Sustaining sustainable agriculture: The rise and fall of the Fund for Rural America

Sustainable agriculture has lately made significant inroads into US agricultural policy discourse. An examination of the “life cycle” of the Fund for Rural America, a component of the 1996 farm bill, provides an example of the complex and contested ways in which the goals of sustainable agriculture are advocated, negotiated, and implemented at the level of national policy, in the context of the evolving political and institutional arrangements of American agricultural policy. The Fund, with its relatively large endowment of $100 million annually, and its explicit emphasis on alternative agriculture research, is emblematic of both the growing political effectiveness of the alternative agriculture movement and the increasing institutionalization of alternative agriculture representatives in Federal agencies. The untimely demise of the Fund in the appropriations process, however, illustrates the extent to which certain key spaces within the state remain outside sustainable agriculture’s broadening sphere of influence. This suggests that while some aspects of the movement’s organizing strategy are indeed effective, some may need to be rethought in light of the experience with the FRA.