| This dissertation uses commodity chain analysis to investigate how the set of activities involved in making, distributing, marketing and consuming organic milk are integrated within spatial and socioeconomic networks, focusing on the Northeast United States, and the significance of such networks. Organic certification of dairy production slows down the agricultural treadmill, which historically has led to dramatic consolidation in the dairy industry and agriculture generally, and ever greater use of capital inputs. This slowdown benefits animal welfare and protects small and medium sized producers from competitive pressures in the dairy industry. Two primary tensions impact the capacity of the commodity chain to produce broad scale social and environmental change. There is sharp interregional variation in production practices, fueled by ambiguity in and uneven enforcement of organic livestock standards by USDA accredited certifiers, particularly in the area of pasturing and animal replacements. The slowdown of the treadmill at the farm level parallels an acceleration of the treadmill downstream at the processing, distribution and marketing levels. Milk supply chains are geographically dispersed due to the niche character of the industry, contributing to economic centralization of the supply and distribution chains. This centralization downstream places small and medium sized producers in a structurally weak position. Current high growth rates mitigate this tension, but do not eliminate it. Divergence in how consumers and producers conceptualize organic contributes to the festering of the standards debate as the former are more concerned with purity of the product and the latter are more concerned with farming processes and their impact on farm viability. How debates over the standards are resolved will have significant implications for the socioecological character of the industry. |
