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Engaging the Organic Conventionalization Debate

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Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World

Abstract

Organic agriculture in the US emerged in California in the 1960s as part of the environmental social movement response to the negative externalities of industrialism (Belasco 1989). The first organic standard developed in California in 1990 is the model for the US standard (Guthman 2004a). Although opposed by conventional agriculture, organics is now part of the mainstream, available in the majority of supermarkets. The success of organics is a great victory for the environmental movement and other critics of conventional agriculture. Sociologically, the success is problematic due to conventionalization, or the process whereby organics takes on many of the characteristics of mainstream agriculture regarding scale and structure. The scholarly discussion regarding the extent and implications of conventionalization has generated a substantial literature in agrifood studies.

Organics without a social vision is dangerously incomplete (DeLind 2000 , p. 24).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    New organic private-label products increased from 35 in 2003 to 540 in 2007 (Driftmier 2009).

  2. 2.

    The Four Questions are: Environmental, Agrarian, Food, and Emancipatory (see Constance 2008). While all four questions do apply to organics, in this analysis we employ the Environmental and Agrarian Questions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Sam Houston State University, Campus Box 2446, Huntsville, TX, 77341, USA

    Douglas H. Constance, Jin Young Choi & Damian Lara

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  1. Department of Sustainable Agricultural Systems, Division of Organic Farming,, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria

    Bernhard Freyer

  2. Department of Community Sustainability,, Michigan State University,, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

    Jim Bingen

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Constance, D.H., Choi, J.Y., Lara, D. (2015). Engaging the Organic Conventionalization Debate. In: Freyer, B., Bingen, J. (eds) Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World. The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics, vol 22. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9190-8_9

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