Recent years have seen a substantial increase in alternative agrifood initiatives that attempt to use the market to curtail the negative social and environmental effects of production and trade in a globalized food system. These alternatives pose a challenge to capital accumulation and the externalization of environmental costs by large agribusiness, trading and retail firms. Yet the success of these alternatives also makes them an inviting target for corporate participation. This article examines these dynamics through a case study of the (...) two most significant such food system alternatives—organics and fair trade—focusing on corporate involvement in establishing and renegotiating the standards undergirding these initiatives. We compare the development of and contestation over the standards for both certified organic and certified fair trade, with particular attention to the U.S. context. We provide a brief history of their parallel processes of rapid growth and market mainstreaming. We examine claims of cooptation by movement participants, as well as the divergences and similarities between the organic and fair trade cases. Analyzing these two cases provides useful insights into the strategic approaches that corporate firms have deployed to further capital accumulation and to defuse threats to their profit margins and to status quo production, pricing, labor, trading and retailing practices. It can also offer valuable lessons regarding the most effective means of responding to such counter-reforms and of protecting or reasserting the more transformative elements at the heart of these alternative systems. (shrink)

Third-party certification is an increasingly prevalent tactic which agrifood activists use to “help” consumers shop ethically, and also to reorganize commodity markets. While consumers embrace the chance to “vote with their dollar,” academics question the potential for labels to foster widespread political, economic, and agroecological change. Yet, despite widespread critique, a mounting body of work appears resigned to accept that certification may be the only option available to activist groups in the context of neoliberal socio-economic orders. At the extreme, Guthman (...) (Antipode 39(3): 457, 2007) posits that “at this political juncture… ‘there is no alternative.” This paper offers a different assessment of third-party certification, and points to interventions that are potentially more influential that are currently available to activist groups. Exploring the evolution of the Non-GMO Project—a novel certification for foods that are reasonably free of genetically engineered (GE) material—I make two arguments. First, I echo the literature’s critical perspective by illustrating how certification projects become vulnerable to industry capture. Reviewing its history and current context, I suggest that the Non-GMO Project would be better suited to helping companies avoid mounting public criticism than to substantially reorient agrifood production. Second, I explore the “politics of the possible” in the current political economy and argue that while neoliberalization and organizers’ places within the food system initially oriented the group towards the private sector, the choice to pursue certification arose directly from two industry partnerships. Consequently, current trends might favor market mechanisms, but certification is only one possible intervention that has emerged as a result of particular, and perhaps avoidable, circumstances. The article offers tentative delineation of alternatives ways that activists might intervene in agrifood and political economic systems given present constraints. (shrink)

While the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMO) and the spread of genetically engineered (GE) foods has gone largely unnoticed by the majority of Americans, a growing number of vocal civil society groups are opposing the technology and with it the entire conventional system of food provision. As with other alternative food movements, non-GMO activists focus on changing individual consumption habits as the best means of altering the practices of food manufacturers and thereby what and how food is produced. In (...) this paper I argue that the increasing use of consumerist tactics reflect the neoliberalization of food activism in the United States – a process that rather than heralding sustainable agricultural and economic futures may reinforce the status quo. Using the emerging non-GMO movement, and the associated market for non-GMO products, I challenge the assumptions that consumer sovereignty and freedom of choice will bring about the small-scale, localized alternatives espoused by activists and scholars in the field. Specifically, I explore three critical limitations of contemporary alternative food politics. First, the neoliberalization of activism shifts the responsibility for social reforms from the state and manufactures to individual consumers, bringing with it important social justice implications. Second, focusing on choice opens new spaces for the profit without seriously threatening contemporary market structures or agro-ecological practices. Third, contemporary consumerist politics focus on eating right not less and thereby provide few alternatives to the current trends towards convenience and processed foods. (shrink)

Organic food standardization is an increasingly important strategy for dealing with consumer concerns about the environment, animal welfare, health, and the economic structure of food production. But the ways in which this consumer-oriented strategy is introduced, organized, and debated vary considerably across countries. In Sweden, a nongovernmental organization [KRAV (Association for Control of Organic Production)] – consisting of social movement organizations, associations for conventional and organic farmers, and the food industry – has been quite successful in promoting organic food labeling (...) as an eco-label. KRAV has developed a complementary position vis-à-vis the state and EU regulatory framework. In the US, the federal government controls standardization. The government frames the label as a “marketing label,” thus rejecting the idea that organic food production would have any significant advantages for the environment or, indirectly, for human health. This framing is separate from the ones created by organic constituencies, leading to deeper controversies than in Sweden. The purpose of this paper is to examine why standardization has followed different patterns in the two settings. We analyze context factors (i.e., political culture, pre-regulatory arrangements, and organizational structures) and process factors (i.e., framing and organizing). What are the benefits of a state-centric versus a nonstate-driven approach regarding powerful standardization? The paper shows that both settings provide not only “threats of regulatory occupation” from actors not committed to organic principles but also avenues for substantial standardization in the future, albeit through different channels. (shrink)

An outline of a theory ofvalues-based labeling as a social movementargues that it is motivated by the need tore-embed the agro-food economy in the largersocial economy. A review of some basic premisesof embeddedness theories derived from the workof Karl Polanyi reveals their connection toparticular values-based labeling efforts. Fromthis perspective, values-based labelingpresents itself as primarily an ethical andmoral effort to counter unsustainable trendswithin presently existing capitalism. Theselabels distinguish themselves from ordinarycommercial labels by a focus on processand on quality. Evaluating thetransformative potential (...) and progressive natureof values-based labeling poses a key challenge.One avenue for gauging this potential isconventions theory. This approach can beadapted to consider the decision makingprocesses that go on within values-basedlabeling groups, as well as consumer decisionmaking based on such labels, as instances ofwhat is termed a politics of ethical judgment.The conclusion emphasizes the need for moreresearch in this area and suggests how it couldbe furthered. (shrink)

This introduction situates key themesfound in papers given at a recent workshop on thechanging material practices, meanings, and regulationof US organic food production. The context is theemergence of an international bio-politics ofagriculture and food and, more particularly in the US,the contradictions of sustainable agriculturemovements catalyzed by the rapid scaling up of organicagriculture from a niche activity to nascentindustry.

The proposed federal regulation oforganic agriculture in the United States raisesquestions both about the nature and character oforganic farming, as well as its relation to theagro-food system at large. The regulatory process hasengendered a public debate about conventional andalternative approaches to agricultural production,which in turn raises issues of environmental politicsand society-nature relations. An analysis oftranscripts from public hearings, organic farmingmovement literature, and interviews with organicpractitioners and advocates reveals the broaderecological, social, and political ramifications. Inexamining the proposed federal rule and its (...) criticalopposition, we encounter two different worldviews; twoconflicting visions of agriculture, rural life, andnature itself. Whether this is a fundamental impasse,or a controversy that can be fruitfully resolved,remains an open question. But organic farming hasarrived at a critical juncture, both fraught withperil, and full of opportunity. The enormous publicresponse to this issue indicates the renewed potentialon the part of civil society to participate ingrassroots environmental social movements in supportof alternative agriculture. (shrink)

Observers of agriculture and theenvironment have noted the recent remarkable growth ofthe organic products industry. Is it possible for thisgrowth in the organics market to contribute toprogressive environmental and social goals? From theperspective of green consumerism, the organics marketis a powerful engine for positive change because itpromotes greater environmental awareness andresponsibility among producers and consumers alike.Given its environmental benefits and its ability touse and alter capitalist markets, organic agricultureis currently a positive force for environmentalism.Still, there are contradictions between organic idealsand (...) practice – e.g., the reductionism of organicstandards, the limitations of private organiccertification, and the widespread practice ofinput-substitution – that emerge through thedynamics of the capitalist market. As the marketmatures, these contradictions will increasinglyundermine the very environmental benefits that are thefoundation of organic agriculture. Fundamental change,therefore, is not likely to occur through the marketalone. There are ways, however, that the organicsmarket could contribute to a broader movement leadingto collective action. For instance, the organicsmarket tends to undermine commodity fetishism in theagrifood system, thereby strengthening civil society.In addition, the market provides space and resourcesfor social movement activity, such as in the struggleover the National Organic Standards. (shrink)

This book investigates standards as the recipes that shape not only the physical world, but human social interactions. The author outlines the history of formal standards and describes how modern science came to be associated with the moral-technical project of standardization of both people and things. The author also explores how standards are intimately connected to power, empowering some but disempowering others.

What accounts for the prestige of quantitative methods? The usual answer is that quantification is desirable in social investigation as a result of its successes in science. Trust in Numbers questions whether such success in the study of stars, molecules, or cells should be an attractive model for research on human societies, and examines why the natural sciences are highly quantitative in the first place. Theodore Porter argues that a better understanding of the attractions of quantification in business, government, and (...) social research brings a fresh perspective to its role in psychology, physics, and medicine. Quantitative rigor is not inherent in science but arises from political and social pressures, and objectivity derives its impetus from cultural contexts. In a new preface, the author sheds light on the current infatuation with quantitative methods, particularly at the intersection of science and bureaucracy. (shrink)

In the context of the mandated phaseout of methyl bromide, California’s strawberry industry has increased its use of chloropicrin, another soil fumigant that has long been on the market. However, due to its 2010 designation as a toxic air contaminant, the US Environmental Protection Agency and California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation have developed enhanced application protocols to mitigate exposures of the chemical to bystanders, nearby residents, and farmworkers. The central feature of these mitigation technologies are enhanced buffer zones between treated (...) fields and nearby buildings. Not only do buffer zones inherently privilege neighbors over farmworkers, but the determinations of the size of these buffer zones are also based on acceptable threshold levels and probabilities that allow significant exposures to those they are designed to protect. Moreover, these protocols require human monitors to detect sensory irritation. While the science and technology studies literature is highly useful for understanding the inextricability of science and politics in developing protective measures and is attentive to what counts as data in setting acceptable thresholds, it tends to overlook that social sorting is intrinsic to such regulation. We thus turn to Foucault’s biopolitics to make sense of regulations that are designed to protect but inherently allow some to become ill. Doing so illuminates how determinations of the bright line are at once technical–political as well as implicit decisions about whose bodies count. (shrink)