Book of Abstract (incl. addendum) - IFSA symposium 2012

Abstract of plenary sessions:
Producing and reproducing farming systems.
New modes of organization for sustainable food systems of tomorrow
Achieving Sustainability via Eco-labels? Examining the social and ecological
dynamics of the ‘Food from Somewhere’ Regime
Keynote speaker:
Professor Hugh Campbell
Department of Sociology, Gender and Social Work
University of Otago, NZ
hod.sqsw@otago.ac.nz
In this address I want to examine the rather contentious and potentially challenging ‘middle zone’ of
activity in global food relations that has opened up around what I term the ‘Food from Somewhere’
regime. Around 20 years ago, at the conclusion of the GATT Uruguay Round of global trade
negotiations (and subsequent formation of the WTO) a great deal of attention was given by scholars to
the implications of the establishment of a neoliberal world order for food. Scholars like Philip
McMichael suggested, at that time, that the world was now about to be progressively absorbed into a
Corporate Industrial Food Regime, supported by neoliberal governance systems, operated by transnational
corporate capital and trading in industrial, mass-produced and highly substitutable
commodities. He termed this new regime: ‘Food from Nowhere’. In opposition to this emerging regime
in world food relationships, some agri-food scholars pointed to the need to encourage and recognize
local food systems, local food cultures, new social movements around local food, farmers markets,
urban gardening and other initiatives that might help form some kind of sustainable locally-embedded
alternative to Food from Nowhere. At the time, many of us were comfortable with the assumption that
world food politics was configured around two poles – the globalizing, industrial, corporate
(capitalist?) pole represented by McMichael’s Food from Nowhere, and the local, embedded, more
sustainable pole of local foods.
My own scholarly path has taken me into the uncomfortable ‘middle zone’ in between those two
poles. One of the curious dynamics of the last 15 years has been the rise of globally-traded foods that
make sustainability claims. Commencing with certified organic, the global trade in organic foods has
often involved large farms, large corporations (both in agriculture and in retailing), highly
professionalized auditing organisations and has captured increasingly large segments of high value
markets in wealthy countries. The food that is traded within this middle zone is positioned to sell for
higher prices due to its overt quality claims that derive from measures of sustainability, ecofriendliness,
the appropriateness of social conditions of production (like Fair Trade), or having been
derived from a desirable location in the world. I have termed this ‘Food from Somewhere’ to
distinguish it from its alternative - Food from Nowhere. Food from Somewhere might come from
somewhere but it arguably has quite different dynamics and qualities to local foods. It is globally
traded, through highly evolved food retailing systems and supported by large export corporations,
highly successful retail chains and professional audit organisations. The existence of the Food from
Somewhere regime is highly challenging to those of us who held onto a comfortable binary separation
of the world food system into that traded in the globalized corporate industrial world of food (most
definitely NOT sustainable) and that which operates in local, more socially and culturally embedded
food relationships (which we assumed would be MORE sustainable). Where do Foods from
Somewhere fit in our understanding of sustainable food systems? Are they ‘tick box’ schemes that
allow producers to claim environmental benefits while maintaining conventional production practices?
Are they a shallow exercise in corporate ‘greenwashing’? Or do they actually have transformative
potential to change the economic, environmental and social character of farming? These questions lurk
behind the eco-labels that we are faced with when we shop at Sainsburys or Natural Foods stores.
To start to answer these questions, I will consider the transformation of food production in New
Zealand. Some agri-export industries in New Zealand have become enthusiastic participants in the
Food from Somewhere Regime, establishing new measures of quality like certified organic, GLOBAL
G.A.P. or other industry-specific eco-labelling schemes. In the last 15 years, food export industries in
New Zealand have made a significant transition from almost total absence of any eco-labelling or
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