THE ECONOMIC PAMPHLETEER Breaking the cycles of co-optation

Abstract

The industrialization of agriculture has faced resistance in the U.S. since at least the early 1900s. The rise of organic agriculture in the 1940s, of sustainable agriculture in the 1990s, local foods in the early 2000s, and regenerative agriculture in the 2020s were all responses to growing concerns about the environmental, socioeconomic, and public-health consequences of industrial agriculture. One by one, each movement has been co-opted by industrial agriculture. With growing concerns about increasingly volatile weather, market prices, and input costs, “resilient agriculture” could be the next challenge to industrial agriculture.

The co-optation is likely to continue, unless there is a fundamental change in strategies for chal­lenging industrial agriculture and whatever its descendants may be in the era of high-tech farm­ing. First, mainstream producers, processors, or retailers have waited for farmers to develop niche markets for organic, sustainable, local, regenera­tive, or other anti-industrial products. When a niche becomes large enough to become a signifi­cant source of corporate profit, they find ways to rede­fine the concept to accommodate their indus­trial production systems. They then make the redefined product more conveniently available at prices that are unprofitable for authentic organic, sustainable, local, or regenerative producers and capture the market. . . .