Doctoral Dissertation Research: From Truck Farming to Local Food Systems

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Scientists have long been interested in the uneven patterns of agricultural land tenure and how those patterns affect both the rural landscape and its inhabitants. Land tenure has also been shown to be influenced by discrimination which affects access to and control over land. This project examines the ways that recent changes in U.S. agriculture challenge and/or reproduce the racially-uneven nature of the nation's rural landscape. Through interviews with farmers who have experienced discrimination, this project will examine how these changes have affected under-represented groups. The changes in U.S. agriculture, specifically the increasingly precarious position of commodity producers, and the growth of local food systems, are reshaping the nation's agricultural landscape. However, they are not occurring in a smooth or predictable manner, and they have uneven social and ecological consequences. While these processes of agrarian change vary across time and space, this project works to uncover the underlying forces that drive the many contingent manifestations of contemporary land politics. To do so, this project draws historical studies of racial discrimination together with theoretical scholarship on the politics of land. The central research question of this project is: To what extent and in what ways does the current restructuring of U.S. agriculture challenge and/or reproduce the legacies of racial discrimination? To answer this question, this project analyzes the ways that shifting forms of state power and dynamic racial ideologies shape the contested agrarian landscape of the South Carolina Lowcountry -- the coastal region surrounding the port city of Charleston. It is through this focus on the articulation of regional landscapes and broader political trends that this project will explain the uneven dimensions of recent changes in U.S. agriculture.