SOC 808 Chapter Notes - Chapter 10: Heterosis, Food Sovereignty, Farm Gate
6 Dec 2014
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Document Summary
Farm impressions reinforced by any food-product advertising that likes food to its sources. Key images connecting food to farming in the popular imagination rustic, serene, healthy. Current high tech, high input, corporate controlled agriculture in turn displacing family farming. Food system has changed more fundamentally than most sectors of our society and economy: changes driven by technology, trade, urbanization, and politics of agriculture. Industrialization of farming replaced by tractors in many parts of north america. Replacing animal power with engines increased the speed, power, and output of farming operations exponentially. Subtle cost of technology advances is farmers" loss of self-reliance as farming increasing depends on industrial corporate sector for key inputs. Adoption of engine-driven farm equipment introduction of hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Plant breeders rights legislation enacted in canada in 1990: curtailed farmers rights to sell seeds to each other and gave powerful new profit protection tools to seed development companies.
