Abstract
Small-scale, artisanal livestock production is framed as “other” by conventional livestock producers, and rural communities. This alterity, although not without cost, allows women to be involved as active entrepreneurs and managers in artisanal livestock production and also allows farmers to pursue management strategies with the explicit purpose of enhancing animal welfare. The case study presented here, an artisanal goat dairy farm managed by three women, demonstrates that by embracing feminine care identities, these women carve a space for themselves within livestock production in which they can pursue their own economic and affective goals. Analysis of ethnographic data also demonstrates that farmers’ decision-making regarding animal production is based on both affective and instrumental concerns. If we are to understand and operationalize the affective component of farmer decision making based on the livestock–farmer relationship, we must begin to consider to what extent livestock themselves are social actors.
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Vertical and horizontal integration within agriculture have led to decreased agency on the part of individual farmers, as well as consumers. Heffernan (2000) describes the dramatic restructuring of livestock agriculture in which consolidation has resulted in the “disproportionate amount of influence on the quantity, quality, type, location of production, and price of the product at the production stage and throughout the entire food system” (p. 66). This situation has resulted in decreasing profit margins for livestock producers per unit of production, therefore, there is significant motivation for farmers to seek to farm at a larger scale.
Animal welfare is of course not the only way in which animals are affected by changes in livestock production. Farm animals’ roles in society, their day to day life experience, are dramatically altered, as are the particular ways that livestock affect the social world. Though welfare is the arena in which we have the most scientific knowledge, if we are to increase our understanding of animals in society, as has been argued is an important frontier in the social sciences (Arluke 2002; Shapiro 2002; Wolch 2002; Tovey 2003; Buller and Morris 2003; Kendall et al. 2006), farm animals’ experiences beyond welfare become important research topics.
This emphasis on dichotomous rationality in some ways parallels the ethical and philosophical debate over animal welfare versus animal rights, in which those taking a hard animal rights perspective conclude that nearly any instrumental use of animals is ethically wrong (for example, Regan 2001).
Although this article is about alternative livestock production, and the analysis presented here suggests that many aspects of animal welfare are likely better served in an alternative rather than conventional production system, it is worth noting that there is a great deal of evidence that most conventional livestock producers do indeed care about the welfare of their animals for a variety of reasons. This aspect of conventional production remains understudied.
Although many writers have urged social scientists to further explore and problemetize animal agency, we have not yet developed and applied methodology for this purpose (for a discussion of our shortcomings in this regard, see Hribal 2007). I personally do not pretend to achieve this ambitious feat in this article; however, the case presented illustrates some of the ways that farm animals can be social subjects.
In the interest of protecting participants’ privacy as much as possible while retaining the significance of the data, I have assigned each of the participants a pseudonym, and changed the names of their businesses.
I will be using several terms specific to dairy goat production. A doe refers to female goat; a milker refers to female goat that produces milk; a buck refers to an uncastrated male goat, while a wether refers to a castrated male goat. A kid is a baby or young goat, while kidding refers to does giving birth; freshening is when a doe develops a new milk supply after giving birth, usually each spring; and debudding refers to the practice of removing the horns of a goat through either chemical or physical means.
It is important to note the fundamental difference in the animal welfare perspective on castration, versus that of the animal rights community. From among the range of castration methods available, animal welfare advocates endorse the use of practices that cause the least suffering. Animal rights advocates, on the other hand, largely reject the argument for the necessity of castration at all, especially when sought to increase livestock production. Animal rights advocates may argue that any castration is an unjustifiable limitation on an animal’s right to engage in the range of behavior which the species has evolved, in this case, sexual and reproductive behaviors. This difference between the animal welfare and animal rights perspectives is paralleled in their positions on many different practices, although castration provides an especially clear example.
However, as is demonstrated by Pederson and Kjaergard (2004), this opportunity afforded by sustainable agriculture may be less available to women farmers women or those interested in animal welfare in the future as some forms of sustainable agriculture, especially organic agriculture, takes on some of the same scientized characteristics as conventional agriculture.
Since Karl Kautsky’s (1899/1988) Agrarian Question was published in Europe in 1899 scholars have attempted to make sense of the seemingly incomplete capitalization of agriculture, focusing on the fact that most production units remain land-based farms, owned and worked by individuals and families. While the question as to what makes agriculture seemingly different from other industries, in which capitalization was completed earlier in history, has been answered in many ways, there seems to be agreement as to the effect of the increasing capitalization of agriculture—namely decreased profits for private farmers and farm families.
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Finan, A. For the love of goats: the advantages of alterity. Agric Hum Values 28, 81–96 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-010-9284-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-010-9284-8