Governing Agriculture Sustainability: Multi-stakeholder Initiatives, Sustainable Intensification and Systematic Change

• In Event: 046 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 05. Food, Agriculture, and Environment

Abstract

Efforts to increase sustainability are increasingly being promulgated using non-state forms of governance. Currently, there are multiple multi-stakeholder initiatives working to develop sustainability standards and metrics for agriculture. These include: LEO-4000, Field to Market, the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, and the Sustainability Consortium. Using the sustainable agriculture initiatives as case studies, this paper examines the capacity of multi-stakeholder governance to regulate the environmental impacts of US agriculture. Specifically, using Paul Thompson’s (2010) tripartite sustainability framework, the proposed sustainability standards and metrics for United States agriculture is assessed. Our findings indicate hat the current political-economic stakeholder nexus is producing incremental adjustments to the status quo of industrial agriculture. Put differently, the standards and metrics being produced by these initiatives are largely advancing programs of sustainable intensification in which sustainability is equated with increasing resource efficiencies. Hence, our research problematizes the efficacy of non-state governance approaches for transformative change.

Authors

• Jason Konefal, Sam Houston State University

• Maki Hatanaka, Sam Houston State University

• Douglas H Constance, Sam Houston State University