Food regime analysis emerged to explain the strategic role of agriculture and food in the construction of the world capitalist economy. It identifies stable periods of capital accumulation associated with particular configurations of geopolitical power, conditioned by forms of agricultural production and consumption relations within and across national spaces. Contradictory relations within food regimes produce crisis, transformation, and transition to successor regimes. This ‘genealogy’ traces the development of food regime analysis in relation to historical and intellectual trends over the past two decades, arguing that food regime analysis underlines agriculture's foundational role in political economy/ecology.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03066150902820354

A food regime genealogy.

Central to the development of green lifestyles is the consumption of foods that by dint of their status as chemical-free, locally produced and/or free of genetically modified ingredients, reduce the environmental impact of food provision. Yet there are many other factors, such as health concerns, that may also encourage the consumption of 'green' foods. This paper explores the ways in which Australian consumers construct organic food-a sector of the food industry that is currently growing at between 20 and 50 percent per annum but is struggling to keep up with rising consumer demand. In order to examine the significance of 'green' signifiers in the consumption practices of Australian consumers a series of focus group interviews and a national consumer survey were conducted. These examined both those characteristics of food that were valued in general, and those meanings that were associated with organic food in particular. In very general terms, analysis reveals that while consumers believed organic foods to be healthy and environmentally sound-both of which were considered desirable-these characteristics were subsumed by an overarching concern with convenience. This does not mean that consumers did not hold genuinely positive environmental attitudes. Rather, it reflects a range of contradictory beliefs and practices that appeared to derive from the discursive conflict between conventional and organic food industries over environmental, health and safety claims. The paper concludes by identifying the barriers and opportunities for expanding the organic industry in Australia in the context of the ways organics is constructed by consumers.

Eating ‘Green’: Motivations behind organic food consumption in Australia

Based on a comprehensive study of the California organic sector, this article responds to the conventionalization debate on organic farming that surfaced after the publication of Buck et al. in 1997 in this journal. First, it addresses the place of California within the international organic sector, justifying its importance as a case study. As an empirical point, it documents the form and extent of agribusiness involvement in California's organic sector and provides place-specific explanations as to how it articulated with the previously existing organic sector. It also considers how agribusiness has influenced organic production, in rule-setting, inter-sectoral dynamics, and agronomic practices. The argument is that agribusiness involvement does more than create a soft path of sustainability - or ‘organic lite’; the conditions set by processes of agro-industrialization undermine the ability of even the most committed producers to practice a truly alternative form of organic farming. This trajectory is not inevitable, however, and largely turns on the sort of state support given to organic farming.

The Trouble with ‘Organic Lite’ in California: a Rejoinder to the ‘Conventionalisation’ Debate

This paper suggests that a corporate-environmental food regime is emerging as part of a larger restructuring of capitalism. Like past food regimes, it reflects specific social and political compromises, which I interpret through the social movement concept of interpretive frames. The diasporic-colonial food regime of 1870–1914 grew up in response to working class movements in Europe, and created a historically unprecedent class of commercial family farmers. When world markets collapsed, those farmers entered into new alliances, including one that led to the mercantile-industrial food regime of 1947–1973. Lineaments of a new food regime based on quality audited supply chains seems to be emerging in the space opened by impasse in international negotiations over food standards. Led by food retailers, agrofood corporations are selectively appropriating demands of environmental, food safety, animal welfare, fair trade, and other social movements that arose in the interstices of the second food regime. If it consolidates, the new food regime promises to shift the historical balance between public and private regulation, and to widen the gap between privileged and poor consumers as it deepens commodification and marginalizes existing peasants. Social movements are already regrouping and consolidation of the regime remains uncertain.

From Colonialism to Green Capitalism: Social Movements and Emergence of Food Regimes

We contend that biocultural approaches to conservation can achieve effective and just conservation outcomes while addressing erosion of both cultural and biological diversity. Here, we propose a set of guidelines for the adoption of biocultural approaches to conservation. First, we draw lessons from work on biocultural diversity and heritage, social-ecological systems theory, integrated conservation and development, co-management, and community-based conservation to define biocultural approaches to conservation. Second, we describe eight principles that characterize such approaches. Third, we discuss reasons for adopting biocultural approaches and challenges. If used well, biocultural approaches to conservation can be a powerful tool for reducing the global loss of both biological and cultural diversity.

https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/pdf/S0169-5347(15)00002-6.pdf

Defining biocultural approaches to conservation

Comanagement is an attempt to produce better and fairer institutions of environmental management. It is applied to protected areas to reduce their social impacts, incorporate Indigenous peoples into decision making, and generate policies that reflect local ecology and culture. Yet comanagement has not always reduced the conflicts between Indigenous peoples and park managers. Through evaluation of the prospects for comanagement of Te Urewera National Park in New Zealand, we conclude that there is a need to identify the demand of Indigenous peoples for comanagement. Historical legacies of land alienation affect present relationships between Maori (the Indigenous population of New Zealand) and conservation authorities, and it is unrealistic to assume that the former will embrace comanagement when it is offered as a token resolution of land grievances. Case studies also confirm a need to acknowledge diversity within Indigenous communities and to address its impact the equity of comanagement.

“Na whenua, na Tuhoe. Ko D.o.C. te partner”—Prospects for Comanagement of Te Urewera National Park

Defending community? Indigeneity, self-determination and institutional ambivalence in the restoration of Lake Whakaki

Conservation authorities and local Maori are engaged in a collaborative science project within the Morere Scenic Reserve (east coast of the North Island in New Zealand). Although the project was restricted initially to the integration of knowledge to support sustainable harvests of kiekie (Freycinetia baueriana), the illegitimacy of state agencies to manage competing Maori demands for that species led inadvertently to the devolution of harvest administration to a local tribe. The success of the Morere experiment is evident in widespread support for a subsequent decision to fallow the kiekie resource, suggesting that further experiments to activate Indigenous polities within conservation management are warranted. Nonetheless, ambivalence towards Maori development needs circumscribes the potential of devolved management and collaborative science.

Brad Coombes

Papers

“Na whenua, na Tuhoe. Ko D.o.C. te partner”—Prospects for Comanagement of Te Urewera National Park

Defending community? Indigeneity, self-determination and institutional ambivalence in the restoration of Lake Whakaki

Postcolonial Conservation and Kiekie Harvests at Morere New Zealand – Abstracting Indigenous Knowledge from Indigenous Polities

Collaboration: Inter-subjectivity or radical pedagogy?

The Challenges of and from Indigenous Geographies