Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
tural features - power relationships and moral concerns, and a mixture of
vulnerabilities to human and biophysical processes - lie behind the unevenness of
food production and consumption is hardly a novel claim. But in the 21st century
there are new dimensions. These include agricultural trade regimes built-up around
non-trade subsidies, food production for export in developing countries (via struc-
tural adjustment programmes) with diversion from immediate consumption, a resur-
gence of peasants and small market producers in many countries being driven off
their land, the proliferation of industrial agriculture featuring a high dependence on
agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides from multinational agri-food
companies, the emulation of Western diets by consumers in developing countries
and much more besides. As a result, 'my hand to my mouth' subsistence economies
are rapidly making way for 'my hands feed other mouths' production and concen-
trations of consumers, increasingly in cities, who are very dependent on those 'other
hands who supply their food'. This is not a new story but one with new plot lines,
resources and a changing cast of characters.
The international literature on food and agriculture mostly deals with food for
the few and affl uent as comprehended from Europe and North America, rather than
livelihood for the many and poor in other places. This literature nevertheless identi-
fi es worrying food dynamics and features that are now embracing both developed
and developing nations. Much of the recent re-politicisation of agriculture and food
springs from breakdowns in the chains of trusted hands that are integral to the
contemporary food scene at every level and every place.
Globalising Agriculture and Food
This section examines material changes in agriculture and food that are interlinked
with commodifi cation and industrial developments over several centuries. These
processes continue to be implicated in production and consumption dimensions of
agriculture and food.
The making of markets, especially for land and labour, and the incorporation of
agriculture and food into capitalist commodity relations surged in the 18th century
when people in UK and Europe were denied traditional access to land for livelihood,
through enclosure and dispossession. The expanding populations of towns and cities
provided cheap labour for industrial activities. Agriculture and food quickly became
a market for industrial products, equipment and technologies. Industrialisation has
added extra steps in agricultural and food production, and created industrial sub-
stitutes for products from traditional agricultural systems. The then prescient phras-
ing of the Goodman et al.'s From Farming to Biotechnology (1987) captures this
idea, identifying a number of phases associated with these interlocking processes.
Agricultural production processes have been altered by changes in labour processes
(e.g., mechanisation of handling in the form of tractors and farm implements
that raised labour productivity), changes in natural production processes (e.g.,
fertilizers), the addition of science (e.g., hybrid seeds, high yielding varieties, feed-
lots) and adding properties to food by processing (e.g., preserving, canning, refrig-
eration, powdered products, freeze drying, irradiation). Industrial substitutes include
margarine for butter, fructose for sugar and soy for meat. More recently, develop-
ments in the life sciences have widened and deepened the impact of 'science-industry'
to include modifi cations to the genetic make-up of plants and animals (e.g., hormone-
dosed milk cows) and attention to altered bodily performance through, for instance,
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