The concept of “crisis,” as historical theorist Reinhardt Koselleck has shown, is used in history as a marker of epochal transition—“indicat[ing] a critical transition period after which—if not everything, then much—will be different” (Koselleck, 2006: 371). Agricultural historians have long been among those scholars most attracted to the terminology of crisis, applying it to analyses of famines, environmental disasters, farm price shocks, political revolutions, mass migrations, epizootic pandemics, and much more. Indeed, for agricultural researchers, it can be difficult to find a period in history that is not in some way fundamentally defined by crisis. Crises punctuate the periodization of agricultural history, on micro- as well as macro-scales, helping us make sense not only of the past but also of the present, when desires for, if not everything, then much, to be different permeate our understanding of the political, economic, and material environments in which food and fiber are grown, sold, and consumed.

This panel is the second in a related set of proposals sponsored by the Agricultural History Society. This panel examines the intertwining of rural social, economic, and environmental crises with post-1980 debates over government policies affecting the structures of modern farming, focusing on the two largest agricultural producing nations of the western hemisphere, the United States and Brazil. Trade liberalization and corporate expansion in agribusiness in the 1980s incurred dramatic changes in the nature of food and fiber production in both countries. While U.S. farmers and politicians confronted a formally declared “Farm Crisis,” Brazilian growers relied on technocratic state knowledge and power to increasingly challenge North American dominance in agricultural exports for everything from citrus to soybeans. Two presentations on the panel will explore the complex and often contradictory political implications of the U.S. farm crisis of the 1980s, while a third will compare Brazilian and U.S. agricultural policymaking in comparative perspective. All three consider the contemporary consequences of the political choices made at this key moment of crisis and adaptation in the globalizing agricultural economy of the late 20^th century.

References

Reinhart Koselleck, "Crisis," Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 2 (2006): 357-400. trans. Michaela W. Richter, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30141882.