ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the development of alternative agriculture movements in the USA and the challenges they now face following the institutionalization of a standards-based, “allowable inputs” conception of organic food and its governance. We suggest that this fundamental conceptual shift has created a fault-line in alternative food movements by marginalizing process-based approaches embedded in a political imaginary of holistic agroecological practices, personal and equitable inter actions between farmers and consumers and localized democratic governance. There is no doubt that the “allowable inputs,” norm-based standards of United States Department of Agriculture(USDA) organic certification has encouraged the entry of large-scale specialized growers, facilitating monocrop production and integration in mainstream processing and distribution networks controlled by powerful corporate actors. From this perspective, the counter cultural origins of the organic farming movement and its radical critique of conventional food provisioning have been transcended by the rise of a mimetic, multibillion dollar industry.
