Ethics of Food Production and Consumption - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 238

put their trust in the hand of large corporations and technological regimes; it is time to
take our responsibilities and to entrust small farmers and craftsmen (Thompson 2010).
Agrarianism is quite a normal practice in peasant societies and can be very sophisti-
cated with respect to food security and sustainability, as in China (Bray 1984) and Japan
(Fukuoka 1978). In more global-oriented variants, agro-ecology and agro-forestry are
seen as crucial, which implies not the reductionist approach to harvests, but a broad
orientation to what the soil and its interaction with various crops and tree species can
give to a farmer (for example, through rotation and intercropping). Farming, according
to this view, will make farmers less vulnerable to market trends (price fluctuations, con-
centration and up-scaling), but the total share of this type of farming may well decline
globally, despite counterpolitics (Larsson, this volume; Chappell, this volume).
In the fourth perspective, a pluralist approach to ethics, all kinds of farming, from
urban gardening, to intensive farming, can be acceptable, so long as they meet ethical
criteria of respect —for land, people, animals, and nature. This position agrees on some
dimensions with agrarianism, but emphasizes the capacities of individuals to flourish
with different life and food styles (Crocker 2008; Pretty 2002). A mixed system could
also be of great benefit to (agro-) biodiversity and make its practitioners less vulner-
able to global market fluctuations. This type of pragmatist pluralism is also part of a
larger democratic perspective, in which consumers' ethical preferences are taken into
account seriously. Pluralist values in a democratic context with regard for scientific and
technological innovations are seen as the most important ethical drivers for a global and
local fair agro-food sector. This perspective goes against the dogma of one-size-fits-all;
depending on the varieties of the soil, culture, social context, and technologies, agricul-
ture has to find its own shape (Norton 2005; Korthals 2004).
Concepts
Food ethics not only tackles the ethical issues discussed above, but also develops its own
concepts. The endeavor of food ethics starts as a matter of fact with a critical analysis of
the fundamental question: what is food? Is it culture or nature, is it only fuel, or a bunch
of nutrients, or purely symbolic? Food ethics assumes, contrary to the more usual per-
spectives of technologists and marketers, that consumers in one way or another are will-
ing to spend some time to think about the food system.
Food ethics has a short history, and its overlaps with other systems of ethics and
applied philosophy. When food production is seen as nothing other than a typical
human destruction of the environment or wild nature (which is often the opinion of
many environmentalists), there is little place for an ethics of food production; however,
when food production is considered to be an important human-nature relationship,
there is room for an independent discipline of food ethics. There is, therefore, an uneasy
relationship between food ethics and environmental ethics. Nevertheless, in the short
history of food ethics, several interdependent and particular concepts and approaches
have emerged in trying to understand and evaluate the problems discussed earlier.