Journal
AGRICULTURE AND HUMAN VALUES
Volume 30, Issue 1, Pages 57-69Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s10460-012-9381-y
Keywords
Productivist; Conservationist; Farmer identity; Water quality; Performance-based management; Farmer decision-making
Funding
- United States Department of Agriculture National Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA) [2008-51130-19526]
- NIFA [582712, 2008-51130-19526] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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All farmers have their own version of what it means to be a good farmer. For many US farmers a large portion of their identity is defined by the high input, high output production systems they manage to produce food, fiber or fuel. However, the unintended consequences of highly productivist systems are often increased soil erosion and the pollution of ground and surface water. A large number of farmers have conservationist identities within their good farmer identity, however their conservation goals often need to be activated to rebalance the production-conservation meanings they give to their roles in society. In this paper we analyze US Cornbelt farmer interviews and surveys to trace how the performance-based environmental management process can be used to influence the farmer social identity and shift the overall good farmer identity towards a stronger conservationist standard. We find the continuous feedback loop in performance-based environmental management mimics the hierarchically organized feedback control processes of identity verification and can be used to help farmers activate their conservationist farmer identities at the person, role, and social levels to establish new norms for the practice of more sustainable agriculture.
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