Introduction

Earlier this year I corresponded with Wendell Berry, an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, to thank him for his decades of leadership and inspiration for a sustainable and just food system and democracy. For over 50 years he has directly and indirectly significantly influenced the formation, growth and important role of the Agriculture and Human Values (AHV) journal and the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) (Berry 1993, 1996). Wendell responded to my letter by noting that the transition “we hoped for so long ago is happening very slowly, if at all. But the efforts and friendly associations are nonetheless dear to me, and they have kept alive a hope deserving to live” (Wendell Berry, personal correspondence Jan. 2022).

The AHV journal has provided a key forum for a community of interdisciplinary, international researchers, educators, and policy makers to analyze and debate core issues, values and hopes facing the nation and the world and to recommend strategies and actions for addressing them. This agenda includes the more specific challenges and opportunities confronting agriculture, food systems, communities, and science, as well as the broader issues and grand challenges of climate change, democracy, and inequality. While these agendas and hopes often seem discrete and independent, they are significantly interrelated, interconnected and interdependent. Moreover, both the broader grand challenges and the more specific issues and goals have only grown in scope, importance, and complexity over the last forty years. While the focus of the journal has been primarily on agriculture, food and related issues, the broader challenges provide the past, current, and future context and have also been important topics for the journal (Table 1).

Table 1 Agriculture and Human Values Journal Articles & Reviews by Topic 1984–2022
Full size table

Several articles, reviews, and presidential presentations have noted our need as a community of scholars focused on food systems to go beyond our comfort zones to address broader societal issues and global challenges (e.g. Pretty 2020; Gliessman 2020; Whitley 2019). Molly Anderson (2021) in her 2020 AFHVS Presidential Address argues that we must push beyond the boundaries imposed by our education, disciplinary training, and institutional and political systems to solve global challenges. She identifies broad challenges facing those trying to build more sustainable food systems including: overcoming the technocratic and productivist approach of industrial agriculture; remaining united as a movement while creating collaborations with other movements; and redistributing power across food system actors so that everyone can realize their human rights, including the right to food.

Building on those ideas and the suggestions of my colleagues, my reflections on the focus of the journal over 40 years can only highlight a limited number of excellent articles addressing both the grand challenges, as well as the food systems, citizen and public science, and empowered communities. To situate my reflections in a broader context, I begin with the important analysis of some key general and grand challenges. These challenges include: climate change and global warming; threats to democracy and the growing neo-nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism; and increasing national and international inequality.

Climate change

Climate change is a significant grand challenge. Many scientists, political leaders, and the media see climate change as the defining issue of our time and the earth at a defining moment (Hawken 2017; EPA 2022; NASA 2022; Gore 2007, Attenborough 2019). The clear and precise warnings made about our earth’s changing climate are materializing as predicted with record heat waves, intense droughts, massive wildfires and supercharged storms with greater rainfall and higher storm surges. Additional threats to humans include rising sea levels, ecosystem collapse, food and water scarcity, more disease, and economic loss wreaking havoc on people’s livelihoods and communities. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. Another recent finding is the likelihood that climate change could spark the next pandemic (Colin et al. 2022). Because of these numerous impacts on the environment and humans, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century.

While climate change shifts may be natural, since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. These fuels are by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for over 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions. As greenhouse gas emissions blanket the Earth, they trap the sun’s heat (EPA 2022; NASA 2022). Wealthy countries, including the United States, Canada, Japan and much of western Europe, account for just 12% of the global population today but are responsible for 50% of all the planet-warming greenhouse gases released from fossil fuels and industry over the past 170 years (Hawken 2017).

While reducing global warming is a long-term effort, the rate can be slowed, and the amount of global warming limited by reducing human emissions of heat-trapping gases and soot. Recent books such as Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming (Hawken 2017) and Designing Climate Solutions (Harvey et al. 2018) have proposed bold and comprehensive yet simple plans for reversing the current trajectory. The ideas vary but many of the tools and suggestions needed to address climate change already exist. Some of the concepts are broad ones that governments and businesses must implement, but many other ideas involve changes that anyone can make.

Several articles and reviews in the AHV journal analyze climate change impacts and strategies that are both broader and more personal. Examples include; changing one’s diet and consumption patterns; rethinking the ethics of our dietary choices; actually eating the food purchased and composting the rest; examining the potential and limited role of Climate Smart Agriculture for its perceived contributions to food productivity, adaptation, and mitigation to climate change; and advocating for the necessity for humanity to be involved in research on climate change in all its aspects: political, legal, cultural, economic, technical, environmental and social (Tickell 2020; Oncioiu 2019; Shilomboleni 2020; Paulson 2021; Kortetmäki 2021; Wilkins 2005; Gussow & Clancy 1986).

Agriculture is particularly challenged by climate change. Increasing temperatures, weather variability, changes in crop and livestock viability, shifting agroecosystem boundaries, invasive crops and pests, and more frequent extreme weather events are negatively impacting food and agricultural production. Climate change is reducing crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals, and lowering livestock productivity.

At the same time, agriculture is a major part of the climate problem. It currently generates 19–29% of total greenhouse gas emissions (Vermeulen et al. 2012; Hawken 2017; EPA 2022; World Bank 2021). When fossil fuels are utilized in agricultural production, rich soils are plowed and forests are removed for crops and livestock, heat-trapping carbon dioxide is released into the air. Cattle and other livestock and rice fields release methane thereby warming the globe. Other greenhouse gases, including nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases, are seeping out of our agricultural lands (Hawken 2017). Without action, that percentage could rise substantially as other sectors reduce their emissions. Additionally, one third of food produced globally is either lost or wasted. Addressing food loss and waste is critical to helping meet climate goals and reduce stress on the environment (World Bank 2020).

In 2019 the Union of Concerned Scientists (2019) issued a report entitled Climate Change and Agriculture: A Perfect Storm in Farm Country. They noted that several authoritative reports, most notably the multiagency 2018 Fourth National Climate Assessment (Reidmiller et al. 2018) have reviewed the scientific data projecting what US farmers should expect to face in coming decades and it’s not pretty. Drawing on those reports the Union of Concerned Scientists predict that several additional impacts will likely occur due in part to the nature of large scale, energy intensive monocultures. For example, monoculture cropping systems leave soil bare for much of the year, rely on synthetic fertilizer, and plow fields regularly. These practices leave soils low in organic matter and prevent formation of deep, complex root systems. Among the results are reduced water-holding capacity which worsens drought impact, and increased vulnerability to erosion and water pollution which worsens flood impact. With minimal biodiversity over wide areas of land, this lack of diversity in monocultural farming operations also exposes farmers to greater risk and amplifies climate impacts such as changes in crop viability and encroaching pests. As summer heat intensifies, another issue farmers and farm workers will face is increasingly grueling and potentially unsafe working conditions. Moreover, it is worth noting that climate change risks are not distributed equally, nor are the pathways to climate adaptation. Public policies and institutional practices have long denied communities of color, low-income groups, and tribal communities’ access to critical resources and decision-making processes, leaving them with fewer options and more risk in the face of climate impacts. It will be important to ensure that these communities have a voice in shaping their adaptation strategies. (Magdoff 2015).

Concrete steps and strategic planning will be important to prepare for climate impacts on agriculture, to reduce both their severity and vulnerability to them, and to protect the future of our food supply as well as the well-being of the farmers and communities that produce it. The farm and food system and particularly sustainable agriculture and local food systems can be important parts of the solution, by reducing emissions at every stage of the food production and distribution process, by building agroecosystems and agroforestry that can sequester more carbon, and by strengthening and empowering communities (Reid 2009, Ravera et al. 2019, Furman et al. 2014, Oncioiu 2019). In the Foreword of Drawdown, Jonathan Foley, Executive Director, California Academy of Science, concludes “Beyond the damage to our planet, climate change threatens to undermine our social fabric and the foundations of democracy” (Hawken 2017: ix).

Democracy

A second key grand challenge is the future of democracy. Nisbet (1992:16) observed that “Lincoln’s famous definition of democracy as government of, by, and for the people cannot be improved upon whether as a moral ideal or as a historical description”. Today there are dangerous trends both internal to the US and globally. Over the last several decades in the US there has been increasing sharp social, political, and cultural divisions, growing economic discrepancies, and a wide pattern of group demands for rights and resources with little corresponding commitment to responsibilities and contributions often described as liberal redistributive justice. More recently a deliberative form of democracy originally advanced by Jurgen Habermas (1979) has emerged. This view of citizenship stresses a democracy aimed at a shared understanding of values, responsibilities as well as rights, and the concept of a public world of value in itself. This is particularly important because liberal politics, which is largely concerned with protecting democratic rights, especially those of minorities and the relatively powerless, has resulted in an explosion of demands, strategies, and mobilizations targeted at acquiring rights and resources. As political scientists Rosenblum and Muirhead (2019) points out, individual rights matter less than a culture that encourages respect and equality among its members in daily interaction. Civic spiritedness must be nurtured if democracy is to work and communities are to thrive.

Deliberative politics has emerged as an alternative to the incivility, rancor, and meanness that often characterize public debates today. Deliberative theorists stress processes that contribute to citizens’ understanding and appreciation of public discussion, their civility, and their commitment to the common good.

Perhaps an even greater threat to democracy has been an erosion of democratic governance nationally and internationally, particularly in light of a changing global political context. This erosion includes the rise of and often revival of extreme right-wing neo-nationalist and fascist social and political movements, authoritarian leaning governments, constraints and attacks on civil liberties, journalists and academics, and the emergence and empowerment of demagogues and autocrats (Douglass 2021; Rachman 2022; Wodak 2015). A 2022 special issue of The New Republic (TNR) entitled “Democracy in Peril” examined the current condition of democracy in the US and globally. In the US, the authors noted that “the Republican Party has aimed a bullet at democracy’s heart” with a broad assault for decades (TNR) 2022:5). This assault has included gerrymandering to enable election success without a majority, voter suppression, aggressive packing of the courts with hard-right judges and justices, and multiple media outlets relentlessly peddling alternative realities and lies and financed by right-wing billionaires. However, they also report that this is not unique to the US but a worldwide trend. (TNR 2022)

For the last six years based on over 30 million data points for 202 countries from 1789 to 2021, The Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, a Swedish think tank at the University of Gothenburg, has issued an annual Democracy Report (Boese 2022). V-Dem measures hundreds of different attributes of democracy. According to the authors the level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 is down to 1989 levels. Dictatorships are on the rise and rule 70% of the world population. Liberal democracies peaked in 2012 with 42 countries and are now down to 35, the lowest levels in over 25 years and only constitute 13% of the world population. In addition to the US, the democratic decline is especially evident in Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, as well as in parts of Latin America and the Caribbean. In summary the authors concluded that the worldwide wave of autocratization is deepening, engulfing more countries, and seems to be changing nature (Boese et al. 2022).

In the face of these significant challenges to democracy globally, it is important to acknowledge the strong connections between our food system and democracy. For forty years, the AHV journal has been a valuable source of analysis of this relationship. Over 20 years ago, Ken Dalberg (2001) published an article in the journal entitled “Democratizing society and food systems: Or how do we transform modern structures of power?” In that piece he argued that we need to diversify and decentralize the built environment as we move towards a post-fossil fuel society. He concluded that “since the reforms needed to democratize society and to democratize food systems are parallel and reinforcing, it is crucial that each of us thinks through the linkages and the potential synergies and acts constructively in each realm” (Dahlberg 2001:135). A few years earlier Alessandro Bonanno (1998) published an article entitled “Liberal democracy in the global era: Implications for the agro-food sector”. He noted the increasing inability of the nation state to control economic and non-economic environments. Bonanno concluded that this is particularly problematic for the agro-food sector since democratization of its development and programs have historically been based on the intervention and control of nation-state agencies. More recently several AHV journal authors have discussed the role of the links between democracy and the food system. For example, Levkoe (2006) discusses learning democracy through food justice movements. Finally, several authors examine food democracy initiatives and identify important research needs and strategies to pursue (Cifuentes & Gugerell 2021; Candel 2022; Thompson et al. 2020).

Inequality

A third key challenge is the issue of social equity and rising inequality over the last several decades, leading to serious negative consequences for individuals, families, communities and society (Reich 2015, 2020; Stiglitz 2019; Flora et al. 2016; Piketty 2014, 2020; Giridharadas 2019; Geismer 2022). The global regime of neoliberalism, that has dominated much of the economic policymaking since late 1970, has worsened inequality, strafed social nets and public investment, and threatened democracy. Once celebrated for its prosperous middle class, the US now faces its greatest wealth disparity in eighty years. Joseph Stiglitz in his recent book People, Power and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent (2019) notes that a few corporations dominate entire sectors of the economy, contributing to skyrocketing inequality and slow growth. He shows that the assault on universities, science, the judiciary, and the media undermine the very institutions that are critical to the US’s economic strength and its democracy.

Robert Reich, author of 17 books, two award winning Netflix documentaries, and former Secretary of Labor, in his recent book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It (2020), expands on Stiglitz’s thesis. Reich develops a compelling analysis of how the rules governing the US’s form of capitalism have dramatically contributed to growing income inequality and how these rules have been distorted by the role of money in our politics. Reich exposes the myths of meritocracy, corporate social responsibility, and the “free market” which have been combined by those at the top to install an oligarchy, to justify their accumulation of even more wealth and power and to undermine democracy. Statistics on income, wealth and political contributions are particularly disturbing. Between 1980 and 2019, the share of the nation’s total household income accumulated by the richest 1% more than doubled while the earnings of the bottom 90% barely rose. CEO pay increased 940% compared to the typical worker’s pay which increased 12%. Inequality in wealth increased even faster with the richest 0.1% rising from less than 10% of the nation’s wealth to 20% over the last forty years. Their share of the wealth is approximately equal to the wealth of the bottom 90% of households combined. Moreover, the bottom 50% of the US population now owns just 1.3% of the country’s wealth. The only other country with similarly high levels of wealth concentration is Russia.

Much of this redistribution of income and wealth is accompanied by a dramatic increase in political power of the very wealthy and a similar decrease in political influence of everyone else. This shift is directly related to the enormous flow of money into politics. In the election cycle of 2016, the richest 0.01% accounted for a record-breaking 40% of all campaign contributions up from 15% to 1980. As Reich (2020) points out, we have created a government system of socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for the rest with a concomitant shift in corporate America from stakeholder to shareholder and private capitalism.

Anand Giridharada, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2019), notes in his review of Reich’s book “when America’s plutocrats use money to capture power to make sure that they monopolize future money, rage swells, human potential withers on the vine, and the soul of the country changes” Reich 2020:i). Despite this grim analysis, both Reich and Stiglitz actually see ways to reclaim power and to remake the system for all.

Once again, over its history the AHV journal provided an important platform to analyze and assess inequality in the food system and to suggest strategies for addressing the inequalities. Despite increasing interest in the food system transformation and social equity, there remains a general lack of social justice in the agri-food system. There continues to be the prevalence of obesity and hunger particularly in low-income and minority populations and general exploitation of labor throughout the system. Work on farms, food processing facilities and in restaurants is characterized by highly gendered and racialized divisions of labor, low wages, and persistent inequalities. While many consumers and alternative agri-food organizations express interest in and support social justice goals, the incorporation of these goals into viable alternatives is often limited (Allen 2008; Sachs et al. 2014; DeLind 2002; Wells 1996; Constance 2008). For example, Joshua Sbicca (2015) in his AHV journal article “Food labor, economic inequality, and the imperfect politics of process in the alternative food movement” examined three California social movement organizations. The organizations included a labor union representing grocery store and meatpacking/food processing workers, a food justice organization working to create green jobs and independent funding models, and an organic urban farming and educational organization. Commitment to fair labor standards varied due to differences in organizational capacity, the degree of dedication to ending economic inequality, and the openness of local political and economic institutions to working class struggles, demonstrating the complexities and contradictions of addressing inequality in the food system. Doug Constance (2008) in his AHV journal article on the inequalities in the system concluded that scholars need to embrace a praxis orientation to agri-food studies and participate in social movements designed to create a more socially just alternative agri-food system.

Sustainable agriculture and local food systems

With these three grand challenges (climate change, democracy, and inequality) as part of a complex context, a majority of AHV journal scholars have thoughtfully examined the opportunities and challenges in our food and agriculture system. It is clear that business as usual will not protect the future of our food supply, nor the well-being of the farmers, communities that produce it, the broader society, and the global environment. For forty years the AHV journal has published some of the best analyses and scholarship focused on our food and agriculture system. These authors have provided a wide range of proposed alternatives and strategies to enhance the system’s viability, sustainability, and broader social goals. The following text is my modest effort to highlight some of the major insights and analyses and the key role the AHV journal has played.

Food and our food system, characterized by intense commodification and financialization and by an accelerating distancing of producer and consumer from each other and from the earth, represent the general failure of late capitalism and postmodernism (Russell 2022; Magdoff 2012). Our food comes increasingly from all points on the globe. Consequently, people are separated not only from their food, but also from knowledge about how and by whom their food is produced, processed, and transported. If these processes tend to destroy land, water, air, and human communities, as they often do, the consumers are unaware of the implications of their participation in this global food system and are unable to act responsibly and effectively for change. Moreover, as Paul Thompson points out, “nearly gone is the spirit of raising food and eating it as an act of communion with the larger whole” (1995:175,). Harriet Friedmann (2016) describes the principal dynamic in this world food economy as a move to distance and durability, the suppression of particularities of time and place in both agriculture and diets. Ultimately this distancing disempowers.

Eric Holt-Gimenez (2019) in his penetrating paper “Capitalism, food and social movements: The political economy of food system transformation” expands the critique of the dominant capitalistic and corporate global food system. He points out that one in seven people on this planet goes hungry (likely a gross underestimation given how hunger is measured), yet we produce one and a half times more than enough food for everybody. He presents data that indicates the undernourished population has increased 9% globally, despite a 12% rise in global food production per capita since 1990. Moreover, hunger in the world is concentrated in Asia and the Pacific, yet much of the publicity from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, US Department of Agriculture, the Gates Foundation and Monsanto highlights Africa. He posits that current approaches to end hunger routinely propose producing more food with more fertilizers, chemicals, high-yielding hybrid seed varieties, genetically modified organisms, and modern farming equipment (Green Revolution solutions, Cabral et al. 2022). Since Asia is already employing this strategy while Africa remains a wide-open market, a corporate food regime is promoted for Africa to address this food scarcity created more by lack of access than actual production.

Magdoff (2015), professor emeritus of plant and soil science, in an earlier paper entitled “A rational agriculture is incompatible with capitalism” arrived at the same conclusion as Holt-Gimenez (2019). Magdoff noted that the capitalist system produces a food system in which there are hungry people (well over 40 million in the US considered food insecure) although there is an abundance of food, little true cycling of nutrients with increasing reliance on fertilizers and excess nutrients on factory animal farms, farm labor and animal slaughterhouse labor that is commonly treated unfairly and/or cruelly, widespread pollution with perticides and fertilizers and several other issues. He concluded that to develop a rational agriculture which is designed to supply the entire population with a sufficient quantity, quality and variety of food and to work in harmony with the local community and ecosystem will require a new socioeconomic system. This system would be based on meeting the needs of all people instead of accumulation of profits.

In the current corporate model of our food system, Goodman, Sorj, & Wilkinson (1987) observed that crops and animals are treated increasingly as chemical components for the manufacture of a wide array of reconstituted foods, whose composition and nutritional value are not clear to the consumer. This global food system tends to reduce the entire world of life to manufactured commodities or merchandisable objects. Use of transportation technologies developed under assumptions of cheap fossil fuel, the mobility of capital, and the development of “controlled environment” production technologies permit the expansion of this system.

Because production is globally dispersed, this system appears to be decentralized, with multinational corporations seeking to reduce costs through cheap labor, minimal government regulations, and mechanization. However, the system as a whole is increasingly centralized. Particular agricultural products are grown in a limited number of areas on a decreasing number of farms, often under marketing and production contracts, and are processed and retailed by a small number of politically and economically powerful multinational corporations (Howard 2016; Lyson & Raymer 2000; Friedland 1994, 2004; Guptill and Wilkins 2002; Busch 2011; Magdoff & Tokar 2010; Demetrakakes 2021).

Market concentration in the food industry, with its attendant legal and other problems, is of course nothing new. The state of the beef and sugar markets helped inspire antitrust legislation at the turn of the 20th century. Concentration has been persistent and today may be even more prevalent. For example, some 53% of the total meat processing market is controlled by the top four firms, with four companies processing 85% of US beef and 65% of its chicken. Four companies own 80% of the beer market; four others control 83% of the ready-to-eat cereal market. For some specific products, concentration is even tighter (Demetrakakes 2021; Howard 2016).

Companies through vertical integration control everything from the seed to the table. Several of the negative impacts include price fixing, exploiting suppliers, paying extremely low worker wages, and negative health and environmental effects of their products. These impacts tend to disproportionately affect the disadvantaged, such as women, young children, recent immigrants, members of minority ethnic groups and those of lower socioeconomic status, thereby reinforcing existing inequalities. The impacts are troubling in the developed world, but perhaps the most serious consequences may occur in the developing countries, where whole regions and nations may be effectively excluded from both production and consumption of food. This globalization of the food system is broadly disempowering because it homogenizes our food, our landscapes, and our communities.

A quarter of a century ago, in an insightful and still very relevant AHV journal article, Kloppenburg et al. (1996) built on a particularly key conceptual and methodological unit of the “foodshed”, a creative analogue to the watershed [first introduced by Hedden (1929) and expanded by Arthur Getz (1991)]. They argued that recognition of one’s residence within a foodshed can confer a sense of connection and responsibility to a particular locality and enable people to produce and eat within and in harmony with the rhythms and patterns of the places where they live. According to these authors, the foodshed must be embedded in a moral economy that conditions market forces and relocates food production primarily within human needs rather than in the economists’ effective demand. By adopting this perspective, one can view the centrality of food to human life as a powerful basis for nonmarket or extra market relationships between persons, social groups, and institutions. In this model, production and consumption of food could become the basis for reinvigorating familial, community, and civic culture. Indeed, the moral economy of a foodshed is viewed as shaped and expressed principally through communities.

Kloppenburg and his colleagues also introduced the concept of a commensal community. Commensal refers both to people eating together and to the ecological relationship of organisms that obtain food from each other without damaging each other. Commitment to a moral economy requires that one work to make commensal communities as inclusive as possible. This entails moving beyond the farm-centered rural emphasis of the sustainable agriculture movement to include issues of race, class, gender, and community within and outside rural areas. According to Kloppenburg et al. (1996:37), “The commensal community should confront and address the need not just for equitable access to food, but also for broader participation in decision-making by marginalized or disempowered groups.“ Moreover, these authors observed that the standards of a commensal community require respect and affection for the land and for other species: “It is through food that humanity’s most intimate and essential connections to the earth and to other creatures are expressed and consummated” (1996:37).

Kloppenburg and his colleagues point out, however, that food is only one specific, though critical, case. One could focus as well on the global monetary system, the global health system, the global political system, and the global industrial system. Sustainability requires a change in global society as a whole. They concluded that we need the recovery and reconstitution of community in general, not simply in relation to food.

Kloppenburg and his colleagues’ creative thesis was complemented by several contemporary AHV journal authors insightful analyses, such as Paul Thompson (1992), Alessandro Bonanno (1991), Kate Clancy (1997), Tom Lyson (2000), Bill Lacy (1994), Fred Buttel (1995), Phil McMichael (2000), Carolyn Sachs (1992), Gail Feenstra (2002), Silva (1988), and Larry Busch (1989). According to Lyson et al. (1999), a growing number of practitioners and academics across the United States were “recognizing that creative new forms of community development, built around the regeneration of local food systems, may eventually generate sufficient economic and political power to mute the more socially and environmentally destructive manifestations of the global marketplace” (1999:210).

Various conceptual analyses and practical efforts to build and enhance local food systems are rediscovering community on this continent and elsewhere. Gail Feenstra (2002) in her AFHVS presidential address, noted that communities have initiated alternative, more sustainable food and agricultural systems that attempt to integrate the community social, political, intellectual and economic spaces through public participation, new partnerships and a commitment to justice principles. Similarly, nutritionist and food system advocate Kate Clancy (1997), in her AFHVS presidential address stated, “The recovery of community as the core of local food systems is the biggest challenge of our work” (1997:113). David Orr (1992), in Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World, wrote that we need to strive for “a rejuvenation of civic culture and the rise of an ecologically literate and ecologically competent citizenry who understand global issues, but who also know how to live well in their places” (1992:1). Wendell Berry (1990) went further, arguing that a new ethic for eaters should address the fact that the condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. According to Berry (1990:127), one reason to eat responsibly is to live free.

This historical body of research and analyses provided the framework for continued innovative scholarship on sustainable agriculture and food systems. During the last 20 years, AHV journal authors have been major contributors to this research and education. These scholars have proposed several important approaches to understanding and pursuing sustainable and equitable local, regional, and global food systems. These perspectives include: food justice (Levkoe 2006; Clendenning et al. 2016; Smaal et al. 2021); food sovereignty (Anderson and Bellows 2012; Wald & Hill 2016; Grey & Patel 2015; Godek 2021); agroecology (Price et al. 2022; Gliessman 2020, Montenegro de Wit 2022; Timmermann & Félix 2015); regenerative food systems (Loring 2022); civic agriculture (DeLind 2002; Poulsen 2017; Obach & Tobin 2014; Lyson 2004); alternative food networks (Rosol & Barbosa 2021; Forssell & Lanloski 2015; Hoey & Sponseller 2018); food democracy (Lopez Cifuentes & Gugerell 2021; Candel 2022); and rights-based food systems (Anderson 2008). Broader approaches have also been proposed such as transitions to sustainability and moving beyond boundaries (Hinrichs (2008, 2014; Niewolny 2021). Each of these perspectives and social movements have made significant contributions.

With those promising strategies and models in mind, Merisa Thompson and her colleagues (2020) have suggested that there needs to be more sensitivity to the time, place, culture, and preferences of the stakeholders. These authors make the case for a deliberative approach in democratizing food. Their approach shares some important similarities to the earlier Kloppenburg et al. thesis. In Thompson and her colleagues’ piece entitled “Democratising food: The case for a deliberative approach”, the authors propose alternatives to the existing food system. They acknowledge that the approaches of food security, food sovereignty, food justice and food democracy are useful and creative ways of examining and strengthening the global food system. However, they view each as inadequate as an alternative to the status quo. To accommodate and balance all the competing goods like nutrition and health, equitable distribution, supporting livelihoods, environmental sustainability, and social justice, they propose a deliberative democratic process that incorporates the interests of all relevant parties at the local, national, regional and global levels. They recognize the challenges and provide some suggestions for moving forward with this approach (Thompson et al. 2020).

As noted earlier, deliberative politics has emerged as an alternative to the incivility, rancor, and meanness and stresses processes and procedures that contribute to citizens’ understanding and appreciation of public discussion, their civility, and their commitment to the common good. Paul Thompson (1997) has persuasively argued for a procedural theory method for implementing a deliberative approach. With this approach, social transactions are made just or unjust less by their substance or outcome than by whether they were the result of fair procedures. A “fair” procedure would be accepted not only as capable of producing a decision on the ethical acceptability of community change such as a particular local food system or development, but also as unbiased towards any particular view of social justice, such as the utilitarian, libertarian, egalitarian, or virtue perspectives. The success of the procedural approach rests on the nature and conditions of the procedures.

Kettner (1993) described a procedural approach called “discourse ethics,“ which is designed to increase the probability of producing a decision relatively unbiased toward any particular notion of social justice, sustainability or sovereignty. His approach involves five morally relevant constraints on discourse : discourse must be open to all competent speakers whose interests will be affected ; people must be free to construe the issues and their own interests in whatever terms they deem appropriate ; participants must be capable and free of constraints to take the role of others ; the process must be free of external coercion ; and statements and reasoning offered must be transparent, or aimed solely at establishing the best reasons for accepting a prescription or conclusion. These ideal conditions, however, are seldom if ever realized in practice. Actual community debates and strategies around such topics as local food systems are unlikely to reach an ethically defensible consensus. The most one can hope for is that the issues will be illuminated for the individuals to approximate ideal discourse conditions. The conscious building of social capital within the community should increase the likelihood that Kettner’s five conditions will be met. In participatory community decision making, participants must express their own positions, arguments, or objections in a common language. Only in this way can the values achieved be considered their own.

The key moral implication of the procedural approach is that policy makers and other experts, like all participants in community development and agricultural and food system sustainability, have a moral responsibility to ensure that Kettner’s five conditions are met, if not in public forums, then at least under some controlled circumstances in which ethical issues can be pursued seriously. With discourse ethics assumed as the preferred principle for social justice, democracy may be viewed as a key mechanism for ensuring both this discourse and broad citizen participation.

Returning to the discussion of the existing food system, projects and components already have emerged over the last several decades which could form the foundation for viable local food systems or commensal communities (Feenstra 2009; Cleveland et al. 2015). The articles cited below reflect only a very small portion of the myriad of research and education efforts devoted to local food systems, farmers and the green economy. One significant development has been farmers markets. Hundreds of AHV articles and reviews from all over the world describe and assess farmers markets (e.g., Leslie 2017; Carson et al. 2016; Montri et al. 2021; Pahk 2022; Chen et al. 2019; Alkon 2008). Some of the topics include the foundations of institutional-based trust, issues of social class and race, fraud and fantasy, farmers perspectives on farmers markets in low-income urban areas, and general assessments. Another similarly analyzed and widespread local food system has been community supported agriculture (CSA). Among the strengths and issues identified in the numerous AHV journal articles from multiple continents are: the differences in commitment, racial membership, and economic risks among low and high income households (e.g., Galt et al. 2017; Delind 1999), their innovative and transformative potential (e.g., Mert-Cakal & Miele 2020), and social, cultural, economic features characterizing the emergence of CSAs in France, Austria and Japan (Lagane 2015). Other significant developments in the local food systems include sustainable agriculture organizations, community and school gardens and urban agriculture (e.g., McIvor & Hale 2015; Cramer et al. 2019; Saldivar-tanaka & Krasny 2004), food banks (e.g., Vitiello et al. 2015), civic seeds (e.g. Soleri 2018), community food security coalitions, community development corporations, local food marketing (e.g., Brinkley et al. 2021), rural development institutes and centers, produce and consumer cooperatives, farm to school programs (e.g., Izumi et al. 2010; Bisceglia et al. 2021; Conner et al. 2012; Allen & Guthman 2006), and food policy councils (e.g., Gupta et al. 2018; Feenstra et al. 2021).

Finally, local restaurants that feature local produce and work closely with local farmers have become a common feature in many locations. Alice Waters (1995), owner of the Chez Panisse organic restaurant in Berkeley, California, is a leader and long-time restaurant owner. Many years ago, she authored the essay “The Ethics of Eating,“ and observed “how you eat and how you choose your food is an act that combines the political, your place in the world of other people, with the most intensely personal, the way you use your mind and senses, together, for the gratification of your soul” (1995:5).

Citizen science/Public science

Science and technology are equally critical influences on the sustainability and empowerment of our food system, community and democracy. In recent decades, public controversies have engulfed many technologies that affect communities, such as nuclear power plants, covid vaccines, hazardous waste disposal methods, and fluoridation of public water supplies. In The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, Langdon Winner (1986:5) observed that “consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or inadvertently, societies choose structures for science and technologies that influence how people are going to work, communicate, travel, consume, and live their lives over time.“ Today biotechnology, gene editing, information technology, robotics, and bioinformatics are rapidly reshaping our daily lives, our food system and our communities, often in unexpected ways. Consequently, these scientific and technological innovations are similar to legislative acts or major policy decisions that establish a framework for public order which may endure over many generations. Indeed, technology is legislation. In a democracy, citizens generally would not tolerate sweeping legislative changes without due process. Scientists and their sponsors, however, can cause wrenching social change through science and new technologies, which is totally isolated from public influence and often usurps fundamental democratic rights. Underlying this privileged position is the belief that scientific knowledge is rational, and capable of revealing nature “as it is.“ Decisions therefore are merely the discovery and application of the laws of nature, unaffected by the vagaries of politics and the social world.

Citizen science

Opposition to citizens’ involvement in science and technology is often based on the claim that lay persons are incapable of grasping the technical nuances and methodological complexity of science (Gross & Levitt 1994). These assumptions and the role of citizens in science have been changing. In the early years of AHV journal, these views were challenged by philosophers (Thompson 1988,1997; Burkhardt 1998; Suppe 1987; Alroe & Kristensen 2002), sociologists (Busch et al. 1991; Lacy 1996; Buttel 1995; Middendorf & Busch 1997), and historians (Palladino 1987). These scholars have noted the inherently problematical, contingent, and negotiated character of scientific and technical research results. The products of science are contextually specific constructs that can be understood only with detailed knowledge of the social conditions of their production. For example, decisions about the choice of the problem, what resources to allocate, how to conduct the research, what to consider as results, and how to interpret the findings are all made by human actors who interpret nature and function in social organizations.

Given this constructionist view of science and technology, how can the generation of knowledge be democratized, and what are the appropriate roles for lay citizens in the realm of science and technology. Kleinman (1998), who drew on several cases illustrating citizens’ involvement in science, concluded that lay people’s inability to grasp the subtle content, the difficult concepts, and the methodological complexity of science is not a valid basis for a priori rejection of efforts to democratize science.

Numerous ways to involve citizens in scientific and technological decision making have emerged in recent years. These approaches can be distinguished across several dimensions: the nature of lay involvement, such as the authority for final decisions and the extent to which involvement includes activities commonly understood to be the exclusive realm of experts; the timing of the citizens’ entry into the process; the nature of experts’ involvement; the organizational dynamic of scientists’ and citizens’ interaction, including who defines the terms of involvement; the extent to which participants view “technical” and “nontechnical” considerations as discrete; and the extent to which they view nontechnical matters as appropriate for consideration. At the least contentious end of the continuum, scientists acknowledge a social dimension to a problem, all participants agree that this is the appropriate realm of nonscientists, and reserve technical questions for the experts. Near the other end of the continuum, lay citizens challenge the rules of the scientific method, are involved in the production and evaluation of knowledge, and often assert that appropriate research methods must be shaped by non-technical considerations. The forms taken for citizen science and democratizing science and science policy include public hearings and forums, advisory and oversight panels and councils, public surveys, consensus conferences, and science shops. As one might imagine, these approaches vary widely in their effectiveness for involving citizens in the process.

All of these processes and procedures, however, are plagued by two fundamental problems. First, the results generally are not binding, and require the decision makers’ approval for implementation. In Denmark, for example, to partially overcome this limitation, consensus conferences were established in association with the parliament, so that outcomes and recommendations could be considered by decision makers as quickly as possible. The second problem concerns the key parties’ ability to manipulate the results. All of these processes risk being co-opted or overwhelmed by powerful interests and ultimately serving only to justify the decisions and plans of these interests. Thus, it is important to keep as transparent as possible the organizers ' goals and motives, the credibility of spokespersons who both raise and discuss the array of issues surrounding the science, the funding sources for research, the process by which content, scope, and audience for science and technology are made, and how this information and the outcomes of the conferences will be pursued (Lacy & Glenna 2005).

Perhaps one of the most effective efforts to move away from scientists’ self-governance and empower citizens and communities has been community-based research and science shops. In this process, lay persons gather scientific data and other information, make decisions about priorities, engage in hypothesis formation, research design, and data analysis, and direct and marshal experts’ knowledge and resources to understand the particular issue or topic.

Community based and participatory action research clearly empowers communities because it embraces the community’s knowledge and values as well as its active participation. Obviously, there are several barriers to democratizing science. The real obstacles to democratizing science are rooted in widespread social and economic inequalities and in an unexamined commitment to expert authority. Optimal citizen participation in science and technology depends on adequate time and other resources with which to: acquire the broadest possible knowledge, gain the opportunity to examine deeply held assumptions, and develop mechanisms that weaken the effects of socially significant forms of inequality. Science and technology will only become more important in shaping our food system and communities’ future and our democracy.

As noted earlier, since the founding of the AHV journal, numerous insightful theoretical and practice pieces on the role of citizens in food systems research have been published. The following are just a few more recent examples. Clare Hinrichs (2008) acknowledges that agri-food studies are challenged to engage non-academic stakeholders and utilizes interdisciplinarity and boundary work to address those studies. More than a decade later Hardie Hale et al. (2022) used a similar concept of boundary work to examine collaborative research between rice growers and conservation professionals to support conservation on private lands. A recent piece on soil balancing within organic farming studied the boundaries between land grant university and fertility specialists and the farmers and their private consultants. The university scientists were highly skeptical of this alternative agricultural community of practice (Brock et al. 2021). Several AHV journal articles utilize participatory research both domestically and internationally to involve local citizens and farmers in sustainable development and agriculture (e.g., Thrupp et al. 1994; de Fliert & Braun 2002; Healy & Dawson 2019). The case of legitimizing local knowledge for science and technology and agricultural development both domestically and internationally is developed in three articles (Glenna et al. 2011; Thrupp 1989; Pant 2019). The role of Mexican activist in using and producing scientific knowledge and launching complex social critiques around genetically engineered maize is a well-documented example of citizen science (Kinchy 2010). Other articles focus on the knowledge of women and people of color to support rational farming practices that support the well-being of human and more that human beings (Layman and Civita 2022), the complex set of relationships in development in the African savannahs (Williams et al. 1995) and NGO and scientists’ divergent perspectives on the social and ethical dimensions of plant genome editing (Helliwell et al. 2019).

Creative strategies for overcoming the obstacles to democratizing science continue to emerge. They should be studied and pursued aggressively to ensure that the agendas for science and technology are broadly inclusive and compatible with local food systems, community sustainability and democracy.

Public science

An equally important dimension of science and technology for sustainable agriculture and food systems is the role of public funded research. Partnerships between US universities and industries have existed for several decades, particularly in the fields of agriculture and natural resources. In recent years, those relationships have become: generally, more varied; wider in scope; more aggressive, commercial, and experimental; and higher in public visibility as universities pursued what has been referred to as academic entrepreneurship and academic capitalism (Slaughter & Rhoades 2004; Busch & Lacy 1983; Lacy et al. 2014). With the rapidly growing number of diverse university-industry relationships, the dynamic expansion of university technology transfer offices and a range of university academic capitalism activities, several scholars have raised fundamental questions regarding the complementary roles of university and industry research and the impact of these relationships for those roles. Key to defining and implementing the university roles, particularly for public universities, was the Land-Grant College Act of 1862 which focused on applied research that addressed social problems and the public good. As an important aside, more recently these same land-grant colleges have been characterized as land-grab colleges since they were initially established through the sale of expropriated indigenous land from 245 Native American tribes (Lee & Ahtone 2020). Today efforts are underway to move beyond simply acknowledging the land.

The formation of these land grant colleges in every US state assumed, in part, that both public goods and private goods are needed to enhance the public good. Policies created a division of labor between the private and public research sectors (Welsh et al. 2009; Lacy et al. 2020). Universities received public funding to do basic and other research without direct applications for commercial products. The private sector, on the other land, conducted more applied and proprietary research (Slaughter & Rhoades 2004).

Consequently, the values of these two communities vary significantly. The primary goal of industry research is to generate trade secrets, patents, and exclusive licensing for commercial gain. Research agendas are set through a multidisciplinary, hierarchical structure with an emphasis on team research, secrecy, short-term agendas, intellectual property, and proprietary products. In contrast, university research primarily conducted within a more individualistic, disciplinary, long-term, organizational structure is generally expected to advance knowledge and address broad social problems. Research priority setting and review processes are more transparent, and knowledge is made available to the public through professional journals and university and government publications (Glenna et al. 2007). While federal policy changes and actions were stimulating funds from patents and licensing, state and federal support for all basic research including agricultural research was declining relative to private sector investments.

Several research analysts, however, have raised concerns that the commercialization of university science threatens the distinct cultures and their important complementary functions (Lacy 2001; Lacy et al. 2009; Glenna et al. 2011; Lacy et al. 2020; Welsh et al. 2008). They found that the university is losing its distinctive incentive system, which is structured to promote a focus on publicly accessible outputs for which the private sector cannot capture sufficient rewards. Some find that commercialization of university science is blurring distinctions between the two research cultures. Moreover, these analysts maintain that the two research cultures are converging (Vallas & Kleinman 2008) and that convergence favors the private sector. Studies have found a rise in data withholding, secrecy, and impaired communication among university scientists (Powers & Campbell 2011). Studies have also explored how academic-industry interactions lead university and industry collaborators to take on characteristics of their counterparts and foster institutional conflicts of interest (Rudy et al. 2007); how university research topics over time come to parallel private sector research topics (Welsh & Glenna 2006); and how scientific fraud is associated with commercial ties (Martinson et al. 2009). Industry funding has also been correlated with research outcomes favorable to the funder, perhaps due to researcher bias, whether conscious or unconscious, associated with conflicts of interests. Moreover, Glenna et al. (2011) found that industry funding leads to less basic and more applied university research as well as more proprietary research. Leland Glenna’s AFHVS Presidential address (2017) discussed the distinctions between the two cultures and how commercialization of university science may be undermining the public interest. He suggested Habermas’s concept of communicative action as the foundation for efforts to establish public spaces for ethical deliberation among scientists and university administrators. Several other AHV journal authors over the 40 years have focused on public science and particularly the role of land grant universities (e.g., Ostrom, 2020; Woodward 2009; Ganning et al. 2012).

Many years ago, I wrote a piece for the American Journal of Alternative Agriculture entitled “Can agricultural colleges meet the needs of sustainable agriculture” (Lacy 1993). The paper highlighted several individual and institutional constraints that limit the ability of the colleges to address these needs. Despite those limitation I identified new research agendas and college programs that were addressing many needs of sustainable food and agriculture systems. Several of those creative and innovative interdisciplinary initiatives developed by researchers in land grant universities have been discussed and analyzed in AHV journal articles. The USAID Collaborative Research Support Programs (e.g. Flora 2001; Barnes-McConnell 1996) are good examples. In my article, I concluded that to be more successful, these efforts must be broad-based and sensitive to a wide range of issues and must include all participants in the system.

To conclude this discussion of public science, I share some of my observations and those of many of my AFHVS colleagues. First monitoring the nature, goals, and outcomes of these relationships will be important. As Derek Bok (2003), former president of Harvard University noted, “It will take very strong leadership to keep the profit motive from gradually eroding the values on which the welfare and reputation of universities ultimately depend”.

Second, it will require strong intelligent, creative and appropriate policies, practices and organizational arrangements to enhance university interactions with the private sector while protecting the autonomy and freedom of operation of university scientists. These policies should be both transparent and directed at realizing the goals of both cultures of science. Finally, there needs to be adequate public agricultural research funding and support to ensure that public research institutions and the culture of science they promote are strong and complementary partners with industry. Only then can there be an appropriate balance between the goals and mission of the broad, long-term public interest emphases of the university and its scientific culture, and the narrower, short term, proprietary and profit interests of the private sector and the industry scientists’ culture.

Empowering communities

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I delivered the presidential address at the annual Rural Sociological Society meeting entitled “Empowering communities through public work, science, and local food systems: Revisiting democracy and globalization” (2000). In my reflections for this paper, I have returned to several of my earlier observations now strengthened by the insights, creativity, innovations, and spirit of my colleagues in AFHVS and in their publications in AHV journal. Numerous AHV papers directly and indirectly describe and analyze the importance and value of community empowerment. The topics included the grassroots activities in more than one hundred communities in the US (Flora et al. 1991), the community gardening movement of New York city (Apteker & Meyers 2020; Saldivar-tanaka & Krasny 2004), women farmers and civic agriculture in Pennsylvania (Trauger et al. 2010), the dynamics of communal management of forests in Sweden (Arora-jonsson 2004), and enhancing farmers development agency in Benin and Madagascar (Halewood et al. 2021). I remain convinced of the central and core value of empowered and sustainable communities not only for local food systems and community development but for our society and democracy.

Many scholars and practitioners have discussed and debated the definition and core components of a community. For this paper I use Philip Selznick’s (1996) appropriately flexible and inclusive definition of community: “A group is a community to the extent that it encompasses a broad range of activities and interests, and to the extent that participation implicates whole persons rather than segmental interests or activities. The emergence of community involves a complex and balanced mix of interacting variables, the most important of which are: a shared history and culture, mutuality, plurality, participation, and integration” (1996:195). By extension, an empowered community is a group of people in a locality capable of initiating a process of social or community action to change their economic, social, cultural, and/or environmental situation.

Ideal communities never have existed, and probably never will. Still, without communities, particularly sustainable communities, society can only atrophy. The restoration of local communities on the human scale is essential to renewal at all levels. Moreover, serious citizenship requires public action guided by the principles of justice, recognition, respect, and accountability. What each of us chooses to do may be critical to shaping our communities and our democracy in the future. Mahatma Gandhi said it well when he stated, “We must be the change we wish to see in the world.“

Conclusion

These reflections have focused first on three grand challenges, climate change, democracy, and inequality and on three key themes of local food systems, citizen and public science and empowered communities that are central for a viable democracy. As I noted earlier, these same themes have been core to the AHV journal from its inception. The journal continues to be an increasingly important platform for contemporary analyses and thoughtful, insightful recommendations for current and future action locally, regionally, and globally. As Wendell Berry so clearly, concisely, and insightfully noted, these hopes deserve to live. I would add that they not only deserve to live but are essential for changing and redirecting an unsustainable and destructive environmental, economic, political and social agenda to a viable, livable and just democratic society.