Since World War II, agricultural production systems and food consumption patterns have undergone astonishing changes. Agricultural research, combined with high input, capital intensive, and trade-based applications, has expanded the productive capacity of the world's farms tremendously. However, serious questions have been raised about the sustainability of industrial agricultural and food systems, about the criteria for judging risks and benefits of chemical and biological technologies, about food safety, about the poor's entitlement to food in developed and developing countries, and about who will farm in the future and how. The Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society is an organization of professionals dedicated to an open and free discussion of these and other related issues, and to an understanding of the values that shape and the structures that underlie alternative visions of current and future food and agricultural systems.

Agriculture and Human Values is the official journal of the Society. Like the Society, it seeks to create educational and scholarly affiliations among the humanities, the social sciences, food and nutrition studies, and the agricultural disciplines, and to promote an ethical, social, and ecological understanding of agricultural and food systems.

The journal publishes papers that critically question the values that underlie and the relationships that characterize both conventional and alternative approaches to the agrifood system - from production, processing, distribution, access, and use to waste management. Of particular interest are papers that explore the differential impacts of ag- and food-related institutions, policies, and practices on human populations and the environment. The journal also publishes book reviews and field reports on related topics.

Manuscripts focusing on the journal's main themes are welcome. They should address a general academic readership while maintaining high standards of scholarship.

AFHVS membership includes Agriculture and Human Values.

A vital part of AFHVS's mission, Agriculture and Human Values aims to foster better understanding of the practical and ethical questions involved in alternative visions of agriculture and food systems.

Agriculture and Human Values was founded in 1983 with support from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the University of Florida Humanities and Agriculture Program, and the College of Agriculture of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida, and is now published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. It encourages interdisciplinary research and maintains the highest scientific and scholarly standards for the articles it publishes.


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Agriculture and Human Values regularly publishes special issues devoted to multi-disciplinary perspectives on a single theme. Each is edited by a leading scholar in the field. Here is a sample of recent special-issue themes:

The Continuing Challenge of Hunger
Kate Clancy, Janet E. Poppendieck, and Jo Marie Powers, Guest Editors

Participation and Empowerment in Sustainable Rural Development
Lori Ann Thrupp, Guest Editor

Human Dimensions of Sustainability
Jeffrey Burkhardt, Guest Editor

Biotechnologies and Agriculture: Technical Evolution or Revolution?
Pascal Byé and Maria Fonte, Guest Editors

Accountability and Collaboration in International Development
George Axinn and Rockefeler Herisse, Guest Editors

Agriculture in Eastern Europe
Alessandro Bonnano, Guest Editors

Anachronisms or Rising Stars: The Black Land Grant System in Perspective
Joel Schor, Guest Editor

Animal Health Technologies and the Third World
Martin Meltzer, Guest Editor

The Crisis in European Agriculture
Alessandro Bonnano, Guest Editor

Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge and Development
Michael Warren, Guest Editor

Low-Input Sustainable Agriculture in Cuba
Judith Carney, Guest Editor

Value Issues in Agricultural Information
Ann Reisner and William Hays, Guest Editors

The Ethics of Biological Control
Jeffrey Lockwood, Guest Editor

Interfaces between Human and Animal Medicine
Elizabeth A. Lawrence, Constance M. McCorkle, and Edward C. Green, Guest Editors

Choice, Complexity, and Change: Gendered Livelihoods and the Management of Water
Frances Cleaver, Guest Editor

The Restructuring of Food Systems: Trends, Research, and Policy Issues
Mustafa Koc and Kenneth A. Dahlberg, Guest Editors

Multiple-Use Commons, Collective Action, and Platforms for Resource Use Negotiation
Nathalie A. Steins, Victoria M. Edwards, and Susan J. Buck, Guest Editors

The Changing Bio-Politics of the Organic: Production, Regulation, Consumption
David Goodman, Guest Editor

Gender and Resource Management: Households and Groups, Strategies and Transitions
Corinne Valdivia and Jere Gilles, Guest Editors

Agriculture and Human Values welcomes contributions on a broad range of topics relating to the main journal theme. Submissions are subject to double-blind peer review by referees in both the author's and related disciplines. The editor will also accept unsolicited book reviews, short discussions of previously published material, literature reviews, and annotated bibliographies. See the inside back cover of a recent issue of the journal for detailed instructions for contributors.

Contributors should submit manuscripts using the journa's online submission system at http://ahum.edmgr.com. Authors should prepare three files. The first contains the title, author(s), affiliations, abstract and full correspondence, including telephone and fax number and email address, for the author submitting the manuscript. The second file contains the title and manuscript text. The third file contains a short bio for each author. For inquiries, please contact:

AFHV Journal Editor-in-Chief:
Harvey James; hjames@Missouri.edu

AFHV Assistant Editors:
Jeffrey Cole  colej@dowling.edu
Nancy Grudens-Schuck; ngs@istate.edu

AFHV Book Review Editor:
Douglas Constance; soc_dhc@shsu.edu

Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media B.V., Formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers B.V.

ISSN: 0889-048X (Paper) 1572-8366 (Online)