Dr. Susan L. Andreatta
Associate Professor
s_andrea@uncg.edu
256-1165
As an applied sociocultural anthropologist, I am interested in human ecology and
political ecology as it is applied to small-scale agricultural producers, marketing, resource
management and environmental change in the Caribbean, Latin America and Southeastern States. For the
last ten years I have conducted research on English speaking Caribbean islands where I worked among
small-scale producers struggling with markets, the environment and politics (see list of
publications). My current research is on the “Political Ecology of the Organic Agriculture and
Food System in North Carolina”, and “Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) among North
Carolina’s Organic Food Sector.” I also am interested in examining small-family farms,
rural farming communities, and their transformation or resistance to the expansion of agribusiness
and the globalization of agriculture. I also have conducted preliminary research on the
“Sedinization of Hispanic Migrant Workers in North Carolina and Community Formation.”
This project was designed to get a sense of the sedentization process in a particular area of the
state, an area that has a long history of tobacco production and growers’ recent dependence on
migrant Hispanic farm labor. I have involved a number of student researchers with both of these
research initiatives. We have collected data on-farm, interviewed farmers, consumers, migrants and
many others, learned various software packages to enter data and interpret the results. Students
have written papers for publication, as well as presented papers and posters at conferences.
See Project Green Leaf.
Fieldwork conducted in: US Southeastern States, St. Vincent, Antigua,
Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Mexico and Costa Rica.
Selected Publications:
Dale, Jack and Andreatta, Susan. "Language and Community Building: The Migrant
Farmworker Experience in North Carolina." Proceedings of the Southern Anthropological Society.
2001.
"Marketing Strategies and Challenges of Small-Scale Organic Producers in Central North
Carolina." Culture and Agriculture 22(3):40-50. 2000.
"Transformation of the Agro-food Sector: Lessons from the Caribbean." Human
Organization. 57 (4):414-429. 1998.
"Agrochemical Exposure and Farmwork Health in the Caribbean: A Local/Global
Perspective." Human Organization. 57 (3):350-358. 1998.
"Bananas: Are they the Quintessential Health Food? A Global and Local
Perpective." Human Organization. Vol. 56(4)437-449. 1997.
Andreatta, Susan Urban Connections to Locally Grown Produce: Trends in the USA. Proceedings
published for a Symposium on Urban Place: Reconnections with the Natural World. November 7-8,
2002.Emory University (in press). 2003 .
Andreatta, Susan and William Wickliffe II "Managing Farmer and Consumer Expectations: A Study of a North Carolina Farmers Market." Human Organization 60 (2):167-176. 2002.