Social Enterprises and Alternative Agro-Ecological Food Networks: A Co-operative Business Model for Agro-Ecological Vegetable Seed Production
| dc.contributor.author | Dey, Aabir | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2013-03-10T17:04:45Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2013-03-10T17:04:45Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2012 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Alternative agro-ecological food networks (AAFNs) are being advanced by farmers, civil society organizations, academics, and other concerned citizens, who understand the current agri-industrial food system to be ostracizing the socioeconomic needs of small-scale farmers and damaging the ecological processes required for food production. Advocates of AAFNs support transitioning towards a food system that consists of differentially-scaled farms that prioritize food security, community development, and ecological restoration. The transition towards regionally-populated AAFNs is partly constrained by corporate consolidation in all sectors of the food industry and by government policies that favour large-scale industrial farming. Maintaining a diversity of regionally-adapted agro-ecological seed varieties is an essential component to building AAFNs. Yet, the proliferation of hybridized varieties and their requisite agro-chemicals, the implementation of intellectual property rights on seeds, and the concentration of agricultural inputs by corporate agribusinesses, have disrupted the ability of farmers to reproduce agro-ecological seed varieties in Canada. The responsibility for preserving these types of seeds has been assumed by seed banks and small-scale seed enterprises; however, due to the oligopolistic pressures exerted by dominant market actors in the seed industry, these organizations face a variety of economic difficulties in scaling up their socio-ecological missions. Co-operatives are an alternative form of social enterprise that agro-ecological farmers can implement to better hedge against these market pressures and to reclaim ownership of agro-ecological seed production. The research in this report analyzes the feasibility of a regionally-based agro-ecological vegetable seed co-operative in the Greater Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario. The findings reveal that by pooling production from different vegetable seed growers in the region, a seed co-operative can economically sustain the preservation of agro-ecological seed varieties through a democratically-owned mission-based enterprise. In doing so, it is hoped that the co-operative can indicate to the market, the state, and the general public, one kind of organization that can meet the underserved needs of agro-ecological growers, and more broadly, begin to better facilitate a national transition towards regionally-based AAFNs. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series | en_US |
| dc.identifier.issn | 1702-3548 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10315/20828 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University | en_US |
| dc.relation.ispartofseries | Vol. 18;No. 6 | |
| dc.rights.publisher | http://www.yorku.ca/fes/research/students/outstanding/index.htm | en_US |
| dc.title | Social Enterprises and Alternative Agro-Ecological Food Networks: A Co-operative Business Model for Agro-Ecological Vegetable Seed Production | en_US |
| dc.type | Research Paper | en_US |