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cultivating the edge: an ethnography of first-generation women farmers in the American Midwest

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Feminist Review

abstract

In the US, an emergent cultural icon of resistant agriculture, the agrarian heroine, attests to growing popular interest in first-generation women farmers. Drawing on practice theory, historical geographical materialism, intersubjective ethnography and feminist scholarship, this ethnography focusses on three first-generation women farmers growing organic vegetable crops for the Chicago market, with critical attention to the body, the land and their uses. By applying permaculture’s theory of ‘the edge’ anthropologically, this study explores the work these women do to cultivate relational spaces that promote fluidity, diversity and solidarity in opposition to industrial agriculture and the homogenising forces of globalisation. The portraits that emerge problematise popular representations of first-generation women farmers.

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Source: Photograph courtesy of Nicholas Peterson.

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Notes

  1. While ‘new’ describes entrant farmers, often children of established farmers beginning their own operations, I use ‘first-generation’ instead to specify farmers whose parents did not farm, following the convention of family farmers termed ‘third-’ or ‘eighth-generation’, etc..

  2. Scholars such as Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern and Michael Twitty are working to address this gap (Brahinsky et al., 2014; Twitty, 2015).

  3. ‘Conventional’ is commonly used to distinguish ‘alternative’ agriculture from industrial agriculture.

  4. The terms ‘field’ and ‘fieldwork’ are differently defined by social scientists and agriculturalists. As a social scientist studying agriculture, I respect both disciplines by using these terms unmodified, allowing each to illuminate the other. Usage is implied through context, and I hope any confusion this causes the reader is more productive than distracting.

  5. The Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES) is a non-profit organisation promoting ‘organic and sustainable agriculture by providing the education, resources and expertise farmers need to succeed’, and the conference it organises is commonly called, simply, MOSES; MOSES, http://mosesorganic.org [last accessed 10 August 2014].

  6. Second-wave feminism did not fully consider the roles and needs of non-white and poor women (hooks, 1984), while the 1960s era back-to-the-land movement largely ignored the central problem of rural blacks: landlessness (Smith, K.K., 2014).

  7. FarmHer, http://www.farmher.com/ [last accessed 19 July 2014].

  8. The Girls Scouts is an organisation founded in 1912 to empower girls through outdoor survival skill education; Girl Scouts, ‘Our history’, https://www.girlscouts.org/who_we_are/history/ [last accessed 14 August 2014].

  9. Jimmy John’s is a regional fast-food chain.

  10. Instagram, ‘Softnucks’, https://instagram.com/softnucks/ [last accessed 16 July 2014].

  11. ‘KFC’ refers to Kentucky Fried Chicken, a global fast-food franchise.

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acknowledgments

My gratitude to Harry G. West, Jakob Klein, Jayita Battacharya, Barley Blighton, Wendy Springer, the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their invaluable guidance, and to Jeffery Bivens for his photographs. I am indebted to all the farmers, named and unnamed, who made this research possible.

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    Megan Larmer

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Correspondence to Megan Larmer.

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Larmer, M. cultivating the edge: an ethnography of first-generation women farmers in the American Midwest. Fem Rev 114, 91–111 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41305-016-0018-7

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