Securing Fish for the Nation: Food Security and Governmentality in Japan

Abstract

Concerns about supplies of food have been a feature of Japanese politics since Japan started modernising in the second half of the 1800s. It has remained a prominent political issue even after Japan cemented its status as a wealthy country in the 1980s, with the Japanese Government continuing to protect domestic food production from international competition. Protectionism is a curious policy for a country so dependent on world trade, including for food. Protectionist practices have led to entrenched interests in some sections of government and industry. Protectionist ideas are used in nationalist arguments against food imports. The protection of domestic food production, however, resonates positively well beyond the groups that benefit economically from protection and those that indulge in chauvinist notions about the dangers of “foreign” food. The issue, therefore, is broader than interest-group capture or xenophobia. We find it is deeply embedded in Japanese policies relating to food domestically and internationally, and goes beyond government policy as such, involving ways of thinking about protection of national culture, and social and environmental responsibility. Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality helps to explain this approach to food security, accounting for the balancing act between free trade and protection as well as the pervasiveness of this rationality beyond government as such.     

Quality turns in Nordic food: a comparative analysis of specialty food in Denmark,Norway and Sweden

ABSTRACT

This article compares the development of specialty food in Denmark, Norway and Sweden using a number of quantitative indicators as well as a qualitative analysis of government policy. The analysis shows that specialty food has increased in importance in all three countries over the last twenty years, but there are important differences in the kind of specialty food that has developed and the nature of government intervention and governance structures. Overall, Sweden appears to have the largest production of specialty food and drink and is particularly strong in organic production and consumption, farm processing and farm shops. Norway has a large number of products with protected origin and also leads in the number of farmers’ markets. Denmark lags behind the other countries on most indicators, but has witnessed the fastest growth in microbreweries over the last five years. Theoretically, the article challenges the ‘negative’ definition of specialty food as ‘non-industrial’ or ‘alternative’, and suggests a more nuanced approach. Empirically, it points towards the possible existence of a ‘Scandinavian model’ of specialty food governance with extensive interaction between central government, local government and private firms to stimulate the growth of specialty food.     

Current status and future prospect of local food production in Hungary: a spatial analysis

There is an increasing interest in Hungary to relocalize food. Spatial patterns and development potential of local food systems (LFSs) are analysed in this paper to help spatial planning practices. A composite Policy Intervention for Food Relocalization Index (PIFRI) is introduced to quantitatively reveal how rural development programme measures should be allocated efficiently to promote local food production. PIFRI points out lagging areas and hidden dimensions of development that need further support, and thus helps setting desirable and realistic policy goals. Besides socio-economic processes, biophysical limitations (availability of agricultural areas) are also accounted for. Results show that LFS development is at an early stage in Hungary. The present level of local food activity and future prospects mismatch. Eastern Hungary has the highest potential for further development as it has relatively widespread and intensive local food production activity. The few small-scale farmers operating in the Budapest area have been already engaged in short food supply chains to enjoy various benefits (and higher profit). Results imply a complex mix of several underlying causes behind the experienced patterns.     

Gender and food security in Bangladesh: the impact of climate change

Food security remains a critical global issue, made more difficult because of the rising world population, climate challenges affecting food production and a focus on market-based solutions that undermine subsistence production in vulnerable rural areas. Particularly affected are countries across Asia where poverty, hunger and malnourishment affect a significant proportion of the population. Drawing on Sen’s entitlement theory, we argue that a shift in focus from national food production to intra-household food access enables a critical reflection on consumption smoothing strategies adopted at this level. In particular, we draw attention to the tendency for women and girls to eat less as an intra-household adaptation strategy. We present findings from our research in rural areas of Bangladesh and note that adaptation strategies adopted by households in response to food insecurity. We note that strategies designed to address food insecurity must include gender mainstreaming to ensure that women and girls are not taking a disproportionate responsibility for intra-household food security.     

长江三角洲地区粮食安全性度量研究

区域粮食安全问题是当前政府与学者关注的热点问题之一。长江三角洲地区高速的工业化、城镇化过程及快速增长的经济使维系粮食生产的耕地数量及质量发生剧烈变化,区域的粮食供需矛盾日益突出。文章对该区粮食生产与土地变化的相关性进行了分析,并阐述了近50年的粮食波动系数,通过预测分析长江三角洲地区粮食产量与消费状况,进一步对该区域粮食安全性进行度量研究。研究结果表明长江三角洲地区粮食缺口将逐年变大,粮食安全状况越来越差,有效的调控措施是实现区域粮食安全的保证。     

The many faces of food security

Food insecurity occurs when people do not have secure access to food necessary for a healthy life. The food‐insecure are typically the poor, and the traditional focus of food insecurity thinking has been the global poor. Increasingly, it is being recognized that in the rich world, food insecurity manifests itself in calorie‐rich but nutrient‐poor diets, leading to the linkage between poverty, obesity and its associated health problems. Furthermore, the historical link between income and diets, when projected forwards, shows a growth in demand that would be extremely challenging to meet with sustainable production. This is especially true given that emissions from the food system are significant contributors to climate change, perhaps more so than any other sector; and yet, probably less than half the world's calories are used directly for healthy diets (over half of agricultural production is lost or wasted, fed to animals or consumed in excess of healthy requirements). This review article, of a suite of four books, covers the way the food security argument is framed and how this is changing, food politics and justice and why our food system is as it is. The overall conclusion is that our food system is placing unsustainable demands on the planet, as well as creating injustice and inequity. The ‘productivist paradigm’ of growing ‘ever more, ever more cheaply’ while relying on international commodity trade and markets to solve the distributional issues, is unlikely to create a sustainable, just and food‐secure world.     

China's Nuclear Energy in Light of the Disaster in Japan

An American specialist on Russian agriculture examines that country's agrarian policy, as well as the agricultural sector more generally, one year into the presidency of Dmitriy Medvedev. Focusing on the three key policy issues—state financial support, state intervention in the grain market, and international food trade policy—he assesses the extent to which current policy represents a continuation of that prevailing during the presidency of Vladimir Putin. The author discusses the appointment of a new Agriculture Minister in 2009, which may signal a different approach to the management of the sector, and concludes with an assessment of the impact of the global financial crisis. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F130, Q100, Q170, Q180. 2 tables, 63 references.     

Food Security and Russia's 2010 Drought

An American specialist on Russia's agricultural sector examines the progression and impact of that country's 2010 drought (the worst in a half-century), leading to a grain harvest one-third smaller than originally forecast. A particular focus is on the country's grain reserves and the government's response to drought in such areas as grain export policy and maintaining the size of the domestic livestock herd, responses which the author argues are conditioned by the drive for food security, a concept that has dominated the political discourse in tandem with resurgent economic nationalism during the post-Soviet period.     

Food for all: An agent-based model to explore the emergence and implications of cooperation for food storage

Abstract

A consistent access to food is paramount for humans at individual and group level. Besides providing the basic nutritional needs, access to food defines social structures and has stimulated innovation in food procurement, processing and storage. We focus on the social aspects of food storage, namely the role of cooperation for the emergence and maintenance of common stocks. Cooperative food stocks are examined here as a type of common-pool resource, where appropriators must cooperate to avoid shortage (i.e. the tragedy of commons). ‘Food for all’ is an agent-based model in which agents face the social dilemma of whether or not to store in a cooperative stock, adapting their strategies through a simple reinforcement learning mechanism. The model provides insights on the evolution of cooperation in terms of storage efficiency and considering the presence of social norms that regulate reciprocity. For cooperative food storage to emerge and be maintained, a significant dependency on the stored food and some degree of external pressure are needed. In fact, cooperative food storage emerges as the best performing strategy when facing environmental stress. Likewise, an intermediate control over reciprocity favours cooperation for food storage, suggesting that concepts of closed reciprocity are precursors to cooperative stocks, while excess control over reciprocity is detrimental for such institution.     

The reinvention of terroir in Danish food place promotion

ABSTRACT

This paper conceptualizes place branding narratives that mobilize local food and contemporary gastronomic trends by revisiting the notion of terroir (taste of place) as a strategic marketing asset. In particular, it explores how rural tourism destinations with little or no gastronomic heritage exploit the discourses of New Nordic Food to create a distinct sense of place. An extensive review of the literature identifies two conservationist strategies by which terroir narratives are constructed (accreditation and patrimonialization), neither of which fully captures the particular rhetorical approaches shaping the Nordic terroir. Drawing on empirical illustrations from Danish rural destinations, the paper argues that terroir can be reproduced and invented through manipulative rhetorical approaches and identifies two novel, transformational strategies framing terroir narratives (exoticizing and enterprising). The paper contributes with a conceptual model conceived through a unique combination of place-specific (typicality) themes and market-specific ideologies, which has the explanatory power to distinguish Nordic terroir narratives from earlier articulations of taste of place.     

Fears for the future: the incommensurability of securitisation and in/securities among southern African youth

Abstract

Over the past two decades, southern Africa has experienced both exceptionally high AIDS prevalence and recurrent food shortages. International institutions have responded to these challenges by framing them as security concerns that demand urgent intervention. Young people are implicated in both crises and drawn into the securitisation discourse as agents (of risk and protection) and as (potential) victims. However, the concepts of security deployed by global institutions and translated into national policy do not reflect the ways in/security is experienced ‘on the ground’ as a subjective and embodied orientation to the future. This paper brings work on youth temporalities to bear on social and cultural geographies of in/security and securitisation. It reports on research that explored insecurities among young people in Lesotho and Malawi. It concludes that, by focusing on ‘threats’ in isolation, and seeking to protect ‘society’ as an abstract aggregate of people, global securitisation discourses fail either to engage with the complex contextualised ways in which marginalised people experience insecurity or to proffer the political responses that are needed if those felt insecurities are to be addressed. However, while securitisation is problematic, in/security is nonetheless an important element in young people’s orientation to the future.     

Sustainability transformations in the balance: exploring Swedish initiatives challenging the corporate food regime

ABSTRACT

This paper explores to what extent organic initiatives that go beyond mainstream organic (so-called Organic 3.0) can challenge the corporate food regime and how they can push the food system towards sustainability transformations. We depart from the assumption that individual initiatives may differ in their potential to influence the corporate food regime and that this potential can be assessed by examining traits linked to reformist, progressive or radical food regime/food movement trends that they may possess. Rather than establishing a dichotomy between niche and food regime or categorizing Organic 3.0 initiatives within one of these trends, we explore the nuances in niche–regime relationships within the food system from a multi-level perspective, using the cases of two Organic 3.0 initiatives in Sweden. The results show that relations between these initiatives and the food regime share key characteristics, but also differ in important respects. While a reformist strategy facilitates niche growth, progressive and radical approaches are more likely to challenge the regime. The choice of approach in both cases involves trade-offs between growth and organic values. We conclude that one of the primary roles of Organic 3.0 initiatives may be to illustrate the viability of alternative models.     

State Withdrawal and the Impact of Marketization on Rural Russia

The role of the state is greatly misunderstood in post-Soviet affairs. In particular, neither urban bias nor corporatist models help to understand the impact of reforms in rural Russia. The article argues that the best way to understand the impact of marketization on the rural sector is through the concept of state withdrawal. State withdrawals is distinct from state weakness, the former reflecting policy choices and the latter concerning state capacities. This article focuses on several central economic aspects from which the state has withdrawn: state control over wholesale food trade and purchase prices, state regulation of the terms of trade, and state direction over rural capital investment policy. State withdrawal reflects political choices. Policy choices flow from ideological principles that emerge from neoliberal philosophical conceptions of the role of the state in the economy. As a result of neoliberal philosophies of the state, the rural sector has experiences sever economic and social consequences.     

Climatic anomalies,food systems,and subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga

Climatic factors have affected subsistence strategies throughout human history. In northern Europe and Russia, short-term climatic anomalies and weather extremes are commonly thought to underlie famines in the Middle Ages. However, medieval subsistence crises were not just natural disasters and medieval people were not passive victims of climatic anomalies. In addition, the capacity to cope with climatic anomalies has varied temporally and spatially throughout the Middle Ages. Yet only a few studies have explored the climatic impact on regional medieval food systems comprehensively. This article examines the significance of climate variability on subsistence crises in medieval Novgorod and Ladoga (Russia), focusing on the relationship between short-term climate anomalies and crop cultivation. In addition, this paper evaluates the impact of crop failures, frosts, and other weather phenomena on the food system. The materials are drawn from medieval sources, paleoclimatological reconstructions, and archaeological evidence. The results show that short-term climatic anomalies alone rarely lead to severe subsistence crises, and during every famine period there is evidence of other contributing factors, such as unfavourable weather phenomena, disease, or social unrest. The variety of cultivated crops and agricultural techniques is shown to increase the region’s resilience to climatic anomalies and to crop failures.     

It’s never too late to join the revolution! – Enabling new modes of production in the contemporary Danish food system

ABSTRACT

The Danish food system has undergone a transition in the past 10–20 years, in which new quality conventions have evolved. Examples include increasing organic production and consumption, and increasing interest in local food, experience, community, taste and gastronomy. This article explores what influences if and how these new food trends are expressed in the food system. We conduct a comparative case study involving three product categories: craft beer, specialty flour and organic broilers. Craft beer and specialty flour have undergone a revolution, in which new flavours, products, practices and social relations are generated; by contrast, organic broilers have remained a relatively stable product category. The case studies demonstrate that the revolution is not just taking place in one domain, but it implies a multidimensional reconfiguration of the food system where an emphasis on multiple quality aspects and diversification of the product category is important. However, food trends are not the invention of the individual producer, but serve as common conventions that products can be related to, although their interpretation is not pre-given. In addition, a transition presupposes a shared vision and a coordination of activities among the actors in the food system or the mobilization of new actors who share this vision.     

统购统销初期的粮食票证制度探析--以1953～1957年的河南为个案

1953～1957年的河南在统购统销初期实施粮食票证制度,经历了初创时期、基本成型时期、确立时期三个不同的发展阶段。粮食票证制度的形成,对于保证粮食统购统销政策的贯彻实施提供了有力的保障,并成为粮食统购统销制度的一个重要组成部分。     

Taking back taste: feminism,food and visceral politics

Despite much thoughtful agro-food scholarship, the politics of food lacks adequate appreciation because scholars have not developed a means to specify the links between the materialities of food and ideologies of food and eating. This article uses feminist theory to enliven a discussion of what the authors call visceral politics, and thus initiates a project of illustrating the mechanisms through which people's beliefs about food connect with their everyday experiences of food. Recent work on governed eating and material geographies is brought together with poststructural feminism in order to move towards a non-dualistic, visceral understanding of (everyday) socio-political life. In showing how the mind–body whole can be conceived as a singular, albeit ambiguously-unified agent, the article prefigures a more complete disclosure of the play of power in food systems. Food is shown as a means to trace power through the body in order to understand the making of the political (eating) subject. Specifically, reconceptualizing taste and the ‘Slow Food’ (SF) movement of taste education helps to concretize what a visceral politics of food might look like. The authors conclude that appreciating how food beliefs and representations exist materially in the body is crucial to the ability of food-based movements to inspire action across difference and achieve their progressive goals.     

‘The Conscience of the Community’: the Au Vaine of Rarotonga

ABSTRACT

The Au Vaine (‘several women’ in Cook Islands Māori), grassroots women’s committees, worked to promote agricultural efforts and food security in Rarotonga during the 1920s and 1930s. A unique organization, the Au Vaine actively encouraged the growing of commercial crops alongside subsistence plantings at a time when women were being pushed towards the home and hearth, and men pulled to wage labour jobs. These women illustrate the powerful and often unheard voices Pacific women retained throughout this period, as well as the critical role of food in Pacific history. In this article I examine the context within which the Au Vaine emerged, discuss what distinguished them from other women’s committees in Polynesia, highlight their purpose and impact on Cook Islands foodways, and explore some of the reasons they declined by the 1940s.     

Feeding fears: competing discourses of interdependency,sovereignty, and China's food security

Following the release of the 1994 report ‘Who will feed China?’ by the Worldwatch Institute, there has been much debate over the implications of China's growing demand for grain. The question of China's food production has elicited a variety of responses. While for some it raises the specter of regional and global instability as China becomes an environmental threat, for others the entrance of China into the world market promises increased trade and profits. In this paper I explore the responses in China and the US to the different notions of interdependence which have shaped the debate. I first turn to how concerns over China's food supply have, despite appeals to the concepts of global environmental and economic interdependence, become linked to classical state-centered geopolitical concerns such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘containment.’ I then look at how the debate has also been actively distanced from national security concerns through the invocation of an alternative interdependence founded on the logic of commerce. I conclude by arguing for the need within critical geopolitics to further examine the circulation of strategic texts between and within states, particularly in the analysis of texts that map worlds beyond the boundaries of North America and Europe.     

Squeezed between external trade barriers and internal economic problems: Bulgaria’s trade with Denmark in the 1970s

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates Bulgaria’s trade strategy towards the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1970s: a decade of intensified economic exchange between East and West thanks to détente and, simultaneously, of growing trade barriers due to the consolidation of the EEC’s Common Market. The successes and failures of Bulgaria’s endeavours are discussed through a study of economic cooperation with Denmark before and after its accession to the EEC in 1973. The main argument is that while Bulgarian economic policy focused on the rising regulatory impediments to trade with EEC members, it neglected the structural deficiencies of Bulgarian export production. Thereby, Bulgarian state officials strove to resolve foreign trade problems through diplomatic negotiations over customs regulations instead of advancing domestic economic reforms . This argument is supported by analysis of intergovernmental economic negotiations and trade deals between Bulgaria and Denmark during the 1970s. It highlights the different ways in which Bulgarian trade envoys in Copenhagen and top officials at home evaluated recurrent problems in accessing the Danish market and formulated solutions for these problems. Thus, instead of tackling internal structural problems, the blueprints for Bulgaria’s foreign trade focused on external foes, namely trade discrimination against socialist countries.