“TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF FROM THE GROUND UP”: FOOD SELF

PROVISIONING IN WASHINGTON STATE

By

ASHLEY LYNN COLBY

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS IN SOCIOLOGY

WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

Department of Sociology

DECEMBER 2013

ii

To the Faculty of Washington State University:

The members of the committee appointed to examine the thesis of ASHLEY LYNN

COLBY find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.

____________________________

Jennifer Sherman, Ph.D., Chair

____________________________

Lisa McIntyre, Ph.D.

____________________________

Rose Hayden-Smith, Ph.D.

iii

“TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF FROM THE GROUND UP”: FOOD SELF

PROVISIONING IN WASHINGTON STATE

Abstract

By Ashley Lynn Colby, M.A.

Washington State University

December 2013

Chair: Jennifer Sherman

This study seeks to begin to understand the phenomenon of food self-provisioning (FSP),

or self-producing food for one‟s own consumption. This paper begins by placing FSP in its larger

historical context of global depeasantization. The paper then goes on to discuss the social,

environmental and cultural impacts of industrial agriculture as well as the research on alternative

agricultures (local, organic, and sustainable) that critique and challenge the hegemonic agrifood

system. The paper then discusses previous studies of FSP as a form of alternative agriculture

which more successfully addresses many of the concerns of industrial agriculture by seceding

(Kloppenberg, Hendrickson and Stevenson 1996) from it. For the current study, I have conducted

20 in-depth semi-structured interviews with agents of Washington State University Extension to

find out the extent to which FSP is on the rise and the emergent reasons constituents give for

participation. This research has established that interest in FSP education is indeed dramatically

on the rise, that many different kinds of people are taking part, and they are coming to it for a

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variety of reasons, which are embedded in specific cultural contexts. It is important to understand

this phenomenon because it is one that is on the rise and becoming a significant activity practiced

by many Americans. Just in the last few years, studies have found that home food gardening has

grown from 31 to 51 percent from 2008 to 2013 (NGA 2009; GWA 2013). This study has shown

that FSP has the potential to bring together incredibly diverse members of the population to

secede from the logic of the industrial food system and potentially undermine it through their

action. FSP turns what is an irrational and alienating system of acquiring food (Ritzer 2004;

Levkoe 2006) into a potentially meaningful and rational relation between people and a substance

so necessary for survival and infused with such meaning. In less than a decade, people are

independently coming to the conclusion that the industrial food system is not sufficient and

turning to FSP as a way to take control over their food sources and ultimately some aspect of

their lives.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii

LIST OF TABLES ......................................................................................................................... vi

1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................1

2. HISTORICAL, SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT ......................................4

2.1 A Brief History of Global Depeasantization .....................................................................4

2.2 The Ecological and Social Impacts of Depeasantization ..................................................7

3. LITERATURE REVIEW .........................................................................................................11

3.1 Alternative Agriculture ....................................................................................................11

3.2 Cultural Aspects of Alternative Agrifood System ...........................................................15

3.3 Studies of Food Self-provisioning ...................................................................................18

3.4 Gaps in the Literature ......................................................................................................29

4. METHODS ...............................................................................................................................32

5. RESULTS .................................................................................................................................35

5.1 Change in Food Self-provisioning ...................................................................................36

5.2 Demographics of Food Self-provisioners ........................................................................41

5.3 Reasons for Participation .................................................................................................43

5.3.1 Knowing Food and Food Quality ............................................................................44

5.3.2 Economics ................................................................................................................45

5.3.3 Cultural Reasons ......................................................................................................46

5.3.4 Self-sufficiency .........................................................................................................48

5.3.5 Emergency Preparedness ..........................................................................................49

5.3.6 Progressive: Social and Environmental ....................................................................50

5.3.7 Teaching to Children .................................................................................................52

5.4 Results Conclusion ...........................................................................................................52

6. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .......................................................................................55

WORKS CITED ...........................................................................................................................60

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LIST OF TABLES

1. Number of interviews in which each code was mentioned………………………………43

1. Introduction

People‟s relation to their food sources is of central concern as access to food is essential for

survival. However, over the course of the twentieth and into the twenty-first century the

“corporate food economy” has alienated individuals from their food sources (Levkoe 2006),

moving people from reliance on subsistence agriculture to reliance on purchased food. Yet,

threats to global food security such as climate change, peak oil, freshwater depletion, economic

depression and population growth are increasing around the world (McMichael 2012; Krugman

2008). Furthermore, the industrialization of the global food system threatens the environment in

a multitude of ways, making the system fundamentally unsustainable (World Population,

Agriculture, and Malnutrition 2012; McMichael 2012; Carolan 2012; Heffernan, Hendrickson

and Gronski 1999).

Drawing on the work of classical sociologist Max Weber, George Ritzer uncovers the effects

that the 'iron cage' of rationality has on society – namely, the irrationality of rationality. Ritzer

explains, irrationality means that “rational systems are unreasonable systems that deny the

humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within them or are served by them" (Ritzer

2004, 134). As people become more and more alienated from their food sources through

industrial agriculture, they are systematically denied any tangible relation between themselves

and a product so necessary for survival. Furthermore, in this industrial food system, food

becomes a globalized commodity, and is subject to the volatility of economic markets wherein

droughts and floods can significantly affect the expected food production (World Food Day

2012). Many organizations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations, call for a serious reflection on the nature of our food system and appeal for an

alternative to this precarious system which differentially affects the world‟s poor (World Food

Day 2012).

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One potential solution to the problems of industrial agriculture is the promotion of an

alternative kind of agriculture. Most studies on the topic of alternative agriculture focus on local,

sustainable or organic agricultures (Ikerd 2008; Hinrichs 2003; Howard 2009). Yet, the most

widely-accepted of these, organic, accounts for just over three percent of food sales in the United

States (USDA ERS 2012). The local food movement is also on the rise, but the prevalence of

this is harder to measure because there is no widely-accepted definition of what constitutes

„local‟ food. If local food is conceptualized as the existence of farmer‟s markets, alternative

agriculture proponents can be heartened by the more than fourfold increase in the existence of

farmer‟s markets since 1994 (Kurtzleben 2012). However, researchers at the USDA have found

that direct-to-consumer sales, which include the sales of farmer‟s markets as well as community

supported agriculture, accounts for less than one percent of total agricultural sales in the United

States (Martinez et al. 2010).

Much of the research done on alternative agriculture focuses on market-based solutions,

placing emphasis on the power of the consumer. Yet, there is another movement which is

gaining much more traction and interest among the American population than the formal market-

based solutions of alternative agriculture – and that is food self-provisioning (FSP). FSP is the

production of edible products for self-consumption. This can include activities from hunting,

fishing, and gathering wild edible products to vegetable gardening, beekeeping, tending small

livestock, canning, brewing beer, or making wine. Recent studies have shown that participation

in one of the most widely-practiced of these activities, home food gardening, jumped from 31 to

51 percent of the American population from 2008 to 2013 (Garden Writer‟s Association 2013;

National Gardening Association 2009). There is a lack of scholarly attention to this popular and

growing phenomenon of FSP.

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The current study is exploratory in nature. This research seeks first to determine whether FSP

is a topic of increasing interest among those seeking to educate themselves on certain

provisioning practices. This study also looks to discover a general sense of the demographics of

those participating in FSP as well as their reasons for participation. Because the FSP population

is so dispersed and private, I gained access to information on this population through agents of

Washington State University Extension, a formal state-wide organization which provides public

education on FSP activities. My results suggest that interest and participation in FSP is indeed on

the rise, especially in the past decade and increasingly so. I also found that the demographics of

those interested in FSP are hard to pin down to certain “types” of people, suggesting that this

increased interest applies to a variety of demographics. Finally, my research suggests that there

are seven salient reasons for participation of FSP: knowing food/food quality; economic need;

emergency preparedness; cultural reasons/personal enjoyment; progressive social or

environmental concerns; self-sufficiency; and a desire to teach this information to children. The

diversity of these reasons for participation suggests again that the people that are taking part are

as diverse as their reasons for participation, making FSP a kind of alternative agriculture which

can bring disparate people together.

This paper will contextualize FSP by discussing the larger political and economic forces that

moved what was once a world of peasants (prior to the Industrial Revolution) off their lands and

into cities. It will then discuss the environmental and social effects of this movement of people

away from the ability to provide subsistence for themselves. Then, this paper will review the

literature on alternative agriculture and studies of FSP, and will address gaps in these literatures.

Moving on to the current study, this paper will discuss the methods and results of the research in

more detail, and end by drawing conclusions and suggesting directions for further research.

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2. Historical, Social and Environmental Context

2.1 A brief history of global depeasantization

The development of economic globalization has had major effects on the world food

system. For most of human history, people have had very close relations with their food sources

– either through hunting and gathering or subsistence agriculture. However, since the Industrial

Revolution, the increasingly global economic system has many driving forces which have

relocated people around the world from rural to urban centers, taking away their ability to

provide food for themselves. This process is called depeasantization, and has been defined by

VanHaute as “a multi-layered process of the erosion of an agrarian way of life” (2012, 6). The

process of depeasantization has developed differently in various locations around the world.

Depeasantization is a world-wide and centuries-long process, yet for the purposes of this paper, I

will focus on the most important macro-level developments which lead to the movement of

people away from subsistence FSP in most places in the world.

Whereas in Europe the process of industrialization and movement to cities happened over

centuries, in much of the developing world this process has happened over a few decades

(McMichael 2012). One way in which depeasantization can be measured globally is through the

demographics of urban and rural settlement. As Sociologist Phillip McMichael notes, “from

1950 to 1997, the world‟s rural population decreased by some 25 percent, and now over half of

the world‟s population dwells in and on the margins of sprawling cities” (2012, 88).

This movement of people from rural to urban spaces is undoubtedly related to the

development of the modern economic system. In his seminal work Political Order in Changing

Societies, Political Scientist Samuel P. Huntington discusses the larger social forces at work in

modernization: “Economically, there is a diversification of activity as a few simple occupations

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give way to many complex ones…subsistence agriculture gives way to market agriculture; and

agriculture itself declines in significance compared to commercial, industrial, and other

nonagricultural activities” (2006, 33). In the period following the Industrial Revolution in

Europe, agriculture as a subsistence strategy among small-scale producers declined in favor of

mechanization and advanced division of labor. In this time frame agriculture also became

commodified; whereas before this period agriculture was done, along with other subsistence

strategies, largely for auto-consumption throughout much of the world.

One major factor driving global depeasantization is the development of agricultural

technology, which eventually leads to the industrialization of agriculture. Many of the advances

in agricultural technology, such as the use of machines and chemical pesticides and fertilizers,

are made to produce increasingly higher yields of food. Indeed, “„productivism‟ has been a

central development theme. It is promoted heavily by the U.S. land-grant university system, with

an extension program geared to…supporting large, capitalized farmers” (McMichael 2012, 74).

However, this mechanization of agriculture works well on large plots of land, not on small-scale

holdings. This increasing technology leads to the consolidation of many minor parcels of land,

pushing subsistence farmers off their small holdings in favor of large farms which produce more

efficiently, at least in the terms of the current industrial economic paradigm.

This „advancement‟ of agricultural efficiency was founded in the technically advanced

industrialized countries and then spread around the world under the guise of feeding the global

hungry. As McMichael explains, “the entire argument for increasing yields was framed by the

specter of increasing population. This argument lent moral and political legitimacy to a

technological solution (despite the consequences)” (2012, 74). In spite of the moral argument

being made around increasing yields through industrial agriculture, this so called „green

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revolution‟ has had disastrous consequences, both social and ecological, around the world, as we

will see in the next section.

Depeasanitzation also happens because of the need for workers in manufacturing in cities

during the process of industrialization. As companies open factories in urban centers, peasants

are increasingly driven off their small farm plots and into cities in order to partake in formal

wage labor. Furthermore, rural areas are seen as places for resource exploitation to provide for

growing urban centers. In many cases, this is a concerted effort for national development by

political leaders. As McMichael explains, “for national development policy, this meant a

deliberate shrinking of the agricultural production as the manufacturing and services sectors

grew. It also meant the transfer of resources such as food, raw materials, and redundant labor

from the agrarian sector as peasants disappeared and agricultural productivity grew” (2012, 50).

The combination of increasing agricultural „productivity‟ through the industrialization of

agriculture and the industrialization of employment in cities works to push people off the land

and into wage labor.

Although the process of depeasantization is often studied as a modern global process

moving peasants from the global South from their lands, this process happened first in the United

States and Europe. It was driven in the global North by some of the same processes such as the

expansion of industrial agriculture, the desire to trade goods over long distances, and increasing

specialization that is happening today in the global South. As Wendell Berry puts it, “One cannot

help but see the similarity between this foreign colonialism and domestic colonialism that, by

policy, converts productive farm, forest, and grazing lands into strip mines. Now, as then, we see

the abstract values of an industrial economy preying upon the native productivity of land and

people” (1977, 6-7).

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As we have seen, there are many factors that have played a part in driving global

depeasantization. Certainly, depeasantization is a complex process and is only treated briefly

here, but we can see from these concise outlines that many of the processes of industrialization,

technological advancement, and the globalization of the economic system are root causes of this

phenomenon.

2.2 The ecological and social impacts of depeasantization

The environmental problems associated with depeasantization are the same as the

problems which are linked to the development of an industrial, global food system, as these two

sets of problems are the outcomes of the same process. In Deborah Barndt‟s research on the

social and ecological impacts of a globalized tomato product, she concludes “with this loss of

control [of people over their food sources] comes a spiritual loss, and a loss of a knowledge of

seeds, of organic fertilizers and pesticides, of sustainable practices such as crop rotation or

leaving the land fallow for a year – practices that had maintained the land for millennia” (Barndt

1997, 61–62). The problems associated with depeasantization are twofold: 1) there is a social

loss in the diversity of agricultural practices, and 2) with this knowledge loss comes the

extinction of knowledge on the sustainable aspects of peasant agriculture. Thus, the advancement

of industrial agriculture worldwide furthers the loss of knowledge in many of the ecologically

and culturally sustainable practices of subsistence agriculture.

The cultural impacts of this mass movement of people from rural lands into urban centers

are devastating. McMichael warns that “peasant cultures are destined to disappear, whether

because of urban gravitational pull, green revolution technologies, eviction by land grabs, or

unequal competition from First World agribusiness exports” (2012, 8). This violence toward the

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culture of peasants means a lack of care for the transmission of knowledge of sustainable

subsistence strategies.

This lack of knowledge creates a whole group of people worldwide who were once self-

sufficient, but have now lost the ability to be so. Many of the peasants worldwide who once used

their land to provide for themselves, now use it to grow specialty products such as “kiwis,

asparagus, strawberries and baby carrots” (McMichael 2012, 132) for consumers in the North

who have access to any foods they desire independent of season. In addition, the United States

began to provide food-aid to developing countries in the post-WWII era, which was a result of

the surpluses of the industrial agriculture of the North (McMichael 2012). This then made many

subsistence farmers dependent upon imports, as they were being given food that they once

worked to grow. Indeed, “between 1961 and 1975 Third World agricultural self-sufficiency

declined everywhere except in centrally planned Asian countries” (McMichael 2012, 65).

The fact that food insecurity is on the rise worldwide is a result of the inequalities of the

current agrifood system, not the ability of the system to produce enough food for all. As Carolan

explains, “The FAO calculates that world agriculture produces enough food to provide everyone

in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day, yet global food insecurity,

in absolute numbers, is increasing” (2012, 7). Not only are peasants worldwide being moved

from the land into cities and losing the ability to produce food for themselves under the guise of

„productivism,‟ they are also not benefiting from this surplus of food being produced.

Industrial agriculture leads to a lack of self-sufficiency not only in the global South, but

historically and continuously in the North. In the US, for example, “two percent of the farms

grow fifty percent of agricultural produce…[and this food system] doesn‟t produce food security,

as thirty million Americans are hungry” (McMichael 2000, 23). Not only has the effect of

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industrial agriculture been to isolate people from the ability to provide food for themselves, but it

also has not lived up to the promise of feeding the world‟s hungry. Commercial agriculture has

made self-sufficiency decline in places that were once entirely autonomous in food production,

including within the United States.

What‟s more, the development of this agrifood system, defined as both the production

and consumption aspects of the current agricultural system (Jussaume and Kondoh 2008), is a

top-down process without the input of those it may affect most – the small-scale farmers that

have been pushed from the land. According to Rural Sociologist William Heffernan et al., “the

centralized food system that continues to emerge was never voted on the by the people of this

country, or for that matter, the people of the world. It is the product of deliberate decisions made

by a very few powerful human actors” (1999, 16). These powerful actors have worked to

consolidate and centralize the food system, impacting the lives of many small-scale farmers

without their knowledge or consent.

A seminal study on the social impact of large-scale farming on American communities

was done in the 1940‟s by Walter Goldschmidt. His study found that communities that have been

taken over by large-scale industrial farms have many negative outcomes when compared to

communities with diverse, small-scale farming operations. Specifically, Goldschmidt found that

small-scale farming communities produce a higher standard of living for community members,

provide more opportunities for employment, and have greater social cohesion than their large-

scale, industrial counterparts (1978 [1947]). Research that follows what is now known as the

“Goldschmidt Thesis” has been replicated numerous times. In a review of this literature Carolan

found that “communities surrounded by „industrial‟ farms are more likely to fall into the latter

[less socially-cohesive] category” (2012, 107). That is, research has found that industrial

10

agricultural communities are more likely to have weak community ties, high income inequality,

and weak social institutions (Carolan 2012).

Industrial agriculture is not only having a negative effect on human societies, but it is also

quickly running up against ecological limits. Although commercial agriculture is seen as an

improvement in terms of efficiency, it does not consider „externalities,‟ or the outcomes of a

particular economic activity that are not measured in economic terms. McMichael warns, “These

[externalities have] significant social and environmental impacts such as disruption of agrarian

cultures and eco-systems, the deepening of dependency on fossil fuel, and modern agriculture‟s

responsibility for up to a third of greenhouse gas emissions” (2012, 9). This system that leads to

depeasantization is simply not a sustainable one.

There are many negative environmental outcomes to the industrialized global food

system. Overall, the most alarming results of this system are in the ever increasing exploitation

of resources which make human habitability on the planet possible. The most important

resources for human life – “food, fresh water, quality soil, energy, and biodiversity – are being

polluted, degraded, and depleted” (World Population, Agriculture, and Malnutrition, 2012). Yet,

while it is estimated that half of the global population are malnourished, arable land resources are

being severely stressed (World Population, Agriculture, and Malnutrition, 2012), leading to a

growing inability to provide for the world‟s hungry, through any form of agriculture.

Furthermore, an energy crisis is on the horizon as “the production, processing and

distribution stages [of industrial agriculture] have all been built on cheap petroleum.

Considerable debate exists on when the world‟s petroleum resources will be depleted, but most

agree the price will begin moving up in the not-too-distant future” (Heffernan et al. 1999, 14). As

oil prices rise and fall, the industrial agrifood system will see effects. Economist Paul Krugman

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explains that “modern farming is highly energy-intensive: a lot of B.T.U.‟s go into producing

fertilizer, running tractors and, not least, transporting farm products to consumers. With oil

persistently [around] $100 per barrel, energy costs have become a major factor driving up

agricultural costs” (Krugman, 2008). The reliance upon oil at nearly every point in industrial

agriculture makes it a major concern for food security.

The use of fossil fuels has led to climate change and increasing climate-related disasters.

There have been major changes in weather patterns in food producing nations upon which the

world relies. For example, Australia, the second largest wheat exporter in the world, has been

seeing major drought conditions that limit the production of food (Krugman, 2008). These are

among the many factors which have the possibility of affecting food outcomes on which much of

the world relies for sustenance.

As we have seen, there have been rapid changes in the way people produce food. For the

vast majority of human history, people practiced a combination of hunting and gathering and

small-scale subsistence agriculture. In this timeframe, the move to large-scale industrial farming

is a very recent phenomenon. There are many negative social and environmental outcomes to

this kind of farming system. Next, this paper will discuss some of the studies of alternatives to

the dominant agrifood system, and suggest a new direction for research.

3. Literature Review

3.1 Alternative Agriculture

The field of study known today as the Sociology of Food and Agriculture came about with a

call in the early 1980‟s from prominent rural sociologists to begin focusing on the potential

negative outcomes of the current industrial food system (Friedland 1982; Newby 1983). The

field of Rural Sociology was dominated, before this shift, by studies that accepted as status quo

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the benefits of industrial agricultural production. With the social and ecological effects of

modern agriculture becoming known both popularly and within other disciplines, these rural

sociologists called for a shift in the field that looks critically at the effects of the agricultural

system. These early scholars also called for the examination of alternatives to this system,

including “stress[ing] reduction in chemical- and energy-intensive agriculture, encouragement of

small farm continuation and more self-production of food” (Friedland 1982, 605, emphasis

added).

One major outcome of this seminal shift of focus in the literature of the Sociology of Food

and Agriculture is the study of alternative agriculture, or alternatives to the industrial agrifood

system. Alternative agriculture is usually defined as in opposition to industrial agriculture. Beus

and Dunlap define alternative agriculture as decentralized, independent, concerned with building

community, promoting harmony with nature, and increasing environmental and social diversity

by exercising restraint and considering short- and long-term outcomes (1990). Current research

on alternative agriculture in the United States has focused mainly on the organic, local and

sustainable agriculture movements.

The most prominent among these is organic agriculture, which is defined by the United

States Department of Agriculture as “without using most conventional pesticides; fertilizers

made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge; bioengineering; or ionizing radiation” (2013).

Organic agriculture is popularly defined by the production practices it maintains. The

mainstream acceptance of organic and sustainable agriculture into institutions such as the USDA

means that much of what once defined it as alternative agriculture is being eroded as it is

becoming institutionalized (Allen 2004). Organic agriculture is also becoming conventionalized

as many organic companies are being consolidated by larger industrial companies (Howard

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2009). This means that the ideal of alternative agriculture that was once embodied in organic

agriculture through characteristics such as being small-scale, decentralized, and diverse is

changing rapidly. As large industrial companies are buying up organic food enterprises, the

organic companies are losing many of these characteristics which would define them as

alternative agriculture. Further, the standardization that comes with certification through federal

regulations enforced by the USDA makes it so that large-scale industrialized monoculture

operations have an easier time becoming certified organic than the small-scale, diverse farms that

once epitomized organic (and therefore alternative) agriculture. Mainstream organic agriculture

now only loosely fits with the tenets of alternative agriculture as defined above.

The two other kinds of agriculture which are often studied as alternative agriculture include

sustainable and local. Sustainable agriculture is less a specific set of production practices and

more a goal or a process that looks to ultimately “sustain agriculture for the benefit of humanity,

forever” (Ikerd 2008, 95). Local agriculture, on the other hand, focuses more on the geography

of food production, emphasizing the social and environmental benefits to a localized agrifood

system (Kloppenburg, Hendrickson and Stevenson 1996).

Much of the research done on alternative agriculture movements relies heavily upon the

role of the consumer in the global north. For example, one recent study emphasized the role of

the consumer in the development of a network of restaurants carrying local foods (Inwood,

Sharp, Moore and Stinner 2008). Another study focused on the politics of the consumption of

rBGH milk and the role of the consumer as promoting alternatives to industrial agriculture

(DuPuis 2000). In a seminal piece on agricultural research activism, rural sociologist Fred Buttel

explains that “the key focus of the contemporary localism/sustainable agriculture movement

is…a critique of long-distance agrofood commodity chains…The sustainable agriculture

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movement increasingly aimed to build an alternative locally based food system involving more

direct linkages…between farmers and consumers” (2005, 280). Again, we see an emphasis on

the mode of consumption being the central focus of the local/sustainable agriculture movement.

A critique of this focus on the power of consumers has been made by Anthropologist Laura

DeLind. She explains, “reducing the locavore to an individual consumer whose primary identity

is mediated through the marketplace feeds liberating rhetoric while starving social or political

activism” (2010, 276). For DeLind, the focus on expanding consumer choices to include more

locally produced products fails to get community members engaged on important social and

environmental issues surrounding agriculture. Instead, individuals are channeled to make

conscientious consumer choice instead of taking action against the industrial food system.

Another critique of local agriculture is based on the idea that food system localization does

not inherently create just, progressive social and environmental practices. Even though there is a

focus on shortening the distance from food producer to consumer, this does not mean that social

equality is flourishing or sustainable production practices are being used. Rural Sociologist C.

Clare Hinrichs claims that “defensive localism” may even exacerbate intolerance by emphasizing

the unique characteristics of the food (and therefore the culture and people) of a particular place

as well as protecting against “non-local others” (2003, 33).

In an influential early piece on local agriculture, Kloppenburg et al. call for a focus on the

“foodshed,” which is akin to the concept of a watershed and it “starts from a premise of the unity

of place and people, of nature and society” (1996, 34). In this piece, the authors call for an

alternative agriculture that is radically different from the current agrifood system. Kloppenburg

et al. want to refocus the literature toward a sort of localism in which we “ground ourselves in

the biological and social realities of living on the land and from the land in a place that we can

15

call home” (1996, 33). The authors encourage study of this kind of fundamentally transformative

localism, one which considers deeply both the environmental and social in its foodshed analysis.

3.2 Cultural aspects of alternative agrifood system

Some of the critique of the industrial agrifood system is done from a cultural perspective. In

this sense, alternative agriculture is not simply embracing alternative methods of production, but

includes a rejection of the fundamental nature of this mainstream food system. Unlike other

environmental or social issues, food issues are deeply embedded in the cultural aspects of our

daily living. The modern industrial food system is fundamentally a system which alienates

people from their food sources (Levkoe 2006) through an attempt at rationalizing all aspects of

food production and distribution (Ritzer 2004). Although under the current configuration food is

treated as another commodity to be bought and sold coldly in the global marketplace, it may be

that the rising interest in alternative agriculture is a rejection of this configuration. This may be

because food is different (Rosset 2006) from other commodities in that it has meaning and is

deeply embedded in the daily rituals of many cultures around the world.

Taking away that fundamental connection of people with nature – through their food sources

– might be able to explain why this specific issue has gotten people from very disparate cultures

to agree that industrial agriculture removes this connection and is not the way forward. From the

peasant agriculture movements of the global South epitomized by the group La Via Campesina

to the alternative agriculture in the global North in the form of organic and local movements to

the growing interest in home food gardening, there is a growing resistance to the industrialization

of food production, distribution and consumption. McMichael puts it more succinctly, “food is

not just an item of consumption, it‟s actually a way of life. It has deep material and symbolic

power. And because it embodies the links between nature, human survival and health, culture

16

and livelihood, it will, and has already, become a focus of contention and resistance to a

corporate takeover of life itself” (2000, 31-32).

Not only is food a human necessity (Heffernan et al. 1999), but it also “is a meaningful and

sustained arena of action and interaction, one that connects us to others on deeply significant

terms” (Guptill, Copelton and Lucal 2013, 3). Food is central to the many rituals and daily

actions of cultures around the world. Furthermore, food not only binds us to one another, it

connects us to the land upon which we rely for sustenance. Kloppenburg et al. explain, “it is

through food that humanity‟s most intimate and essential connections to the earth and to other

creatures are expressed and consummated” (1996, 37). Certainly, over the past two centuries this

connection of people to their food sources has become more and more tenuous. However, this

alienation may have reached a critical juncture at which people are looking to reconnect to this

most vital of commodities.

This is why the distancing and centralizing of food production in the industrial agrifood

system can be so problematic (Collins 2000). This problem is especially challenging in the

global north; “what is eaten by the great majority of North Americans comes from a global

everywhere…the distance from which their food comes represents their separation from the

knowledge of how and by whom what they consume is produced, processed and transported”

(Kloppenburg et al. 1996, 34). How can these individual eaters care about these aspects of the

industrial food system if they are so fundamentally removed from it? The first step in re-

incorporating the meanings associated with the production and consumption of food is first to

shorten the distance between producer and consumer. According to prominent agricultural

thinker Wendell Berry, “The closer we live to the ground that we live from, the more we will

17

know about our economic life; the more we know about our economic life, the more able we will

be to take responsibility for it” (1992, 35).

The modern American cultural critique of industrial agriculture is rooted in the history of

Jeffersonian agrarianism, which believed that “farming was the most legitimate, elevated and

moral occupation,” and that farmers were “„natural‟ people, living in and shaped by nature”

(Danbom 1986, 108). Jeffersonian agrarian values were predominant during the early decades of

the United States‟ existence. As we discovered in the previous section, throughout the twentieth

century this kind of thinking fell away in favor of a more scientific, productivist orientation to

agriculture. Yet, as the full social and ecological consequences of the industrial agrifood system

were revealed starting in the 1970‟s, a shift back to agrarian thought is occurring; “critics of

modern farming…were actually rooting their analyses in traditional agrarian thought. They

implied that agriculture had special value” (Danbom 1986, 124). That is, the culture of

agriculture was being lost to corporate farming, and one way thinkers like Wendell Berry see to

repair this loss is to re-connect people with their food sources.

One way this cultural critique of industrial agriculture manifested itself in the early days of

the food counterculture is through altered consumption practices. Historian Warren Belasco

explains that there is a “nostalgia for slower, simpler, more honest and intimate times wrapped

up in the interest in natural and ethnic foods and the lost craftsmanship of cooking and baking”

(2005, 227). This countercultural reaction to the mainstream food system does not seek to create

an entirely new culture of eating; instead, it hearkens back to a time where eating was an act for

which individuals took responsibility. However, this rejection of the industrial food system is

once more manifested through an act of consumption.

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As we have seen, much of the research on alternative agriculture has focused on alternatives

which are very much embedded within the logic of the current agrifood system. From the focus

on the consumer as a source of action to the conventionalization of concepts such as organic or

sustainable agriculture, research on alternatives within the sociology of food and agriculture

literature has not looked at alternatives to the dominant system that radically break from its logic.

Kloppenburg et al. claim that “we know all too little of…the alternatives to the global food

system that were and are now being constructed” (1996, 39); and the authors call for “the

identification, celebration and study of existing and emergent alternatives to the food system”

(1996; 40).

Kloppenburg et al. are not interested in any alternatives to the system, but call for a focus on

new systems that represent “fundamental transformation rather than simple reform” (1996, 37).

Specifically, they ask that work be done on food systems that deeply consider environmental and

social concerns. They only way to do that, they argue, is through secession, or “a strategic

preference for withdrawing from and/or creating alternatives to the dominant system rather than

challenging it directly” (1996, 38). There has been very little research done to date on aspects of

alternative agriculture that truly challenge (rather than seek to reform) the mainstream agrifood

system.

3.3 Studies of food self-provisioning

Thusfar we have seen the negative social, cultural and environmental outcomes of industrial

agriculture as well as the alternative agricultures of organic, local and sustainable which seek to

address these problems that arise from the hegemonic agrifood system. Yet, much of what has

been studied as a challenge to this system focuses mainly on the role of the consumer as activist.

Furthermore, many of the so-called alternative agricultures (i.e. organic) have been consolidated

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and have incorporated many of the principles of industrial agriculture. Those aspects which do

truly and consistently fit the definition of alternative agriculture, such as the local foods bought

and sold at farmer‟s markets, are extremely small-scale and again focus on the role of the

consumer-activist.

I argue that one particularly salient aspect of alternative agriculture which seeks to challenge

the industrial agrifood system is the act of food self-provisioning (FSP), which is the production

of edible foods for self-consumption. It has also been defined as “as a complex set of activities in

which goods are produced for self-consumption or trade rather than sold on a market” (Schupp

and Sharp 2012, 96). Self-provisioning can include any activities done on a personal-scale for

use in the home such as hunting, fishing, keeping a fruit tree or preserving food through canning,

freezing or dehydrating, among other activities. This hyper-local act of providing food for

oneself is fundamentally an act of secession (Kloppenburg et al. 1996) from the industrial

agrifood system. Although people taking part in FSP may not see themselves as enacting a

resistance to the industrial food system, each act of self-production removes that food from being

consumed in the industrial system. We will now consider several studies of this phenomenon –

and we will look at the way FSP acts to address specific problems with the industrial food

system, and how these specific practices and meanings are dependent upon the social context in

which they are practiced.

Among those living in poor urban areas, people participating in FSP are often looking to

address the lack of access they have to quality, nutritious foods. The industrial food system

creates this unequal access, as we have discussed, and FSP allows individuals in this setting to

re-claim control over this unfair food distribution by self-producing. In Chicago and Milwaukee,

the organization Growing Power seeks to provide access to both healthy and adequate amounts

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of food for the urban poor through setting up community gardens, gardening training, and

outreach (Growing Power 2012). Several authors have looked at this organization in terms of its

role as representing the food sovereignty movement (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010; Morales 2011),

which focuses on community or localized control of food production. These studies describe

Growing Power as providing access to fresh, healthy foods to what would be an otherwise food

insecure population (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). They also note that Growing Power is working to

create a food system that is “responsive to the circumstances of people of color” (Morales 2011,

156). One way this is done is by having a two-tiered market for the surplus foods produced by

Growing Power. One set of food is given to the farm workers, donated to food banks, and/or sold

at a reduced price to food insecure urban populations. Another set of food is sold at upscale city

farmer‟s markets at a higher cost to subsidize the cost of running the farms (Block et al. 2011).

In a recent study on the participants of Growing Power in Chicago, Block et al. found that

these participants discussed “issues of inequality in the distribution of retail investment, and lack

of power over local land use planning” (2011). The authors argue that the problems the urban

poor face in terms of access to food can be likened to their poor counterparts in developing

nations. They conclude that movements of auto-production in poor urban areas can subvert the

hegemonic neoliberal food regime by providing the community with control over their own

resources and by allowing equitable access to healthy foods (Block et al. 2011).

Another study (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010) of urban farming in Detroit places FSP within the

larger context of de-industrialization in the United States. As manufacturing jobs left Detroit,

supermarkets and access to food went along with them. The city was a hollow shell with many

empty lots and fields. Similarly to their counterparts in the global South, residents of Detroit lost

access to food through the processes of the global capitalist system. Activists and organizers

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began to develop empty spaces within the city for community gardens and urban farms, taking

autonomy over their livelihoods and providing needed access to fresh foods (Gottlieb and Joshi

2010). Nearly identical results have been found in Cleveland (Winne 2010). As we discussed

earlier, the industrial food system produces enough calories to feed all of the world‟s poor, yet

the reason people are still living in hunger is because of unequal access to those foods. These

studies have shown that for the urban poor, FSP provides the ability to subvert the logic of the

industrial system that has not provided them with enough or quality foods by simply providing

those foods for themselves.

Literature has shown that many urban food movements use FSP to contribute to food banks

in order to reach the most food insecure populations (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010). Part of the effect

of the industrial agrifood system in the United States is the lack of access not only to quantity,

but quality foods in poor areas. Several organizations have emerged to use FSP to feed the

hungry with this in mind. A Lubbock, Texas food bank created a five acre farm on which to

grow foods for donation. The Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C. created a farm on

which homeless people are taught to grow food for their own (and others‟) consumption. The

Food Bank of Western Massachusetts started a sixty-acre farm to address lack of access to fresh

food and veggies in normal food bank donations, and in Green Bay, Wisconsin “emergency food

advocates sought to develop community garden opportunities…for the region‟s large Hmong

population, the most food-insecure population in the region yet perhaps the one most

knowledgeable about food growing” (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010, 216-217).

Immigrant populations are often the most knowledgeable on FSP, and several studies have

looked at how poor urban immigrants have gained from participating in community or backyard

gardening. One study looked at Puerto Rican immigrants in Holyoke, Massachusetts that “had

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worked on homestead farms in Puerto Rico” and the study stressed that they “had the knowledge

to turn what was otherwise a bleak and unutilized landscape into a place to grow food” (Gottlieb

and Joshi 2010, 124). Several studies looked at the case of the South Central Farm (SCF) in Los

Angeles which existed from 1993 until it was bulldozed for development in 2006. The SCF

“included U.S.-born Chicana/os and people from indigenous diaspora communities originating in

communities across Mesoamerica” (Mares and Pena 2011, 206). The SCF provided a space for

immigrants to keep kitchen gardens, a practice common in most of participants‟ countries of

origin. The farm also allowed gardeners to gain access to foods that are not available in

supermarkets, easing the transition to a new home (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010; Mares and Pena

2011). One participant put it this way, “I grow the same plants I had back in my garden in

Oaxaca. We can eat like we ate at home and this makes us feel like ourselves” (Mares and Pena

2011, 209). The participants in the SCF are challenging the hegemonic food system that does not

provide access to culturally appropriate food by using FSP to gain access to those foods and to

strengthen social ties in the immigrant community through gardening.

One recent study (Levkoe 2006) researched The Stop Community Food Centre in Toronto,

which is an urban agriculture education center with teaching gardens, a food bank, and several

community outreach centers (The Stop 2012). Levkoe found that this site centered around food

justice, taught participants about urban agriculture and, as a consequence, strengthened

community ties and empowered people through breaking down their individualism and fostering

a collective identity (Levkoe 2006). Here is another example of FSP in the urban context

countering the effects of the industrial food system, which alienates people from their social ties.

FSP is turning food intake from a simple act of individual consumption to an act that has the

power to strengthen social ties.

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Although there have been few studies specifically looking at FSP in poor rural areas, scholars

have noted that self-provisioning in the form of hunting and fishing are common and culturally

accepted means of providing access to quality and quantity foods in poor rural America

(Sherman 2009). One study which looked particularly at FSP in rural New Hampshire found that

local and fresh foods were preferred and hunting, fishing, raising small livestock and gardening

were affordable and often-used means of accessing these foods (McEntee 2011). In the rural

context, FSP is not new; it is and has been a culturally-accepted form of subsistence, helping to

combat hunger in places where access to foods, due to the logic of the hegemonic food system, is

limited. It differs from the urban context in that people do not imbue FSP with meanings related

to political or environmental justice. Yet, the act of FSP itself in rural areas is subverting the

logic of the industrial food system by providing the poor access to foods they would otherwise

not be able to obtain.

Similarly to immigrant populations in the urban setting discussed above, poor immigrants

in rural settings often have the knowledge to provide fresh and healthy foods for themselves. One

study centered on a community of rural farm workers in Northfield, Minnesota. Although these

immigrants worked daily in agricultural settings, they lacked access to healthy and fresh foods.

One Guatemalan immigrant started the Rural Enterprise Center to teach his fellow migrant

workers about sustainable agriculture and to provide them with the training to start their own

small-scale sustainable farms (Morales 2011). Like their urban counterparts, FSP in rural settings

can help to build community, combat racism, and promote self-sufficiency among the most food

insecure populations (Morales 2011).

One other area where there is some scholarly attention on the rural poor is in FSP done

by Native Americans. There are several organizations that are seeking to protect or renew

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traditional hunting, farming and gathering practices of several Native American tribes (Winne

2010). The Mvskoke Food Sovereignty Initiative and Earth Keepers Voices for Native America

is an organization in Oklahoma that seeks to “reintroduce farming and food preparation methods

that are more culturally and ecologically appropriate and contribute to building a sense of

community and a healthier lifestyle” (Morales 2011, 162). Native Hawaiians have started MA‟O

Organic Farms with the hope of “bringing food self-reliance to the Leeward coast of O‟ahu

Island” (Winne 2010, 143). While some movements are seeking the restore an interest in

traditional practices, one study noted that the vast majority of Karuk Tribe of the Klamath

Mountain region already partakes in fishing, hunting or gathering mushrooms, yet they are

facing harassment when partaking in these practices and are faced with environmental

degradation diminishing their food sources (Norgaard, Reed and Van Horn 2011). Again, here

we see FSP combating the logic of the industrial food system that strips food production of its

culturally-relevant meanings by re-introducing those practices into Native American

communities.

Although we have seen a few examples of studies on food movements among the rural

poor, scholarly work in food movements has an incredible urban bias. This may be a reflection of

the politics of studies of alternative agriculture, which focuses on “contemporary” instead of

“traditional localism” (McEntee 2011, 247). Contemporary localism focuses on the

environmental or social impacts of local food production and traditional localism is focused on

access to fresh and affordable food. Poor rural populations are often at a greater risk for food

insecurity as they face higher food prices and greater distances to stores than their urban

counterparts. Yet, they are less often the subject of study as there is a bias in academia of

studying the “contemporary localism” that is enacted in urban and suburban settings.

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There are other important differences about the nature of FSP in urban and rural poor

settings in these studies. Rural provisioners are usually acting on an individual basis, whereas

urban provisioners (at least those studied) are part of a more organized and collective process of

production. This may also be due to a bias of research being done in the urban setting on highly

visible organizations of food production, rather than on individuals self-producing in the home or

in a community garden setting. Furthermore, the meanings embedded in FSP differ greatly by

context. In each of these settings, people are subverting the logic of the hegemonic food system

by providing themselves with quality, affordable foods. Yet, among the urban poor there is a

focus on social and environmental justice, in the rural setting FSP is a culturally acceptable

subsistence strategy, and among immigrant and Native American populations FSP builds

community and identity by re-introducing practices that are culturally important.

FSP within the urban and suburban middle and upper classes is also focused on access to

quality foods, but this desire for access is not driven by hunger. Instead, the industrial food

system creates a mass-produced food product with which the middle class is not satisfied.

Further, FSP in this context is also looking to explicitly address the social and (especially)

environmental impacts of the industrial food system. The participation in FSP among the middle

class is often aligned with and motivated by several seminal works of nonfiction (Winne 2008).

Probably the first and most influential work of this kind was the 1971 book Diet for a Small

Planet by Frances Moore Lappe. One author claimed that “this work provided thoughtful and

analytical weight to the growing body of personal experience” (Winne 2008). Another major

work of this segment of the movement was that of academic and journalist Michael Pollan‟s The

Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006) and In Defense of Food (2009). These bestselling books revealed in

sickening detail the social, health, and environmental problems of the industrial food system,

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through which consumers get most of their provisions. Pollan also offered an alternative vision

to that system: fresh, local food that strengthens community, helps the environment and is a

better option for human health. Pollan calls for any form of acquiring local foods: community

supported agriculture, farmer‟s markets, farm-to-school programs, or backyard gardening (2012).

Local food production within the middle and upper classes has also been covered in a

variety of popular sources, such as Barbara Kingsolver‟s (2007) book Animal, Vegetable,

Miracle: A Year of Food Life, which recounts a year the author spent choosing to produce her

own food. There have also been countless articles in The New York Times discussing topics

around local food production. One such article focuses on the cultural capital that comes with

local food production by describing rich consumers that hire farmers to plant and maintain

vegetable gardens in their backyards so that they can eat locally and have access to luxury

vegetable varieties (Severson 2008). Another article focuses on middle and upper middle class

consumers that have chosen to produce for themselves for environmental reasons (Burros 2007).

Much of the food culture within this class are centered around concepts such as

sustainability, slow food, locavorism or terrior, which is focused on the “ability to link directly

the growing practices and the physical environment, the cultural associations of the food, and the

place where it‟s grown” (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010, 191). This movement may also be exemplified

by the kitchen garden, a space for growing vegetables within a suburban home-owner‟s

backyard. This idea was initially championed by celebrity chef Alice Waters and finally made its

way onto the White House Lawn via the work of Michelle Obama in 2009 (Burros 2009). The

appeal for many foodies was that the kitchen garden provided an alternative to the lack of variety

or quality in supermarket foods. Kitchen gardening, or “growing food in whatever location was

possible” (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010, 221) provided access to the kinds of heirloom varieties of

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foods that are not found in the store, due to the increasing monoculture of the mainstream food

system.

There has been academic work that has criticized this aspect of the food movement as

coming from a privileged positionality, claiming that “the movement‟s predominantly white and

middle-class character suggests that it may itself be something of a monoculture” (Alkon and

Agyeman 2011, 2). Other authors have claimed that those members of the middle-class food

movements who claim to support local, slow and sustainable food systems do not have an

understanding of how modern small-scale producers can be a part of the same cultural hegemony

that pushed Native Americans from their land. These authors argue that members of the middle

class food sovereignty movement may be producing their own food sustainably at the expense of

less privileged groups‟ ability to produce their own food in a sustainable way (Mares and Pena

2011). Yet, not all middle-class food self-provisioners are motivated by social justice concerns.

As we have seen, a large component of FSP in this class is motivated simply by the cultural

capital that comes with the production and consumption of luxury foods as well as the

environmental effects of localizing their food source and using micro-scale, sustainable

production methods.

As we saw before, McEntee (2011) makes the distinction between contemporary and

traditional localisms. Contemporary localism focuses on the ecological or social aspects of local

food production, where traditional localism is centered on gaining access to fresh and adequate

amounts of food. Contemporary localism maps neatly onto middle-class food sovereignty

movements in that these movements are driven by the social and environmental outcomes of

their food production. However, it should be noted that this aspect of the American food

sovereignty movement has been understudied in scholarly literature. Although there are many

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popular books and articles that look at this sub-movement, there is a need for a systematic look at

the middle-class food movement.

Here we‟ve seen very distinct kinds of FSP where people are coming to this act of food

production for very different reasons and with very different meanings attached, dependant on

context. Among the urban poor, studies have shown organized and highly political movements of

people looking to combat the injustices of the global industrial food system. This characteristic

of urban FSP may be biased, however, by studying only those highly-visible and easy-to-access

organizations rather than home or community gardeners working on an individual basis which

surely exist in the urban setting, as has been found by using Google Earth to locate backyard

food gardens in Chicago (Taylor and Lovell 2012). In both the private and public urban settings,

however, FSP seems to be a new phenomenon, increasing only in the last ten years or so in

response to the extreme inequality in access to foods. On the other hand FSP, especially hunting

and fishing, in the rural setting seems to be something that is a culturally-accepted form of

recreation and subsistence that has stayed relatively consistent throughout time. It may be that

the motivation to hunt or fish changes from a recreational activity to an act done explicitly for

subsistence in lean economic times (Sherman 2009). Yet, the motivation to do FSP in the rural

setting differs greatly from the urban setting in that is done more for cultural or economic

reasons rather than explicitly political ones. What‟s more, among immigrants and Native

Americans, the act of FSP helps to provide a culturally-accepted form of subsistence that

provides access to foods that represent a cultural heritage and strengthen community ties.

Finally, in the suburban and/or middle class setting, FSP seems to be a new phenomenon

motivated by either a desire to obtain high-quality foods such as heirloom tomatoes or by the

social and environmental problems associated with industrial agriculture.

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What‟s interesting is that we have several quite different settings in which FSP is on the rise,

but for very different reasons. Whether it‟s the drive to obtain quality foods, to explicitly reject

the injustices of the industrial food system, or to enact a culturally-accepted means of getting

food in an economic downturn, very diverse sets of people are coming to FSP at this time in

history. Although many of these people would not explicitly state rejection of the industrial food

system as what is bringing them to FSP, each act of producing food for oneself yields a challenge

to the system in removing the consumer for that particular product (Kloppenburg 1996).

Furthermore, people are seceding from the logic of the hegemonic food system by subverting the

logic of the monoculture, the unequal access to food, and lack of culturally-important food

production practices.

3.4 Gaps in the Literature

The idea of food self-production is becoming increasingly relevant in American society as

individual access to fresh, nutritious and affordable food could provide security to many

communities. However, in the past two centuries the food system has become industrialized and

in the process has removed people from the source of their food (Levkoe 2006). Many

alternatives to this dominant system of food production have been defined, debated, and

discussed within sociological journals, but FSP is less often considered. Specifically, what is not

known is whether or not this is a growing phenomenon and the motivation for individuals to

produce food for themselves. My research seeks to explore trends of self-provisioning and the

motivations of food self-provisioners, or people who produce food for auto-consumption through

such means as gardening, hunting, fishing, or keeping livestock.

Although organic, local and sustainable agriculture are promising outlets for promoting

positive social and environmental change, much of the research done on these topics focuses on

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the role of the consumer. Furthermore, organic food accounts for just over three percent of total

food sales in the United States (USDA ERS 2012). On the other hand, according to a recent

survey done by the Garden Writer‟s Association, about 51 percent of the population is planning

to grow a food garden in 2013 (2013). This is up from 31 percent growing food in 2008,

according to the National Gardening Association (2009). As stated previously, the simple act of

consumption requires much less investment than the act of producing food for oneself. The only

other aspect of FSP that has been studied in a nationwide survey is hunting and fishing.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 12 percent of the U.S. population has hunted or

fished (2011), but it is not clear the proportion of this that is for recreation and what is for food

consumption.

The study of FSP is substantively important. Not only is a large proportion of the population

taking part in it, but this trend has been on the rise in recent years. Many different kinds of

people are taking part for very different reasons which range from concerns over food quality to

economic challenges. Furthermore, FSP provides potential solutions for food insecurity,

especially in food desert areas. People are coming to FSP for many overlapping reasons.

Although not all provisioners are engaging in it explicitly in order to challenge the industrial

food system, the result of their behaviors fundamentally undermines the system by removing

consumers from it.

It is clear that there is a growing interest in FSP. From rural hunters to city activists, people in

the United States are accessing local, healthy foods in a way that is subverting the global and

industrial food systems, whether or not this is the explicit intent of the provisioner. They are

lessening their dependence upon consuming in the global industrial food system by self-

producing. What is absent from the literature, however, is a systematic understanding of the

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reasons people give for coming to FSP, and how it interacts with larger historical trends. It is

also unknown to what degree people are truly opting out or challenging the system by

participating in FSP. Past literature on FSP has generally focused on a single field site and has

mostly focused on individual or community outcomes of some aspect of FSP, rather than the

reasons people participate. There is also a lack of research being done on FSP as a whole.

Current research usually focuses on one aspect of food self-production, most often food

gardening, especially in the community setting.

From the beginnings of the sociology of food and agriculture, rural sociologists were calling

for a more detailed look at the “self-production of food” (Friedland 1982, 605). In their seminal

work on the foodshed, Kloppenburg et al. claim that there is a need for work on a kind of

alternative agriculture that does not seek to reform the current system, but fundamentally secedes

from it in order to radically transform it (1996). Prominent agricultural thinker Wendell Berry

asks us to take responsibility for our economic life by getting acquainted with the land from

which we live (1992). Despite these calls from prominent thinkers, there has been a lack of study

on this kind of transformative food production that so fundamentally aligns with the given

definition of alternative agriculture as decentralized, independent, concerned with building

community, promoting harmony with nature, and increasing environmental and social diversity

by exercising restraint and considering short- and long-term outcomes (Beus and Dunlap 1990).

This lack of research is especially surprising given that at least half of the population of the

United States is taking part in at least one FSP activity (GWA 2013).

In the current research, I fill this gap by documenting the interest in FSP as well as examining

the motivations of people seeking FSP education in order to understand why they are driven to

take part in this activity. Is interest in FSP on the rise? Do food self-provisioners conceptualize

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their activities as a political act or is it cultural? Are they engaging in FSP out of necessity or

because it is trendy? And how might these trends line up with major historical transformations?

4. Methods

The data for this study was collected from September 2012 to January 2013. I conducted

twenty semi-structured recorded interviews with Washington State University Extension

employees concerning their affiliation with programming relevant to self-provisioning and their

description of the changes that have happened to these programs over time. All twenty

interviews were conducted over the phone, recorded and transcribed. Recorded interviews lasted

on average 45 minutes, with a range in interview times from 21 minutes to 1 hour and 40

minutes.

One of the most relevant lines of questioning is represented on my interview schedule as,

“Ask R to describe how either the specific program or other self-provisioning programs have

changed over the years. In what way have they/it changed? How did these changes come about?”

I started sampling using volunteers from a WSU Extension-wide email listserve, asking for

people who have had some experience in any of extension's self-provisioning programs such as

Master Gardener or Master Preserver. I then developed my sampling using a snowball sampling

technique. I continued to sample until I “saturated” the data (Weiss 1995). That is, I continued

gathering data until my answers became redundant. This technique was used as there is no

simple sampling frame available, and has provided me with the theoretically-relevant data that I

am seeking.

To analyze my data, I have transcribed each interview into a document, identified only by

participant number. I then re-listened to the audio of each of the twenty interviews to allow for

preliminary theories to emerge. Once I had a preliminary set of findings and codes which

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correlate with these findings, I began coding the data. I imported the document files into

Dedoose Qualitative Software. I linked each document file with a set of descriptive

characteristics of that participant including gender, race, educational attainment, age, and rural or

urban county extension office. I then coded files according to emergent findings and theories.

Washington State University Extension is a useful site for learning about the trends in home

self-provisioning as Extension is one of the nation's first and most well-established sources for

self-provisioning education. WSU was one of the first-established Cooperative Extension

Programs after the passage of the federal Morrill Act of 1890, which allowed for the creation of

land grant colleges. A potential problem with researching the educational programs in self-

provisioning (instead of the trends of household self-provisioning) is that I am getting

information specific to the programming that extension offers, not necessarily the gamut of self-

provisioning activities that are being practiced. However, I have found in this research that

extension is flexible to the needs of the community – so if there is a strong interest in the

community for a particular kind of self-provisioning education, usually extension will make an

accommodation to teach a course on that subject.

Furthermore, because I am asking extension agents in their official capacity as employees of

the state of Washington, I may be getting the official stance of WSU Extension rather than the

on-the-ground experiences or thoughts of those partaking in self-provisioning activities. On the

other hand, speaking with educators allows me to get a more wide-ranging or aggregate

experience of many people – as I specifically ask extension agents to report what they have heard

or noticed from a majority of their constituents.

In order to increase internal consistency-related reliability, I added questions to my

interview schedule that seek to address the same problem, and see if the respondent answers

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similarly to each of these questions. For example, I found several ways of asking how the

changes in the self-provisioning programs came about and attempted to compare the answers for

each of these questions to one another to find a correlation. In order to assess the face validity of

my measures, I did cognitive interviews, which is a pretest in which I discuss my questions with

a volunteer to determine if they are measuring what they intend to measure (Blair and Conrad

2011). My main concept of interest is change in self-provisioning programming over time, so I

conducted several cognitive interviews and asked the interviewees what they thought my

questions are intending to measure. I also asked volunteer interviewees to determine the clarity

of my interview questions, in order to decrease measurement error.

One way to get at convergent validity is to look at the National Gardening Association

and the Garden Writer‟s Associations measures of changes in home food gardening over time.

Convergent validity uses a measure outside of the study which should theoretically have similar

findings to the concept in question in order to determine the validity of the concept (Lehmann

1988). My findings show that these educational programs are driven by demand from individuals

and the demand has increased in recent years. This correlates with the findings of the National

Gardening Association and the Garden Writer‟s Association, which have found that there has

been a substantial increase in food gardening the past five years.

Because so little systematic research has been done on FSP, I am not entering this research

with a specific hypothesis. Instead, I am using qualitative methods in order to allow themes to

emerge from the data. This allows for myself and future researchers to use this theory-building

information on trends of FSP. This small sample size and qualitative methodology means that

my data is not generalizable beyond the scope of WSU Extension, yet I am able to provide

evidence for the finding that many people are coming to FSP for many different reasons. This

35

theory can then be tested in other Extension programs as well as any other educational programs

that teach self-sufficiency. The scope of my theory may also extend beyond educational settings

and apply to larger trends in household self-sufficiency activities across the United States.

5. Results

My population consisted of Washington State University Extension Agents and those that

have worked for extension in the past. My sample (N=20) is three-quarters female, entirely

white, and the vast majority has higher than a bachelor‟s degree. Ages range from 29 to 77, with

an average age of about 55 years old. Tenure at extension ranged from less than one year to 44

years, with an average tenure of about 19 years. Less than two-thirds of respondents work in

entirely rural counties, about a quarter work in entirely urban counties, and the remaining fifteen

percent work in counties with mixed work in both urban and rural settings. I also categorized

each county‟s class based on median income, poverty rate, educational attainment, and median

home value. Based on this categorization, about a third of counties are lower-class, a third

middle-class and a third upper class. Although there may be more variance within a county than

between counties, this categorization gives us a rough estimation of the relative wealth and

poverty of the counties in which the extension agents work, and can therefore help to explain the

trends we have found in self-provisioning attitudes and activities.

My three main areas of interest include: change in interest in FSP over time,

demographics of food self-provisioners, and reasons for participation in FSP. Again, I did not

enter this research with a specific hypotheses, only guiding research questions. Put briefly, I

found that there has been a marked increase in interest in FSP in the past decade or less. My

results also show that the demographics of those participating in FSP are not clear enough (at

least to WSU Extension agents) to delineate a typology of participants. Finally, I have found that

36

there are seven emergent categories that were offered by extension agents to explain the reasons

people have stated for coming to FSP: knowing food/food quality; economic need; emergency

preparedness; cultural reasons/personal preference; progressive social or environmental

concerns; self-sufficiency; and teaching children. I will discuss these results in more detail

below.

5.1 Change in food self-provisioning

Extension provides a variety of educational resources related to FSP. The programming

offered is bounded by two things: interest from the community and available funding. Most self-

provisioning programming offered is based on a strong demand from constituents in the county.

However, sometimes there is a demand for a certain kind of information and extension does not

hire a specialist to provide that information due to lack of funding for that position.

There are several kinds of programs extension has historically offered that have

influenced what kinds of information on FSP people can seek from this resource. Some of the

most popular and pervasive programs offered by extension include Master Gardener, Cultivating

Success (a small farms program), Growing Groceries, and food preservation classes. Other

classes on FSP that are offered are based on a demand for information from constituents; these

include programming on small livestock production, such as beekeeping and keeping chickens.

Another avenue for FSP is in community gardens. Although extension does not offer specific

programming on community gardens, agents often have an idea about the state of community

gardening in their county. Finally, aspects of FSP that are often left out of the scope of

extension‟s programming include hunting, fishing and gathering wild edibles like mushrooms or

berries, and this lack of information on these kinds of activities will limit this study‟s ability to

speak to those aspects of self-provisioning. As we will see in this section, there are important

37

distinctions on what kinds of people (rural or urban, social class) are taking part in which self-

provisioning activities.

One well-established program that extension offers is the Master Gardener program. This

program started at Washington State University and has now been adopted in many state

extensions throughout the nation. The program began in the 1970‟s when the King County

extension office was being inundated with questions on plant care so much so that they had a

full-time staff member simply answering these calls. The premise behind the program is that

extension extensively trains a cohort of volunteers each year that graduate with the designation

of Master Gardener. They are then expected to donate a minimum hours of volunteer time

answering gardening questions from the community and doing outreach.

One venue to observe an increased interest in FSP is to find out the volume and kinds of

questions that individual community members are asking extension and Master Gardeners.

Master Gardener was specifically mentioned nearly equally by rural and urban agents as well as

across county class level, suggesting that vegetable growing is a phenomenon increasing across

class and geographic boundaries. Elaine1, an urban master gardener program leader, told me,

“On average right now our hotline gets 10-15 calls a day. Five years ago we might have gotten 2

or 3.”We find here that the volume of gardening calls has increased, especially in the past 5 or 6

years – that is, starting around 2006 or 2007. Not only has the volume increased, but the

questions have changed from primarily questions on ornamentals to questions about growing

one‟s own edible products. Robert, an extension agent from a mixed urban and rural county,

explains, “People‟s interest in gardening and seed sales have tripled, quadrupled over the past

couple of years. Yeah a tsunami of interest.” Claire, another urban agent, said:

1 All names of respondents are pseudonyms.

38

I do know that backyard gardening and even fruit tree orchard growing is just very, very

popular. People are always talking about it and asking about it. Anytime we do

workshops on those topics they‟re very, very popular.

This sentiment repeated itself in the data, and it is clear that there has been a major uptick in

interest in gardening education, especially on the production of edible products.

Another program that some counties offer is the Growing Groceries program, which

provides education on simple food growing. This program especially seeks to target lower

income households to potentially help ease food costs. The vast majority of agents mentioning

the Growing Groceries program were in urban settings, which indicates that it is the urban poor

who need education on vegetable gardening to supplement a lack of access to quality foods. It is

clear that vegetable gardening for subsistence is a phenomenon that exists among the rural poor,

but previous research (Sherman 2009) suggests that this is such a culturally-accepted practice

little education is needed on it. Carol, an extension agent working in a dense urban setting

explained:

A: On very short notice we had a Growing Groceries expo. We had 190 people that

showed up, which also was surprising with relatively short notice.

Q: Right, and what year was this?

A: This was 2009.

Again, we see a huge uptick in interest in the past few years in growing edible products.

Extension has also traditionally been a source of evidence-based education on food

preservation. However, as funding began to diminish and food preservation became less popular,

agents who specialized in food preservation retired and were not replaced. However, in the past

several years, interest in food preservation has been quickly rebounding. Elaine, the urban master

39

gardener put it this way, “Then in the last two years, we've had an upsurge in interest and we had

a [canning] event out here last Saturday and we had 4000 people and I suspect that we have

several hundred people's names… So, interest is extremely high right now.”

This large number of people interested somewhat reflects the nature of working in an urban

environment. However, Mary, a rural agent, expresses having a relatively equal amount of

increase, but smaller raw numbers due to the rural setting:

A: Now [canning is] getting to be a necessity for some people. So they‟re really wanting

to learn...

Q: When did you start to see that starting to change?

A: Well I think probably about 5 or 6 years ago. And then the last 3 or 4 years, I‟ve had

classes as many as 60 people. My classes this year I‟ve had one with 57, another 46, and I

think my smallest class I taught this year was 8 people.

In both urban and rural settings and across social class, interest in food preservation is on the

rise, and very quickly. Like vegetable gardening, the findings suggest that food preservation is a

self-provisioning activity that is increasing in popularity in many different settings; although we

will see later that people are coming to these shared activities for different reasons.

Mentioned by about half of extension agents interviewed, there is also increased interest

in small livestock production, such as keeping bees and chickens. This interest in small-scale

livestock production is mentioned almost exclusively by low and middle class rural county

agents. A small minority of agents both working in the Vancouver area, which is an upper class

community which adjoins Portland, Oregon, mentioned that backyard chickens were on the rise.

This may suggest that small-scale livestock production is and has been pervasive as a subsistence

40

strategy in rural places; whereas this interest is new in urban areas among the middle and upper

classes. Nicole, a rural extension agent, explains:

There are a lot of people who are now getting into bees…we started a beekeeping club

and we‟ve got just tons and tons of people joining this beekeeping club. And then it turns

out that there‟s just a lot of people now who are raising their own rabbits for food. You

know, in town every other house seems to have chickens now for eggs, not necessarily

for meat but there‟s a lot of meat growers out here. But I‟ve been surprised at the number

of goats and the rabbits that are being raised by people for food.

A different venue for the production of edible products is in community gardens.

Although extension often does not directly work in the development of community gardens,

extension agents often have a robust knowledge of these kinds of activities happening in their

county. Several agents mentioned the growth of community garden spaces as a place where

people are growing edible products for self-consumption, like Sharon, an agent discussing the

urban setting in which she works: “Community gardens have just mushroomed. In 2006… we

had maybe 2 community gardens at that point and right now we‟re pushing, I don‟t know,

somewhere between 12 and 15 in the city limits.” These gardens are often situated in towns or

urban centers – in places where people do not have the land resources to grow a backyard

garden. Indeed, extension agents from urban and mixed counties were much more likely to

mention community gardening than those in rural counties. This finding indicates that even

people in urban settings lacking access to space for FSP are finding a way to grow edible foods

by developing community gardens, especially in the last several years.

One major finding of this study is that extension agents perceive that there has been a

marked increase in food self provisioning activities in the past few years, ranging from two to

41

seven years ago (between and 2005 and 2010). Extension agents working in both rural and urban

settings as well as across social class equally mentioned this perceived increase in interest in

FSP.

The kinds of activities on which people are seeking extension education differ by

geography and social class. This study has found that an increased interest in both vegetable

gardening and food preservation is pervasive across rural and urban counties as well as across

social class. However, small livestock production is primarily popular in rural settings among the

low and middle classes. Yet, there is a small but growing interest in so-called „backyard

chickens‟ among the urban middle and upper-classes. Again, this study lacks explicit

information on certain types of self-provisioning including hunting, fishing or foraging, due to

extension‟s lack of programming in these areas. Previous studies (NGA 2009; GWA 2013) have

focused primarily on change in interest in food gardening, and we see that the increased interest

in FSP goes beyond that one activity to include food preservation and small-scale livestock

production. In this section we have seen that interest in WSU extension programming on FSP is

on the rise and that people are taking part in a range of activities, depending on the setting. Now

we can turn to looking at what kinds of people are taking part in this growing phenomenon of

providing food for oneself.

5.2 Demographics of food self-provisioners

One way to begin to understand the phenomenon of FSP is to understand the basic

demographics of the people participating. Are food self-provisioners a particular age or income

level? Are they part of a certain generation? Or a certain class?

Sharon, an urban agent, explains that in her city‟s community gardens, she sees all levels

of income and age:

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Q: Of the people taking part in community gardens – what kind of people are they? What

kind of age range do you see? What kind of income range do you see?

A: Everything. It depends on the neighborhood. If you have a low income neighborhood

you‟ll have a bunch of low income people. But I definitely see everybody age-wise. All

the way down from the little guys all the way up to the 70 or 80 year old who just can‟t

stand to not have dirt under their fingernails.

For some self-provisioning activities, however, cost may be prohibitive to entry for low-income

people. A few extension agents mentioned cost as a barrier to entry specifically for canning, as

the cost of start-up equipment may be difficult to bear for some people, even if food preservation

may help save money in the long term. Jim, a rural agent, explains:

The thing about canning is that it is extremely expensive to do canning. Sometimes we

think, „Well god, we have low-income, we have them grow the garden, we have them can

it.‟ They don‟t have the ability to go out and spend all that money to do canning. And

when you do a big garden you gotta can. You gotta do something with the harvest „cause

you‟re not gonna eat it all. There are some misnomers about canning. We think it‟s there

for those that don‟t have a lot of money. It‟s expensive to get into. Once you get into it

it‟s great.

Overall, though, agents explained that people with a range of income levels are taking part in

FSP, but that these activities will have different meanings to different populations, something

that will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

As far as differences in age, again we see quite a large range of participants. Janet, an

agent working in a mixed urban and rural county, explained that for canning:

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The interest is booming. And it's two segments. One is the person that used to can like

my mom, you know, fifty jars of peaches for the family… And then the other segment is

kind of the younger, who may have had no exposure to it… [this segment] has to do with,

you know, more environmental, local, concern for local.

Here we see a range of age in participants, but again from the perspective of the extension agent

these two segments are getting involved for different reasons. The older generation is returning

to a skill they once practiced regularly, and the younger generation is learning for the first time

for ideological reasons.

Overall, WSU extension agents explained that FSP is an activity that many people of

different generations are getting involved in. As Claire, an urban agent, explains, “It [self-

provisioning] is just a multi-generational thing right now. I mean you‟ll go out to somewhere and

see people literally of every generation from toddlers to all up, so I think it‟s just a very hot topic

right now.” It is difficult then to understand the FSPs based on basic demographics, as

participants vary widely on measures such as income or age. What was also clear from the data,

however, is that the different segments of the population come to it for different reasons. As we

saw in one quote, the older people are coming back to it maybe for economic reasons or to get

reacquainted with it; whereas the younger people are coming to it for the first time and it is due

to concerns about food safety for their children or other environmental or social reasons. We will

look in more detail at this phenomenon in the next section.

5.3 Reasons for participation

Table 1. Number of interviews in which each code was mentioned.

Code Interviews mentioned

Knowing food 18

44

Economics 18

Cultural Reasons 16

Self-sufficiency 14

Emergency preparedness 13

Progressive 12

Teach to children 7

N=20

5.3.1 Knowing food and food quality

One reason for participation that was mentioned by nearly every extension agent was that

people are interested in knowing where their food is coming from. This was almost always

mentioned in conjunction with a fear over the food quality of conventional foods. This code had

equal representation across class and geographic setting. Mary, a rural agent, put it this way,

“Young mothers are concerned about all the additives that are put into baby food. So if they can

do their own then none of that is there and they know what‟s in that jar or can that they‟re

opening.” Elaine, an urban agent, echoed the same sentiments:

I just know so many people come to me saying, 'I want to know what's in my food.' I

think that the reason we have so much asthma and allergies. Especially food allergies is

all around the processing of food and what's in those foods and what we don't know is in

those foods and all the high-fructose corn syrup and now the arsenic in rice thing, which I

need to find out more about. They're just really concerned about how food is being

processed and they want more control of their food sources.

This attitude was repeated by nearly every extension agent. When people come to extension for

information on FSP, a very large segment are expressing concern over the safety of their food.

45

These people want to gain control over their food sources by taking some measure of

responsibility over its production. It is also interesting that there was little difference in what

kinds of people – both rural and urban and from different class settings – expressed this

sentiment. A surprising cross-section of people all agree that they simply cannot trust what is in

their food.

What was once considered “safe” food such as organic has become increasingly

conventionalized (Howard 2009) by being processed in large industrial factories using unknown

practices. These murky aspects of its production make it essentially risky. FSP gives people the

opportunity to control that risk by gaining the knowledge of the food they produce for self-

consumption, even if it is only a small portion of their diet.

5.3.2 Economics

Mentioned just as often as concern over the quality of food are economic concerns.

Nearly all participants mentioned the economic downturn as a major reason that people have

turned to FSP. This response was mentioned equally by both rural and urban agents and in

different class settings. Jim, a rural extension agent explains, “Gardening has taken an upturn. I

think one of the biggest things for gardening was food prices. We had the gas crunch about 3

years ago…people were thinking „Wow, food prices have gone through the roof I should garden,

I should can, I should do those things.‟” Not only do we see the economy influencing

participation in gardening, but also in the decision to take up canning. Mary, a rural agent,

expressed it this way:

I think that just as a rule that most people are really wanting to be more self-sufficient

and as we said because of the economy. They‟re wanting to learn… I think that they

realize there are ways to save money by going and learning more about how to do some

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of these other things, especially the pressure canning. A lot of people are freezing their

food.

This sentiment was also expressed in the urban setting. Carol, an urban agent, put it this way,

“Well, in 2008, it was really clear that people were losing their homes, they were losing their

jobs, they were losing all kinds of things, so they needed to grow food.” The Great Recession

that started in 2007 has, according to my sample, had a major impact on the decision of people to

begin FSP. People in the state of Washington are responding to the economic crisis by learning

how to provide basic necessities for themselves.

5.3.3 Cultural reasons

The next most mentioned reason for participation in FSP is for cultural reasons. Four-fifths of

the sample mentioned a shift in culture that has allowed FSP to be a popular activity. This

cultural shift centers on the desire to reconnect with nature or to simplify one‟s life. The cultural

shifts associated with FSP in my study have to do with a desire to incorporate the joy of working

with one‟s hands. What we can see from the data is that this cultural shift is more prevalent in

poorer and rural counties. According to my sample, some people come to FSP as a rejection of

the commercial lifestyle. Lisa, a rural extension agent, put it this way, “I think that our society

has gotten a little bit commercial at times. Yeah it‟s kind of fun to figure out what you really

want and what‟s really necessary and what you can forego.”

Janet, an agent from a mixed urban and rural county explains the reason people come to

FSP might be a subconscious shift in thinking, an emotional reaction:

I think that sense of taking care of yourself from the ground up is a feeling that people

have. Kind of, „I can do this.‟ I think it's even more than „I can take care of myself‟ – it's

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not even that thought through. I think it's an emotional response to connecting to nature

and how nature intends for us.

Nicole, an agent from another rural county explained that this cultural shift may be different for

different demographic groups:

I think that the people who are the grandparents are like, „This isn‟t anything new, you‟ve

not invented the wheel.‟ You know [laughs], „What are you so proud of?‟ [laughs] „A

garden isn‟t something to be proud of a garden is something that you just do.‟… I think

that a lot of this is sort of a middle class kind of a reconnecting with the land type of a

thing that everybody else knew about the whole time.

This agent explains that this cultural shift that is getting so much attention in major news outlets

may simply be a phenomenon of the middle-aged and middle class. According to this agent, the

older generation takes gardening for granted, as a part of a lifestyle which goes unsaid; whereas

the younger generation is coming to it for the first time and are placing a lot of emphasis on this

act which is simply accepted without much fanfare among the older people.

Finally, in one of Washington‟s most rural and most poverty-stricken counties, William

explains that people come to FSP as a lifestyle, “They raise their own food and basically they

want to get away from the modern society that‟s why they came here.” This rejection of some

aspects of the modern industrial world and a turning toward what is considered „natural‟ or

simple is one reason people come to FSP. This particular reason is quite complex but is focused

around an alternative lifestyle, the joy of physical labor, and a desire to be connected to the land.

The details of this cultural shift requires more parsing out in future studies, but this study has

found preliminarily that people in poorer and more rural counties are slightly more likely to have

48

mentioned this cultural reason for coming to it. This may be because this activity aligns with

subsistence strategies that are embedded in rural culture (Sherman 2009).

5.3.4 Self-sufficiency

A related but distinct category for participation in FSP is the desire to be self-sufficient.

About three-quarters of the sample mentioned the desire to learn certain kinds of FSP as a way to

be independent and the self-efficacy that comes with it. Jim, a rural extension agent put it this

way, “But there‟s still some [benefit to] being able to know how to do it and being able to be

self-sufficient that way and have that ability to sew and mend that I think some people are going,

„Man I really want to know how to do this.‟” Lisa, another rural agent explains that this

phenomenon echoes a similar phenomenon from the 1970‟s:

I think there was a lot back in the 70‟s and we see that I think it‟s come around again. A

lot of interest in doing things yourself. Being able to get by with maybe part time work

and [being able] to be self-sufficient to the point where you didn‟t necessarily need to

have a full time job.

This attitude was echoed in the urban setting as well. Claire, who works in an urban setting,

explains, “We have a lot of volunteers… they just love the idea of self-sustainability and food

security and things like that.”

This is closely related to cultural shifts, but those mentioned before are centered around a

connection to nature and an embracing of a simpler or slower lifestyle. Doing FSP for self-

sufficiency, on the other hand, is a distinct kind of cultural shift toward a do-it-yourself lifestyle.

Self-sufficiency was mentioned equally by rural and urban agents as well as across classes. This

pervasiveness may be because this rugged individualism is deeply embedded in American

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culture, as discussed earlier. FSP is one way to enact this cultural value which is growing in

acceptance and popularity.

5.3.5 Emergency preparedness

Two-thirds of the sample mentioned emergency preparedness as an emergent reason for

participation in FSP among their constituents. FSP for emergency preparedness is mentioned

equally in both urban and rural counties as well as in different class settings. Emergency

preparedness is also highly related to self-sufficiency because when people become aware of the

threat that an emergency situation poses, their desire to come to FSP is borne out of a desire to be

self-sufficient in that situation.

Several of my participants mentioned actual natural disasters that affected their county,

and how this raised awareness as to the fragility of the industrial food system upon which they

rely. Jennifer, an agent working on a Native American reservation in Washington, explained:

The more home food preservation that people do the more prepared they will be for a

disaster because they won‟t be dependent on stores and that kind of thing. And so I think

that scare [a major storm] coming through the reservation kind of prompted an increased

interest in „What can I do…to make sure that what happened does not happen again?‟

Elaine, an agent working in an urban county put it this way:

We were cut off at one time because of a flood in the Centralia area. And the trucks

couldn't get up and down I-5 to deliver to grocery stores and restaurants and we quickly

understood how much reliance we had on either train or truck traffic to get food here.

And so I think there's also concerns about natural disasters and so on.

The people in these counties that have experienced some level of natural disaster were quickly

made aware of the precariousness of the industrial food system and the response for some was to

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turn to extension to learn how to provide for themselves and their family in the case of another

disaster.

Michael, a rural agent, put it most clearly:

The heightened awareness of our dependence of the transportation infrastructure and the

recognition that if anything were to disrupt these sort of fragile webs we would be in big

trouble, quick. There's interest in being more self sufficient simply from a security

standpoint. After things like Hurricane Katrina people realized how, if you're without

electricity for a short period of time or without new food supplies coming in to a

community for a variety of reasons we are pretty vulnerable… I think an increase in

recognition of a whole host of natural disasters or human caused disasters, we're

extremely vulnerable... People are responding to that… That's not a fringe topic any

more.

The fact that emergency preparedness is a salient topic driving people to learn about FSP reveals

that people are seeing the risks of the industrial food system and seceding from it in order to

protect themselves.

5.3.6 Progressive: social and environmental

Although probably what comes to mind as the foremost reason for participation in FSP,

progressive concerns were only mentioned by about three-fifths of my sample. Progressive

concerns include the consideration of environmental or social effects of the industrial food

system. This reason for participation is what is cited by mainstream news sources and associated

with the middle class, as mentioned in the Literature Review section.

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Not surprisingly, extension agents from urban and richer counties were twice as likely to

mention progressive reasons for participation in FSP as their rural counterparts. Claire, an urban

agent, explains:

I mean people understand the connection between eating fruit from Guatemala or Chile

and the impact that that has on numerous things versus something that‟s grown by you or

your neighbor or shared… People understand the relationship between where you get

your food and how healthy it is for you and the planet.

This sentiment did exist among rural agents as well, but it was mentioned by a small minority of

rural agents. Thomas, an agent working in a rural county home to a small regional public

university, put it this way:

The focus there is on sustainability, local when you can get it,…and equity – fair

treatment of people who work in the food industries from growth to retail delivery, that

sort of thing. That strikes a chord with an interesting cross section of people in the

community.

This is another manifestation of the rejection of the outcomes of the industrial food system, but

this is for ideological reasons rather than emotional or individual ones.

Janet, an agent from a mixed rural/urban county, explained the kind of demographic that

comes to FSP out of a concern for progressive issues is the youth, “The younger segment that it

has to do with, you know, more environmental, local, concern for local.” Certainly, the

stereotype depicted in mainstream news articles about FSP is the young, middle- to upper-class

dabbling in gardening or keeping backyard chickens for progressive reasons. This image is

reflected in my data with the caveat that it is very much not the only kind of person or reason for

participation in FSP. Indeed, only three-fifths of the sample even mentioned this as a reason for

52

participation, behind five more popular responses. So, although richer, urban, younger people are

indeed citing progressive reasons for participation, they are not the center or the driver of

participation in FSP as a whole, as might have been thought from the informal reporting that has

been done thus far.

5.3.7 Teaching to children

Finally, only about a third of the sample mentioned that their constituents were coming to

FSP out of a duty to pass this information on to their children. Teaching to children was

mentioned equally among urban and rural agents, but was cited slightly more by agents working

in poorer counties. Nicole, a rural agent, expressed, “I think a lot of us too at the same time were

trying to show our kids what gardening is and where food comes from.” Claire, an urban agent,

put it this way:

A lot of people want to expose their kids to…picking fruit. You know, there‟s something

kind of magical about that. People‟s eyes kind of light up when you talk about that.

These agents explain that this passing down of home skills stopped or slowed in a certain

generation, and they feel the obligation to equip the next generation with the skills they may not

have gotten from their parents. This drive to teach children FSP seems both out of a desire to

provide needed skills for self-sufficiency as well as a basic education in naturalism.

5.4 Results Conclusion

The findings of this study include: that interest in FSP education at extension is

dramatically on the rise, the demographics of food self-provisioners are varied, and there are

seven emergent reasons for participation in FSP. The main finding of the study is that FSP is not

a homogenous phenomenon. Instead, many different kinds of people are coming to it for

different reasons, and these reasons seem to be tied to class and cultural setting. The act of FSP

53

represents a rejection of and secession from the industrial food system, but not everyone doing it

sees it that way.

This study has established that interest in FSP education is indeed on the rise, and in a

dramatic fashion. From gardening to small livestock production, in varying geographic and class

settings, people are turning to FSP and asking WSU Extension for education on proper

techniques. This investigation has also found that, contrary to stereotypes perpetuated by

coverage of this phenomenon by news outlets (Burros 2007; Burros 2009; Winne 2010), the

demographics of food self-provisioners are incredibly varied. This is important sociologically

because this phenomenon has the potential to bring together a great variety of constituents to a

common activity which provides fresh and nutritious foods. Although these people may be

choosing to participate in FSP for extremely divergent reasons they are all arriving at similar

outcomes.

There are seven emergent reasons provided by WSU Extension agents as to why their

constituents are coming to them for education on FSP. The two most mentioned reasons for

participation are: 1) a fear of the food produced by the industrial food system and a desire to

know the origin of one‟s food, and 2) a way to save money in response to the Great Recession

starting in 2007. Other reasons mentioned, in descending order of popularity are: cultural shifts

that reject modern commercial society and embrace simplicity, a desire to be self-sufficient, a

wish to be prepared in case of emergency, for progressive social or environmental concerns, and

a duty to pass on food producing knowledge to children. Most of these reasons for participation

have a latent embedded critique of the modern industrial food system. Yet, whether or not they

see it this way, the act of FSP ostensibly is a choice to decrease participation in this system

through providing some of their food through FSP.

54

Another major and significant finding is that these varied demographics of those taking

part in FSP help explain the varied reasons for participation. Which of the above reasons was

emphasized is deeply embedded in the cultural context of food self-provisioners. It is worth

noting that the two most popular reasons for participation, knowing one‟s food and for economic

reasons, were mentioned by nearly all participants and did not show differences by geography or

class. This suggests that there is a major historical and structural shift which is turning people to

produce food for auto-consumption. My research suggests that this is influenced by the Great

Recession along with a new heightened awareness of the riskiness of industrial food through

increased food recall news coverage. Self-sufficiency and related emergency preparedness were

also mentioned by most participants, and did not show more prevalence in either rural or urban

or different class settings. This suggests that self-sufficiency is a pervasive American value, and

FSP can help to enact that value for people of all types. There are two reasons for participation

that were clearly situated in specific cultural contexts. The first is the desire to get closer to

nature or to simplify one‟s life. This was mentioned more by agents working in poorer and rural

counties. This may be because FSP is a subsistence activity among the rural poor. It may also b a

lifestyle choice by a specific subset of the rural poor that are looking to “drop out” of society, as

mentioned by William, the extension agent working in one of Washington‟s poorest and most

rural counties. Finally, those agents who mentioned their constituents taking part in FSP for

progressive social or environmental reasons were much more likely to be from richer and urban

counties. This is the stereotypical idea of the food self-provisioner perpetuated by major news

outlets, but surprisingly this was only mentioned by three-fifths of my respondents.

This study is only a preliminary attempt at understanding reasons for participation in FSP

and producing a typology of food self-provisioners. Much more work needs to be done with

55

actual participants in FSP to draw out more clearly their circumstances, beliefs and behavior.

This study has laid the groundwork for understanding this rapidly growing phenomenon and

provided a road map for future work on FSP.

6. Discussion and Conclusion

The major findings of this research include: people seeking education on FSP in Washington

State is on the rise in a significant way, there are a wide variety of people participating, and

people come to FSP for a variety of reasons. The uptick in interest seems to have coincided with

the Great Recession which started in 2007, but this is not the only reason people why have

become interested in providing food for themselves. The most cited reason, other than to save

money, is to regain control over one‟s food source in light of a growing distrust of the quality of

industrial foods. Other related reasons for participation include: a desire for more simplicity in

one‟s lifestyle, the efficacy that comes with self-sufficiency, being prepared for an emergency

situation, and as a way to enact progressive values.

This research begins to fill the gap in research proposed by prominent sociologists of food and

agriculture such as Friedland (1982) and Berry (1992) by looking at those producing food for

themselves and getting to know the land on which they live. As recent studies have found that up

to fifty percent of the population may be keeping a home food garden (GWA 2013), this is a

phenomenon that sociologists ought not to ignore. This study has found that those choosing to

produce food for their own consumption are incredibly varied in age and income level as well as

in the reasons they are choosing to participate. This challenges our conventional notions of who

is participating in FSP. More so than the middle-class progressive urban gardener, this is a

phenomenon which includes young parents concerned with additives in baby food, retirees

looking for simplicity in lifestyle or rural Native Americans interested in avoiding the negative

56

outcomes of a natural disaster, to name a few kinds of participants. Although my data is not

robust enough to provide a strong typology of food self-provisioners, it can begin to draw a

rough outline of the incredible diversity of those choosing to participate as well as the meanings

and cultural contexts in which FSP is embedded.

This research also provides a framework for understanding another kind of alternative

agriculture. The most prominent aspects of alternative agriculture that are studied in the literature

are organic, sustainable, and local agricultures. However, these commercial enterprises make up

only a very small percentage of all food bought in the food economy. FSP, on the other hand, is

practiced, at least in the form of food gardening, by around fifty percent of the American

population (GWA 2013). Although it is clear that FSP is not providing a majority of food for

many of these people, the act of FSP is much more active and engrossing than the act of

consuming. No study has looked at the extent to which all FSP activities are practiced by the

American population, but one must assume if we include all activities such as hunting, fishing,

canning, small livestock rearing, mushroom foraging, or keeping small tree fruit, we would find

a larger percentage than the fifty percent doing home food provisioning. Many of these were out

of the scope of the education that WSU Extension provides, and are therefore out of the scope of

this study, but a comprehensive look at all FSP activities as a whole would be very useful in

future research.

One way alternative agriculture has been defined is as decentralized, independent, concerned

with building community, promoting harmony with nature, and increasing environmental and

social diversity by exercising restraint and considering short- and long-term outcomes (Beus and

Dunlap 1990). I propose, in light of the current research, that FSP is worthy of study as a form of

alternative agriculture. In some ways, it fits the definition with more precision than the current

57

incarnations of organic, sustainable and local agricultures, which have often been co-opted by

the conventional food system (Howard 2009).

Finally, FSP ultimately represents an act of secession from the industrial food system, as

defined by Kloppenburg et al. as “a strategic preference for withdrawing from and/or creating

alternatives to the dominant system rather than challenging it directly” (1996, 38). The act of

FSP fundamentally opts-out of the structure of the conventional agrifood system. As mentioned

previously, most studies of alternatives to the industrial food system – which include organic,

sustainable and local foods – are attempts to inject some principles of alternative agriculture into

the conventional food system in order to reform it. FSP represents a fundamental break from the

industrial food system, as individuals are bypassing participation in that system by producing

food for their own consumption. Although it is clear that most food self-provisioners are only

providing a portion of their own food needs through self-provisioning, even these small acts

could have large impacts. FSP could affect how much industrial food is being bought overall,

bring healthy foods to food deserts, provide sustenance in case of emergency, and allow those

not served adequately by the current food system to gain a sense of efficacy in their self-

sufficiency, among other outcomes. Future studies should look at the impact of this act of

secession from the industrial food system, as the potential results are many.

This study sought to gain a basic understanding of FSP in the state of Washington. Since this

research is exploratory, my findings are preliminary and would require future studies to bear out

further details. My methodology, qualitative open-ended semi-structured interviews, allowed

participants to answer openly, not driven by specific questions or hypotheses. However, this

method‟s drawback is that I do not have a very large sample or precise consistency in my lines of

questioning. This study therefore cannot be generalized beyond the population of WSU

58

Extension. It can, however, be used as a road map for future studies attempting to understand

FSP among different populations. Furthermore, my population of study, WSU Extension Agents

and affiliates, only gives me the perspective of an educator providing information on FSP, rather

than the thoughts and behaviors of food self-provisioners themselves. This may provide me with

a wide view of food self-provisioners, as extension agents come into contact with many

constituents and can speak broadly in terms of trends they have seen. On the other hand, this

viewpoint is limited to speaking only to the kinds of education extension promotes (i.e. the

master gardener program), and has the potential of only acquiring the attitudes of the extension

agents and not their constituents. As mentioned previously, this study not only leaves out many

acts of FSP such as hunting, fishing or foraging, but it also does not speak to the concerns of

those who do not go to Extension for education.

Future research can address these limitations by sampling different populations of food self-

provisioners, using different methodologies, and expanding the sample. My study raised three

important areas of inquiry for future research: 1) creating a robust typology of participants in

FSP, including placing the meanings they bring to FSP into their cultural context; 2) determining

if FSP can or should be an area of inquiry in the study of alternative agriculture; and 3) looking

at the impact of this act of secession from the industrial food system. These are just three areas

which immediately stand out as important lines of inquiry, but because FSP is so understudied

even as it is a growing phenomenon in our society, many more questions have the potential to be

asked.

This study sought to begin to understand the phenomenon of FSP. I asked the questions: Is

this phenomenon really happening? Who is taking part? Why are they coming to it? This study

has established that interest in FSP education is indeed dramatically on the rise, that many

59

different kinds of people are taking part, and they are coming to it for a variety of reasons, which

are embedded in specific cultural contexts. It is important to understand this phenomenon

because it is one that is on the rise and becoming a significant activity practiced by many

Americans. Just in the last few years, studies have found that home food gardening has grown

from 31 to 51 percent from 2008 to 2013 (NGA 2009; GWA 2013). This study has shown that

FSP has the potential to bring together incredibly diverse members of the population to secede

from the logic of the industrial food system and potentially undermine it through their action.

FSP turns what is an irrational and alienating system of acquiring food (Ritzer 2004; Levkoe

2006) into a potentially meaningful and rational relation between people and a substance so

necessary for survival and infused with such meaning. In less than a decade, people are

independently coming to the conclusion that the industrial food system is not sufficient and

turning to FSP as a way to take control over their food sources and ultimately some aspect of

their lives.

60

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