Agriculture and Human Values

Agriculture and Human Values is the official journal of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society. Since World War II, agricultural production systems and food consumption patterns have undergone astonishing changes. Agricultural research has expanded the productive capacity of the world's farms tremendously, but this expansion has raised questions about the sustainability of modern practices, about the criteria for judging risks and benefits of chemical and biological technologies, about the poor's entitlement to food production and safety in developing countries, and about who will farm in the future and how. The Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society is an organization of professionals dedicated to an open and free discussion of these and other related issues, and to an understanding of the values that underlie alternative visions of the food and agricultural systems. The journal seeks to create educational and scholarly junctures among the humanities, the social sciences, food and nutrition studies, and the agricultural disciplines, and to promote an ethical, social, and biological understanding of agriculture. Contributions on a broad range of topics relating to the main theme are welcome. They should be addressed to a general academic readership while maintaining high standards of scholarship. The journal publishes essays on normative issues in assessing conventional and alternative food production, marketing, distribution, and consumption systems, on the sociology of knowledge in the areas of agriculture, nutrition, and food systems, on the application of science and technology studies to agriculture and food systems, on the philosophy of the applied agricultural sciences, on critical theory applied to agriculturally related topics, on social, economic, and agricultural development theory, and on other value issues related to production and consumption systems, including topics on environmental values and on animal welfare. It also publishes theoretical discussions, policy analyses, in-the-field reports, and humanities-based inquiries.