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Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California, by Julie Guthman. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 250 pp. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-520-24094-4. $21.95 paper. ISBN: 0-520-24095-2.
Agrarian Dreams critically assesses the representation and organization of organic food and agriculture as it has developed in California. Of central concern is the extent to which organic farming constitutes an opposition to corporate agriculture and industrial practices. The dominant discourse stresses that organic agriculture supports complex natural systems, embraces self-sufficiency in food production and consumption, and addresses social injustices. Conversely, Guthman suggests that organic agriculture is progressively more a variant of agribusiness-as-usual.
The book is competently organized across eight substantive chapters, with an appendix that extends the discussion of research design and data analysis. The first chapter outlines prevailing claims lauding organic agriculture, and backgrounds the research. The second chapter explores the historic articulation of an emergent organic discourse with the conditions then prevalent in the global agrofood economy. Guthman observes:
growers' decisions to convert [to organics] did not turn on a...