Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
and McMihael use the framework of food regime theory to articulate how, at partic-
ular historical moments, food production and consumption paterns become aligned
at a global level. The problem they identify lies in the current configuration of global
food relations that is haracterized by commoditization, heapness and a relentless
obscuring of the full haracter of food relations and the value created from food (and
labour).
At a practical level, one response to these dynamics is apparent in the growing
relevance and significance of alternative food systems - including fair trade, farm-
ers' markets, organic and audited low-input production and designation of origin -
for socially- and environmentally-conscious consumers. In academic analysis, these
alternative food systems are identiied as a potential means by whih more equit-
able and sustainable pathways to global food security can be ahieved (see Maye,
et
al.
, 2007; Dowler,
et al.
, 2009). While these alternatives mobilize food cultures that
contest the abstracted and commoditized norm, they can elicit ambiguous outcomes
through their complex relationship with the ongoing operation of global market re-
lations and consumer politics - as articulated by Smith and Lyons in this collection.
Thus, alternative food systems can provide only partial solutions to the food crisis.
Another partial, and very important, element of hange is presented in an edited
topic that documents the proceedings at a food security conference in Toronto (Blay-
Palmer 2010). he contributors to that topic, including leading rural and food soci-
ologists, emphasize the role of social movements at the consumption nexus of the
food system in the reconfiguration of the global food system. Their emphasis is on
responsible consumption and diets and involves the imagining of alternative food
systems in whih concerns for social justice and environmental sustainability be-
come fundamental elements of consumption. heir approah resonates with the ar-
guments of Lang
et al.
, (2009) for sustainable diets, albeit the later authors envision
a muh more prominent and leading role for government policy. Lang and his co-au-
thors promote the potential of 'hoice editing' in the form of policies that preference
sustainability relative to convenience and profit to reconfigure a pernicious food sys-
tem. Their emphasis remains at a very rational and pragmatic level, however, focus-
ing on the actions of consumers as individuals or as groups who express sustainable
preferences in their consumption habits and demands for food qualities.
It is not only sholars in the social sciences who have arrived at this kind of un-
derstanding. Jules Prety (2002), in his holistic analysis of the hallenge of agricultur-
al sustainability, provides a very cogent argument that a basic element of a hange to
