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

最近欧洲和美国的粮食恐慌表明，粮食供应的国际化和工业化不仅产生了前所未有的丰富性和多样性，而且产生了一系列新的危险。这些事件迫使政府法规和食品行业生产实践都发生了变化。这些变化如何反过来改变韩国食品出口商与其在朝鲜的市场之间的贸易关系？这个问题对世界上一些最贫穷的国家，如布基纳法索，有着重要的影响。几十年来，布基纳法索一直是非洲最大的法国绿豆出口国之一，但很难保证继续进入欧洲市场。许多国家现在生产高价值的新鲜水果和蔬菜(FFV)作物出口到欧洲，有些国家，如津巴布韦，拥有优越的技术和经济资源。与此同时，进入食品匮乏的欧洲市场的条件变得越来越严格和排他性。该项目将研究不断变化的食品质量和风险的文化结构如何改变非洲和欧洲之间关键的FFV商品链上的交换和合同关系。它将利用人种学方法以及以前在布基纳法索由国家科学基金会资助的研究期间建立的联系。该项目还将涉及法国Rungis国际市场的人种学田野调查，津巴布韦FFV部门的试点研究，以及图书馆和档案研究。分析的目的将是确定参与非洲口蹄疫生产和分销的人如何理解、体验和采取行动关注食品安全。作为食品安全和贸易多年研究的一部分，该项目做出了四项重要贡献。首先，通过研究流行的“食物恐惧”在国际贸易重组中的作用，它展示了质量、风险和信任的文化结构如何塑造和被全球食品体系的权力关系和经济地理塑造。其次，这项研究突显了这一全球体系中以前未被研究过的差异。通过比较两个社会、经济和政治历史截然不同的非洲地区的出口业务，它阐明了种族、阶级和不平衡发展是如何塑造国际贸易模式的。第三，这项研究将展示如何使用定性方法来分析自然、文化和政治经济之间的关系，不仅是在当地或地区的粮食供应系统内，而且是在跨大陆的商品链上。最后，本研究有助于更广泛地理解文化是如何影响和应对经济全球化的。

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.