Food Geographies: Social, Political, and Ecological Connections (Exploring Geography)

343 Pages·2022·19.037 MB·English

by  Pascale Joassart-Marcelli

Food Geographies
Social, Political, and
Ecological Connections
Pascale Joassart-Marcelli
San Diego State University
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
Executive Editor: Michael Kerns
Assistant Acquisitions Editor: Haley White
Sales and Marketing Inquiries: [email protected]
Credits and acknowledgments for material borrowed from other sources, and reproduced with
permission, appear on the appropriate pages within the text.
Published by Rowman & Littlefield
An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706
www.rowman.com
86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE
Copyright © 2022 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission
from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Joassart, Pascale, author.
Title: Food geographies : social, political, and ecological connections / Pascale Joassart-Marcelli.
Description: Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. | Series: Exploring geography | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021050223 (print) | LCCN 2021050224 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538126646 (cloth) |
ISBN 9781538126653 (paperback) | ISBN 9781538126660 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Food habits—Social aspects. | Food habits—Political aspects. | Food habits—
Environmental aspects. | Cultural geography.
Classification: LCC GT2850 .J63 2022 (print) | LCC GT2850 (ebook) | DDC 394.1/2—dc23/
eng/20211130
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050223
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050224
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO
Z39.48-1992.
Contents
List of Textboxes, Figures, and Tables vii
Preface xi
Chapter 1. Food Geographies 1
1.1. Food as a Geographic Fact 2
1.2. Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Field 5
1.3. Geographies of Food 8
1.4. Goals and Organization of the Book 22
PART I: POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD
Chapter 2. Agriculture and Farming 25
2.1. The Birth of Agriculture 26
2.2. Agroecosystems 31
2.3. Major Types of Farming 40
2.4. Conclusion 47
Chapter 3. Global Food Regimes 49
3.1. Globalization and Food Regimes 50
3.2. Early Globalization: The Spice Trade 51
3.3. Colonization of the New World and the Colonial Food Regime 53
3.4. Postcolonial Developmentalist Regimes 55
3.5. Contemporary Food Regimes 56
3.6. Homogenization and Differentiation 68
3.7. Conclusion 69
Chapter 4. Labor Geographies of Food 71
4.1. Labor Geographies 72
4.2. Labor in the Food System 73
4.3. The Rise of Wage Labor 76
4.4. Migration and Race in Agrifood Labor 80
4.5. Women in Food Work 85
4.6. Conclusion 91
Chapter 5. Food Connections and Commodity Chains 93
5.1. Commodity Fetishism and Global Chains 94
5.2. Bringing in Consumption: Networks and Circuits 99
5.3. Ethical Consumerism and Fair Trade 104
5.4. Localism and Alternative Food Networks 110
5.5. Conclusion 113
iii
iv Contents
Chapter 6. Global Food Crises: Hunger and Malnutrition 115
6.1. Definitions and Trends 116
6.2. Explanations of Hunger and Food Insecurity 123
6.3. Beyond Hunger: Malnutrition 128
6.4. Eradicating Hunger and Enhancing Food Security 130
6.5. Conclusion 136
PART II: ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD
Chapter 7. Food’s Ecological Pillars: Soil, Water,
and Biodiversity 139
7.1. Agroecosystems and Nature’s Inputs 140
7.2. The Environmental Impacts of the Contemporary Food System 142
7.3. Environmental Threats to Food Security and Safety 154
7.4. Sustainable Agriculture 155
7.5. Conclusion 162
Chapter 8. Food and Climate Change 165
8.1. A Climate Change Primer 166
8.2. The Carbon Footprint of Food: Lifecycle Analysis 168
8.3. Diets and Carbon Footprints 172
8.4. The Climate Crisis: Food Insecurity, Involuntary Migration, and Conflict 176
8.5. Reducing Food’s Carbon Footprint 178
8.6. Conclusion 183
Chapter 9. Seafood 185
9.1. Fishing and Aquaculture: Food and Livelihoods 186
9.2. Overfishing: A Collective Action Problem? 190
9.3. Aquaculture: A Solution? 194
9.4. Pollution and Climate Change in Aquatic Ecosystems 197
9.5. Sustainable Seafood 198
9.6. Conclusion 202
PART III: SOCIAL AND CULTURAL GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD
Chapter 10. Food, Identity, and Difference 205
10.1. Identity and Difference 206
10.2. National Cuisine 207
10.3. Food and Class 214
10.4. Ethnic Food 216
10.5. Conclusion 221
Chapter 11. Food in the City 223
11.1. Foodscapes 225
11.2. Eating in Public 226
Contents v
11.3. Gastro-Development and the Urban Food Machine 230
11.4. Food Deserts and Food Apartheid 234
11.5. Urban Agriculture and Alternative Foodscapes 238
11.6. Food Justice 241
11.7. Conclusion 245
Chapter 12. Food, Kitchens, and Gender 247
12.1. Home Cooking: Domesticity and Patriarchy 248
12.2. Outsourcing Social Reproduction 254
12.3. Marketing Domesticity 260
12.4. Conclusion 262
Chapter 13. Food, Bodies, Health, and Nutrition 263
13.1. The Body 264
13.2. The Obesity Epidemic and the Pathologization of Fatness 266
13.3. Explaining Obesity 267
13.4. Anti-Fat Politics and Its Consequences 277
13.5. Healthy Eating 281
13.6. Conclusion 283
Chapter 14. New Food Geographies 285
14.1. A Broken Food System? 285
14.2. Food Futures 287
14.3. New Food Geographies 288
14.4. Get Involved 289
14.5. Hope 292
References 295
Index 315
About the Author 329

Textboxes, Figures, and Tables
Textboxes
1.1. Indigenous Fishing 3
1.2. Studying the Tomato from a Geographic Perspective 10
1.3. The Power and Danger of Maps 17
2.1. The San Hunter-Gatherers of Southern Africa 27
2.2. The Green Revolution 34
2.3. Land Reform 37
2.4. The Family Farm in North America 44
3.1. Spices in French Medieval Cuisine 52
3.2. The US Farm Bill: A Tool for Controlling the Global Food System? 57
3.3. Global Meat Networks and Zoonotic Diseases 59
3.4. NAFTA and Its Impacts on Farming and Food in Mexico 63
3.5. Beer, Fast Food, and Transnational Capital 67
3.6. The Hamburger: Global or Local? 69
4.1. Child Labor in Low-Income Countries 79
4.2. Consumer Boycotts and the Farm Labor Movement: Sí Se Puede! 80
4.3. The Bracero and the H2-A Guest Worker Programs in the United States 81
4.4. Plantations and Prisons 84
4.5. The Social Costs of Gender of Gender Inequality in Malawi 89
5.1. Global Commodity Chains of Bananas 96
5.2. Food and the Geographic Imagination 101
5.3. Dairy Networks and the Story of Milk 103
6.1. Classifying Food Insecurity 122
6.2. Hunger and Conflict in Palestine 127
6.3. Obesity in the Pacific Islands 130
6.4. Food Banks 132
6.5. Ending Hunger in Belo Horizonte, Brazil 135
7.1. Ecosystem Services 142
7.2. Indonesian Palm Oil 144
7.3. Asparagus Farms in Peru’s Ica Desert 152
7.4. The Three Sisters 159
7.5. Agroecological Rice Systems 160
8.1. Gender and Climate Change 177
8.2. Climate Change and Central American Migration to the United States 179
8.3. Cap-and-Trade Programs 182
9.1. Tokyo’s Fish Market 189
9.2. The Collapse of the Northern Atlantic Cod Fisheries 191
9.3. Illegal Fishing off the West Coast of Africa 195
vii
viii Textboxes, Figures, and Tables
9.4. Coral Reefs 197
9.5. Marine Protected Areas and Indigenous People’s Rights 200
10.1. Ethnographic Cookbooks 208
10.2. Thanksgiving Holiday Dinner 210
10.3. Peruvian Food Heritage and Gastrodiplomacy 213
10.4. Craft Beer 215
11.1. The British Pub 228
11.2. Food Halls as Urban Revitalization Projects 231
11.3. The Food Truck Wars 233
11.4. Mapping Food Deserts 235
11.5. Systemic Racism and Urban Spaces 237
11.6. The Black Panther Party’s Food Program 244
12.1. Progressive Homemaking 252
12.2. Food and Sex 253
12.3. The Help 255
12.4. Emotional Labor 259
13.1. Corn Syrup 272
13.2. Bento Boxes and the Mommy Wars 277
13.3. Fatphobia and Fat Shaming on Television 279
Figures
1.1. A Hupa fisherman on the Klamath River, circa 1923 3
1.2. Food system conceptual map 6
1.3. Tomato seed packet from Bolgiano and Son, 1918 11
1.4. Woman working at an assembly line in a tomato canning plant, circa 1940 12
1.5. Map of iconic foods of the United States 19
2.1. San hunters in the north Kalahari Desert 27
2.2. Map of early centers of agriculture 30
2.3. Conceptual framework for agroecosystems 32
2.4. Farmer planting rice in an irrigated delta, Vietnam 41
2.5. Farmers harvesting teff near Axum in northern Ethiopia 42
2.6. Farming as a patriotic act 44
2.7. Concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) in Yuma, Arizona 45
2.8. Typical Mediterranean agricultural landscape 47
2.9. Greenhouses in Westland, the Netherlands 48
3.1. The Peacock Banquet, anonymous painting, mid-fifteenth century 52
3.2. Map of medieval spice trade routes 53
3.3. Enslaved Africans cutting sugarcane on the island of Antigua, painting by
William Clark, 1832 54
3.4. Value of global exports of food and animals, in millions of US dollars,
1961–2017 58
3.5. Composition of food exports, 1961, 1970, and 2017 58
Textboxes, Figures, and Tables ix
3.6. Leading food-producing countries (fish excluded), ranked by share of global
production, 1967 and 2017 61
3.7. 2018 map of food exports flows (in billions of US dollars) from major net
exporting countries to world regions 62
3.8. Large agrifood transnational corporations and sales in billions of US dollars, by
sector 66
3.9. 3G Capital’s food industry assets and connections, 2020 67
4.1. Map of agricultural employment as share of total employment, by country, 2018 74
4.2. Agrifood system job composition: three examples by income level 75
4.3. Selected indicators of labor and capital intensity in agriculture: three examples
by income level 75
4.4. Workers harvesting green tea leaves on a large plantation in Vietnam 76
4.5. Lamesa farm workers community in Texas 83
4.6. Parchman Penal Farm, male prisoners hoeing in a field, 1911 84
4.7. Woman cleaning a field with a sleeping baby on her back, Ghana 86
4.8. Map of percentage of landowners who are women, by country 87
4.9. Woman selling roasted corn on the side of a road in Midrand, South Africa 90
5.1. Global commodity chains 95
5.2. Chiquita cargo ship loaded with refrigerated banana containers, Bocas del Toro,
Panama 97
5.3. The banana value chain 97
5.4. Advertising banner for Beef & Lamb New Zealand’s “Taste Pure Nature” branding
campaign in California 101
5.5. Milk advertising in the Daily Oregonian newspaper, February 11, 1920 103
5.6. Trends in fair trade premiums and producers 105
5.7. Map of fair trade producer organizations and sales by country (in millions
of euros), 2018 107
5.8. Primary fair trade commodities in terms of production, labor, land, and
premiums 108
5.9. Fair trade coffee advertisement 110
5.10. Glenwood Green Acres Community Garden, Philadelphia 112
6.1. Map of prevalence of undernourishment by country, 2016–2018 average 118
6.2. Map of percentage of adults who are obese by country, 2016 120
7.1. Water cycle and agriculture 145
7.2. Landscape changes and crop biodiversity losses caused by agricultural
intensification 146
7.3. Global fertilizer production 148
7.4. Map of percent of agriculture-related water risk 150
7.5. Water footprint of selected foods 153
7.6. The benefits of agrobiodiversity in a rice paddy 160
7.7. Radar diagram displaying the benefits of agroecological rice production systems
in Thailand 163
8.1. Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO ), methane (CH ),
2 4
and nitrous oxide (N O), 1750 to 2018 167
2
8.2. Agricultural greenhouse effects and CO cycle 168
2