Feeding on Fear: An Analysis of Food Scares and the Restructuring of International Fresh Food Commodity Chains

Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

Investigators

Abstract

Recent food scares in Europe and the United States show how the internationalization and industrialization of the food supply have produced not only unprecedented abundance and variety but also a host of new perils. These incidents have forced changes both in government regulations and food industry production practices. How are these changes in turn transforming trade relations between the South's food exporters and their markets in the North? This question holds important implications for some of the world's poorest countries, such as Burkina Faso. For decades Burkina Faso has been one of Africa's largest exporters of French green beans, but continued access to the European market is hardly assured. Many countries now produce high-value fresh fruit and vegetable (FFV) crops for export to Europe, and some, such as Zimbabwe, have far superior technological and economic resources. Meanwhile, the conditions for access to the food-scared European market have become increasingly stringent and exclusionary. This project will examine how changing cultural constructs of quality and risks in food are transforming exchange and contract relations along key FFV commodity chains between Africa and Europe. It will draw on the ethnographic methodology as well as the contacts established during previous NSF-funded research in Burkina Faso. The project will also involve ethnographic fieldwork in the Rungis International Market in France, a pilot study of the FFV sector in Zimbabwe, and library and archival research. The analysis will aim to determine how food safety concerns are understood, experienced, and acted upon by people involved in the production and distribution of African FFV. This project, as one part of a multi-year study of food safety and trade, makes four important contributions. First, by examining the role of popular "food fears" in the restructuring of international trade, it demonstrates how cultural constructs of quality, risk, and trust both shape and are shaped by the power relations and economic geography of the global food system. Second, this research highlights previously unexamined differences within this global system. By comparing export operations in two African sites with quite different social, economic, and political histories, it illuminates how international trade patterns are shaped by race, class and uneven development. Third, this research will demonstrate how qualitative methods can be used to analyze the relationship between nature, culture and political economy not only within a local or regional food supply system but also across transcontinental commodity chains. Finally, this research contributes to the broader understanding of how culture informs and responds to economic globalization.