ABSTRACT
The rights-based and utilitarian moral philosophies that accompanied the rise of modern industry provide a powerful philosophical framework for countering and correcting the excesses that were beginning to be visible in mainstream agriculture. The new agrarian view sees problems with industrial agriculture that go well beyond its harmful impacts on people who work in the fields or other vulnerable loci within the food system. Agrarian philosophies have prioritized the role of the farmer because the activity of farming—animal laborans—is thought to play an important role in the production and reproduction of personal and social virtues. As discussions of sustainability have become increasingly commonplace, three-circle thinking has become familiar to a wide cross-section of people with different educational backgrounds who play different social roles. Apparently following Gordon Douglass's tri-partite conceptualization, Miguel Altieri included a Venn diagram illustrating three dimensions for sustainability that he labeled environment, society, and economy.
