Document Type

Honors Project - Open Access

Abstract

Agriculture in the US countryside has long been idolized as a symbol of traditional American values via the “family farm” while queerness has become associated with avant-gardism and urbanity. This study contributes to the nascent but growing scholarship at the convergence of these seemingly opposing propositions: queer farming. Specifically, I contextualize LGBTQ+ farmers in Minnesota and Wisconsin through historical and modern perspectives on the dominant heteronuclear family farm and industrial agricultural landscape to understand how they approach farming in the absence of traditional gender roles and as predominantly small, alternative farmers. The family farm as we imagine it today is the result of government-backed programs to maintain white superiority by restoring white rural livelihoods with industrial agriculture and heterosexual nuclearity. This study involved semi-structured interviews with LGBTQ+ and family farmers, yielding insights into how queer farmers navigate a lack of farming privilege and work towards a more anti-capitalist relationship with land, work, and community; the meaning of the family farm today and how generational farming influences life as a small farmer; and how all small farmers are involved in their communities to develop and inspire more just agrifood futures. Finally, spatial analysis explored regions and networks of queer and small farming in Minnesota and Wisconsin. By centering queer and small farmers, this study investigates how one alternative to the idyllic family farm—among all those excluded on the basis of race, gender, or immigration status—contributes to wider efforts to resist industrial agriculture and affect change across the agricultural landscape.

Download

Included in

Geography Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

© Copyright is owned by author of this document