Governments, grassroots, and the struggle for local food systems: containing, coopting, contesting and collaborating
Governments, grassroots, and the struggle for local food systems: containing, coopting, contesting and collaborating
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DOI：
10.1007/s10460-016-9765-5
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发表时间：
2017-09
影响因子：
4.5
通讯作者：
Julia M. L. Laforge;C. Anderson;S. McLachlan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Julia M. L. Laforge;C. Anderson;S. McLachlan
当地的可持续食品系统已经抓住了大众的想象力，成为可持续食品未来的进步(如果不是激进的)支柱。然而，这些草根创新嵌入了占主导地位的粮食制度中，反映了生产主义、工业主义和新自由主义的政策和制度。在向更可持续的粮食系统过渡过程中，了解这些新出现的基层努力与占主导地位的粮食制度之间的关系至关重要。在这项研究中，我们考察了直接农产品营销者与食品安全法规和其他政府政策的接触，以及这种接口在更广泛地过渡到可持续农业食品系统中塑造当地食品潜力的作用。这项混合方法研究包括对美国和加拿大的农民和牧场主的采访和调查数据，以及马尼托巴省的深入案例研究。我们确定了政府和农民之间的四种不同类型的互动：遏制、增持、竞争和合作。人们发现，食品安全法规的不一致执行遏制了改变食品体系的渐进努力。虽然政府对当地食品的支持计划在某些方面是有帮助的，但它们往往被认为是不充分或不适当的，因此主要是支持符合更主流方法的倡议，从而助长了言论和实践。农民和其他草根行动者通过个人和集体行动对这些食品安全法规和政府支持计划的不足提出了质疑。最后，农民找到了与政府合作的方法，共同制定解决方案。虽然遏制和拉拢反映了强化现状的政府技术，但合作和竞争都反映了通过参与替代经济活动来影响、甚至改变主导政权的机会，作为“可能性政治”的一部分。更好地了解这些相互作用的性质将有助于草根运动为实现更可持续和更公正的粮食系统制定有效的战略。
Local sustainable food systems have captured the popular imagination as a progressive, if not radical, pillar of a sustainable food future. Yet these grassroots innovations are embedded in a dominant food regime that reflects productivist, industrial, and neoliberal policies and institutions. Understanding the relationship between these emerging grassroots efforts and the dominant food regime is of central importance in any transition to a more sustainable food system. In this study, we examine the encounters of direct farm marketers with food safety regulations and other government policies and the role of this interface in shaping the potential of local food in a wider transition to sustainable agri-food systems. This mixed methods research involved interview and survey data with farmers and ranchers in both the USA and Canada and an in-depth case study in the province of Manitoba. We identified four distinct types of interactions between government and farmers: containing, coopting, contesting, and collaborating. The inconsistent enforcement of food safety regulations is found to contain progressive efforts to change food systems. While government support programs for local food were helpful in some regards, they were often considered to be inadequate or inappropriate and thus served to coopt discourse and practice by primarily supporting initiatives that conform to more mainstream approaches. Farmers and other grassroots actors contested these food safety regulations and inadequate government support programs through both individual and collective action. Finally, farmers found ways to collaborate with governments to work towards mutually defined solutions. While containing and coopting reflect technologies of governmentality that reinforce the status quo, both collaborating and contesting reflect opportunities to affect or even transform the dominant regime by engaging in alternative economic activities as part of the ‘politics of possibility’. Developing a better understanding of the nature of these interactions will help grassroots movements to create effective strategies for achieving more sustainable and just food systems.