ORE Open Research Exeter
TITLE
Fruits of our labour: Work and organisation in the global food system
AUTHORS
Boehm, S; Spierenburg, M; Lang, T
JOURNAL
Organization
DEPOSITED IN ORE
09 January 2020
This version available at
http://hdl.handle.net/10871/40320
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1
Fruits of our labour: Work and organization in the global
food system
Steffen Böhm, Marja Spierenburg, Tim Lang
Introduction to the Special Issue, to be published in Organization
Abstract
This is the first special issue of any organization studies journal on food labour. Why is this a big deal? In this
Introduction we argue that the field should pay much more attention to the agri-food system and the work that goes
into producing, distributing and consuming foodstuff. Food is such an all-important, basic ingredient to human
existence, incorporating a vast web of organizational processes that are constantly changing, being contested at all
scales. Whether subsistence peasants, new-age community foodies, massive food logistics companies, Deliveroo dark
kitchens or Uber Eats cyclists – there is a huge amount of labour everywhere in the agri-food system. Food labour is so
vast, this special issue can only begin lifting the lid. In this Introduction we provide an overview of the current scholarly
work on food labour. We identify some of the historical contexts and struggles that have led to the agri-food system in
existence today. We identify food labour types, particularly focusing on those that are vanishing or emerging, crucially
asking why these transitions are taking place. We also engage with the various resistances expressed by people against
the ever globalising agri-food system, outlining logics for the emergence of alternative food movements. Finally, we
introduce each of the seven papers collated in this Special Issue, all of which, we hope, will provide food for thought to
all of us who tend to have three meals a day without thinking too much about the labour that goes into our grub.
Introduction
In children’s story books, there is often a romantic picture of food labour centred on the farmer, presented as a robust,
worthy citizen, today with a tractor, in the past with horses. This ‘old’ picture offers a vision of short supply chains from
farm to kitchen which is hopelessly inaccurate, let alone depicting the complex dynamics of 21
st
century food labour
(Kearney 2018). In the 19
th
century, sizable labour sectors working on food, but off the land, emerged first in the West,
then spread globally. Today, entirely new sectors emerged, as the gap between primary production and final
consumption has lengthened. Gone is the romantic picture of doughty yeoman farmer, and in comes the reality of
ready-made food, supermarkets, home delivery, advertising and marketing, data mining, plant and animal breeding, and
supply chain management. Consumers have been enrolled into this restructuring of food labour, with transformation of
domestic labour, the arrival of the prosumer, and Instagram identity food politics. Behind these ‘new’ food labours lies
the juggernaut of food manufacturing, whose processes have transformed how increasingly urbanised populations
receive their food since the 19
th
century. Steam roller mills altered milling. Canning, invented in the early 1800s, was
industrialised by the century’s end. New processes and products have continued ever since. Today, hundreds of
thousands of new food products come to market, many to fail, but all seeking to grow what consumers never even
knew they wanted. The food designer, chemist and engineer have changed the entire food system from production to
consumption. New sectors and sources of labour intervened and restructured the flow of biological matter we humans
call ‘food’.
Work undertaken to produce food is one of the most fundamental and ancient forms of labour human beings must
engage in to survive and flourish. It is not surprising, therefore, that much of the academic focus on food work has been
on primary forms, i.e. ‘on’ rather than ‘off’ the land. Thus, there are many studies of peasant labour (e.g. Bose & Sugata,
1993; Bryceson et al., 2000; Pegler, 2015), of the transitions caused by industrialization and mechanization of farming
(e.g. Laite, 1981; Heywood, 1981; Cernea, 1978), and of the role of migrant labour on the land (e.g. Cliffe, 1978;
Bryceson, 2019; Chan, 2010). Yet, remarkably little attention has been given to the broader range of food labour or to
see if there are any cross-sectoral similarities. Instead, mainstream understanding has taken recourse to a narrative of
progress as well as that the revolution in length, complexity, control and technology of food work in the 20th century
has all been for the greater good of humanity, efficiency and well-being. Now, in the era of climate change, and
powerful evidence on how food is a main driver of ecosystems and health damage (Willett et al., 2019; Gladek et al.,
2016), it is time to begin a more critical analysis of modern food labour. As societies have industrialized and urbanized,
food remains perplexingly hidden to most of us (Li 2011). Some have argued that this is because of food’s banality and
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intimacy; it is just there (e.g. Winson, 1993). Others point out that it is crises, notably hunger, which demand critical
analysis, and that the 21
st
century challenges are so complex, the demands tax common understanding (e.g. Mason and
Lang, 2017). The need for consumers to understand more precisely how food arrives on the supermarket shelf does
bubble up from time to time. It was forcefully brought home, for instance, by the horsemeat scandal that gripped
Europe in 2012 (Madichie & Yamoah, 2017), and BSE (‘mad cow disease’) in the 1980s-90s. Scandals such as these, as
well as an increasing stream of media publications on the relations between food production and climate change (BBC,
2019) have spawned a range of consumer and policy reactions, from scepticism to changed behaviour, to moments of
renewed interest in the production and regulation of food production.
This partial picture suggests room for improved understanding of the role of food work in modern systems. While there
has been welcome attention to food retail (Burch & Lawrence, 2007), there has been less focus on modern food
factories, or the growth of artisanal production. Catering remains the Cinderella service in academic studies, which
Gabriel (1988) noted three decades ago. Demand for local and fair-trade food, for instance, indicates some appetite for
food with provenance that is ‘ethically produced’ (Nicholls & Opal, 2005), though some studies indicate that even this
niche has had limited impact. One study of fair-traded products, for instance, found that while benefits did flow into the
developing world, women and the lowest paid workers did not receive their due rewards (Cramer et al., 2014).
The motivation for this special issue was to refocus academic attention on how change and growth in the food system
and all its sectors affect those working in the agri-food system. This collection of papers can barely scratch the surface of
what is really needed, but we call for others to join in beginning to lift the commodity veil and to explore the production
and organization processes behind food and the context that shapes them. Some social scientists, particularly
geographers, have begun to map the vast web of work which enables ‘just-in-time’ supply chains to deliver food to
affluent parts of the world so continuously and relatively cheaply. They also highlight the costs, winners and losers
(Allen & Sachs, 2012; Bonanno & Cavalcanti, 2012; Cramer et al., 2014). As a transition unfolds from an era of low food
prices to one characterized by, what Moore (2015) calls, ‘the end of cheap nature’, the full costs and scale of production
assume even greater importance (FOLU, 2019). Yet, the costs and benefits within the agri-food system are unequally
distributed among the various actors in the system (Elder and Dauvergne 2015); Van der Ploeg, 2009). Increased
financialization (Clapp), a growing dominance of the food system by large agri-businesses (Lang & Heasman, 2015), as
well as policy contradictions, characterized by the promotion of intensive production methods, on the one hand, and
sustainable rural development on the other, have impacts on this distribution (Banks & Marsden, 2000; Garzon, 2006;
Siebert, 2006). At the same time, there is greater awareness among both policymakers and the wider public of the
unacceptable social costs of cheap food, in terms of environmental costs as well as exploitative and unsafe conditions
for workers and food producers across the system (Burnett & Murphy 2014; De Castro et al., this issue).
Even apparently simple foods may have complex supply chains. One study of factory-made bread found at least 40
ingredients, meaning suppliers did not necessarily know what was in their products. The myriad segments which now
make up what analysts call the ‘food system’ are subject to co-ordination, negotiation and rapidly changing dynamics.
Within these market relations, there can be moments of unprecedented stress. One moment, the food labour force is
extending, the next it is fragmenting. One moment, in the worlds of Marx and Engels in 1848, rural labour was being
liberated from what they memorably called the “idiocy of rural life” and seduced into an apparently freer life and labour
in the town, the next their labour was being exploited or marginalised. This vacillation is still observable today, across
both rural and urban food work. Think of the casualization of the Uber or Deliveroo food delivery bicyclist (Taylor, 2017).
Across diverse political regimes, the price of food is a significant indicator of progress and development (Bernstein
2014); (Dorward 2013). Food prices have also served as political instruments, with attempts to control prices to keep
wages of labour in other economic sectors in check and suppress social unrest. As sectoral interests vie for control,
market share and profits, the labour process is ceaselessly under review. Investments and technological innovations
serve to ‘modernize’ food production and increase production, yet the concomitant financialization of food production
also results in price increases, which have scarcely improved livelihoods of food producers. Value chains have become
longer, resulting in a ‘distancing’ in food systems (Clapp). New sectors and actors have emerged, seemingly overnight,
snatching the food just before the consumer gets to ‘choose’ it, thereby taking another slice out of the chain.
Internationalisation of value chains increased under new wave globalisation from the 1970s, and further accelerated
with a new land rush since the early 2000s, involving players from emerging economies as well, further reinforcing the
squeeze on food work (Lang and Heasman 2015, Devlin 2016, Devlin et al. 2014, Cousins et al. 2018).
3
Why does this background matter for understanding the role of labour within organizations? Simply because food ought
to be an immense slice of labour and organizational analysis, but it rarely is. There is hence an urgent need for
organization studies to take the human labour element in food more seriously, from farm or sea to consumption and
waste. Food systems offer rich opportunities critically to examine the role of work and labour in all societies, whether
high, middle or low income, whether looking at primary production or the new ‘soft’ people control sectors such as Big
Data workers or Uber drivers. Food labour is so vast, so all-present, that this special issue can do no more than begin to
lift the lid. People and hence organizations cannot go without food for long, and it is somewhat curious that food has
been ignored in organization studies for so long. The purpose of this special issue is to begin to change that and to put
the case for food as a core exemplar within organizational analysis.
Food labour in transition
The food sector has always been the largest labour force on the planet. In the past, work was as serfs or slaves, whereas
today it is more often waged. There is still a vast unwaged labour force, however, with possibly nearly half a billion
people working in the micro-scaled subsistent (self-providing) farm sector. Industrialisation accelerated a revolution in
agricultural work, partly by technical innovation replacing labour, and partly people being attracted into towns and
cities. The world is now majority urbanised, yet the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates the global farm
labour force still to be over 1 billion people, one in three people in employment. This is now in decline both in absolute
numbers and proportionately. Back in 1991, farm labour was an estimated 1.3 billion, 42% of all employment but by
2017 this had fallen to 28% (World Bank 2018). These global figures disguise massive regional differences. In 2017, the
ILO estimates that agriculture employed 70% of the workforce of low-income countries, nearly 40% of lower middle-
income countries, 16% of upper middle income countries and just 3% in developed countries.
With economic development work moves off the land, yet labour demands in or related to the food sector remain high.
This began in the industrialised West in the late 18
th
century but runs apace today in the Asian Far East and other parts
of the ‘developing world’. Much land-based food labour was and remains unwaged, working hand-to-mouth in small
scale self-sufficiency (International Labour Organisation 2018b). About two thirds to three quarters of all food produced
on the planet is actually produced by peasants and small units. However, with the new wave of investments in land,
these producers are increasingly threatened and made to give up their land in return for a promise of jobs in more
‘modern’ agriculture (Li 2011). Plantation agriculture is not a thing of the past; it is alive and well but now facing
environmental as well as occupational scrutiny.
Although formal employment has grown, much of it is insecure, temporary, part-time, or semi-waged (Scherrer and
Verma 2018); (Li 2011). The labour force is both casualised and feminised and gender pay gaps are considerable
(International Labour Organisation 2016). Despite legal abolition, slave work continues, with forced agricultural labour a
significant segment of the estimated 21 million forced labourers in the world (International Labour Organisation 2014).
The experience of these workers ranges from slave-labour aboard Thai fishing boats (Vandergeest 2018) to volunteer
work by the home or allotment gardener, producing food for their own table (Watson, this issue), from exploitative
rhythms of migrant agri-food labourers in rich countries (Manolchev & Agar, this issue) to modes of exploitation in the
agricultural fields in poorer nations (Greco, this issue). The policy response to this running sore has been honourable but
weak, a mix of niche markets such as fair trade and appeals to responsible capitalism such as the FAO and OECD’s
voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Reporting (OECD and FAO 2015 ). No wonder there has been a renewed interest in
new peasant organizations and the wider resistance to corporate farming (McMichael 2000, Martinez-Torres and Rosset
2010).
Growth of food labour off the land
Food work is everywhere but much of it is hidden. The tea picker, the canteen worker, the supermarket checkout
worker, the horticultural worker, the factory sorter and packer, they all keep just-in-time food systems flowing. Food
labour is nigh universally low paid, yet modern media have lionised celebrity chefs. Few, other than for niche markets
such as fair traded foods, argue that food ought to cost more to ensure food work is properly rewarded. Questions
about how to feed the growing world population result in a fierce battle over what is meant by efficiency between those
who see it as financial productivity per worker and others who offer new criteria such as carbon emissions or people fed
per hectare (Cassidy et al. 2013).
4
As the food manufacturing revolution emerged in the 19
th
century, with machine production seemingly offering the
prospect of minimal food labour, some radicals began to argue that the drudge, the mundanity and exploitation might
even be something of the past. Charlotte Gilman Perkins, for example, a radical feminist, foresaw a time when domestic
life could be kitchen-less, thus liberating women (Perkins Gilman, 1966). Less thought was then given to where that
labour might be transferred or on what terms. Yet, a modern feminist focus on food has suggested that the
reproductive politics of food has not gone away (Lewis and Schuller 2016). In the early 21
st
century, food, as we have
seen, remains a huge employer. Perhaps this should not be a source of surprise. As a basic need, some labour, whether
waged or unwaged, conducted by men or women, young or old, is likely to be expended on feeding people. What is
remarkable, however, is the rapidity of change in food labour. Settled agriculture began around 10-12,000 years ago.
Industrialisation took off 200 to 300 years ago, and went global only in the last century. And a transformation of food
processes has occurred in the last century and a half. ‘Supermarketisation’ began in 1916 with Clarence Saunders’
surreally named Piggly-Wiggly self-service store (Lawrence and Dixon 2015). Yet, that is now being constantly changed
by new products, new processes which result in new pressures on and new ways of organizing labour; for instance
home delivery of prepared food by drones, new software platforms, such as Amazon Fresh, and under-paid freelance
food couriers on bicycle, clashing with motorists in traffic clogged big city streets. An ‘Uber-isation’ of food processing
and delivery is underway.
Battles for control of food markets are a permanent feature of the food system. In the late 19
th
century what are today
new food manufacturing giants began: Nestlé in 1867; Quaker Oats in 1877; what is now Unilever in the 1890s; Kellogg’s
in 1904; Coca Cola in 1892 and Pepsi Cola in 1898; General Mills in 1928. Today the giants emerge fast. A company such
as Just-Eat is a web-based delivery company which orchestrates home deliveries from multiple restaurants. It was
founded only in 2001. It was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2014, valued as £1.4 billion and by the end of
2017 was valued at £5.6bn. Its worth was greater than Domino’s Pizza founded in 1960. Amazon, the huge online
retailer, was founded in the USA in 1994, launched Amazon Fresh in Seattle in 2007, rolled it out in 10 countries within
a decade, and could undercut even giant supermarket chains such as WalMart and Tesco by an average of 12.5% by
2018 (Halliwell 2018). Some financial analysts think this pace and scale of change will continue. Others argue that
planetary boundaries and inefficiencies of material use are beginning to catch up on the profligacy of 21
st
century
consumerism (Lang and Heasman, 2015; Walker, 2019). Moore (2015) suggests that neoliberal capitalism has run its
cause as it reaches its limits of providing cheap food to a growing population. Hence, he argues that an economic,
political and cultural readjustment is inevitable.
The variety of food labour
There are many forms of food labour. Some uses ancient technology such as hand tools for hoeing, picking crops,
sorting, cleaning, bagging, weeding. These are ancient tasks one can see on fields around the globe or painted in ancient
manuscripts. No wonder peasant labour has been so extensively covered (van der Ploeg 2008). Its simplicity and low
capital costs reinforces its resilience and resistance to degradation and appropriation (Herrera and Kin 2015, Scott
1976). The social fall-out from technological innovation in field labour has been much studied by historians (Hobsbawm
and Rudé 1969), noting the winners and losers and sources of resistance. Contemporary technical change continues to
be both championed and resisted in the food sector (Lowe, Phillipson, and Lee 2008, Grunert and Traill 1997, Bigliardia
and Galatib 2013, ACARD 1982). As a result, some parts of the world see food emerging from equipment and labour
process which would not have been out of place a thousand years ago, while elsewhere in the world vast new
equipment is applied in manners even half a century ago would have seemed impossible: genetic engineering, drone
managed crops, roboticised food factories, retort pouches not just tins or frozen foods. Labour displacement may
continue apace in one part of the world while not in another.
For at least ten to twelve thousand years, since settle agriculture emerged, food has always travelled and been traded,
but today the scale of that movement is immense. Ships, trucks, trains and planes carry food far and wide. This
distribution labour force underpins the food system, yet few outside retail logistics consider them part of the food
labour force. With computer-based just-in-time distribution systems now the epitome of conventionally ‘efficient’ food
supply chain management, a new hidden food labour force has become increasingly powerful. Long-distance truck
drivers are the new coolies, but they might be displaced from home, constantly on the move, yet can be well paid,
although not all are. Supermarket logistics go hand in hand with ruthless buying systems. Fresh food products are
contracted a year ahead but are stored for perhaps only 4 days; the storage is on the motorway. The food planner and