Transcript The University of Sheffield: PowerPoint template

Food for Thought:
response from Peter Jackson
University of Sheffield
ippr Food for Thought seminar
6 December 2007
The working paper
• a thorough, systematic and thought-provoking
review, living up to the mission statement (“ippr
north produces far-reaching policy ideas,
stimulating solutions… shaped from our
research [and] strong democratic engagement”)
• a worthy sequel to IPPR’s path-breaking study of
the social, economic and environmental costs of
food retailing and the ‘hypermarket economy’
(Off our Trolleys? Raven, Lang & Dumonteil
1995).
My brief
• To focus on food cultures and consumption
issues
• Based on my recent research on retail
competition and household change (ESRC,
2001-4); commodity chains and food cultures
(AHRC-ESRC, 2003-7); and current role as
Director of the Changing Families, Changing
Food programme (Leverhulme Trust, 2005-8).
The challenge:
to coordinate policy on…
• international trade and
development
• CAP reform (subsidies,
quotas, tariffs and rural
economies)
• land-use planning, agriculture
and rural development
• carbon emissions (transport,
packaging, waste, recycling)
• retail competition
•
•
•
•
food safety and risk
food security and inequalities
public health and nutrition
health and safety of farm
workers
• animal welfare
• … all in a context of multilevel governance.
Starting point: reconnection
“Our central theme is reconnection. We believe the real
reason why the present situation is so dysfunctional is
that farming has become detached from the rest of the
economy and the environment. The key objective of
public policy should be to reconnect our food and
farming industry: to reconnect farming with its market
and the rest of the food chain; to reconnect the food
chain and the countryside; and to reconnect consumers
with what they eat and how it is produced”
Curry Commission report on Food and Farming: a
sustainable future (2002).
Framing the question:
political and moral economies
• Reconnecting producers and consumers along a (moreor-less linear) chain ‘from farm to fork’?
• Academic critique of linear chains, with arguments for
more complex systems, circuits and networks
• The working paper argues for a focus on the ‘food
system’ with three key issues: sustainability (people,
planet and profit), risk and food security (and
inequalities)
• Underlying need to connect questions of politicaleconomy (in the global agri-food business) with the
moral economies of food and farming – the missing
dimension in IPPR’s analysis?
Moral economy
• how economic activities are influenced and structured by
moral dispositions and norms, and how those norms
may be compromised, over-ridden or reinforced by
economic pressures (Andrew Sayer, Studies in Political
Economy 2000)
• in relation to food, compare ‘heroic histories’ of British
sugar beet with ‘selective amnesia’ regarding role of
slavery in production of sugar cane
• moral questions with direct consequences for
contemporary food industry (reform of EU sugar regime,
food marketing and public health issues).
Moral economies of food and
farming
• relevant to many of the questions raised in the
report (relations between the global North and
South, animal welfare, public health etc)
• why food is different from other sectors of public
life (strongly invested with meaning; embodied
identities; closely connected with notions of self,
family and nation…)
• the meanings of food matter – they have social,
political and commercial consequences.
Consumption cultures are socially
embedded, hard to change…
• Scottish Diet Action Plan, ten years of concerted effort
with little nutritional improvement
• FSA research: 67% of consumers know about 5-a-day
but only 30% achieve targets
• ‘food deserts’ where arrival of new superstores has
negligible impact on diet
• school meals where ‘healthy eating’ seen to undermine
the intrinsic meanings of ‘normal’ childhood; food as
‘social camouflage’ in a ‘culture of conformity’
(Barnardo’s Burger Boy report, 2004)
• loss of consumer trust when food arguably safer now
than ever before, with big differences across Europe
(Kjaernes, Harvey & Warde Trust in Food, 2006).
Not just ‘barriers to change’…
• the moral economies and social embedding of food
require less didactic approaches to ‘healthy eating’
(more than an information deficit)
• ‘informed choice’ as an inadequate way of understanding
consumer behaviour, an ideological not an explanatory
term in context of monopolistic retail environment
• wider social and cultural dimensions are beginning to be
recognised in contemporary policy circles e.g. in OST
obesities report: “policies aimed solely at individuals will
be inadequate … a whole system approach is critical ...
together with wider cultural changes to shift societal
values … [requiring] action by government, industry,
communities, families and society as a whole” (Tackling
Obesities: Future Choices, October 2007).
Do we need a (UK) food policy?
• current lack of coordination has consequences
• many drivers for change: food insecurity and inequalities,
recent ‘food scares’ (and new threats), climate change…
• UK’s ‘post-productivist’ agricultural regime requires
different response
• devolved authorities have taken a lead, shown what’s
possible (e.g. Welsh Assembly food strategy)
• whether to push for a unified food policy or better
coordination of existing policies is a practical matter (‘the
art of the possible’)
• need to address the moral as well as the political
economies of food and farming.