Social mycorrhiza: The social infrastructure of agroecological farming economies

ABSTRACT

Alternative agriculture (e.g. agroecology and organics) aims to address global environmental and social problems: goals that hinge on alternative farms’ economic viability. Viability depends on farmers accessing key resources (e.g. land), typically through markets, but also through social relationships. In this article, I offer a theory of how agroecological farmers’ social infrastructure can enable resource access. ‘Social mycorrhiza’ uses ecological mycorrhiza as a metaphor to conceptualize how individuals with simultaneous market interests and movement-based values (like alternative farmers) create social networks that facilitate resource access, in circumstances where they trust each other will act according to both their economic interests and their social and environmental values, over time. Social mycorrhiza highlights cooptation – when social and environmental values are sacrificed for economic interests – and burnout – when economic viability is sacrificed forsocial and environmental values. I illustrate social mycorrhiza using a case study of alternative (organic and agroecological) farmers in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. In short, social mycorrhiza describes the social relational infrastructure of agroecological farming economies.

KEYWORDS:

• Agrarian question
• agroecology
• farm viability
• political economy
• social movements
• community and economic development
• food justice

Acknowledgments

I thank the farmers and other alternative food system leaders I interviewed for this study. Clara Craviotti, Jane Collins, Monica White, Mike Bell, Steph Tai, Pinar Batur, Angela Serrano, Jaclyn Wypler, Tom Safford, Emily Kyker-Snowman, and Mark Anthony each shaped this project in important ways.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Similarly, the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition uses the term ‘social mycelium’ to describe social ties in their network (Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition 2020). Ecologically speaking, ‘mycelium’ refers to a collection of hyphae, described below. In contrast to this use of social mycelium, I use social mycorrhiza to describe a more specific type of social relationship that involves resource flows between at least two entities. Whereas ‘mycelium’ refers to the part of a fungus that delivers resources, ‘mycorrhiza’ refers to the relationship between fungi and plants where they can mutualistically exchange resources between each other under certain conditions, also described below.

2. Polanyi themself was ambiguous about the distinction between money and credit in their theory of fictitious commodities, which is important for political economic theory (Jessop 2019), but not for this article. For a discussion of the importance of credit to agriculture, the historical expansion of the credit system into agriculture, and credit as a fictitious commodity, see Henderson (1998).

3. For a complete discussion of methods, see Leslie (2020). Before starting this research, I obtained ethics approval by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s IRB office and obtained informed consent before every interview.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fulbright Association; UW-Madison Department Sociology; UW-Madison Department of Community and Environmental Sociology; Mellon-Wisconsin; Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems; Rural Sociological Society.

Notes on contributors

Isaac Sohn Leslie

Dr. Isaac Sohn Leslie, is an Extension Assistant Professor of Community Development, Graduate Faculty in Food Systems, and Collaborator with the Institute for Agroecology at the University of Vermont.