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.Cuts to food stamp programs were justified as necessary toend cycles of dependency and to stop undercutting the work ethic by pro-viding free food. The problem with institutions such as emergency foodprograms (e.g., food banks and soup kitchens) is not that they create dependence, but that they perpetrate the perception that food insecurityis being addressed, deflecting attention away from any government respon-sibility for the poor (Poppendieck 1997).The neoconservative critique ofwelfare misses any viewpoint that wages are too low (Mills 1996) or thatentitlements, whether private or public, can make self-reliance possible.One result of the dominance of ideologies of individualism is that thepoor are not only deprived materially but also demoralized politically andpsychologically.While in the 1960s the hungry marched on Washingtonand sat in at the usda, today the hungry dejectedly and patiently wait in 126 Together at the Tablelines (Poppendieck 1995).Even the poor blame themselves for their situ-ations, as revealed in The Hidden Injuries of Class (Sennett and Cobb 1972).The self-blame and demoralization become even more potent as the poorbecome poorer while the richest layers of society continue to accumulatewealth.Between 1989 and 1995 income for the poorest fifth of Americansdecreased 2 percent but increased 43 percent for the wealthiest 5 percenteven without including capital gains income (Center on Budget and PolicyPriorities 1996b).Farmers are also affected by this ideological straitjacket of self-reliance.Adams (1995) discusses how the ideology of individual entrepreneurshipwas so powerful that farm men and women blamed their problems duringthe farm crisis of the mid-1980s on their own individual choices evenwhen they simultaneously understood their situation as stemming fromlarger political economic structures and exacerbated by government poli-cies that favored expansion and exports.This type of individualistic orien-tation has not always been part of the agrarian perspective, however.According to Adams (1995), as a means to discredit socialism, large agribusi-nesses and the Farm Bureau mounted an intensive ideological campaignduring the Cold War to transform farmers existing agrarian individualism,in which household and community were paramount, to entrepreneurialindividualism, in which profits were paramount.The power of ideologies of individualism and self-reliance is a perfectexample of hegemony.The effect of hegemony is that it shapes people sperceptions, cognitions, and preferences in such a way that they accepttheir role in the existing order of things, either because they can see orimagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchange-able, or because they see it as divinely ordained or beneficial (Lukes 1975:24, cited in Hall 1982).The perception of the poor as undeserving existseven in the liberal enclaves of alternative agrifood movements.For exam-ple, one organic foods retailer in Santa Cruz, California, attempted to mit-igate the high cost of organic food by offering a discount to customerspaying with government-subsidized food coupons.Some other customerswere so angered by what they saw as giving the poor an undeserved breakthat they threatened to boycott the store.Perhaps one reason that ideolo-gies of individualism are popular is that if social problems are treated asindividual rather than social, everyone else can be absolved of complicityin contributing to or not helping to solve social problems.This type ofextraction of social relations from the realm of the political is the hallmarkof economic liberalism. Reflections on Ideologies in Alternative Agrifood Movements 127Economic LiberalismAccording to Barham (1997), social movements around alternative agri-culture attempt to balance the laws of the market on the one hand withhuman and environmental needs on the other.In Barham s study, leadersof the sustainable agriculture movement in France consistently criticizedthe market as incompatible with meeting human and environmental needs.In the United States, however, alternative agrifood movements have for themost part accepted the basic structures and operating principles of the dom-inant economic ideology of economic liberalism
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