Civic Agriculture – Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community

While the American agricultural and food systems follow a path of industrialization and globalization, a counter trend has appeared toward localizing some agricultural and food production. Thomas A. Lyson calls this rebirth of locally based agriculture and food production civic agriculture because these activities are tightly linked to a community's social and economic development. Civic agriculture embraces innovative ways to produce and distribute food, and it represents a sustainable alternative to the destructive practices associated with conventional large-scale agriculture. Lyson argues that farming in the United States was modernized using the same techniques that transformed the manufacturing sector from a system of craft production to one of mass production. Viewing agriculture as just another industrial sector led to transformations in both the production and the processing of food. Lyson enumerates the shortcomings of the current agriculture and food systems, and he then introduces the concept of community problem solving and demonstrates that a re-localization of the food production system is underway.