The Socio-Nature of Local Organic

The Socio-Nature of Local OrganicFood

Alison Hope AlkonDepartment of Sociology, University of the Pacific, Stockton, CA, USA;

[email protected]

Abstract: The concept of socio-nature asserts that social relations are inherentlyecological and that ecological relations are inherently social. This paper examines how, andwith what consequences, discourses and practices of support for local and organic foodreflect this idea. It argues that proponents of local organic agriculture view the food theypromote as simultaneously social and the product of human labor. However, advocatesunderstanding of the concept is partial and constrained by social privilege. It does notextend to industrial agriculture or paid farm labor. The literature on socio-nature coheresaround the revelation that what is understood as natural is also social and vice versa. Incontrast, this paper takes a new approach, examining socio-nature as a practice-shapingdiscourse already embedded in social life. Investigating the on-the-ground ideologicalwork performed by the concept also allows for assessment of its political consequences.

Keywords: socio-nature, food, farmers markets, inequality, organic, local

Among critical geographers and fellow travelers attempting to bridge the naturesociety dualism, the concept of socio-nature asserts that social relations areinherently ecological and that ecological relations are inherently social. Researchdemonstrates the inseparability of society and nature at sites ranging fromgenetically modified organisms (Harraway 1997, 2008) to urban gardens (Gandy2006), amusement parks (Darling 2006; Davis 1997) and cities themselves (Heynen,Kaika and Swyngedouw 2006). The goal of these works is to examine natureand society as materially and discursively co-productive of one another, and tounderstand the historically situated processes through which this co-productionoccurs. Urban landscapes and human-created technologies are envisioned not asdifferent from or outside of the natural world, but as formed (and reformed) bysocio-environmental processes with material and ideological consequences. Otheranalyses offer deep readings of so-called natural places, analyzing them as sociallyproduced.

According to many of this perspectives adherents, what is at stake in thinkingthrough socio-nature goes beyond the theoretical. Many deploying this conceptview it as capable of animating a new kind of politics, arguing that the erroneouslyperceived separation between nature and society justifies the exploitation of bothpeople and planet. They argue not for the reunification of humans and naturepursued by many environmentalists, as present in that vision of reunification is anacceptance of present-day separation, but for a recognition that society and natureare always and already intractable as a starting point for political work (Castree andBraun 2001; Heynen, Kaika and Swyngedouw 2006). Understanding the naturaland the social as co-produced, these theorists believe, can lead to a politics seeking

Antipode Vol. 45 No. 3 2013 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 663680 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01056.xC 2012 The Author. Antipode C 2012 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

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to better human society and non-human nature (Castree and Braun 2001; Heynen,Kaika and Swyngedouw 2006).

Food is in many ways the ultimate socio-nature. Eating is a primary human need,and while critical social scientists are often wary of claims that something is a part ofa universal human nature, the need for food is certainly one of humanitys essentialcomponents. The species of plants and animals that humans eat are certainly livingthings, but most have been bred by humans to take their current form (see, forexample, Whatmore and Thorne 1997). Corn, for example, did not exist prior tohuman cultivation, as it was domesticated from a wild grass called teosinte byindigenous peoples in the Americas (Braun 2009). With the exception of a few wildedibles, food species begin as what Neil Smith (1984) calls external nature, non-human species and landscapes before contact with humans. It is then shaped byhuman technologies, including agriculture and plant breeding in order to becomeunified with and sustain human bodies, which are, of course nature as well. Inaddition, the processes of food distribution, as well as food preferences and taboos,are deeply social phenomena (Douglas 2004; Forson and Counihan 2011).

Because food is commonly regarded as socio-natural, and because its social andenvironmental dimensions are the subject of broad-ranging social movements,this paper explores how co-production is understood by actors working to createsustainable food systems. This question is theoretically important because it movesbeyond a research agenda focused on the existence of socio-nature and calls for it toexamine the political effects of culturally available narratives of co-production. Morepragmatically, this approach allows for an empirical examination of the politicalconsequences of socio-nature.

Those seeking to reform and transform the food system are motivated by a varietyof discourses, including animal rights, food safety, public health, food justice andfood sovereignty. These divergent and overlapping discourses are often united intheir opposition to industrial agriculture. This paper focuses on actors who focus onthe need for local and organic food, both in the popular media and on the ground.The ideals associated with this goal include an eco-agrarian ethic in which supportfor small, organic farmers is essential to environmental sustainability, communitycoherence and resistance to corporate power. This local organic food discourseanimates the writings (and the book sales) of authors such asMichael Pollan,WendellBerry and Barbara Kingsolver, as well as the purchasing decisions of many customersof farmers markets and community-supported agriculture subscribers.

My work unpacking the politics of socio-nature in efforts to promote local organicfood was comprised of a deep reading of this popular literature, as well as participantobservation and interviews with managers, vendors and customers at a farmersmarket dedicated to local organic food. It reveals that supporters of local organicfood generally describe their preferred foods as both the product of nature andhuman labor. As such, they often attribute to it the potential to enact an arrayof ecological and social benefits, including decreasing pollution, building healthysoil, creating vibrant rural and urban communities, and establishing local economicalternatives to corporate control. Politically, this brings environmental and socialchange together, and broadens the environmental movements perspective on whatkind of landscapes are to be regarded as worthy of sustaining.

C 2012 The Author. Antipode C 2012 Antipode Foundation Ltd.

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However, the understanding of socio-nature evidenced by supporters of localorganic food is both partial and privileged. Supporters construct local organic foodas simultaneously natural and social but do not make the leap to seeing naturein processed foods or factory farms. This division allows supporters of local organicfood to construct their own foodways as separate (and separable) from the corporatefood regime, orienting them toward the creation of alternatives over a fuller andmore critical engagement with industrial agriculture.

In addition, supporters of local organic food evidence a limited recognition of thesocial, in that many of them fail to recognize the full scope of human labor associatedwith food production. While proponents of local organic food emphasize the laborof the farm owner, they recognize neither the contributions nor the struggles of themostly migrant farmworkers whose labor is essential on the overwhelming majorityof even small, family-owned farms. Eliding farmworker labor allows supportersto believe that worker rights and conditions are not relevant to their social andenvironmental goals. A fuller and deeper understanding of socio-nature mightinstead lead supporters of local organic food to pose broad questions about whois producing what kind of food (and through it, what kind of nature), for whosebenefit, and to whose disadvantage. Such a shift might help proponents to envisiona transformation of the industrial food system into one that is both environmentallysustainable and socially just.

Unpacking Socio-NatureScholars invoke the term socio-nature to examine nature as a social product.Castree (2001:3) explains that nature is defined, delimited and even physicallyreconstituted by different societies, often in order to serve specific, and usuallydominant, social interests. In other words, the social and the natural are seen tointertwine in ways that make their separationin either thought or practiceimpossible. In this vision, nature is neither stagnant, nor in equilibrium, but isactively produced and contested through human activity (Botkin 1990; ONeill2001, Zimmerer 1996, 2000).

Important work on this subject deconstructs the idea of wilderness, arguing thatit is not separate from human social activity. The classic example here is WilliamCronons The Trouble with Wilderness, which described nature not as a pristinesanctuary where [lives] the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but stilltranscendent nature, but rather the creation of very particular human cultures atvery particular moments in human history (1995:69). Cronon seeks to understandhow and why wilderness is understood differently in dissimilar historical periods.1

Extending this tradition, scholars have investigated how dominant conceptions ofwhat nature is and should be, serve to legitimize and even naturalize particularland use and management practices (Peet and Watts 1996). Whiston Spirn (1996),for example, describes how understandings of nature as wilderness influenced thematerial practices of those designing urban parks, and Gandy (2006) offers a relatedanalysis of how the garden citymovement drew upon these tropes to seek a synthesisbetween nature and the urban form. Additionally, Robbins (2007) traces the waysthat dominant understandings of trees as ecologically beneficial led to the planting


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of fast-growing but invasive and ecologically damaging species. In contrast to apopular discourse that regards nature as static and separate from human society,this research agenda demonstrates how socially constructed notions of the naturalhave various material and environmental effects.

Other scholars take a discursive approach, analyzing how constructions ofnature embed ideas about race, class and gender. Merchant (2003) has writtenprolifically on the ways the wilderness has been constructed to maintain myths ofgender difference and hierarchies. In the US, white people have historically positedracial differences as natural (Anderson 2001), and justified the marginalization ofcommunities of color through a belief that they are closer to nature (see Ellingson2001 on Native Americans and Glave and Stall 2006 on African Americans). Inaddition, colonizers commonly attributed agency to nature in the countries theyconquered, erasing thework of indigenous cultures (Gandy 2006;Mann 2005). Eachof these works interrogates environments and social orders commonly constructedas natural to demonstrate how social processes influence both the ways we thinkabout them and the material practices through which they are developed. Togetherthey powerfully assert that seemingly natural landscapes and social orders are sociallyproduced.

Additional research further chips away at the nature/society divide by analyzingthe presence of nature in urban areas. Some are aligned with Harveys (1996)commonly quoted statement that there is nothing unnatural about New York City.Jane Jacobs, for example, wrote that urban environments are as natural as coloniesof prairie dogs or the beds of oysters (1961). Matthew Gandy (2002) describeshow cities are not only akin to non-human nature, but constituted from it by tracinghow rawmaterials were reconstituted to create a metropolitan nature in New YorkCity. Other scholars look for nature in even less likely landscapes. Darling (2006)examines New Yorks Coney Island, not only demonstrating how the seeminglyorganic seaside has continuously been shaped by, for example, truckloads of sandimported towiden the beach, but also exploring how the amusement park showmenused animals, natural disasters, freaks, and human sexuality to package nature fora public that was simultaneously frightened of and intrigued by it. Davis (1997)similarly looks to Sea World to examine how its owners, Anheuser-Busch, producea vision of nature that drives public consumption of the theme park experience.Price (2000) examines everyday artifacts, including pink flamingos and The NatureCompany, to show how consumerism mediates humans relationships with non-human species and landscapes. Each of these contributions demonstrates that asocially produced nature pervades all aspects of social life, both discursively andmaterially.

Within each of these approaches, some researchers write in the tradition ofurban political ecology, which looks to labor as the essential bridge betweennature and society. Here, nature is incomprehensible except as mediated by labor(Bakker 2003; Heynen, Kaika and Swyngedouw 2006; Smith 1984; Swyngedouw2006). Humans use labor to meet basic needs for food, warmth, shelter, etcbut this process simultaneously produces new human needs. This process issocial in that it is subject to norms and processes, but it is simultaneouslygoverned by biophysical processes such as hunger and gravity. Importantly, though,



socio-natural landscapes are unevenly produced, following various social hierarchiesand creating landscapes capable of integrating wealth and poverty. The politicalecology approach is particularly germane to this study because it sheds light on theway that farm owners labor becomes constructed as socio-natural while migrantfarmworkers remain invisible.

Overall, the research program associated with socio-nature regards it as a thingto be revealed, explaining how what is self-evidently natural is also social and viceversa. Working from both sides of the nature/society divide, this research pushesthem towards each other. However, it also redraws the very binary it seeks to upturn,naturalizing either the natural or social while treating the other as something tobe demonstrated through research. This paper moves beyond demonstrating theexistence of socio-nature (that what is assumed to be natural is social and viceversa) to examine its consequences. It builds upon work by Heynen (2006) andGandy (2002, 2006), both of which deal with the praxis of socio-nature in socialmovements, to begin a new research program examining socio-nature as a practice-shaping discourse already embedded in social life. Politically, it guides us to questionthe actions and strategies that are animated by this discourse.

Food is an important standpoint from which to begin this agenda because unlikethe wilderness or New York City, it is self-evidently natural and the product ofhuman labor, and is tied to the broader processes of urban metabolization (Heynen2006). It is generally sold as a commodity, valued and distributed according tosocial standards and unequally available based on hierarchies of race, class, gender,national status etc. But as it is consumed, food once again becomes nature inthe form of human bodies. In his urban political ecology of hunger, Heynen(2006:139) writes that the production and distribution of food, or the lack thereof,are processes that bridge physiology and markets, or necessity for food and desirefor particular foods. The physiological necessity of food is a component of Smiths(1984) external nature, but our desires for particular foods, the social relationsthat govern the labor of food production, and the means through which food iscommodified and distributed, are all deeply social.

As will be argued below, supporters of local organic agriculture evidence anunderstanding of co-production that orients their visions and strategies towardboth environmental and social sustainability. However, this understanding of co-production is partial and coheres around middle class labor and consumer desires. Itfails to incorporate the kinds of labor and everyday food practices that are generallyperformed by low-income people and people of color. Their erroneous vision inwhich the inequalities and abuses that pervade the food system are separate fromthe local, organic alternatives they create is one reason that supporters of localorganic food have been unable to imagine a means of food system transformationthat highlights issues of labor and social justice (Allen 2004).

Research ApproachBecause narratives of co-production are widely available with regard to food,and because my interest lies in understanding the political consequences of suchnarratives, this paper examines advocacy for local and organic food. Local and


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organic food activism tends to find its most dedicated adherents among educatedmiddle-class and affluent white people, often in major metropolitan areas andcollege towns. Its strategies are largely economic. Movement adherents encouragethe creation of local and organic farms and regional distribution models such asfarmers markets. Many are farmers themselves, or at least avid gardeners.

To examine the narratives of co-production held by supporters of local and organicfood, I draw from a discursive analysis of the popular literature promoting this goal.As someone who has been participating in and studying food movements for wellover a decade, I am intimately familiar with this literature, and draw on it here inorder to argue that my ethnographic and interview findings are relevant not onlyto the case itself but broadly characterize efforts to promote local organic food.

I spent 18 months as a participant-observer at the North Berkeley farmers market,a market that strongly reflects the goals and discourses promoted in the popularliterature. Managed by The Ecology Center, one of the citys veteran environmentalorganizations, its bylaws allow only organic produce grown within 150 miles ofBerkeley.2 The North Berkeley farmers market is a lively place. Friends and neighborsstroll from booth to booth, greeting one another and inquiring about families andcommon friends. Many patrons, especially women and young children, sit on thegrass and savor their purchases while listening to a rotating cadre of live musicians.The North Berkeley farmers market is also extremely profitable for vendors. Onthe rare occasion that a space becomes available, applicants are evaluated onenvironmental considerations, including organic techniques and the miles the foodwill travel.

I attended this market weekly between 2005 and 2007, and have continuedto patronize it in the years since. I took on the roles of customer, volunteer andoccasional vendor. During this research, I was able to get a feel for the everydaydiscourses through which buyers and sellers linked the practice of growing, selling,buying and eating food to broader social and environmental themes. I took copiousnotes, which I later expanded.

I also conducted 18 in-depth interviews with customers, vendors and marketmanagers. These interviews allowed me to more deeply understand the worldviewsand desires that led individuals to farm, work at, or shop at this particular farmersmarket. All interviewswere digitally audio recorded and transcribed. I also conducteda survey of 100 market customers, using a sample of convenience.3 This surveyprovided not only demographic information but also data on the values andpriorities of a larger swath of market patrons.

I then scrutinized these notes and interview transcripts. This search for patternsfrom within a wealth of available data allows the observations and interviews to giverise to the analysis, and minimizes the risk of researchers merely replicating theirown perspectives (Glaser and Strauss 1967). The themes of environment/ecology,human community, and social reform were immediately evident in my data, and Iused focused coding to search for patterns concerning how those I studied regardedthese ideas (Emerson, Fretz and Shaw 1995).

A wealthy city with an important countercultural history, Berkeley, California hashelped to define the landscape of US food movements (Belasco 1989). However,this does not make this farmers market unique, as similar markets can be found



in other predominantly white, liberal, affluent and highly educated areas such asAnn Arbor Michigan, Madison, Wisconsin, or Union Square, Manhattan. Like manyof these locales, Berkeley is also generally politically progressive and tends to favorenvironmental and social goods. Therefore, it seems likely that if a recognition ofco-production were ever to give rise to political possibilities, we would see evidenceof it in Berkeley.

Nature and Society at the Farmers MarketLocal organic agriculture is an important standpoint from which to explore thepolitical potential of socio-nature because farmers market vendors, managers andcustomers regularly regard their food as the inextricable product of nature andhuman labor. With regard to nature, the language through which farmers marketparticipants describe local organic food, and the places where it is grown, very muchresembles the way that advocates for wilderness preservation describe the placesthey seek to preserve.

Organic Food and Farms as Natural EnvironmentsIn the popular literature, the idea of organic farms as holding some of the goodswe tend to associate with the wilderness is perhaps best captured in Wendell Berrys(1993) essay Conservation is good work. Conservation is generally somethingone does in the wilderness, and it has been the goal of many wilderness-orientedenvironmental organizations. But Berry does not seek to conserve the kind ofwilderness landscapes in which humans do not live. Instead, he argues that throughorganic farming, he can conserve the wildness of his soil and the nature thatsurrounds him on his seventh-generation Kentucky farm. Nature, in local andorganic farming, is not some external entity to be visited on vacations, but thestuff of everyday productive life.

Proponents of organic farms also link them to the wilderness by describing themas spiritual places. JohnMuir wrote of the Hetch Hetchy Valley that no holier templehas ever been consecrated by the heart of man (1912:249). Vendors and customersat the North Berkeley farmers market offer similar invocations when describing theirattraction to local organic food. For example, Judy LaRocca, a biodynamic grapefarmer and winemaker, expressed that for her, farming is like a religion, somethingsimilar to Wicca. My husband is born Roman Catholic, and he might identify as aChristian, but hes really a farmer. Judy expressed great admiration for the work ofRudolf Steiner, who is often credited with founding biodynamic agriculture (thoughmany of its techniques have long been used by people native to North America).These techniques include not only organic cultivation but also the use of fermentedherbs and composts and a planting schedule guided by an astronomical calendar.Indeed, Steiner describes the practice of growing biodynamic food as reading thebook of nature, coming to understand and provide for the plants various needsand desires through creativity and experiments.

In this way of thinking, food not only embodies a vision of nature similar topreservationists description of the wilderness, but is the vehicle through which


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wildness becomes a part of the urban landscape. OneNorth Berkeley farmers marketcustomer, for example, describes a recent visit to a market farm. Its amazing tohave a sense of where the food comes from because I can feel the energy of thatspace in the food she said. Through her consumption of the food, the natureenergy of the farm she visited becomes a part of not only this customers worldviewbut her physical being. Alice Waters, a celebrity chef who was one of the earlyproponents of local organic ingredients in gourmet food echoes this sentimentwhen she writes that if we dont care about food, then the environment will alwaysbe something outside of ourselves. And yet the environment can be somethingthat actually affects you in the most intimateand literally visceralway. It can besomething that actually gets inside you and gets digested (2005). Food becomesthe vehicle through which the sense of spiritual connection to the environmentdescribed by Judy in the preceding paragraph becomes the stuff of everyday life forurban people.

Wilderness preservationists argue for environmental protection on the basis ofspiritual connection. Beginning in the 1960s, ecologists began to argue in favorof biodiversity. North Berkeley market farmers emphasize agricultural biodiversity,further connecting their productive landscapes to the wilderness ideal that hasinspired many environmentalists. Most market farmers produce an array of cropsaiming to mimic the vast genetic diversity found in nature. For example, the websiteof Riverdog Farm, which grows a wide variety of produce, emphasizes biodiversityas a strategy to avoid reliance on pesticides, which negatively affect the soil, waterand workers who produce the food. By advocating for the planting of a wide arrayof crops, and several varieties of the same crop, organic farmers emphasize thattheir food is subject to the same bio-physical processes as all other lifeforms, andwork to give it the best chance of survival. Vandana Shiva, a farmer, activist andwriter commonly read by supporters of local organic food, argues that agriculturalbiodiversity is an important opposition to the privatization of genetic material underindustrial agriculture.

The Hard Work of FarmersEach of the above examples describes how market farmers and customers constructthe naturalness of the food that they promote. But for their discourse to be oneof socio-nature, they must also emphasize at least some of the human labor thatmakes this food possible.4 The most common trope through which the human laborcomponent is emphasized are expressions of regard for the hard work that farmersmust undertake in order to produce food. For example, one afternoon, I overheardthe following exchange between a farmer and customer. The customer had pickedout three heads of baby gem lettuce from among the farmers brightly coloredchoices.

Thats two, said the farmer, about to give him a price.No, three, replied the customer.Best policy, the farmer said with a smile.No sense gypping you, exclaimed the customer.5 You guys are like the hardestworkers. No one works harder than farmers.



Discussions of farmers hard work are common among supporters of local organicfood, and are sometimes even evoked as a defense against criticism (as in, youshouldnt be so critical of farmers; they work so hard).

This emphasis on farmers hard work is represented in the popular literatureby David Masumoto, a third-generation peach farmer and author of several books.Masumoto subtitled a recent talk at Oregon State Universitys small farm conferenceWhy We Farmers Work So Hard. His refrain, there are no sidewalks on a farm,indicated not only that farming was difficult, but that non-farmers should have aspecial respect for those who do this work. Supporters of local organic food constructit as socio-natural by emphasizing its connection to the non-human environmentwhile simultaneously underscoring the human labor necessary to food production.Of course, it is the labor of the farmer or farm family that is so highly regarded andthat counts in the construction of socio-nature evidenced by supporters of localorganic food. The invisibility of other kinds of labor, particularly that of the migrantworkers who do the bulk of the cultivation even on small family farms, will be takenup in the next section on the limits of socio-nature.

Political Consequences of Socio-NatureIn sum, supporters of local organic food evidence a broad understanding of socio-nature that animates politics wedding the improved ecological health (constructedthrough ecological science and thewilderness aesthetic) to the betterment of humansociety. The place to be preserved is not a place devoid of human life, but a farm inwhich humans and non-human species are engaged in a complex socio-naturalprocess that results in the production of human sustenance. And this process,according to advocates of local organic food such as those who populate the NorthBerkeley farmers market, also helps to create landscapes that better support non-human life, from themicro-organismsmore common to soil untreatedwith chemicalpesticides to the greater number of fish found in rivers that do not collect runofffrom pesticide-ridden fields. Further, according to this logic, preserving the farm alsohelps to preserve the city. Farmers markets provide access to food that supportersbelieve is better for human health, tying their own wellbeing to that of non-humanlandscapes and organisms. Farmers markets are also commonly viewed as a socialgood, a vibrant public place where social connections can be forged and a way tomaintain the economic life of the local community. This is an important departurefrom an environmental movement focused largely on places in which humans donot live (or, as in the case of Native people who once inhabited protected lands, wereremoved from). Indeed, the ecological aspects of the local organic food activismare aimed at places where people live, work and play, which is precisely thedefinitional shift called for by the environmental justice movement.

The Limits of Socio-Nature Among Supporters of LocalOrganic FoodRecognition of society and nature as co-productive of local and organic food bothpervades and shapes much food activism. This recognition, however, is partial andlimited by the movements general privilege.


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Industrial Agriculture Just Isnt NaturalFirst, advocates such as those populating the North Berkeley farmers marketrecognize the food they desire and promote as simultaneously social and natural. Butthe fruits of industrial agriculture are described not only as immoral or exploitative,but as somehow unnatural. For example, one evening at the farmers market,I overheard the following conversation between two customers in front of thehomemade pasta stand:

Ooh, smoked salmon ravioli, said a man to the woman beside him, gazing longinglyat the pasta displayed in front of him.Its Atlantic smoked salmon, she responded warily.His mood immediately changed from desire to anger. Atlantic Salmon is all farmed andreally bad for the environment, he said to the woman working. The only salmon thatsany good from an environmental standpoint is Alaskan. Its all wild. Its like real fish! Andthey have good governmental protection in Alaska so its good to support that. In theAtlantic, though, its all farmed. They keep the salmon in cages in one place, which hasa disastrous effect on that bit of ocean, and then move the cage to another. Its like slashand burn!

It is certainly consistent with a socio-nature approach to evaluate the ecologicaleffects of various practices. But in referring to wild-caught fish as real fish, thiscustomer implies that farmed fish are something other than natural. Again, thenature/society binary is redrawn with wild fish being a part of nature, and not at allsocial, and farmed fish cast as socially produced and not at all natural.

This comment also resembles the way that farmers market participants and othersupporters of local organic agriculture construct genetically modified foods as non-natural. For example, the opening sentence in The GMO experiment, a short videocreated by Greenpeace, describes genetically engineered crops as a worldwideexperiment on people, animals and nature. Casting the creation of these cropsas an experiment on nature certainly precludes the possibility that such cropsinclude nature, even as a hybrid creation of nature and technology. In addition, oneof the most compelling framings of GMOs uses the term frankenfoods. This is, ofcourse, a reference to Mary Shellys novel in which the fusion of human remains andtechno-science create a monster. This storys warning against human interventioninto natural processes of life and death is in many ways precisely the opposite of theconcept of socio-nature, in that not only does it view society and nature as separate,but regards this separation as both moral and necessary.

Indeed, for many supporters of local organic food, it is not only farmed fish andGMOs that are constructed as entirely socially produced, but industrial agriculturemore generally. The blogger at Aisle of Confusion, who names Eric Schlosser andMichael Pollan as her greatest influences, writes that, There is nothing natural,acceptable, or necessary about modern industrial agriculture. Similarly, FrancisThickes book, A New Vision for Iowa Food and Agriculture, contains a chaptercalled How industrial agriculture differs from a natural ecology. This chaptersets out the two paradigms, describing the former as a monoculture, dependenton herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers and fossil fuel that leads to the depletion ofecological capital and the leakage of pollutants. Natural ecology, however, ischaracterized by biodiversity, energy efficiency, self-renewal, resilience and the



recycling of nutrients. In this binary, food is either natural or industrial, but never co-produced. While these are not the best known authors writing about local organicfood, the natural/industrial binary they construct is common to advocates of localorganic food. Indeed, it resonates withMichael Pollans directive to eat food ratherthan the edible food-like substances produced by industrial agriculture (2008).

Advocates of local organic food certainly describe it in terms that reflect anunderstanding of society and nature as co-produced. The food and the farms inwhich it is grown are depicted both as natural and as the product of human labor.Industrial agriculture, however, is depicted as somehow contrary to nature, despitethe fact that it is composed of plants, soils, water, etc and produces the goodsthat become the stuff of human bodies. This partial understanding of co-productionlimits the political possibilities and strategies chosen by supporters of local organicfood. By contrasting their preferred foods with an unnatural industrial agriculturalsystem, advocates create a romantic vision that infuses much of their literature andeveryday discourses. While this romanticism does not negate their recognition thata landscape (in this case, local organic farms) can be both natural and sociallyproduced, it simultaneously leads to a more utopian politics in which particulardiscourses and actions are presupposed by a small subset of relatively privilegedpeople and legitimized through their claim to natural-ness. This occurs becausethe idealized practices are envisioned not as opposed to, but as removed (andremovable) from, the broader agricultural system. Such an approach necessarilyyields a politics of conversion through which these discourses and practices arebrought to others, who are then judged based on their desire to enroll (Childs2003; DuPuis and Goodman 2005; Guthman 2008).

Farmers Arent the Only Ones WorkingThe supporters of local organic agriculture demonstrate an incompleteunderstanding and valuation of a second element of socio-nature, namely labor.For political ecologists, labor is the primary way to understand the co-productionof nature and society. While supporters of local organic food understand that bothnature and the labor of the farmer are necessary for the food they prefer, theysimultaneously ignore other necessary labor.

Farmworkers are largely physically and discursively absent from advocacy for localorganic food. Thus their labor, and its contribution transforming external nature intoedible socio-nature, plays no role in supporters understanding of co-production.The predominantly immigrant, Latino/a workforce who cultivate the bulk of UScrops are rarely present in farmers markets like North Berkeley, though manyfarms do hire individuals, predominantly white and in or recently out of college,to staff their farmers market stands. The most progressive participants in the NorthBerkeley farmers market attempt to mark this absence. For example, when askedto describe why the market is important, one manager acknowledged labor as wellas environmental issues:

The Ecology Center tends to put environmental goals together with social goals. At thesame time as saying sustainable agriculture is a really important part of preserving ourplanet, [we also emphasize] sustainable employment practices. A lot of farms use reallycheap labor and the people who are working on the farms live in horrible circumstances.


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She went on to describe several farms featured in the Berkeley farmers markets thatuse unionized labor, rely solely on the labor of farm owners, or who have financed thepurchase of land by their former farmworkers.6 The latter farm had also participatedin the 2007 May Day immigrant rights protests, supporting their workers decisionto strike. Rather than canceling that days market, white farm owners and internsarrived with one small table full of produce and a statement claiming that thismeager amount was what they were able to accomplish without the help oftheir Latino/a workers. They also wrote an article in their community-sponsoredagriculture newsletter describing the situation. Each of these were attempts torepresent the labor of farmworkers within the food system and therefore pointtowards the potential for a broader understanding of co-production than generallycharacterizes adherents discourses and practices.

However, while individual farm owners andmarket managers see labor as essentialto the markets socio-environmental goals, this is not an integral part of thefarmers market mission or of the wider local organic food discourse. At the farmersmarket, participating farms are screened for their environmental credentials (organiccertification, local, etc) and ownership structures (family or cooperatively owned).While the Berkeley farmers market guidelines also mention farm labor practices, thatcriterion is much less often applied. In addition, the previously described exemplaryfarms are not given preference within the farmers market. Indeed one evening,a woman approached the managers table to ask why Swanton Berry Farm, avendor at the Saturday farmers market and the first organic farm in the US tosign a contract with the United FarmWorkers (UFW), was not present on Thursdays.Limited spots at the small Thursday market were offered on a first-come, first-servebasis, explained another market manager. We totally support the UFW. Its just thatthey didnt apply.7 Despite managers individual support for this farms exceptionallabor practices, no institutional effort was made to extend them this opportunity.Additionally, The Ecology Center does nothing to encourage other market farmsto follow this example. The Ecology Center and other organizations sponsoringfarmers markets have the ability to advocate for the recognition of farm labor intheir policies and advertising discourses, but they do so in only the most limitedways. Farmworker labor, therefore, remains outside the notion of co-productionenvisioned by supporters of local organic food in sites such as the North Berkeleyfarmers market.

Moreover, there are several ways in which the literature describing local andorganic food serves to discursively erase the presence of this group from even theimage of co-production that farmers markets construct. Supporters commonlystated directive to build community with the people who grow your foodemphasizes connections between farmers and consumers, but ignores the laborersperforming much of the actual cultivation. Indeed, the reverence for small, familyfarms often displayed by supporters of local organic food mistakenly convincesmany farmers market customers that market farmers do not employ non-familylabor when nearly all of them do. In addition, while all of the food at the NorthBerkeley farmers market is local, those who cultivate it are not. When supporters oflocal organic food emphasize geographic proximity, it obscures the difficult, costlyand sometimes even deadly journeys of those who travel thousands of miles in order



to produce the food found there (Alkon and McCullen 2011). The farmers marketclearly embraces an understanding of co-production because it views local, organicfood as the product of both nature and human labor. But the labor it regards islimited to that of the farm owner. Despite the necessity of their labor, farmworkersare not treated as an essential component of the socio-natural system as understoodby supporters of local organic food.

Co-Production and its ConsequencesThe goal of this article has been to examine to what extent, and with what effect,those working to promote local and organic food conceptualize society and natureas co-produced. To date, the literature on socio-nature largely coheres around therevelation of co-production, in which what is commonly assumed to be natural isdemonstrated to also be social and vice versa. This paper adds an additional layerto this important foundation by exploring how co-production is understood byactors in everyday life. In other words, it moves theorists beyond demonstrating theexistence of socio-nature and towards investigatingwhat is at stake in its recognition.This brings us to the question of assessing the consequences of socio-nature inshaping the worldview that guides political action. Scholars advocating for a socio-nature approach have often argued that it might serve to foster a new kind ofenvironmental politics that is less romanticized and more attuned to dialectics andthe dynamics of human labor.

Because food is one of the more obvious examples in which nature and humanlabor are inextricable, and because food is currently the subject of vital socialmovements, it comprises an important standpoint from which to examine thepolitics of socio-nature on the ground. Based onmy ethnographic and interview datafrom the North Berkeley farmers market, as well as the wider sustainable agricultureliterature, I argue that the movement has an important, yet limited, understandingof co-production. Supporters tend to portray local organic food as co-producedby society and nature. Because they see local organic food as nature, supportersadvocate for it through a discourse that borrows heavily from the language throughwhich environmentalists advocate for the preservation of wilderness, particularlythemes of beauty and biodiversity. And yet, by simultaneously emphasizing the hardwork required by farmers to produce food, movement supporters recognize localorganic food as a product not only of nature but of human labor. This understandingof co-production fosters the creation of a politics that weds improved ecologicalhealth to the betterment of human society. It brings the place to be preserved outof the wilderness and into the farms, homes and bodies where human life takesplace. This spatial shift facilitates a stronger connection between the environmentalpolitics of various food movements and advocacy for environmental justice thatprioritizes the places where ecological processes are more immediately intertwinedwith human health disparities.

However, the politics of socio-nature embraced by supporters of local organicfood is both partial and privileged. First, awareness of co-production is limitedto local and organic food and farming. Supporters continue to regard industrialagriculture not only as ecologically and socially damaging, but as unnatural. This


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discursive move fosters a romantic vision of local organic food and a utopian politicsthat naturalizes one set of socio-natural relations as right and legitimate ratherthan a more open discussion of what kinds of agro-ecological landscapes shouldbe preserved and why. This partiality is deeply entangled with the movementsgeneral social privilege, which allows activists to (attempt to) remove themselvesfrom an unnatural food system and shop their way in to an alternative (Szasz2007). The sustainable agriculture movements understanding of their preferredfoods as socio-natural while other food is merely industrial parallels its strategyof creating alternatives rather than transforming the food system entirely. Bothare about constructing and creating something pure and removed from a largersystem that is unnatural and destructive. This carving out of utopian niches standsin contrast to a potential alternative strategy that might emphasize continuitiesbetween industrial and alternative food systems in order to think about large-scaletransformation. By emphasizing continuities between industrial and local organicfood systems, activists might become convinced that the only way to truly havelocal and organic food is to transform the food system writ large.

The notion that local organic food is natural, and that industrially produced food isnot, certainly has widespread appeal, particularly among the predominantly affluent,white subjects who are generally hailed by the romantic discourses surrounding localand organic food (Alkon and McCullen 2010; Guthman 2008; Robbins 2007). Butit seems possible that, rather than turning away from local organic food, a discoursethat relied less on questions of what is or is not natural might instead turn moreexplicitly to issues of ecological consequences and of power. It may be no morenatural to pollute a river than to protect it, but protection remains beneficial tofish, soils and humans. Instead of discussing what is or is not natural, supporters oflocal organic food might turn directly to questions of who is harmed by, and whobenefits from, what kinds of agriculture. This is precisely the shift called for by manyscholars of socio-nature, who argue that the point is not to merely understand co-production but to highlight the need to make political and moral judgments aboutwhich landscapes we seek to understand and protect and how we will go aboutdoing so (Castree and Braun 1998; Cronon 1995, Haraway 1997).

The other arena in which the partiality and privilege that characterizes localorganic foods relationship to socio-nature is most evident is that of farm labor.Supporters of local organic food incorporate the labor of farmers into theirunderstanding of co-production, which orients their environmental sensibilitiestoward populated landscapes and human communities. However, many of thediscourses and practices held by supporters of local organic food make thecontributions of farmworkers, and the tremendous struggles they face, even moreinvisible than they are in industrial agriculture. Again because of the privilegedposition generally held by supporters of local organic food, they emphasize thoseaspects of socio-nature that best reflect their middle-class sensibilities and desires.Recognizing that food is co-produced does not automatically orient them towardsa deeper investigation of the labor involved, which would reveal a far less utopianvision of local organic agriculture. However, a food movement that advocated formore equitable labor relations might replace the utopian quest for alternatives witha more direct analysis of power. Such a move would require a reflexive discussion of



what kind of agricultural landscapes should be produced, by whom, and for whosebenefit. One could imagine answers to these questions that diverge widely fromthe above-described responses, particularly on issues of pesticide drift and its healthconsequences (Harrison 2011).

Scholars of socio-nature have critiqued romanticized visions of the wilderness asserving to justify the brutality of industrialization (Gregory 2001). Supporters oflocal organic food participate in a parallel romanticism of local organic farms andfarmers, but to a very different political end, namely to promote farming practicesbelieved to be less harmful to plants, animals, soils and humans. Despite these moreprogressive political ends, this romanticism remains problematic in that it presents aparticular idealized conception of socio-nature. It legitimizes the labor of the farmer,literally naturalizing it by casting it as inseparable from the natural processes thatyield food production, while erasing that of the farm laborer. Better attention to therole of labor might also help to remove some of the romanticism from the rhetoricthat tends to characterize support for local organic food. The harsh conditions facedby farmworkers, even on organic farms selling locally, are certainly at odds with thisromantic view. But highlighting these experiences might help supporters of localand organic agriculture to create the kind of discursive reflexivity in which multipleconstituencies can discuss the kind of nature and society we wish to promote andprotect, rather than attempting to enroll others in a pre-formed vision.

With regard to intellectual conceptualizations of socio-nature, the discourses heldby supporters of local organic food illuminate the ambiguous nature of the social.In some cases, such as Cronons writing, social refers to the mere presence ofhumans and to a need to understand human practices. But for many politicalecologists, social refers more specifically to the processes of human labor and tothe ways that uneven power relationships are institutionalized under capitalism,producing unequal access to both material and discursive dimensions of nature.In other words, social can either mean human, or can be more specific to issues ofpower, exploitation and inequality. This distinction is reminiscent of debates aroundthe social dimension of sustainability, which is sometimes defined as thinking broadlyabout human society, but other times defined more specifically as accounting forinequalities. It also brings to mind Jill Harrisons (2011) insights concerning theideal of justice. Harrison argues that constituencies involved in the managementof pesticides define justice in utilitarian terms (doing the most good for the mostpeople), libertarian terms (best pursued through the market) and communitarianterms (located in local communities). None of these definitions prepare theirconstituencies to account for the disproportionate effects of pesticide drift and itstremendous health consequences on low-income Latino/a immigrant workers andtheir families and communities. Harrisons argument that only a notion of justicethat explicitly addresses structural inequalities seems to provide some direction forscholars concerned with the politics of socio-nature. Like justice, social may be tooambivalent a lens to shape a politics of socio-nature.

A stronger and more potentially transformative politics needs to be unequivocalin its assertion that nature is inseparable from inequalities of race, class, gender,national status, etc and from the capitalist processes that are so foundational to their(re)production. By this standard, support for local organic food does not fit the bill.


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But there are strands of food activism that approach this goal, and that are beginningto gain greater influence. Those organizing under the banner of food justice oftenfocus on the ways that inequalities both emerge from and shape industrial andalternative food systems. However, while they tend to be more compassionatetoward those who rely on industrial foods, food justice activists tend to followthe local organic food movements lead in their emphasis on alternative forms ofproduction and consumption. Their goal is to create racially specific narratives andalternative food systems that might inspire communities of color to embrace morenatural foods. The distinction between good food and industrial food remains justas strong. More broad in its stated goals is the food sovereignty movement, whichparticipates in direct action protests against neoliberal institutions such as the WorldBank and IMF. Efforts to translate this agenda from its roots in the internationalpeasant movement to urban and US contexts, however, have seen a weakening ofits most radical goals (though the newly formed US Food Sovereignty Alliance offersnew promise). And yet the emergence of these threads of food activism, and theirgrowing influence on food movements, offers a hopeful direction for a food politicswhose embrace of socio-nature is neither privileged nor partial. This movementmight offer a vision in which all nature and all human labor is inextricable, and inwhich the conditions under which both exist can be improved through broad socialtransformation.

Endnotes1 Light (1995) offers a similar analysis of romantic and classical views of nature.2 The exception is a southern California date farmer, who delivers his dried products in bulkto a San Francisco-based employee. It is this employee who brings the fruit to the farmersmarket each week.3 A sample of convenience simply indicates that the researcher attempted to stop shoppersas they passed by her at the market, and surveyed those who agreed to participate. Whilethese findings are not generalizable in the way a random sample would be, her demographicdata were overwhelming, and fit with her ethnographic impressions concerning the affluent,white character of the North Berkeley farmers market.4 They are, of course, ignoring immigrant laborers who fuel California Agriculture. This pointwill be taken up later in the article.5 Cultural prohibitions against ethnic slurs are so strong in Berkeley that we suspectthe customer is unaware that gyp is a derogatory insinuation associating Roma peoples,demeaningly called gypsies, with theft. Ignorance of this term reflects white privilege andthe invisibility of people of color, but not the individual-level racism generally associated withmore common ethnic slurs.6 Market managers tended to answer my questions in terms of all three of the Berkeleyfarmers markets rather than just North Berkeley. The farm that is unionized and the farmthat financed land for their former employees do not sell on Thursdays, but at the largerTuesday and Saturday markets that are held at the other locations.7 This has been contested by a Swanton Berry employee.

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The Socio-Nature of Local Organic

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