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Symposia
Symposium on Local Development Strategies in Food Supply Chains
Considerable effort over recent years has been placed by scholars on examining what seems to be the rise of 'alternative' and re-localised food. This goes under a variety of labels, such as short-supply chains, alternative food networks (AFNs). Despite the growth in empirical cases there is a need to conceptualise and theorise their existence in the context of their contested nature, and their highly competitive relationships with the dominant agro-industrial model. Do these new locally and regionally-based initiatives contribute to the emergence of an alternative, social, scientific and institutionally-based rural development paradigm? If so , how does it co-exist with the conventional agro-industrial complex, and what opportunities does it provide for local sustainable development? How is the conventional system (e.g corporate retailers, food manufacturers, government agencies) reacting to these trends? What are the critical and distinctive conceptual issues in addressing this 'new localism' and how is it contributing to our deeper understanding of rural and regional uneven development, social resistance and rural innovation? For instance, how are new alliances and relationships between producers and (urban consumers) shaping and sustaining local development strategies?
Through the paper presentations, debate and discussions the symposium will also, more broadly, assess some of the theoretical and policy implications of this re-localisation of food and its importance in shaping local development strategies more generally. In particular, it will question the degree to which such scholarly work is, or could lead to a more effective comparative rural sociology as well as innovations in new and more sustainable rural development pathways.
Symposium Chair:
Terry Marsden, University of Cardiff, UK
Symposium Speakers:
Retro-innovation Matters: the Emerging Rural Development Paradigm?
Marian Stuiver and Terry Marsden, The Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands and University of Cardiff, UK
The dynamics between rurality and agricultural practices face three co-existing and contesting paradigms: productivism, postproductivism and rural development. We have argued in Stuiver and Marsden (2004) that Retro-Innovation is a key concept to grasp and deepen our insights in the emerging rural development
paradigm.
Based upon empirical studies in different contexts the paper will explore the dimensions of retro-innovation within the food chain and its implications for new forms of rural development. A case study in South Africa shows the possibility of developing retro-innovative scientific concepts in order to support small -scale farmers in their subsistence agricultures. Case studies in Italy, Wales and the Netherlands show the importance of consumer practices in retro-innovation. These case studies are examples of institutionalized retro-innovative practices that, though started from local initiatives, managed to 'scale up' to a national or even global significance. The paper explores an outline typology of such diverse retro-innovation practices; and then addresses what mechanisms are necessary for such practices to 'scale-up', as well as to become more embedded into territorial domains.
We conclude the paper by highlighting the significance of the role of critical social science in taking such concepts forward and developing a more robust conceptual framework for the new rural development paradigm.
Organising for Local Development
Maria Fonté, University of Naples
Studies on local systems, on one side, and on food supply chains, on the other, seem to point to different possibilities of competitiveness for small, traditional firms/farms.
Local development is conceived as a way to let emerge local resources that are there, in the territory, but are latent, little known, ill utilised. Co-ordination of economic activities points to the possible competitiveness of small firms conglomeration, to the importance of horizontal linkages, trust, independence, tacit knowledge, artisan / natural qualities of the product and multifunctionality of the agricultural activity.
To the contrary, the shift in the regulation power from producers to buyers in the transnational food supply chain go together with an increasing concentration of the dominant firms, that displace local systems of production, imposing international, uniform criteria of quality definition and food provision.
Local development and supply chains literature seem, then, to locate themselves at the opposite of each different dichotomy: "top-down"/"from below"; vertical / horizontal; formal / tacit, standardisation /differentiation, etc.
In this context and from the perspective of Italy, the European country with the lowest index in the food retail sector concentration (Dobson 2002), I would like to discuss a case study, that may be taken as a counter-example. The Coop (the Italian food supermarket chain, organised as a co-operative, with the biggest market share for food products in Italy, about 18%) and Slow Food have recently signed an agreement, aiming at "the safeguard of typical products and food traditions, consumers health and well-being, the promotion of projects for the education of taste in the school, awareness of the necessity to change agricultural policy strategies and the willingness to guarantee small producers the mean to continue their work". The agreement is also based on a series of common initiatives, like the support for some of the Slow Food initiatives, the education of Coop workers and associates and editorial production. The final idea is a new Coop philosophy that wants to link the Coop store to its territory, with its quality and typical production.
From the perspective of Coop, are these objectives propaganda (a sort of "civic washing"), utopia or an example, that may be imitated? If so, which conditions make the strategies of a big retail firm compatible with local development? The agreement objectives need to be analysed in contrast to the Coop policy and organisation of food provision, in order to consider the space of the agreement in the general economic strategy of the firm.
The Dynamics of Local Development, from Hunger to Quality Food. Cases from the North-eastern Brazil
Josefa Salete Barbosa Cavalcanti, University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil
The provision of food is a critical starting point from which to understand the articulations between production and consumption locales. In a research carried on in the North-eastern Brazil, we have come to find out that, more and more, local spaces of production and distribution of food are under tight control of external (retailer) regulations. From the choosing of plots, to land uses, to labour contracting, to cultural, environmental and packing practices, there is very much evidence that food quality is an issue under spot. On the other hand, there has become widely known concerns about food safety and food security which, in the Brazilian case, is shown through the Hunger Zero, a governmental project to alleviate poverty and solve some of the country's problem. In this paper we will argue for the relevance of going in deep into the dynamics of food studies in contemporary society looking at local markets, agricultural and supermarkets units, government and labour and strategies in the North-eastern region. Based on case studies and related literature, we will put forward the argument that the distribution of food around the world is very much a combination of transnational corporations interest and local development strategies; without exploring the possible contradiction implied in it, would never have been possible to understand how packing houses, state distribution units as well as agricultural and retailer distribution units would come into the local government agenda, contributing to the making of quality food to the world's consumers. Several case studies developed by our team of researchers will illuminate the analyses.
Food and the Politics of Localism. Discussants to be arranged
Melanie De Puis and David Goodman, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
"Coming home to eat" (Nabhan, 2002) has become a clarion call among alternative food movement activists. Most food activist discourse makes a strong connection between the localization of food systems and the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. Much of the academic literature on food systems echoes food activist rhetoric about alternative food systems as built on alternative social norms. New ways of thinking, the ethic of care, desire, realization, and vision become the explanatory factors in the creation of alternative food systems. In these norm-based explanations, the "Local" becomes the context in which this type of action works. The global becomes the universal logic of capitalism and the local the point of resistance to this global logic, a place where caring can and does happen. Nevertheless, in the political sociology literature, studies of the local, such as Gaventa's study
of Appalachia in Power and Powerlessness, are often classic studies of inequality and hegemonic domination. Long-term historical case studies of local food politics can provide a necessary corrective to the idea that "local is beautiful." Case studies addressed here include milk market orders and agricultural land protection policies. These case studies show that the urban consumer is a highly powerful political force, but not necessarily a force for "the better" if one defines "the better" in terms of the establishment of equitable and trusting relationships, particularly between the city and its local countryside inhabitants. However, rather than declaim the "radical particularism" of localism, as Marxists do, it is more productive to question an "unreflexive localism" and to forge localist alliances that pay attention to unequal power relationships.
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XI World Congress of Rural Sociology