynamics – influence farmers’ practices and livelihoods. Gender an...

Farmers struggle to afford farmland because competing land uses raise prices higher than what farmers earn, especially in small-scale and sustainable agriculture. Farmers often depend on an intimat...

Although typically invisible, neoliberal policies and ideologies are often at the root of why farmers markets struggle to offer affordable prices for consumers, sufficient income for farmers, and expand socially and environmentally sustainable food systems. Argentinian ferias francas, a variation on farmers markets, offer a unique case to examine how they may be designed to alleviate these issues by challenging neoliberalism through legislative mechanisms. Ferias francas emerged as an explicitly anti-neoliberal, grassroots response to Argentina’s expansion of neoliberal agricultural policies that stimulated global agribusiness and displaced small-scale farmers. Organizers partnered with municipal, provincial, and national governments to develop legislation to support small-scale farmers and to make the network of ferias competitive with global agribusiness. I ask, how can organizers expand farmers markets’ potential to fulfill the social and environmental goals of agri-food movements, given neoliberal capitalism’s constraints and contradictions? I analyze feria legislation by situating it in its social and historical context, and comparing legislative mechanisms to core elements of neoliberalism in the economy and in the everyday mentalities of agri-food activists. I find that mechanisms such as setting prices lower than neighboring supermarkets and establishing uniform prices for feria goods contest some aspects of neoliberalism. However, the ferias also reproduce neoliberalism, and are still subject to the price standards set under the global neoliberal agroeconomy, raising questions about their prospects for sustainability under neoliberal capitalism. This analysis of feria legislation makes neoliberalism’s influence on farmers markets visible and highlights legislative mechanisms that address some of its harmful effects.

Intimate relationships are foundational to farm viability. They affect how farmers share tasks, earn income, and access land, yet the role of sexuality and heteronormativity in agriculture remains understudied. Furthermore, queer people are largely ignored as potential farmers by the sustainable agriculture and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movements. I document the lived experiences of queer farmers, an underresearched group, through participant observation and interviews with 30 sustainable farmers of various genders and sexualities in New England. I use a queer perspective to illuminate sexualized and heteronormative patterns in sustainable agriculture. Whereas the perception of rural heterosexism can discourage queer participation in agriculture, queer farmers faced less overt heterosexism than they expected. However, they did experience heterosexism particular to sustainable agriculture, and confronting it might jeopardize relationships important for economic and environmental sustainability and land access. Some farmers were attracted to sustainable agriculture for reasons specific to gender, sexuality, and anticapitalist values. I argue that sexuality and heteronormativity are embedded in farmer recruitment, retention, and land acquisition, which are critical for the transition to sustainable agriculture. I offer the sustainable agriculture movement a lens for envisioning alternatives for farm families, homes, and workplaces.

United States agricultural policies have systematically disadvantaged farmers of color throughout U.S. history and today. The Alternative Food Movement (AFM) is redesigning food systems to improve human and environmental health damaged by conventional industrial agriculture, but is simultaneously reproducing racial disparities. The Food Justice Movement (FJM) is fighting to hold the AFM accountable for building food systems that prioritize racial and social justice. However, contemporary conversations of food justice/sovereignty and race, as areas of study, are often missing the important discussions of the long and rich history of farmers of color who have used agriculture as a means of resistance to systemic racial oppression. This chapter uses White’s (Freedom farmers: Agricultural resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC, 2018) theoretical framework of Collective Agency and Community Resilience (CACR) to illuminate the resistance strategies of farmers of color in three key areas of racism in agriculture: (1) policies targeting U.S.-born Black farmers, (2) policies targeting immigrant Latinx farmers, and (3) AFM spaces and organizations. We argue that an understanding of race and agriculture, using the theoretical framework of CACR and its strategies of prefigurative politics, commons as praxis, and economic autonomy, provides a way to shift the discussion from one often seen through a lens of oppression to one that has the potential to move toward self-sufficiency, self-determination, and liberation.