Social change through sustainable agriculture and sustainable consumers

Sometimes people ask me if I ever get discouraged that it is taking so long for sustainable agriculture to become more mainstream. First, for something to be solid, it needs a long time to develop. Second, if we look at history, we see many major changes took a long time. For example, from the signing of the Declaration of Sentiments at the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848-the beginning of the movement for women to get the right to vote-until 1919, when the goal was achieved, it took 71 years and the effort of several generations of women and men (DuBois 1992). The struggle to get equal pay continues. Getting arsenic off the market and not only out of agricultural use but also out of household products like paint and medicine took more than 50 years. (Whorton 1975). Everett Rogers, in his literature review The Diffusion of Innovations (1962), documents that it takes between 14 and 50 years for new ideas to be adopted. In addition, most of the cases reviewed in his book were examples of the adoption of a particular product, not a general practice, such as sustainable agriculture. I’m prepared to be a part of this work for the long haul.