Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food

Exploring Alternatives

Moya Kneafsey, Rosie Cox, Lewis Holloway, Elizabeth Dowler, Laura Venn, Helena Tuomainen

• Publisher: Berg Publishers
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781845202538
• eBook ISBN: 9781847886187
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Öffentliche Landwirtschaftspolitik

Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food presents a detailed and empirically grounded analysis of alternatives to current models of food provision. The book offers insights into the identities, motives and practices of individuals engaged in reconnecting producers, consumers and food. Arguing for a critical revaluation of the meanings of choice and convenience, Reconnecting Consumers, Producers and Food provides evidence to support the construction of a more sustainable and equitable food system which is built on the relationships between people, communities and their environments.

CHAPTER 1

Contextualizing ‘Alternative’ Food Relationships

INTRODUCTION

We live at a time when serious socio-economic, ethical and environmental problems associated with food regularly cause concern. Many people – consumers, producers, campaigners and policy-makers – are said to worry about the ways in which food is provisioned for a whole variety of interlinked reasons. Alongside the rapid technological changes associated with processes of industrialization and globalization in food production, processing and retailing, insistent critiques of the structures and relationships of food provision are now gathering momentum. There is a growing recognition that the very values underpinning contemporary food supply arrangements are in need of critical scrutiny (Food and Agriculture Organization 2001). In other words, to what extent and how do we value food, its production, its distribution and its consumption?

Indeed, some of the key ethical questions of our time relate to food. For example, how can we address food inequalities, and the challenge of the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’? How can trade relations be structured more fairly, especially for small-scale food producers and growers? How much should consumers know (or be told, or want to know) about their food, and to what extent should they be ‘trusted’ or ‘empowered’ to choose the ‘healthiest’, ‘fairest’ and most ecologically benign foods? To what extent can scientists, processors, retailers and governments be ‘trusted’ to tell the whole story about food? How far should the environment be degraded, or animals have to suffer to produce food people want to buy? Such questions are, of course, addressing highly complex issues, but the point is, answering them requires an explicit evaluation and prioritization of values, which in turn can only be achieved through critical reflection on what societies and individuals are really prepared – and enabled – to care for. In this book, we aim to contribute to such an appraisal of the value of food, by examining some of the diverse ways in which consumers and producers are actively involved in building food relationships and practices which they regard as better suited to meeting their everyday needs, sustaining their lifestyles, addressing their anxieties and satisfying their own, as well as more widespread, daily ethical dilemmas.

Within this broad context, this book provides a detailed and empirically grounded analysis of the activities of food producers and consumers involved in the creation of ‘alternatives’ to the current dominant models of food provision. In the United Kingdom, there is now growing evidence that different people in all sorts of different places are actively engaging with some of these fundamental questions about our relationship with food: from inner city residents creating vegetable gardens from reclaimed wastelands, to neighbours in remote rural locations sharing agricultural risks and responsibilities. In a variety of locations, producers and consumers alike are working to construct new and ethically significant food relationships and practices, which they see as helping to address concerns about health, social justice, animal welfare and the environment. For example, markets for local, organic, and fairly traded foods are continuing to expand, and not only among the higher income consumer groups. The Institute for Grocery Distribution (IGD) (2005a) suggests that 70 per cent of British consumers want to buy local food and 49 per cent want to buy more of it than they do now. In 2005 retail sales of organic products were worth an estimated £1.6 billion, an increase of 30 per cent on the previous year (Soil Association 2006), and the retail value of products carrying the Fairtrade Mark rose from £16.7 million in 1998 to over £195 million in 2005 (Fairtrade Foundation 2007).

Evidence also suggests that not only are people increasingly interested in the origins and ethical and health properties of their food, but they are also prepared to buy direct from producers through a variety of different channels. This is said to engender more trust in food provenance, support local businesses and enhance pleasure in food purchase and use (Sage 2003; Kirwan 2004). The first farmers’ market in Britain was launched in Bath in 1997. By 2006, farmers’ markets were being held in 550 locations around the United Kingdom, with a combined turnover of £220 million (National Farmers’ Retail & Markets Association 2006; Soil Association 2006). There are also several hundred organic vegetable ‘box schemes’ now operating in the United Kingdom, which provide produce direct from the grower to the purchaser, and are thought to have combined sales in excess of £100 million per year (Soil Association 2007). Sales through independent shops, farm shops, farmers’ markets and box schemes in total increased by 32 per cent from 2004–5 (Soil Association 2006). Large retailers are also keen to

build on these trends. So, for example, Waitrose advertisements currently focus on British and local sourcing, and other major supermarkets promote local and regional quality produce (e.g. Tesco’s ‘Finest’ and Sainsbury’s ‘Taste the Difference’ ranges). 2007 also saw the arrival in West London of the American Whole Foods Market, a farmers’ co-operative which began in Texas, and which now sells organic and ‘green’ products in 190 stores in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, and in 2006 had a turnover of £3.2 billion (Renton 2007).

Through detailed explorations of six ‘alternatives’ to predominant food supply arrangements, this book examines the identities, motives and practices of people actively involved in trying to produce and consume food in ways which allow them to address a variety of societal and individual concerns about food. Their efforts, we argue, are integral to the construction of a practical critique of current food structures. Recognizing the multidimensionality of ‘alternative’ food relationships, we move beyond the emphasis on economic imperatives for producers to ‘connect’ with the market, and examine the ethical, emotional and reflexive spaces of ‘reconnection’. In so doing, we engage with themes of care, love, pleasure, anxiety, choice and convenience, and show how these elements are spoken of, and experienced by, a range of producers and consumers. And we argue that the motives and practices of those involved, can be understood within the context of a broad framework of care for close and distant ‘others’ (variously defined), which in turn provides discursive and material expressions of ‘reconnection’ with the potential to radically realign producer and consumer relationships through food.

CONTEXTUALIZING PRODUCER, CONSUMER AND FOOD ‘RECONNECTION’

Food is currently the subject of much debate and controversy in the United Kingdom. ¹ Celebrity chefs are omnipresent, cookery programmes are screened on television in abundance, there has been a renaissance in ‘British’ ingredients and cuisine, and books on cooking, diets and health regimes proliferate. Despite all this, consumers are often accused of having ‘lost’ their cooking skills and knowledge about food origins, preparation and nutritional values. Food is abundant, of consistent quality and often cheap, and yet it can also cause anxiety and illness. Food provides essential nourishment for health, and yet the over-consumption of saturated fats, salt and refined sugars, and the under-consumption of vitamins and minerals, particularly those found in vegetables and fruits, threatens the lives and health of millions in ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ economies (Popkin 1999; World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization 2003; World Health Organization 2007).

Barely a week passes by without a ‘scare’ concerning particular ingredients or production methods, often involving a supermarket accused of deceiving consumers about where products come from, and how they are made. Recent examples include concerns about residues of pesticides and veterinary medicines found in certain foods, plus fears about salmonella, BSE, E. coli 0157, genetically modified foods, foot and mouth disease, dioxins in animal feeds, toxic cooking oil and Sudan 1, a potentially carcinogenic food dye (Morgan et al. 2006). We could also add avian influenza and the existence of PCBs in farmed salmon to the list, plus the 297 food additives permitted in non-organic food, which have been linked to heart disease, osteoporosis, migraines and hyperactivity (Soil Association 2005a). There are also concerns about the level of salt hidden in everyday products such as cereals, bread and meat, where consumers might not expect to find it (Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) 2003). Salt is an important determinant of high blood pressure, which is a contributory factor in over 170,000 deaths per year in England (SACN 2003).

Not only are there fears about what is in food, but also what is missing from it; so, for example, evidence is emerging of lower levels of trace minerals, secondary nutrients (e.g. antioxidants) and vitamins found in conventionally produced fruit and vegetables compared to organic produce (Soil Association 2005a). Thus, Felicity Lawrence, in her best-selling Not on the Label, argues that ‘[P]aradoxically, as we have become more affluent as a nation, we have also become more anxious about our food and how it is produced’ (2004: xiii). Those concerned with the environment, meanwhile, point to the damage caused to wildlife, soils, water and climate by the current methods used to grow, process, package and transport food (see, for example, Sustain 2001; Defra 2002a; Soil Association 2005a, 2005b), whilst others draw attention to the living conditions experienced by intensively produced livestock, such as factory farmed chickens.

These concerns are no longer new. Indeed, food panics have recurred cyclically throughout modern history (e.g. Cobbett 1979 [1822]). Writing about food choice in the 1990s, Murcott (1998a: 1) described that decade as one which saw ‘a veritable explosion of international public concern about food’. Almost ten years after the end of the Economic and Social Research Council’s programme on the Nation’s Diet, anxieties about food on the part of the public have not disappeared. If anything, they have intensified and proliferated. The government responded to this erosion of consumer confidence in the food supply chain and its regulation by establishing the independent Food Standards Agency (FSA) in 2000 (Morgan et al. 2006), while retailers have launched a raft of new labelling schemes, product ranges, and environmental initiatives in order to secure consumer trust. Yet, despite government and retailer strategies to reassure consumers, critiques of the food system from various perspectives are gaining coherence and momentum. For instance, at the time of writing, the Strategy Unit in the Cabinet Office is reviewing the whole food system and the challenges it poses to government and citizens alike (Strategy Unit 2008).

We argue that the problems briefly outlined here are attributable, at least partly, to the disconnection of consumers from food, in the sense that many consumers know very little about where much of their food comes from, what it is made of, how it is produced, and by whom. And in response to this situation, we suggest that there is evidence of attempts by both consumers and producers, to try to ‘reconnect’ with each other, and with food, through engagement in more direct relationships. Just how and why people – whether producers or purchasers – become enrolled into these relationships, and why they matter, forms the main focus of this book.

In the rest of this chapter, we provide a more detailed context for our research and analysis. First, we establish what we mean by ‘disconnection’, and explore its implications for producers and consumers; this enables us to ‘flesh out’ some of the introductory points made above and provides a sense of some of the key motivations driving contemporary urges to ‘reconnect’ producers, consumers and food. Crucially, we want to establish that discourses and practices of ‘reconnection’ have emerged in relationship with, rather than simply ‘in opposition to’, discourses and practices of ‘disconnection’ in the food system. Second, we introduce six examples of ‘reconnection’ between food producers and consumers. These examples provide the empirical data upon which our analysis is based, and form the focus of subsequent chapters in the book.

A ‘DISCONNECTED’ FOOD SYSTEM? EVIDENCE AND IMPLICATIONS

It could be argued that rather than being disconnected, the contemporary food system is more connected than ever. Farming is now generally viewed as part of a wider, vertically integrated agro-industrial food system, in which the production sector is contractually linked upstream to input suppliers, and downstream to processing, distribution and retail industries (Ilbery 2005). Large agribusinesses, or food chain ‘clusters’ (Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002) manipulate land, technical knowledge, chemical inputs, machinery and processing facilities, export and distribution systems. Thus, for example, in 2002 just five global companies dominated the seed industry (Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002).

The larger retailers are also more connected than ever to other actors in the food chain. They contract farmers to grow crops or raise livestock to meet their exact specifications, and they contract processors to produce goods that carry the retailers’ own label (Millstone and Lang 2006). Consumers are also increasingly connected to these political economic networks, in that, although the variety of foods available has grown enormously, they have in fact arguably less and less choice about where to buy food. According to Simms (2007: 92), the four largest supermarket chains in Britain now control 75 per cent of the grocery market and, as he points out of the market leader, ‘if all its current plans are allowed to come to fruition, Tesco will double its size at home. According to insider City analysis . . ., Tesco is set to end up taking £1 in every £4 spent by United Kingdom shoppers.’ (The figure currently stands at about £1 in every £8, and this is not exclusively expenditure on food but also includes other goods and services.) Consumers therefore have more ‘choice’ of commodity range, but less choice of retailer. Additionally, because of retailer size and scale of operation, most are unable to stock produce from very small and/or ‘local’ producers, so reducing customer access to these products. With their ability to conduct extensive market research and track expenditure linked to socio-demographic indicators in considerable detail from various forms of ‘loyalty’ cards, retailers also hold sophisticated and closely guarded information about consumers’ buying habits and preferences; such knowledge remains privileged, outside the public domain, and is used to manage the system to competitive advantage. Not least, the information enables retailers to develop new products and services (extending into banking, insurance and so on) with which to ‘connect’ ever more completely with their customers.

In this book, we argue that, in fact, it is these very trends that are contributing to the ‘disconnection’ of consumers from their food and its production. The idea of ‘disconnection’ refers not only to structures and relationships within the food system, but also to perceptions and feelings about the food system. ‘Disconnection’ evokes the perceived and actual separation of food production from food consumption. This is most notable in the sense that, as we said above, most consumers in developed market economies do not know where (or how) much of their food is produced. This state of affairs is hardly new. As Trentmann (2007) notes, the lengthening of food chains is associated with processes of globalization dating back to the seventeenth century, when in Holland, for example, about one third of peoples’ food came from afar. By 1913, food made up 27 per cent of world exports (according to O’Rourke 2003, cited in Trentmann 2007) and was firmly entrenched in the global economy. The increased geographical and technological distances involved in production–consumption networks mean that food origins and conditions of production are often ‘dis-placed’ (Cook and Crang 1996). Indeed, as Cook, Crang and Thorpe point out, ‘the practical possibility of a complete knowledge of food provision systems has to be questioned. The distance food travels to get to our plates and the sheer complexity of the food system, inevitably means that the biographies of the foods we eat are rather opaque to us’ (Cook et al. 1998: 164). Moreover, many consumers do not want to know where their food comes from or how it is made, and place trust in governments, regulatory systems and retailers to provide food that is safe to eat.

‘Disconnection’ in the food system is an outcome (but by no means an end result) of the complex interplay of se...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables and Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Contextualizing ‘Alternative’ Food Relationships
• 2 Conceptualizing ‘Alternatives’ within a Framework of Care
• 3 Analytical Description of Six ‘Alternative’ Food Schemes
• 4 Growing and Selling Food: Producers and Production
• 5 Buying and Eating Food: Consumers and Consumption
• 6 Locating Food in Everyday Life: Consumer Practices, Care, Convenience and Choice
• 7 Conclusions: ‘Reconnection’ through Care
• Appendix 1 Researching ‘Alternative’ Food Schemes
• Appendix 2 Consumer Sample Profile
• Notes
• References
• eCopyright