Fall 1995 (v7n4)
Cornelia Butler Flora
Journal Paper No. J16309, Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa (Project No. 3281). 1995
Evidence is mounting that the benefits of sustainable agriculture are not merely environmental and do not stop at the farm gate, but also improve community wellbeing. Documenting these social and economic changes is becoming easier as greater numbers of farmers, often concentrated in particular places, are adopting sustainable production and marketing practices. At the same time, social scientists in a variety of fields are discovering the unique importance for community development of "social capital," defined as "features of social organization, such as networks, norms and trust, that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit." (Putnam, 1993) New methods for measuring social capital at the community level are making it possible for researchers to compare social relationships in communities where sustainable agriculture is practiced widely with thos in communities surrounded by industrial agriculture. A long line of sociological research has linked industrial agriculture with community decline. The question today is: Can sustainable agriculture reverse this trend
Cornelia Butler Flora, currently a rural sociologist at Iowa State University, has been a leading scholar in this field for many years. In this article Flora reports the results of a fiveyear study of four Midwest communities. She wanted to know if sustainable agriculture contributes to community social capital by enhancing the community's ability to identify problems, consider alternatives, and make needed adjustments after solutions are first implemented; or, alternatively, if it detracts from healthy community development by creating isolated subgroups who distrust each other.
Methodology
Flora selected her four communities from a recently published study funded by the Northwest Area Foundation (1995). Researchers in that study developed an index to classify farms as either "sustainable" or "conventional." The index consisted of three criteria: 1) reduction in the use of purchased chemicals and fertilizers, 2) use of ecological practices such as natural fertilizers, more complex crop rotations, and diversified crop and livestock production, and 3) commitment to these practices as a longterm goal reflected in the farmer's values. Those who scored highest on the index were classified as "sustainable" and those who scored lowest as "conventional." The authors of the Northwest Area Foundation study were careful to note that the farmers labeled "sustainable" were not sustainable in any absolute sense, but only in relation to other farmers surveyed. Likewise, those labeled as "conventional" were only relatively less sustainable than others on the index. The "conventional" label was only applied to those who scored at the low extreme of the index, thus allowing comparisons between two groups with polar opposite practices and values.
For her study, Flora selected two communities identified in the Foundation study as having a critical mass of "sustainable" farmers and matched each of these with a community of similar size, agricultural potential, and distance from major population centers and highways whose farmers were identified as "conventional." Between 1989 and 1994, each of the four was studied using the techniques of community ethnography, a way of operationalizing a variety of measures of social infrastructure and providing a description of a community's institutions and setting. Among the specific techniques used were content analysis of local newspapers, analysis of census data, field visits, interviews with community leaders, windshield surveys to determine social class indicators, and simply hanging out in cafes, stores and other businesses talking with owners, patrons and employees. Each of the four communities had a population under 2,000.
The agricultural economies of the two pairs of communities were slightly different. Communities in one pair were located in alluvial plains, and consisted primarily of locally owned dairy and row crop operations of moderate size. Communities in the second pair were located in glaciated areas with less rainfall, and featured cattle production and small grains. Flora notes that in the sustainable farming communities, levels of community cohesion and cooperation were low when the study began in 1989, as indicated primarily by the absence of functioning civic organizations and lowachieving town governments.
Findings and Conclusions
Over the course of the fiveyear study little change in community cohesion or effectiveness was noted in the two communities featuring conventional agriculture. By contrast, both communities where sustainable agriculture was more widely practiced experienced significant increases in their ability to mobilize community resources for development (Table 1). Flora found that a significant factor in the renewal was a shift that redefined sustainable farmers as community resources rather than sources of embarrassment. In one town, the local sustainable agriculture organization became an important part of the community fabric, sponsoring a variety of communitywide events. This in turn helped to spark a revival in city government, and ultimately to the creation of a highly successful community development plan with state backing.
The other community formed an economic development task force, which invested in an organic seed cleaning facility for local farmers to replace a business that had left the community. A small input supply and machinery repair shop in the town developed a field implement particularly useful for sustainable farmers and began to market this product by mail order.
Interpreting these and related findings, Flora believes that "movement toward sustainable agriculture through local sustainable farming organizations in a community is associated with, although not necessarily determinant of, an increase in a community's social capital" (p. 16). A critical factor is the problemsolving mindset that is integral to sustainable farming, the ability to adapt to local conditions while striving toward economic, environmental and social goals. As Flora puts it, "community citizens and farmers both begin to see that their action,collective for communities and individual or household for farms,can make a difference in achieving goals" (p. 16). The farmer and the community no longer define themselves as victims of big government or outside industry, but begin to distinguish choices they can make to enhance economic security and environmental quality. According to Flora, "...a pattern of problem solving guided by norms of mutual trust and reciprocity is encouraged by the sustainable agriculture movement and the various organizations that give social expression to that movement, and that this is what helps to nurture and build social capital within small, agriculturally dependent rural communities" (p. 2).
Reviewer's Comments
Flora's study demonstrates that the somewhat nebulous concept of "social capital" can be successfully operationalized and linked to sustainable agriculture. While her data alone cannot prove the thesis that sustainable agriculture benefits community development by increasing social capital, it opens up a fertile new area for empirical investigation. Given the obvious dissimilarities between the isolated, small communities Flora studies and California's rural communities (typically larger and with greater proximity to urban centers), her work cannot be taken as an exact blueprint for testing the social capital thesis here. It is unlikely that one could find communities in California where boundaries are discrete enough and farming practices so clearly distinguishable, to enable the sort of community comparisons she has employed.
On the other hand, California is a ripe setting for studying how the proliferation of grower information netwrks, local marketing groups, farmland preservation coalitions, and other sustainable agriculture organizations at the local, regional and statewide levels are developing social capital that is benefiting the state and its communities. As in the Midwest, new levels of trust, cooperation, and an empowering problemsolving focus are creating both a heightened subjective sense of belonging and tangible economic gains. We need studies that articulate the impact of changing production and marketing techniques on community social and economic organization, including support networks, community values, and levels of trust and cohesion. Flora's study is one useful example, as is a recent Cornell study of farmers' markets which found that the social capital created by pursuing sustainable agriculture often serves as an incubator for creating new businesses that benefit the entire community (Lyson et al., 1995). The growth of this type of research is a welcome sign that the socioeconomic dynamics of sustainable agriculture are beginning to get the attention they deserve from social scientists.
Table 1. Indicators of development of social capital in communities identified as having a sustainable agriculture emphasis.
Symbolic Structure
- formation of a new community development organization
- increased discussion of sustainable agriculture in coffee shops
- two new businesses geared to local agriculture, one for seed cleaning and one manufacturing a special farm implement
- city government revived
- broad input into a community betterment plan
- newcomers gained access to important elected and appointed positions
- sustainable agriculture organization promotes a variety of communitywide events
Resource Mobilization Capacity
- increased number of volunteers and participation in local government and organizations
- plan developed to revitalize main street
- improvements in police and fire protection
- town's Economic Development Corporation revived and a community visioning process begun
- a local building restored and moved to a park in the state capital
Networks
- increased ties between local farmers and the state sustainable agriculture network
- more cooperation between organizations on planning and conducting community activities
- mothers participating in the WIC program (Women, Infants and Children) become more active in school, church and community activities
- newcomers asked into leadership positions in a planned and effective way
- Chamber of Commerce revitalized and casts a wide net for memberships
- community development efforts aided by visits and discussions with communities that had undertaken similar projects
- several new singing groups formed
References
Bird, Elizabeth Ann, Gordon L. Bultena, and John C. Gardner (eds.). 1995. Planting the Future: Developing an Agriculture that Sustains Land and Community. Iowa State University Press, Ames, IA.
Lyson, T.A., G.W. Gillespie and D.L. Hilchey. 1995. Farmers' markets and the local community: Bridging the formal and informal economy. American Journal of Alternative Agriculture (forthcoming).
Putnam, Robert. 1993. The prosperous community: Social capital and public life. The American Prospect 13:3536.
For more information write to: Cornelia Butler Flora, Department of Sociology, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 500111070.
(DCC.008)
Contributed by David Campbell
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