Relational Agriculture: Gender, Sexuality, and Sustainability in U.S. Farming

Abstract

Although 97% of U.S. farms are “family-owned,” little research examines how gender and sexual relationships – inherent in familial dynamics – influence farmers’ practices and livelihoods. Gender and sexual dynamics – shaped by race and class – affect who is considered a farmer, land management decisions, and access to resources like land, subsidies, and knowledge. We use feminist and queer lenses to illuminate how today’s agricultural gender and sexual relations are not “natural,” but when left uninterrogated are constructed in ways that harm women and queer farmers while limiting potential to develop sustainable practices. Women and queer farmers also resist, “re-orienting” gender and sexual relations in ways that expand possibilities for achieving food justice and ecological sustainability. We offer “relational agriculture” as a tool for making visible and re-orienting gender and sexual relations on farms. Relational agriculture brings sexuality into food justice and demonstrates the centrality of gender and sexuality to agricultural sustainability.

Keywords:

• Agricultural history
• food justice
• gender
• LGBTQ+
• queer
• relational agriculture
• sexuality
• small-scale farming
• sustainable food systems

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jane Collins, Steph Tai, and Monica White for their thoughtful feedback and guidance on this paper.

Notes

1 4-H originated in the boys’ and girls’ clubs established by the 1914 Smith-Lever Act, which also established the Cooperative Extension Service. Although programs were managed locally – such as by land-grant universities – the Smith-Lever Act gave the USDA the power to approve or disapprove of local programming and budgets. As Rosenberg (2015, 45–46) argues, “The [Smith-Lever Act] was a vital piece of state building that provided early twentieth-century national government with a means to monitor and regulate America’s sprawling rural spaces.”

2 Brown, Romero, and Gates (2016) did not find statistically significant differences between LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ food insecurity rates for Asian and Pacific Islanders (10–12%) or American Indian and Alaskan Native (30–32%) groups.

3 The 1978 change to the census of agriculture added the option for cisgender women to be counted as farmers (Hoppe and Korb 2013, iv), but reinforces a binary view of gender that excludes transgender, genderqueer, and non-binary people.