Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Comparative Study of Skilling Institutions in U.S. Alternative Agriculture

农业日益被认为是造成21世纪各种最紧迫挑战的关键因素，这些挑战包括环境变化、农村外移、土壤退化、生物多样性丧失、传统知识丧失以及肥胖和营养不良流行。与传统美国农场的衰落相比，新兴的替代农业部门提供了一个潜在的有希望的解决方案。但是，替代农民，即过去二十年来在美国激增的短商品链生产者，经常发现缺乏知识和农场管理技能是经营可持续经营的巨大障碍。该项目训练学生的经验、科学数据收集和分析方法，将研究农民如何利用不同的替代农业技能机构来开发、交流和应用替代农业所需的知识。除了为人类学研究生的培训提供资金外，该项目还将通过将其发现广泛传播给投资于发现更有效的方法来改善美国农业发展的组织，从而增进对科学的理解。在华盛顿大学格伦·斯通博士的指导下，布拉德利·琼斯将探讨投资于小规模替代农业的农民如何驾驭技能机构（传播农业管理信息的机构），以创造和维持可行的农业经营。研究者将比较研究阿巴拉契亚中部和纽约哈德逊河谷的新兴知识生产和交流景观。这两个地区近年来替代农民的数量急剧增加，但在人口、历史、经济和环境方面存在重大差异，这带来了独特的挑战和机遇。该研究提出了一个问题：另类农民如何构建并参与机构以获得农业技能？制度如何中介信息流动和知识传播？哪些行为者参与其中，他们如何在彼此之间以及更广泛的权力结构中运作？回答这些问题对于我们对替代农民及其技能策略的实质性理解，以及我们对个人形成和使用制度的方式的更广泛的理论理解具有重要意义，以满足社会决定的需求，并重新定位生产和专业知识的社会关系。数据将从不同地点的农民、农业专家和项目工作人员那里收集，包括替代农场、农民培训项目、非营利性食品和农业倡导组织，以及一系列培训活动、农业会议和研讨会。这项关于知识发展和传播的研究回应了一项实际需要，即更好地了解替代农民如何在其长期经济和生态可持续性方面应对重大挑战。在这两个研究区域，结果摘要将提供给各利益相关者，包括农民、倡导组织、农业推广和政策制定者，以便制定战略，减轻农民成功的障碍。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Agriculture is increasingly identified as a key contributor to a variety of the most pressing challenges of the 21st century including environmental change, rural outmigration, soil degradation, biodiversity loss, traditional knowledge loss, and epidemics of obesity and malnutrition. Against the well-documented decline of the traditional American farm, the emergent alternative agriculture sector offers a potentially promising solution. But alternative farmers, the short-commodity-chain producers that have proliferated in the past two decades in the United States, frequently find that a lack of knowledge and farm management skill is an enormous obstacle to running a sustainable operation. This project, which trains a student in the methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, will study how differing skilling institutions for alternative agriculture are used by farmers to develop, exchange, and apply knowledge necessary for alternative agriculture. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology, the project would enhance scientific understanding by broadly disseminating its findings to organizations invested in discovering more effective means for improving American agricultural development.Bradley Jones, under the supervision of Dr. Glenn Stone of Washington University, will explore how farmers invested in smaller-scale alternative agriculture navigate skilling institutions (the institutions through which agricultural management information is disseminated) to create and sustain viable farming operations. The investigator will comparatively study the emerging landscape of knowledge production and exchange in Central Appalachia and the Hudson Valley of New York. Both regions have seen recent dramatic increases in the number of alternative farmers but have important demographic, historical, economic, and environmental differences that offer unique challenges and opportunities. The study asks: How do alternative farmers construct and engage with institutions to acquire agricultural skill? How do institutions mediate flows of information and knowledge transmission? What actors are involved and how do they operate in relation to one another and broader structures of power? Answering these questions has important implications for both our substantive understanding of alternative farmers and their skilling strategies, as well as our broader theoretical understandings of the way institutions are formed and used by individuals to fulfill socially determined needs and to reorient the social relations of production and expertise. Data will be collected from farmers, agricultural experts, and program staff at a variety of sites including alternative farms, beginning farmer training programs, and non-profit food and agriculture advocacy organizations, as well as at an array of training events, farm conferences, and seminars. This study of knowledge development and dissemination responds to a practical need to better understand how alternative farmers are navigating a major challenge in their long-term economic and ecological sustainability. In both study regions, summaries of the results will be provided to various stakeholders, including farmers, advocacy organizations, agricultural extension, and policy makers so strategies can be developed for mitigating obstacles to farmer success.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.