79 U.S. ORGANIC DAIRY POLITICS: ANIMALS, PASTURE, PEOPLE, AND AGRIBUSINESS Book by Bruce A. Scholten New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 Reviewed by Jennifer Mateer University of Victoria Dairying in the USDA National Organic Program has thrived partly due to negative public perceptions of industrial practices on conventional farms. But as organic dairying comes to resemble conventional farming, dangers exist of disenchantment with it. (Scholten 2014: 208) Political economy and agricultural policy scholar Bruce A. Scholten has put his considerable personal and academic experience towards his newest book U.S. Organic Dairy Politics: Animals, Pasture, People, and Agribusiness (2014). Scholten’s book puts forward a new perspective on current trends in the American food system, and thus makes a signifcant contribu- tion to geographies of food, political economy, and political ecology literatures. For geographers and other academics picking up this book, what is most important to know is that the author moves beyond the standard debates regarding the importance and politics of organics (usually very rosy in presentation) in order to ofer a more nuanced understanding of organic dairy farming in the U.S.A. and the “actually existing” organic processes. 1 At the heart of Scholten’s 1 Although there is discussion of shifts towards and away from organic dairy practices, Scholten does not suggest that organic farming is “new”, but rather that these farming practices are new modes of resisting factory farming. argument, there is a concern regarding the ways in which factory farming has impacted agricultural landscapes of the USA, and further how organic dairy farming has become more economically successful and corporate-driven, which more often refects standard dairy practices. Scholten begins his book with his experiences growing up on a dairy farm in Washington State. He demonstrates the ways in which his and other family farms used multigenerational labour, focused on sup- porting local communities, and had a relationship with the land and the cattle they tended. Tis standard mode of managing a dairy farm has changed in the last 50 years. To demonstrate this, Scholten gives an overview of what practices constitute organic dairy farming and the shifting landscapes of dairies across time and place. He begins with a discussion of the ways in which the agricultural system in the US has gained control of farmers, animals, the environment, and even the consumers. Using government policy encouraged by agribusiness, the necessity to “get big or get out” shifted production from small-scale family dairy farms to megadairies, a common term used throughout the book that describes the increase in farm and herd size, often “necessitating” confned animal feeding opera- tions (CAFO). Megadairies, he argues, are unable to