ABSTRACT
The rapid growth in the complexity of commercial farming systems over the past several decades has spurred strategies for managing nearly every aspect of agricultural value chains—from farming practices to assuring the safety of agricultural commodities that reach consumers. In this book, we explored the reasons farmers are increasingly driven to use toxic agrochemicals that continue to pose serious threats to the public health of farming communities, even in spite of a host of regulatory agencies. The past twenty years have seen massive consolidation of the global trade in agricultural goods under a few large-scale buying firms located in the global north, giving rise to a form of competition that prizes stable and steady supplies of uniform products that must be delivered irrespective of unpredictable environmental and social forces. These buying firms strive to reconcile the variability inherent in agricultural production with the needs of global competition by enforcing quality standards that emphasize consistency, generification, and standardization of the products in their value chains. As a result, the drive to modernize agriculture has generated many innovations that have revolutionized farming by allowing for more predictable and efficient production.
