Rebalance power and strengthen farmers ’ position in the EU food system? A CDA of the Farm to Fork Strategy
AbstractThe Farm to Fork (F2F) Strategy at the heart of the European Union’s Green Deal set out to create a “just transition” towards a sustainable food system, with benefits for all actors. We conducted a critical discourse analysis (CDA) to explore discourses around power in the food system and farmers’ position in th e communication and implementation of the Farm to Fork Strategy. Discourse analysis encapsulates various scientific methodologies for deciphering the meaning behind the creation and communication of different forms of language and identify power dynamics, amongst other aspects. We identified two p...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 18, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Chinese food self-provisioning: key sustainability policy lessons hidden in plain sight
AbstractDrawing on an exploratory study of urban food self-provisioning (FSP) in China, this article argues that progress in sustainability scholarship can be accelerated by embracing a greater diversity of framings of sustainability. It brings four important empirical findings concerning the prevalence of Chinese urban FSP, the social diversity of its practitioners, their primarily non-economic motivations, and production methods meeting the criteria for organic food that are deployed by more than a third of urban food growers. On this basis, the article highlights the importance of greater attention to identifying and va...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 14, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Unpacking gender mainstreaming: a critical discourse analysis of agricultural and rural development policy in Myanmar and Nepal
AbstractConventional gender analysis of development policy does not adequately explain the slow progress towards gender equality. Our research analyses the gender discourses embedded in agricultural and rural development policies in Myanmar and Nepal. We find that both countries focus on increasing women ’s participation in development activities as a core gender equality policy objective. This creates a binary categorisation of participating versus non-participating women and identifies women as responsible for improving their position. At the same time, gender (in)equality is defined exclusively as a women’s concern....
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 5, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Biotechnology activism is dead; long live biotechnology activism! The lure and legacy of market-based food movement strategies
This study thus conceptualizes the ‘case’ of U.S. biotechnology market activism expansively, drawing on interviews with 25 activists from diverse organizations to investigate the legacy of two food-labeling movement strategies (one public and mandatory, one private and voluntary). The results support that the legacy of market str ategies extends more broadly than the immediate initiative. They also confirm that the consequences of such neoliberalized strategies are most productively assessed contextually and applied, rather than categorically—as most clearly illustrated by the counterintuitive results of the failed m...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 5, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Reinventing the meal: a genealogy of plant-based alternative proteins
AbstractIndustrial animal agriculture is a significant driver of climate change, habitat loss, and the ongoing extinction crisis, all of which will continue to accelerate as global demand for animal products grows. Plant-based alternatives to animal products, which have existed for over a thousand years, offer a potential solution to this problem, as the intersection of recent technological innovation and shifting capital investment trends have ushered in a new era of alternative proteins that are redefining food categories like meat, eggs, and milk. To better understand these evolving food forms, their attendant technolog...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 5, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Unpacking gender mainstreaming: a critical discourse analysis of agricultural and rural development policy in Myanmar and Nepal
AbstractConventional gender analysis of development policy does not adequately explain the slow progress towards gender equality. Our research analyses the gender discourses embedded in agricultural and rural development policies in Myanmar and Nepal. We find that both countries focus on increasing women ’s participation in development activities as a core gender equality policy objective. This creates a binary categorisation of participating versus non-participating women and identifies women as responsible for improving their position. At the same time, gender (in)equality is defined exclusively as a women’s concern....
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 5, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Biotechnology activism is dead; long live biotechnology activism! The lure and legacy of market-based food movement strategies
This study thus conceptualizes the ‘case’ of U.S. biotechnology market activism expansively, drawing on interviews with 25 activists from diverse organizations to investigate the legacy of two food-labeling movement strategies (one public and mandatory, one private and voluntary). The results support that the legacy of market str ategies extends more broadly than the immediate initiative. They also confirm that the consequences of such neoliberalized strategies are most productively assessed contextually and applied, rather than categorically—as most clearly illustrated by the counterintuitive results of the failed m...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 5, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Reinventing the meal: a genealogy of plant-based alternative proteins
AbstractIndustrial animal agriculture is a significant driver of climate change, habitat loss, and the ongoing extinction crisis, all of which will continue to accelerate as global demand for animal products grows. Plant-based alternatives to animal products, which have existed for over a thousand years, offer a potential solution to this problem, as the intersection of recent technological innovation and shifting capital investment trends have ushered in a new era of alternative proteins that are redefining food categories like meat, eggs, and milk. To better understand these evolving food forms, their attendant technolog...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 5, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Re-centering labour in local food: local washing and the growing reliance on permanently temporary migrant farmworkers in Nova Scotia
This article explores the labour behind local food in the Canadian Atlantic province of Nova Scotia. Based on surveys and interviews with farmers, migrant farmworkers, and farmers ’ market consumers in the province, we suggest that the celebration of local food by government and industry is a form of “local washing.” Local washing hides key aspects of the social relations of production: in this case, it hides insufficient financial and policy supports for Nova Scotian f arms and the increased reliance on migrant farmworkers via the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program and the Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Our res...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 1, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Books received
(Source: Agriculture and Human Values)
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - September 1, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
African indigenous vegetables, gender, and the political economy of commercialization in Kenya
This study investigates the increased commercialization of African indigenous vegetables (AIV) —former subsistence crops such as African nightshade, cowpea leaves and amaranth species grown mainly by women—from a feminist economics perspective. The study aims to answer the following research question: How does AIV commercialization affect the gendered division of labor, women’s particip ation in agricultural labor, their decision-making power, and their access to resources? We analyze commercialization’s effects on gender relations in labor and decision-making power and also highlight women’s agency. Based on a m...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - August 27, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Understanding the rationale and advantages of a traditional Mediterranean intercropping system in the nineteenth century
In this study, we seek to recover the long-lost experience from a traditional Mediterranean intercropping system that combined the cultivation of vines and cereals. Using local historical resources available for a Catalan village for the second half of the nineteenth century, we compare the characteristics and functioning of intercropping and monocultures of vines and cereals using socioeconomic and agrarian metabolism indicators, and discuss the advantages of the traditional intercropping system as an adaptation to the productive limitations of the agroecosystem (particularly in terms of soil quality and productivity, and...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - August 23, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
