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.While this may ensure that people can have more control over thesource and quality of their food, it does not address basic questions of equityand access.To a large extent, there is a continuation of the neoliberal ori-entation of the conventional agrifood system embedded in alternative agri-food efforts, particularly in their emphasis on creating opportunities forproducers and consumers to have different options and make differentchoices.A dominant orientation of the alternative agrifood movement istoward developing alternative businesses that would allow people to acquirefresher, healthier food or help small farmers become or remain viable.Formany alternative agrifood efforts, changing the food system means increas-ing the diversity of sustainable markets and ensuring that consumers havemore choice, rather than making deep structural changes in the food sys-tem that could reconfigure who it is who gets to make which kinds of foodchoices.Yet, as Hinrichs (2000) cautions, we need to closely examine thenew economic systems arising in alternative agriculture movements in orderto understand what they mean for the movement and for those involved intheir operations, rather than assuming that they are meeting goals forchange in the food system.In her analysis of direct markets, she observesthat direct marketing from farmer to consumer does not necessarily or fun-damentally challenge the commodification of food.Thus, market-basedalternative agrifood practices may be limited in their potential to transformthe agrifood system in the direction of social justice.Through the alternative agrifood movement progress has been made indeveloping programs, legitimizing the concepts of sustainability and com-munity food security, expanding research agendas and approaches, anddeveloping alternative food production and distribution practices.Yet theseemergent forms do not yet deeply interrogate the conditions that retard orenable the achievement of agricultural sustainability and food security.5reflections on ideologies embedded inalternative agrifood movementsThe combination of the development of alternative agrifood institutions andthe integration of sustainable agriculture and community food security intodominant agrifood institutions has begun to make significant changes inagrifood discourses and practices.Concepts of agricultural sustainability andcommunity food security are becoming increasingly familiar and betterdeveloped, programs in these areas have been established in traditional agri-food institutions such as the usda and land-grant universities, and alterna-tive agrifood institutions such as community-supported agriculture areproliferating throughout the country.Furthermore, most of this change hashappened in the past decade.This development and integration is the resultof many forces, including the crucial nature of food and its omnipresencein our daily lives.Another reason for this rapid growth is that the alterna-tive agrifood movement challenges the conventional system, but not to sucha degree that it poses a serious threat.This allows the movements entry intoinstitutions from which they would otherwise be excluded and allows for thefurther growth of alternative agrifood institutions.This circumscription ofchallenge can be seen as smart, practical politics.While this approach has contributed to the acceptance and progress ofalternative agrifood movements, it can also have neutralizing or contra-dictory effects.That is, the problems and solutions that tend to be articu-lated are those which can be addressed within the framework of traditionalepistemologies and practices including those which have contributed toagrifood problems in the first place.Often the problems amenable to res-116 Together at the Tableolution by traditional approaches and institutions predominate, such asresearch in new pest management techniques, development of communitygardens, or improvement of marketing systems.In this way, despite con-ceptual and methodological departures from the path of traditional agri-food research, alternative agrifood programs have tended to reproduce keyframeworks and foci of the conventional system [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]