CONFERENCE
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON ALTERNATIVE AGRO-FOOD NETWORKS: QUALITY, EMBEDDEDNESS, BIO-POLITICS
October 12-13, 2001 at UC Santa Cruz
Participants - Abstracts
Patricia Allen (Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, UCSC) and
Michael Goodman (Department of Environmental Studies, UCSC)
Shifting Plates in the Agrifood Landscape: TheTectonics of Alternative Agrifood Initiatives in California
In recent years, concerns about the “health” of the agrifood system have given rise to a wide range of activities that challenge thepremises and practices of the conventional food system. Beyond voicing disagreement, food advocates are actively developing alternative food production and provisioning pathways that diverge from those of the conventional agrifood system. The emerging constructions include community supported agriculture, farmers' markets, urban agriculture, and regional food labels—what we have termed “alternative agrifood initiatives” (AFIs).
These efforts represent a new kind of agrifood activism, one that adds consumers and food consumption to a traditional focus on farmers and production. In this new politics of food, activism is embodied not in formal politics, but in everyday necessities and experiences. This new form of engagement has sparked the imaginations, hopes, and energies of people occupying very different locations throughout the agrifood system. Accordingly, AFIs are increasingly celebrated in both popular culture and academic venues as agents of progressive change in the agrifood system. As compared to the conventional food system, they are considered to be more equitable and environmentally sound, as well as provide healthier food.
In this paper we consider claims about the social, economic, and political transformative possibilities of AFIs. Drawing on subjective accounts of AFI leaders in California, we document perceptions of food-system problems and solutions, AFI goals and activities, and the motivations and histories of AFI leaders. We discuss the arenas in which AFI leaders seek to create change, and how they are situated within the landscape of agrifood activism. We conclude with observations about the spaces within which, the extent to which, and for whom AFIs are beginning to reshape and rebuild the agrifood system.
Elizabeth Barham (Department of Rural Sociology, University of Missouri-Colombia)
Translating “Terroir”: Social Movement Appropriation of a French Concept
The French word “terroir” has recently become prominent in the vocabulary of agro-food activists around the world, signifying their support of “local” food versus globalizing industrial agriculture. Historically, terroir refers to an area or terrain, usually rather small, whose soil and microclimate impart distinctive qualities to food products, as in the case of wine. But the concept behind the word also has specific historical, social and political dimensions that do not always lend themselves to appropriation by other countries and peoples. In fact, interpreting the meaning of terroir has proven complex and controversial within France itself, spawning a wealth of literature that is little known to the rest of the world. This paper explores the specificity and currency of the concept in modern day France, drawing on literature from sociology, anthropology and law. Based on this discussion, I outline potential barriers, as well as opportunities, that may arise as other states or regions attempt to retrofit the concept to their own culture as a foundation for social action. The case of the United States is explored to provide a concrete example. I close the paper with a brief overview of the relationship of terroir to French labels of origin (appellations d’origine côntrolée), as they are administered by the state. My principal argument is that social movement actors will need to understand the nuances of this concept if they are to use it as an effective mobilizing tool.
Susanne Freidberg (Department of Geography, Dartmouth College)
Culture, Conventions and Colonial Constructs of Rurality: Histories and Geographies of Difference in the Afro-European Fresh Produce Trade
This paper draws on comparative social history and convention theory to examine current transformations in the contemporary "anglophone" and "francophone" fresh produce trades between Africa and Europe. Retailers in the UK and (to a lesser extent) France have responded to recent food scares and intense press scrutiny by developing codes of "best practice" and "ethical trade." As conventions, these codes represent corporate efforts not only to assure but also profit from an increasingly comprehensive notion of food quality. These codes also promise to drive changes in retailers' international fresh produce supply chains, but not uniformly. Comparative historical analysis of French and English conventions, as they apply to African fresh produce commodity chains, provides insight into the interplay between place, culture, and national and international political economies.
Neva Hassanein (Department of Environmental Studies, University of Montana).
Achieving Food Democracy: The Pragmatic Politics of Transformation
A number of analysts argue that social movements – especially coalitions among movements that represent different goals and constituencies – are key to transformation of the dominant agro-food system. Indeed, organizing around food can inspire political reawakening, civic engagement, and community economic development. Social movements have mobilized people to do everything from saving a particular farm from urban sprawl to shutting down the Seattle meetings of the World Trade Organization. In these efforts, activists are engaged on a daily basis in political and social struggles that seek to accomplish what is presently possible given existing opportunities for and barriers to change. There is, however, a nagging sense among both theorists and activists that such political pragmatism may be insufficient for achieving the complete transformation of the food and agriculture system that many movement actors and academic analysts see as necessary. This paper will explore the tension between political pragmatism and transformation, and it will examine what that tension means for achieving food democracy. The analysis will draw on existing literature as well as reflections on recent activist experiences.
Claire Hinrichs (Department of Sociology, Iowa State University)
Imputing Quality by Claiming Place:The Social and Environmental Discourse of 'Local' Foods
Throughout North America and Europe, a proliferating web of initiatives now seeks to create alternatives to the social and environmental shortcomings of an industrializing and globalizing agri-food system. Many of these initiatives involve establishing new economic institutions, such as retail farmers’ markets or community supported agriculture ventures, which forge new, more direct relations between food producers and consumers. Others, however, attempt to “work from the inside,” by shifting the existing procurement policies of long established institutions and businesses to include or emphasize “local” foods. Drawing on recent developments in actor-network theory as applied in agri-food research, this paper examines the transformative potential of “local foods” procurement practice in existing segments of the conventional agri-food system in Iowa, USA. Dominated by conventional commodity agriculture (chiefly the production of corn, soybeans and hogs) and highly reliant on foods imported from outside the state, Iowa provides an especially instructive case regarding the politics and meaning of “local” foods. The paper compares “local” foods procurement by for-profit groceries and convenience stores and by non-profit institutional buyers, such as hospitals and schools, in Iowa. It considers the enrollment of specific food system actors in such projects, how quality is imputed on the basis of place, and the ensuing dynamics of collaboration and competition within and across producer, retailer and consumer groups in developing the category of “local” foods. In the case of Iowa, the growing “local” foods movement ultimately registers contradictory notes. It has helped to crystallize and activate surprising levels of producer and consumer opposition to conventional commodity agriculture and industrial foods in Iowa. But it has done so through a sometimes uncritical valorization of place. In assuming that the outcomes of local social and environmental relations are unfailingly positive or at least benign, the discourse of “local” foods in Iowa may unwittingly feed nativist sentiments and highlight selected environmental achievements, while ignoring more subtle failures. The transformative potential of “local” foods procurement practice in Iowa cannot be discounted, but it will be more fully realized when the quality imputed to place rests on more equitable social relations and broad-based environmental improvement.
Richard Le Heron (Department of Geography, University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Cr(eat)ing Food Futures: Exploring the Rise of Organic Production andGMO Support in New Zealand
In New Zealand's agro-food sector, two developments, those of organic food and GMOs are being hotly contested. Both developments are potentially contradictory, each offering significant challenges and opportunities to conventional agro-industrial models. Their recent prominence in New Zealand, after a decade or more of increasingly vocal advocacy, forms part of the conflictual landscape of new food politics. The different premises of organics producers and GMO proponents, and the gaps between idealised concepts and on-farm and food chain practice, pose major questions about the wider organisation of production for the globalising food economy to which New Zealand and its food producers continue to be oriented.
This paper utilises a range of theoretical perspectives to inform a number of dimensions to New Zealand's food politics: the emergence of the developments in New Zealand, the social construction of "interests" and power relations in the New Zealand context, the historico-geographies and embeddedness of promotional and oppositional horizontal and vertical networks, the discourses contributing the scope and detail of issues, "problems" and "governance", and institutional tensions springing from the developments. The paper draws on, amongst other sources, the parliamentary select committee deliberations relating to organics production; public debate connected with the Environmental Risk Management Authority handling of GMOs; the variety of industry, corporate and consumer discourses; and recent research initiatives of New Zealand's Crown Research Institutes in the areas. Analysis will be directed at identifying, in the New Zealand context, various barriers to the development, recognition and elaboration of alternative food networks and strategic sites where particular action might have high transformative possibilities.
Becky Mansfield (Department of Geography, Ohio State University)
Fish, Factory Trawlers, and Imitation Crab: The Nature of Quality in the Seafood Industry
As the last major food that is primarily wild-caught, fish offers unique perspectives on relationships among nature, quality, and agro-food production. In this paper, I will explore how ideas about quality are not simply social constructions that have material effects, but are complex interactions between natural inputs and their environments, production techniques and technologies, and foods and their uses. To explore how quality is constructed within specific production networks, and then how it affects relations within those networks, I will develop a case study of the surimi seafood industry. Surimi is a fish paste made from a variety of fish species, including Alaska pollock, the largest fishery in the world. Surimi is used to make a variety of seafood products, including both traditional Japanese fish cakes and imitation seafood products (e.g. “krab”), which is the most common form in the US and Europe. Rather than focusing on relationships between ‘nature’ and ‘society,’ I analyze individual production networks to understand how specific aspects of what we call ‘the natural world’ participate in specific interactions. I show that physical characteristics of the fish, and the environments from which they come, play key roles in quality definitions. Yet at the same time, which characteristics count as quality is defined within the production networks. The key is not whether natural processes put constraints on economic activities or whether economic actors are able to outflank nature through technical innovation, but rather how specific elements and activities within production networks define each other in their interactions.
Marie-Christine Renard (Universidad Autonoma Chapingo).
The 'Alternativeness' of Fair Trade: Risks and Challenges
"Fair Trade" hides different meanings and trade initiatives: alternative trade, fair trade labelling, and ethical trade. The first step is to clarify these differences. In doing this, a tension appears between two aspects of Fair Trade aims, which, on one side, seek to penetrate the market and consumers' lifestyles (a niche strategy, in order to sell more Fair Trade products and reinforce producers' organizations in the South) and on the other side, to challenge and transform the mainstream economic model. This tension is not an absolute contradiction though; both try to induce change and reduce unequal socio-economic relations through consumers conciensciouness. However, it reflects the difference between a more radical and a more pragmatic vision of Fair Trade. The discussion raises the question of the possibility of Fair Trade to lose the status of "alternative" and to be absorbed by mainstream trade. This danger, which rises with these initiatives' successes, comes from two sides: from other actors like TNC’s who will try to neutralize the networks by offering labellized products with less social (or environmental) standards and various states that can establish their own certifications rules or from the loss of identity and original objectives because of business practices. Labels as a base for network legitimacy and a product of interaction is a key element while linkage to social movements is another. Information and communication between producers and consumers is a third. They represent social and symbolic power to counter mainstream economic power.
Colin Sage (Department of Geography, University College Cork, Ireland)
Entanglement, Embeddedness and the Geography of Regard: Agro-Food Networks in South West Ireland
This paper outlines the elements of a flourishing range of alternative agro-food initiatives in South West Ireland that include the production of high value “gastronomic” foods, lifestyle or “alternative value” products, and an associated array of distribution chains. The diversity of these elements, it is proposed, constitute several overlapping networks that are conformed by different actors and rather different nodes - or operational passage points - where the network is reproduced. The existence, for example, of a “good food” network brings together largely artisanal specialists involved in the production, preparation and provision of high quality produce, and consumers of particular class and income configuration. Generally, it is the brand image of the product, rather than the identity of the producers, which is embedded with an ecological and spatial provenance that assures consumers of the product quality (Murdoch, Marsden & Banks 2000). However, producers, particularly prime movers, may be endowed by consumers with a measure of trust, or moral authority, that allows them to speak out, for example, in defence of traditional production methods, in opposition to state-imposed hygiene regulations (which particularly impact upon the small-scale food sector), or on behalf of consumers interests (eg. regarding GM food). Clearly, there is more embodied in this relationship between food producers and consumers than simply an exchange of goods for money: there is, I will argue, an economy of regard (Lee 2000).
A second network that can be identified in the region brings together farmers, growers and other food producers who choose to sell their produce in more personalised and direct methods to consumers. Here, embeddedness is constituted by the localization of production and consumption. The needs of both sets of actors and the context in which exchange takes place frequently gives rise to “entangled” social relations such that it demonstrates the very real hybridity of moral and money economies in which alternative agro-food networks are rooted. Unlike Callon’s use of the term as synonymous with “marketization” (Callon 1998), entanglement is used here to embody a juxtaposition that brings with it certain tensions arising from obligation and responsibility between the two sets of actors. Teasing out the implications of entanglement, embeddedness and an economy of regard – appropriately delineated by the specific geographical context within which these alternative networks exist – is a necessary task for understanding their future development and potential. The paper will seek to develop these ideas with the support of case studies drawn from the region.
Pierre Stassart (SEED, Fondation Universitaire Luxembourgeoise, Belgium) and Sarah Whatmore (Open University, UK)
Risk and the Assemblage of Alternative Meat Networks in Belgium
Globalization of agri-food networks has been contested from theoretical and empirical point of view (Murdoch 2000). For a few years actor-network theory has been used to analyse agri-food networks and to describe counter-tendencies and new dynamics of "alternative geography of food" (Wathmore,1997) . Main driving forces identified are growing concerns about environmental and local quality, fair trade and food safety. While local, environmental and fair trade aspects have been analysed, food scares often mentioned as and important concern does not seem to be deeply enough studied in the construction of alternative agri-food networks.
This paper tries to give a new analytical perspective about the question of how far risk linked to food scares play a role in the lengthening of alternative agri-food networks, when the actors try to extend their market beyond the local.. We suggest that analytical tools provided by ANT can explain why risk of food scares have not been taken in account in the research on quality. However, combining actor network theory and the concept of "Mode of ordering"(Law 1994) seems to open new perspectives .
Our empirical data come from 2 cases studies of "farmer meat " networks in Belgium. Beyond the classical picture of heterogeneity and dynamic of the networks, we can better understand how such networks translate the risk when we analyse their mode of ordering through discursive analysis. The cases show that risk has been the starting point of the network and the driving force of the social construction of quality. More specifically, "Farmer" tales reveal a mode of ordering of accountability of risk that refer to the Wynne (1991) conception of management of risk by “profane” knowledges.
Michael Winter (Center of Rural Research, University of Exeter, UK)
Embeddeddness and the New Food Economy: Incomers, Farmers and Local Food
The study of food provision in recent decades has been dominated by approaches which, inter alia, emphasise globalising tendencies and the political economy of the global agro-food system. The key actors in the system are seen as multi-national food processing and retail capital and political advocates of free trade. However, more recently there has been a renewed interest in attempts by farmers and consumers to mount challenges to the global agro-food complex through the operation of alternative food systems. These are characterised by a focus on consumer concerns over human health and food safety, the environmental consequences of globalised and industrialised agriculture, farm animal welfare, and fair trade. It is these consumer concerns which are seen as the prime motivating factors in a move away from the homogenised products of the global agro-food industry.
It is important to stress that the turn to quality has no single defining set of characteristics. Indeed there are different strands of quality consumerism with many contradictions and tensions between them. For example, amongst meat eaters, food health concerns prompt white meat consumption while farm animal and environmental concerns are more likely to encourage red meat consumption. The organic food sector provides the clearest example of the strength of quality consumerism. The market for organic produce in Europe and elsewhere has expanded very significantly in recent years. However, even within the organic sector, itself, there is considerable market segmentation. There is a marked contrast, for example, between organic box schemes and the slick marketing of well presented and packaged organic produce from across the globe in UK supermarkets such as Waitrose or Tesco’s.
The literature covering these developments in the food economy has given some attention to these differences. However, there has been a tendency, not only to conflate differences within the motivations and behaviour of quality consumers, but to heighten the claims being made with the introduction of another dimension – local embeddedness. Thus, taking quality as the defining characteristic of the alternative food economy, Murdoch et al (2000) argue that “quality is coming to be seen as inherent in more “local” and more “natural” foods” and consequently that “quality food production systems are being reembedded in local ecologies.”
This paper seeks to contribute to the growing interest in alternative food regimes by examining three questions, in the light of empirical work undertaken in five rural localities of England and Wales.
First, how useful is the notion of embeddedness to our understanding of changes in the food economy?
Second to what extent can the turn to quality be equated with embeddedness?
Thirdly, and more speculatively, what are the implications of current trends for longer-term developments in food markets?
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