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Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California Julie Guthman, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 94704. 2004. 236 p. $21.95 paperback. ISBN 0520240952.
The organic food movement is typically associated with providing not only healthier food for the consumer but also promoting and practicing a more ecologically sustainable and socially just approach to food production. In Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California, Julie Guthman explores the extent to which current organic farming practices in the state of California complicate and contradict the values and ideologies associated with the organic food movement.
According to Guthman, the current organic food industry in California, while indebted to the organic food movement arising from the counterculture of the 1960s, does not exhibit its holistic approach to agriculture. Instead, the label "organic" has come to be defined far more narrowly as a set of allowable inputs for given crops. As a result, much of California's "organic" food...