Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
nihe in the world food market, resulting in entirely new agri-food assemblages as
well as transformed praxis of food production at the level of orhards and farms (see
Rosin, 2008; Rosin
et al
., 2008).
At first glance, the New Zealand model for adopting high-value, quality-audited
food products for elite markets seems to strongly vindicate the neoliberal model for
securing livelihoods for agricultural producers. If we return, however, to the com-
pelling need to feed the world, two provisos become apparent. First, the capacity of
elite UK supermarkets to provide high monetary returns to elite suppliers in premier
agricultural export nations like New Zealand surely represents a global nihe rather
than a model for the entire market. In fact, it is arguable that this elite nihe only
exists because of some of the repellent qualities of the industrial food system (see
this topic, hapters by McMihael, Stok and Carolan, Butler, Dixon and Prithard).
It is only the by-products of this elite model that find their way to the bottom end of
the world market - particularly, in New Zealand's case, the trade in heap, and ex-
tremely faty 'mutton laps' that are sold through various low-proile arrangements
into the South Pacific (Gewertz and Errington, 2010). Clearly this does not represent
a useful way to address world hunger. Second, there is some suspicion that these new
private sector governance arrangements are actually acting as a means of excluding
Developing World producers that is, if anything, even more exclusive than the pri-
or, more state-organized style of agricultural and trade regulation (Campbell, 2005).
At least if the UK government were engaging in exclusionary practices that discrim-
inated against poor producers in the Developing World there would be a mehan-
ism of political recourse via the WTO disputes process. If Sainsbury's does the same,
however, then there is no mehanism whatsoever available to those who ind them-
selves loked out of suh market opportunities.
Like the US model of corporate, commodity-based export agriculture, the New
Zealand model is often politically legitimated on the grounds that expansion of
world markets for food (even if it is elite foods suh as spring lamb cuts or organic
kiwifruit) is the key means for solving world hunger. In the case of New Zealand,
rather than 'let them eat cake', the phrase should be recast as: 'let them eat our or-
ganic heesecake with kiwifruit jus'!
