Colin Sage

Social embeddedness and relations of regard:: alternative ‘good food’ networks in south-west Ireland

Abstract While it is useful to qualify the embeddedness of alternative food networks with relation to marketness and instrumentalism, the evidence of strong inter-personal ties within transactions conducted by small food producers and their customers requires better conceptualization. Following Offer (Econ. Hist. Rev. L 3 (1997) 450) and Lee (Geoforum 31 (2000) 137) this paper uses the notion of relations of regard to illustrate the benefits to both parties arising from their interaction that go well beyond narrowly financial evaluations. The term “good food” is deployed for its capacity to convey the multiple attributes of products as well as to capture a heterogeneous set of actors broadly sharing a common set of values around food. Drawing upon interviews with producers and other key individuals within the region, the paper describes some of the issues affecting the organic farming and food artisan sectors, as well as their respective use of different food supply chains. The growth of face-to-face transactions has stimulated the development of markets in the region, which are considered for their status as oppositional sites to the mainstream food industry. Finally, the source of strong moral values that permeates the network is considered in relation to an important food personality.

The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture

Despite a significant growth in food production over the past half-century, one of the most important challenges facing society today is how to feed an expected population of some nine billion by the middle of the 20th century. To meet the expected demand for food without significant increases in prices, it has been estimated that we need to produce 70–100 per cent more food, in light of the growing impacts of climate change, concerns over energy security, regional dietary shifts and the Millennium Development target of halving world poverty and hunger by 2015. The goal for the agricultural sector is no longer simply to maximize productivity, but to optimize across a far more complex landscape of production, rural development, environmental, social justice and food consumption outcomes. However, there remain significant challenges to developing national and international policies that support the wide emergence of more sustainable forms of land use and efficient agricultural production. The lack of information flow between scientists, practitioners and policy makers is known to exacerbate the difficulties, despite increased emphasis upon evidence-based policy. In this paper, we seek to improve dialogue and understanding between agricultural research and policy by identifying the 100 most important questions for global agriculture. These have been compiled using a horizon-scanning approach with leading experts and representatives of major agricultural organizations worldwide. The aim is to use sound scientific evidence to inform decision making and guide policy makers in the future direction of agricultural research priorities and policy support. If addressed, we anticipate that these questions will have a significant impact on global agricultural practices worldwide, while improving the synergy between agricultural policy, practice and research. This research forms part of the UK Governments Foresight Global Food and Farming Futures project.

The transition movement and food sovereignty: From local resilience to global engagement in food system transformation

The emergence of grassroots social movements variously preoccupied with a range of external threats, such as diminishing supplies of fossil energy or climate change, has led to increased interest in the production of local food. Drawing upon the notion of cognitive praxis, this article utilises transition as a trajectory guided by an overarching cosmology that brings together a broad social movement seeking a more resilient future. This ‘grand narrative’ is reinforced by ‘transition movement intellectuals’ who serve to shape an agenda of local preparedness in the face of uncertainty, rather than structural analysis of the global system. In this context, growing and producing food offers important multi-functional synergies by reconnecting people to place and its ecological endowments and serves to provide a vital element in civic mobilisation. Yet, local food could also become a means to build international solidarity in defence of food sovereignty and establish a global coalition opposed to the corporate agri-food agenda of biotechnologies, land grabbing and nutritional impoverishment.

Addressing the Faustian bargain of the modern food system: connecting sustainable agriculture with sustainable consumption

As we deal with the drivers and consequences of food price volatility that now stretch over almost a decade, the scientific, technological and environmental basis of the global food system is becoming more and more sharply contested. For the moment the agri-industrial bio-science paradigm remains in the ascendancy, notably by harnessing a neo-Malthusian call for a ‘doubling’ of food production by 2050 in order to feed a world of 9 billion. Here, precision agriculture, genetic engineering and nanotechnology (Beddington 2010, Gebbers and Adamchuk 2010, Scrinis and Lyons 2010, Tester and Langridge 2010) are all variously promoted as the new magic bullet for a rejuvenation of the productivist model (Horlings and Marsden 2011).

Re-imagining the Irish foodscape

Limited attention has been paid by geographers to the Irish food system beyond the farm gate. Yet the last two decades have witnessed a substantial transformation in the provision of food and in patterns of consumption. This extended introduction to a set of four themed papers considers the role played by corporate retailing in refashioning the urban foodscape and in restructuring agri-food supply chains. The article aims to highlight the significant disconnection that exists between the realms of production and consumption, and outlines the potential of alternative visions and practices that offer a way of reconnecting them. Finally, the article will introduce the four papers which provide an illustration of the range and depth of analysis that geographers can bring to the study of the Irish food system.

Food security, food sovereignty and the special rapporteur Shaping food policy discourse through realising the right to food

Over the past 6 years, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, has vigorously defended the case for small-scale and sustainable farming and has helped to establish the political legitimacy of food sovereignty in high-level expert fora. This commentary offers brief reflections on De Schutter’s contribution focusing on the welcome shift of emphasis from food to nutritional security as well as his strong support for agroecology. It argues that he has offered a powerful and coherent alternative to the prevailing paradigm of productivism that has helped reshape food policy discourse.

Environmental trade-offs of pig production systems under varied operational efficiencies

Production of pork, the most consumed meat globally, is estimated to emit 668 m tonnes CO2-eq of greenhouse gases each year. Amongst various production systems that comprise the pig industry, grain-based intensive production is widely regarded as the largest polluter of the environment, and thus it is imperative to develop alternative systems that can provide the right balance between sustainability and food security. Using an original dataset from the Republic of Ireland, this paper examines the life-cycle environmental impacts of representative pig farms operating under varying production efficiencies. For the baseline farm with an average production efficiency, global warming potential (GWP), acidification potential (AP) and eutrophication potential (EP) per kg carcass weight departing the slaughterhouse were estimated to be 3.5 kg CO2-eq, 43.8 g SO2-eq and 32.1 g PO4-eq, respectively. For herds with a higher production efficiency, a 9% improvement in feed conversion ratio was met by 6%, 15% and 12% decreases in GWP, EP, AP, respectively. Scenario and sensitivity analyses also revealed that (a) a switch to high-protein diets results in lower GWP and higher AP and EP, and (b) reducing transportation distances by sourcing domestically produced wheat and barley does not lower environmental impacts in any notable manner. To improve cross-study comparability of these findings, results based on an auxiliary functional unit, kg liveweight departing the farm gate, are also reported.

A retrospective public health analysis of the Republic of Ireland's Food Harvest 2020 strategy: absence, avoidance and business as usual

Abstract The concept of an Ecological Approach to health and including Health in All Policies warrants inter-sectoral and transdisciplinary collaboration to improve health determinants and reduce health inequities. Agriculture policies, which greatly influence food production and its environmental impacts as well as food availability and dietary consumption, are therefore of interest to public health. Increasing rates of non-communicable diseases linked to diets containing high levels of processed foods, increasing numbers of households unable to access nutritious food and the environmental consequences of the food system are amongst the major health challenges of today, both globally and in Ireland. In 2010, Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries published Food Harvest 2020 a roadmap for Irish agriculture for the subsequent decade prepared against a backdrop of rising diet-related ill-health and increasing environmental concerns. This article critically analyses the process of consultation and stakeholder involvement in the development of Food Harvest 2020 from a public health perspective. Publically available documents including submissions to the Food Harvest 2020 consultation process were the primary source of data. This study highlights a distinct absence of public health representation in the process, an avoidance of some key public health challenges and the dominance of a ‘business as usual’ approach.

Six questions for food justice

In July 2014 the Food Justice: Knowing Food/Securing the Futureworkshop at the University of Reading, UK brought together over 60 academic and civil society delegates to discuss the contemporary state of food justice. While food is essential to the growth, development and health of human life, and to social well-being (Riches 2018), an array of contemporary challenges demonstrates that our food system does not ensure freedom from want and oppression, or environmental sustainability (Allen 2008). Indeed, when we consider the number of malnourished children that live in countries with food surpluses it becomes clear that a more equitable and healthy food system is substantively not an issue of production but, rather, of access and justice. Justice, in the context of food, has a variety of framings, including questions of rights, anti-poverty politics, community food security, distribution, political representation and collective self-determination (Levkoe 2006; Barnhill and Doggett 2018) Consequently, “food justice” as a concept, process, practice and outcome remains open to multiple interpretations (Gottlieb and Joshi 2010) with all the inherent dangers of being an “empty signifier” (Heynen, Kurtz, and Trauger 2012). Despite this, there is a utility and importance to wide, diverse engagements from a range of stakeholders in working through notions of food justice (Wekerle 2004). Indeed, this is mirrored by the number of alternative food movements across the world focusing on “the multiple ways that racial and economic inequalities are embedded within the production, distribution, and consumption of food” (Alkon and Mares 2012, 348). These endeavour to explore the causes, symptoms, processes and outcomes of food justice and injustices (Agyeman and McEntee 2014) and recognise the need to address and challenge the socio-economic, political and ecological contexts and structures that have shaped food injustice (Alkon and Guthman 2017a). Food justice is, therefore, a critical concept both for scholars and for people’s everyday lived realities. For the former, it offers a conceptual framework to understand and analyse the broader structural inequities that shape people’s experiences of food systems and potentially contribute towards progressive policy development and social change (see, for example, Levkoe 2006; Sbicca 2012; Bradley and Galt 2014). For the latter, realising a more just food system means one in which everyone has “access to sufficient, affordable, healthy, culturally appropriate food, and – very importantly – respect and self-determination” (see also Dowler and O’Connor 2012; Bradley and Galt 2014, 173). Although food justice practices generally work through principles and ideals embodied within the broader struggle for social justice, the movement is not homogenous, especially when considering US experiences versus those in the UK (Food Ethics Council 2010; Moragues-Faus 2017; Kneafsey et al. 2017) and other parts of the globe (Besky 2015; Blake 2017). The tensions and contestations reflecting the range of reformist to radical approaches, practices and rationalities (Brent, Schiavoni, and Alonso-Fradejas 2015) were, and are, exemplified in our workshop and this special issue.

Food words: essays in culinary culture

This book derives – alongside a range of other outputs – from work undertaken by Jackson and collaborators under the ERC-funded ‘Consumer culture in an “age of anxiety”’ research project. This is n...