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Making the Country Work for the City: Von Thünen's Ideas in Geography, Agricultural Economics and the Sociology of Agriculture

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  • Daniel Block
  • E. Melanie DuPuis

Abstract

Geography, as the discipline responsible for describing the organization of space, has developed several ways of dealing with the phenomenon of the central city and its surrounding hinterlands. One of the most prominent of models used is von Thünen's Isolated State, a predictive model of how rural hinterlands organize agricultural production in relation to an urban center. Despite today's globalized food provisioning system, there are still some agricultural commodities that remain in U.S. city hinterlands. The most prominent of these is milk. The spatial organization of dairying is therefore a topic in which von Thünen's notions of centrality are still pertinent. In addition, outside of geography, his ideas had a significant effect on the agricultural economists who formulated dairy marketing policy. This paper will examine von Thünen and notions of centrality in the formulation of dairy policy in the United States. His contribution has been very important to agricultural economists and agricultural geographers but less important to sociologists of agriculture, who see the spatial organization of food production around cities due as much to contingent, local political outcomes as to law‐like notions of centrality. Comparative historical method in sociology has been particularly useful in determining the role of predictive models and contingency in determining the spatial organization of milksheds.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Block & E. Melanie DuPuis, 2001. "Making the Country Work for the City: Von Thünen's Ideas in Geography, Agricultural Economics and the Sociology of Agriculture," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 79-98, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ajecsc:v:60:y:2001:i:1:p:79-98
    DOI: 10.1111/1536-7150.t01-2-00055
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    Cited by:

    1. Hongyun Han & Zhen Yuan & Kai Zou, 2022. "Agricultural Location and Crop Choices in China: A Revisitation on Von Thünen Model," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(11), pages 1-13, October.
    2. Noël van Dooren & Brecht Leseman & Suzanne van der Meulen, 2021. "How New Food Networks Change the Urban Environment: A Case Study in the Contribution of Sustainable, Regional Food Systems to Green and Healthy Cities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(2), pages 1-15, January.
    3. E Melanie DuPuis & Daniel Block, 2008. "Sustainability and Scale: US Milk-Market Orders as Relocalization Policy," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 40(8), pages 1987-2005, August.

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