Rejoinder: "Dumb Farmers": Or, They Can't Possibly Know What They're Talking About — We're the Experts

Abstract

First paragraphs:

Over the past decade, we, as a research team, have explicitly investigated the intersection between small family farms, economics, development, and culture in northwest Ohio (Gatrell, Reid, & Ross, 2011; Gatrell, Reid, Steiger, Smith, & Carroll, 2009; Gatrell, Thakur, Reid, & Smith, 2010; LaFary, Gatrell, Reid, & Lindquist, 2006; Reid, Gatrell, & Ross, 2012; Reid, Smith, Gatrell, & Carroll, 2009; Reid, Smith, Haase, Ross, Mirozoyants, & Gatrell, 2009). As such, our primary interest has been in describing and understanding the socio-spatial and cultural context of small family farms and their production practices, as well as business practices as observed in the study area with the assistance of congressionally directed spending. To that end, Cultivating Narratives: Cultivating Successors (Steiger, Eckert, Reid, & Ross, 2012) focused on the practices and decision making of farms (to be read as firms) and the empirically observed realities of northwest Ohio farmers, and articulated the overall positionality of the research relative to the cultural and political significance of the family farm....