For this research example, I found an article that explored a research question similar to my own. In “Factors in organic farmers’ decision making: Diversity, challenge, and obstacles,” from volume 14 of American Journal of Alternative Agriculture, Leslie A. Duram poses the question: “Who are the farmers who specifically decide to adopt organic methods, which are outside the practices used by most of the agricultural community?” (Duram, 2). Duram conducts a multiple-layered study in which she strives to understand the characteristics of organic farmers as well as the ways their decisions are made and influenced.

After giving a brief description of what sets organic farming apart from other forms of agriculture, Duram describes her methods of data collection. Duram sent a mail survey to 49 organic farmers, receiving 26 responses. In addition to the surveys, she conducted in-depth interviews with five farmers. She utilized qualitative analysis and qualitative data techniques to analyze the responses she received from her sample. Duram found that the reason many farmers decided to become organic was because they were excited about taking on a new challenge as organic farming requires many modifications and changes to their land, lifestyle, and knowledge.

This study was similar to my own proposal because Duram crated a list of eight factors in decision making. These included “diversity, challenge, change, businesslike approach, no formal agricultural education, love of the land, anti-‘radical environmentalist,’ and obstacles” (Duram, 2). She uses these eight factors in her survey just as I would use my seven categories of challenges in a survey for my own research project. I felt that there was a lot going on in this article and that it would have been more beneficial to focus on only one aspect of organic farming.

Duram, Leslie. 1999. “Factors in organic farmers’ decision making: Diversity, challenge, and obstacles.” American Journal of Alternative Agriculture14(1). Retrieved March 29, 2018. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&amp=&context=gers_pubs&amp=&sei-redir=1&referer=https%253A%252F%252Fscholar.google.com%252Fscholar%253Fhl%253Den%2526as_sdt%253D0%25252C5%2526q%253Dchallenges%252Bfarmers%252Band%252Branchers%252Bface%2526btnG%253D%2526oq%253Dcha#search=%22challenges%20farmers%20ranchers%20face%22

In regard to my seven categories of challenges that American farmers and rancher face today, Ryanne Pilgeram and Bryan Amos’ article “Beyond ‘Inherit It or Marry It’: Exploring How Women Engaged in Sustainable Agriculture Access Farmland,” in Rural Sociology, Volume 80, Issue 1, presented me with a new category to consider: gender inequality. Pilgeram and Amos explore the ways in which female farmers obtain their land. After a brief literature review in which they outline the history of female farmers and today’s population of female sustainable farmers, they ask the question, “What are the different ways that women engaged in sustainable agriculture access farmland and how are those pathways to access affected by specific economic and cultural moments?” (Pilgeram and Amos 22).

Pilgeram and Amos selected a population of 40 female sustainable farmers in “Sunset County.” They compiled this population through online resources and speaking with stakeholders and farmers’ market managers in the region. Feeling confident that they had a list of all of the female sustainable farmers in the county, Pilgeram and Amos sent letters and emails to all members of the population asking for their participation. Of the 40 population members, they were able to obtain a sample size of 17 women with whom they would conduct in-depth, semi structured interviews with. After conducting the interviews (either over the phone or on the farms), Pilgeram and Amos utilized NVivo software to code and transcribe their responses and field notes. They then used cross-tabulations to analyze the patterns that were present.

They discovered that there were three main themes in how these women obtained their land: “Access through Marriage,” “Access Later in Life through Personal Savings and Retirement,” and “Land Access as Young Women with a Male Partner.” There were clear patterns of age groups within each of these categories. Those who gained access through marriage are the oldest group of women, and those who gained land access with an equal partner are the youngest group. Patterns regarding access to other important things were also present. Those who were able to be an equal partner in the land access had more access to time, education, and their own money than those who obtained their land through marriage.

This study presented me with a new category of challenges that today’s farmers and ranchers face. It was interesting to read about the increased number of female, sustainable farmers and the different groups within this category. It is clear that there is inequality among these female farmers as some have more access to other important things such as education, time and money that benefit their farming lifestyles.

Pilgeram, Ryanne. Amos, Bryan. 2015. “Beyond ‘Inherit It or Marry It’: Exploring How Women Engaged in Sustainable Agriculture Access Farmland.” Rural Sociology80(1): 16-38. Retrieved March 25, 2018. (http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=c3235d15-40c5-4a9b-a1b7-9eb374975f83%40sessionmgr4008)

The article that I found for this Research Example focuses on two of my categories of challenges that American farmers and ranchers face today – changing demands of consumers and economic influences.  While the article focuses on an entire rural community, there is some mention of the ranches that formally comprised most of the town. In the online records of Rural Sociology, I found an article that had yet to be included in any printed volume of the journal. The article, “’Not Allowed to Inherit My Kingdom’: Amenity Development and Social Inequality in the Rural West” by Jennifer Sherman outlines the changing social scene in the rural town of Paradise Valley, Washington. Originally and lumber and ranching town, the area has become a hotspot for tourists, second home owners, and outdoor recreation. Sherman focuses on how the locals have had to adapt to a changing social scene as their rural home has been influenced by a changing economy and the changing demands of tourists.

Sherman utilized ethnography and descriptive research as she studied those in Paradise Valley for 10 months, conducting 84 in-depth interviews during that time. She obtained her sample through advertisement, gift card incentives, and snowball sampling. She wanted to be sure to interview individuals from all backgrounds but wanted to focus mostly on locals and those from lower economic status. Her goal was to understand how the influx of tourists has changed the rural community. She asked questions about all aspects of the interviewees personal lives and conducted the interviews in their homes or in local parks, cafes, or restaurants. After conducting her interviews, Sherman utilized the software NVivo to analyze and code her transcriptions.  She coded the interviews for various themes that came up consistently across different interviews.

Sherman found that the increase of seasonal tourists played a troubling role in the lives of locals. Those who had originally owned ranches and made a living through forest services and other outdoor professions began losing their lands as they were dedicate to tourist attractions and activities. The local economic scene changed from small, family owned businesses to large chains and tourist-based corporations. The social dynamics changed as well as the rich, urban, tourists began to outnumber the original local, close-knit community. The influx of outsiders raised the price of homes and land and began to drive out those who were living in Paradise Valley for several generations. There has been an increase in jobs, but only seasonal ones which do not provide substantial income during the low-tourist seasons. This article provided a look inside how the tourist businesses can negatively affect local farmers and ranchers. It was an example of the economic and social challenges these people face.

Sherman, Jennifer. 2017. “’Not Allowed to Inherit My Kingdom’: Amenity Development and
Social Inequality in the Rural West.” Rural Sociology(Online). Retrieved March 19, 2018. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/doi/full/10.1111/ruso.12168

As my research question has developed and become finalized into, “What do today’s American farmers and ranchers report to be the greatest challenge that they face in regard to their livelihood?” I wanted to focus my research on one of the six categories of challenges that I proposed in my concept paper. This time I looked at the social challenges that farmers and ranchers are facing today. Specifically, queer farmers and farmers who are part of the LBGTQ community. This is a challenge that I had originally though little about but Isaac Leslie’s article, “Queer Farmers: Sexuality and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture” in Rural Sociology volume 82, issue 4, from 2017 brought it to my attention. Leslie poses the question, “How do queer farmers’ lived experiences illuminate the role of sexuality in the transition to sustainable agriculture?” (Leslie, 2017).

Leslie focuses on the sustainable agriculture movement and how queer farmers are struggling to be integrated into the lifestyle’s community. Leslie describes sustainable farming as being very relationship-based which is hard when some queer farmers are not welcomed into the community. Utilizing participant observation, Leslie interviewed 30 sustainable farmers (19 queer and 11 heterosexual) from New England. The members of the sample were obtained through farming events, markets, and snowball sampling. He conducted his interviews while being given a tour of the farm, while preforming manual labor with the individual, or in a normal sit-down interview setting. This was to ensure that the interviewee felt comfortable and provided candid answers to Leslie’s open-ended questions. Leslie assigned pseudonyms to each individual and made sure he had their consent before recording their conversations. He did so in order to maintain confidentiality and remain ethical throughout his study. After obtaining his 30 interviews he utilized ATLAS.ti qualitative data analysis software and grounded theory to analyze the responses.

Through doing these interviews, Leslie found that many queer farmers struggle to create and maintain personal relationships with other sustainable farmers. At the same time, though, he found that many of these same farmers were surprised with how accepting heterosexual farmers were. It is a common assumption that people who live in rural areas might not be as accepting to homosexual lifestyles as those who live in urban areas. When interviewing the 19 queer farmers, Leslie found that many of them were pleasantly surprised with how accepting their neighbors and business partners were with their homosexuality. But this should not disregard the challenges that these specific farmers face. When it comes to a customer-base, many people expect their food to come from family run farms where common family values are present. Another issue arises when customers are not comfortable with the fact that their food is coming from a queer-run farm where the producer does not share the same values as they do. I find this to be ridiculous and a reason that I had not thought of as an issue to begin with, but maybe I am naive.

This article was eye-opening to me any very interesting. I had not thought of this specific issue and challenge before and it only broadened my understanding of what many farmers and ranchers are struggling with today. This specific topic would fall under the ‘social’ challenges that farmers and ranchers are facing today. This article helped me to think about how I would collect a sample group for my own study and how I might analyze my own in-depth interviews. Before, I planned to do a survey for my research study, but after reading this article I am considering doing in-depth interviews instead.

Leslie, Isaac. 2017. “Queer Farmers: Sexuality and the Transition to Sustainable Agriculture.” Rural Sociology82(4): 747-771. Retrieved March 11, 2018. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/doi/10.1111/ruso.12153/full

As I write these journal entries and research examples, my research question is shifting and developing with every article that I read. I have gone from writing about the change in American beef purchase over the last 10 years, to focusing on the environmental factors associated with changes in American ranching. The article that I found using Google Scholar relates to how farmers and ranchers are adapting to various external factors. In their article, “Agritourism: Motivations behind Farm/Ranch Business Diversification,” Norma Polovitz Nickerson, Rita J. Black and Stephen F. McCool pose the question, “…why farmers/ranchers have turned to (or plan to turn to) agritourism as a means of diversification/entrepreneurship” (Nickerson et al. 19).

In order to answer this question, the authors conducted a survey. Taking place in Montana, the study population was comprised of “Participant rosters from farm/ranch recreation business workshops…farmers/ranchers listed in the 1996-1997 edition of the annual Montana Travel Planner…[and] members of the Montana Ranch Vacation Association” (Nickerson et al. 21).  After identifying eleven reasons for diversification, a questionnaire was mailed to 707 participants, asking them to rate the reason for diversification on a scale of one to five, with five being most important. The eleven reasons for diversification included: “fluctuations in ag income, employment for family members, additional income, losing government ag programs, to meet a need in the recreation/vacation market, tax incentives, companionship with guests/users, an interest/hobby, to fully use resources, other farm/ranch recreation business successes, and to education the consumer” (Nickerson et al. 21).

After receiving 292 usable surveys, the data was analyzed by describing the data, testing for differences among the eleven reasons by looking at the mean scores for each reason, and using chi-square tests on groups of respondents while controlling for different variables. The authors concluded that the leading factor in diversifying for agritourism is based on economic reasons. They stated that this was not surprising and matched previous research.

This article has led me to question which government actions have had the most impact on farms and ranchers. These authors concluded that economic factors have led to the diversification of farms and ranches, but I want to know which specific government policies have led to these changes. I am also curious about the other ways in which farms and ranches have had to change apart from agritourism.

Nickerson, Polovitz Norma. Black, J. Rita. McCool, F. Stephen. 2001. “Agritourism: Motivations Behind Farm/Ranch Business Diversification.” Journal of Travel Research40(1): 19-26. Retrieved February 18, 2018. (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/004728750104000104#articleCitationDownloadContainer)

With regards to my topic, the challenges facing today’s American farmers and ranchers, I have found my focus to shift specifically to the environmental challenges. That being said, one of the leading issues regarding America’s beef industry today is the fact that Americans are purchasing beef from international sources instead of local ones. This is an issue on a local level as it takes money away from our own farmers and rancher, but it is also an environmental issue as well.  The online Rural Sociology, June 2012, Volume 75, No. 2 article, “The ‘Hamburger Connection’ as Ecologically Unequal Exchange: A Cross-National Investigation of Beef Exports and Deforestation in Less-Developed Countries” by Kelly Austin goes into the reasons why beef exports are having a detrimental impact on the environment. To explain this issue, Austin describes the concept of unequal exchange and focuses on the deforestation in Latin America that has increased as a result of their growing beef industry.

Austin opens her article by explaining that unequal exchange happens when a less developed country exports goods to a more affluent country. When this happens, the affluent country gains the goods while the less developed country gains hardly anything and continues to lose resources as a result. For example, when beef is exported from Latin America, whatever profit they make needs to go to immediate needs of the ranchers and very little profit is left over. It also means that, with rising demand for Latin American beef, more ranches are popping up meaning that more deforestation is happening. There is an unequal exchange of goods happening whenever North Americans demand beef from Latin America. Based on this concept, Austin poses a hypothesis which can be summarized into two research questions: “is deforestation in less-developed countries positively associated with the relative extent to which beef exports are sent to more-developed nations? Is the impact of the vertical flow of beef exports on deforestation in Latin American nations more pronounced than in other less-developed nations?” (Austin, 2010).

Austin uses ordinary least squares regression to compare the rate of deforestation to the amount of beef being exported out of Latin America as well as how the deforestation in Latin American nations compares to other nations where deforestation happens. To gain her sample she created a list of criteria that the less-developed countries needed to fall under and she used listwise deletion to create her sample of 48 countries. After obtaining data through her research of beef export data and deforestation data, Austin used OLS regression to come to the conclusion that part of her hypothesis was correct. Deforestation in less-developed countries is positively associated with beef exports to more-developed countries and this is predominately seen in Latin America.

While this article provided interesting insights into this environmental issue, I found it incredibly confusing to follow the methods portion of the article. There were many concepts that we have not learned about yet including her methods of analysis and data collection. That being said, I was still able to understand what was being discussed and the results of the research.

Austin, Kelly. 2010. “The “Hamburger Connection” as Ecologically Unequal Exchange: A Cross-National Investigation of Beef Exports and Deforestation in Less-Developed Countries.” Rural Sociology75(2):270–99. Retrieved February 10, 2018 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1549-0831.2010.00017.x/full).

Continuing with my topic of the challenges facing today’s American ranchers and farmers, I revisited the journal Rural Sociology and discovered yet another relevant article. In the June 2016, Volume 81, Number 2 print I found an article titled, “Environmental Harm and ‘the Good Farmer’: Conceptualizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability in the Beef Industry” written by Anna Kessler, John R. Parkins and Emily Huddart Kennedy. In this piece, the authors analyze the struggle of producing beef while being environmentally conscious. Kessler et al. pose three research questions: “(1) What are the discourses that producers draw on to support their self-perceptions as stewards of the land, (2) how are these discourses used by producers to negotiate and reconcile their involvement in a system that contributes to environmental degradation, and (3) what are key elements to interpreting these discourses of sustainability?” (Kessler et al. 2016: 174).

In order to answer these questions, the authors analyze secondary sources while also conducting their own in-depth interviews, utilizing reports of acts, behaviors and events and focused ethnography. The secondary sources come in the form of reports of interviews and focus groups made of farmers (specifically calf and cow producers). When conducting their own personal interviews, Kessler et al. used referral sampling and accumulated a sample of 17 cow and calf producers in Alberta, Canada with whom they conducted semi-structured interviews. They assigned pseudonyms to the participants in order to remain ethical. After collecting their data via personal interviews, Kessler et al. used thematic analysis to look at repeated patters. The interviews were coded then categorized into themes.

This article provided some very interesting insights into the struggles many farmers and ranchers face when it comes to producing beef while also trying to help the environment. Focus is placed on the use of biotechnology and the debate surrounding its positive effects on the environment but negative effects on farming practices and animal welfare. Kessler et al. write on the turmoil facing farmers who want to be seen as the ‘good farmer’ and act in environmentally conscious ways while still having high levels of productivity. Many farmers are trying to find a balance and a way to be both because without a healthy environment, there would be nothing to produce. While this study focused on farmers in Canada, this is a very relevant issue in the United States as well. As people are becoming more environmentally conscious and more aware of where their food is coming from and how it is being raised, farmers and ranchers are needing to keep up with the changing demands of consumers.

Kessler, Anna; Parkins R. John; Kennedy Huddart Emily. 2016. “Environmental Harm and ‘theGood Farmer’: Conceptualizing Discourses of Environmental Sustainability in the Beef Industry.” Rural Sociology81(2):172-193.

My topic of research focuses on the challenges facing today’s American ranchers. In the June 2008, Volume 73, Number 2 print of Rural Sociology, I found an article addressing one of these challenges. Carla Barbieri, Edward Mahoney and Larry Butler collaborate to write the article, “Understanding the Nature and Extent of Farm and Ranch Diversification in North America.” In this article, the three authors outline the reasons why North American farms and ranches are needing to diversify in the services they provide and ways they use their lands. They write that this need to diversify comes from developments in technology and government policies as well as the changing market, competition, and demands of consumers. To name just a few, these diversifications come in the form of renting out properties for events, repurposing properties as hospitality operations, and producing other merchandise (yarn, wine, gift baskets) not normally associated with their field of production. While a question is never posed in the article, the hypothesis of the study is stated and can lead the reader to understand what question is being answered with the data collected: do different characteristics of the farmer/rancher as well as different characteristics of the farm/ranch make a difference between lightly, moderately, and highly diversified farms/ranches? Using an online survey, Barbieri et al. collected demographic data by looking at public records and obtaining a list of names from the North American Farm Direct Marketing Association (NAFDMA). They emailed the survey to members of the NAFDMA as well as farmers and ranchers not involved with the association and asked recipients to pass on the survey to others who might be able to provide data as well. In the end, they obtained 1,135 usable surveys, 934 of which were obtained through snowball sampling.  The data obtained was analyzed by classifying the diversifications reported in the surveys into the three levels (light, moderate, high) using multiple linear regression and a-posteriori. This article and data collected provide me with some of the most interesting information that I have found on my topic thus far.

Barbieri, Carla, Edward Mahoney, and Larry Butler. 2008. “Understanding the Nature and
Extent of Farm and Ranch Diversification in North America.” Rural Sociology73(2):205–29.