Agriculture Reference
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relations (Barrientos and Smith, 2006). More broadly, the export-oriented expansion
of organics, fair and ethical trade in the South has been critiqued for centralizing a
neoliberal and privatized development agenda, one in whih livelihood outcomes in
the South - including food security - are tied to individual consumer preferences in
the North, and to the 'benevolence' and 'stewardship' of powerful Northern actors
(Blowfield and Dolan, 2008; Dolan, 2010). Meanwhile, the food sovereignty move-
ment has called for the re-orientation of agriculture and food production away from
export markets towards feeding local communities (Holt-Giménez
et al.
, 2009).
In the context of these debates, horticultural food production in Africa has
clearly emerged as an important site at whih to engage with questions of small-
holders' participation and power in global food networks. For Marsden (2000, p27),
the low levels of participation by Southern smallholders in defining the values em-
bedded in organic, fair and ethical trade represents an 'incipient process of social
and political marginalization in current food/power relationships'. This literature,
however, presents just one side of the story. Concurrently, certification systems -
and the processes through whih smallholder producers are incorporated into those
systems - also provide sites of ongoing contestation and negotiation of the social
and ecological values by whih these standards operate. As Friedmann and McNair
(2008) have identified, global agri-food relations are being shaped both from above
(suh as in the case of supermarket ethical trade) and from below (as in grass-
roots regional organizations for organic or fair trade). And as export horticulture for
smallholders is usually accompanied by subsistence and local market production, the
livelihood priorities underpinning these food systems form an integral component
of the sustainability needs for smallholders engaged with export horticulture and its
certiication shemes. Following a brief overview of the researh methodology, the
remainder of this hapter will illustrate that while the particular versions of sustain-
ability discourse represented by organic, fair and ethical trade have been established
as legitimate and integrated into agri-food regulatory systems, Southern producers
and producer organizations have demonstrated that it is possible for these concepts
to be articulated in diverse - and sometimes contradictory - ways.
Researh methodology
he indings presented in this paper draw from ield researh conducted by the au-
thors between 2004 and 2009 in Kenya (see
Figure 12.1
)
(Smith) and Uganda (Lyons).
Both of these countries have experienced significant growth in export production
