Who is left behind in global food systems? Local farmers failed by Colombia’s avocado boom

Abstract

Work on global food systems has focused on the livelihoods of farmers directly affected as growers of agricultural export goods and has paid less attention to those who are left behind by new patterns of production and consumption. The connections between preexisting agricultural livelihoods and the new systems of provision associated with fashionable products are poorly understood. Global trends in food culture have wide ranging local impacts. In this paper we argue that researchers need to look beyond linear commodity chains and the goods that travel from producers in one country to consumers in another and expand global food systems analysis to understand what regional livelihoods are modified or displaced by globalised agriculture. Avocados are a popular health food among millennials. Colombia is experiencing a boom in exports. Avocados have long been grown in the Santander region, but global demand has turned them into a politically important crop. Using food systems analysis, our field research illuminates how new opportunities for capital accumulation are transmitted through global markets and shape regional agricultural practices. Large investors have profited, while small-scale farmers have been impoverished. We demonstrate how the interplay of requirements for homogenous fruit from local supermarkets, demand for the export Haas variety, as well as the government's export-oriented policies, have modified local livelihoods. Our contribution examines the broader social space in which agriculture is located. We argue for the need to study food systems beyond the vertical relations that constitute linear supply chains and examine the horizontal context of systems of provision.

Rethinking Nature Relations

“…Growing bodies of literature on commodity chains, cultures and networks that draw on approaches in global commodity and value chains as well as political economy of agriculture literature increasingly illustrate the complex ways in which meanings are attached to environmental goods. For instance, this literature conceives of environmentally based commodity production (such as food) as being shaped among actors or nodes within complex webs of interdependence, with agency in the network also being built on how a commodity is constructed and conceived of: how nature is sold in a fashion that displaces local and society relations and removes interaction in daily life from dependency on natural resources in the local context (Hughes 2000;Serrano and Brooks 2019). Resource use is dominated by large-scale corporations and resource-use networks (commodity chains and commodity networks) (cf.…”

Vegan food geographies and the rise of Big Veganism

“…Commentators from beyond vegan studies note how many forms of violence and injustice continue in food supply chains even when animals are removed. Examples include studies of the marginalisation of small-scale avocado farmers in Colombia ( Serrano and Brooks, 2019 ), the ecological and social injustices associated with arable monocultures ( Shiva, 1993 ; Green and Foster, 2005 ) and the labour and sexual exploitation experienced by migrant workers in horticultural sectors in Europe and the US ( Holmes, 2013 ; Palumbo and Sciurba, 2015 ). Recognising the spectrum of systemic exploitation within both animal and plant-based foodways has formed a core strand of vegan-anarchist critiques against the ‘vegan-as-consumption’ approach (explored below) to vegan mainstreaming ( White, 2018 ).…”

From fish to fishworker traceability in Thai fisheries reform

“…But we know little of how traceability serves as a means of improving working conditions or labour relations. Studies of the so-called full-chain traceability often miss the worker at the beginning of the chain; and more politicized issues of political economy and agrarian and livelihood transformation are also missed within these systems that are more concerned with having fully traceable supply chains in place (Carswell and De Neve, 2013;Riisgaard, 2009;Serrano and Brooks, 2019). A case study from the tuna industry shows that traceability may even reinforce the existing unequal power relations that structure the fisheries industry (Djelantik and Bush, 2020).…”