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Summary Geographies of Food
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Summary of the book Geographies of Food: an Introduction. All chapters (1-10).
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Table of ContentsGeographies of food...............................................................................................................................3
Part 1: The place of food........................................................................................................................3
Chapter 1: Introducing Geographies of food......................................................................................3
1.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................................3
1.2 What are food geographies?....................................................................................................3
1.3 Geographical imaginations and food’s geographies.................................................................6
Chapter 2: Geographies and Politics of Agricultural Production.........................................................7
2.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................................7
2.2 Making food and making places: landscapes, nations and labour............................................7
2.3 Moving food and making places: placing and displacing..........................................................7
Part 2: Geographies of food production, transformation and consumption........................................10
Chapter 3: Geographies and Politics of Agricultural production.......................................................10
3.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................10
3.2 Geographies of food production: a global perspective...........................................................10
3.3 Agri-food commodity chains: product sector geographies.....................................................11
3.4 Producing food in the city: urban agriculture.........................................................................13
3.5 Agricultural policy: political geographies of food production.................................................14
3.6 Summary.................................................................................................................................15
Chapter 4: What happens to food? Geographies of mobility and transformation...........................15
4.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................15
4.2 Mobility and transformation: geographies and relationships.................................................16
4.3 Transforming agriculture and food under capitalism: the agrarian question.........................16
4.4 Liberalizing food mobility: global trade policy and food regimes...........................................17
4.5 Government intervention, global food governance and free trade........................................17
4.6 Global food trading: mobilizing High Value Foods (HVFs).......................................................18
4.7 ‘Big food’: transforming and industrializing food....................................................................19
4.8 Working in farming and food processing: the human cost.....................................................20
4.9 Wasting food in industrialized food systems..........................................................................20
Chapter 5: Eating Geographies: The spaces and cultures of food consumption...............................20
5.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................20
5.2 The shifting geographies of food consumption.......................................................................21
5.3 Food’s cultural geographies: eating space(s), places and connections...................................22
5.4 Eating geographical politics and ethics...................................................................................24
Part 3: Geographies of food crisis and respons....................................................................................25
1
, Chapter 6: Food systems in crisis? The new food insecurity.............................................................25
6.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................25
6.2 The contours of the world food crisis.....................................................................................25
6.3 The new food security debate................................................................................................25
6.4 Explaining the 2007-8 food price crisis: the new fundamentals.............................................25
6.5 Financial speculation and the food crisis................................................................................26
6.6 Other critical interpretations of the food crisis and food insecurity.......................................27
Chapter 7: The Fight against Hunger and Malnutrition in the Majority World.....................................28
7.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................28
7.2 The scale and geography of hunger and malnutrition in the Majority World.........................28
7.3 Causes of hunger and malnutrition in the Majority World: poverty, conflict and structural
inequality......................................................................................................................................29
7.4 The international response to hunger and malnutrition: from Green Revolution to the
Sustainable Development Goals...................................................................................................31
7.5 From corporate power to people power: the rise of the ‘food sovereignty’ movement........32
Chapter 8 Food insecurity amidst wealth.........................................................................................34
8.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................34
8.2 Food insecurity in the 21st century: scale, causes and consequences....................................34
8.3 Solutions to food insecurity: food aid, the right to food or food justice?...............................36
Chapter 9: Reconnecting consumers, producers and food...............................................................39
9.1 Introduction............................................................................................................................39
9.2 AFN’s: definition and geography.............................................................................................39
9.3 ‘First generation’ AFNs: locality foods and local food networks.............................................40
9.4 Fair trade networks: the moral economy of getting to know your coffee farmer...................42
9.5 ‘Second generation’ AFNs and sustainability transitions........................................................43
Part 4: Geographies of possible food futures.......................................................................................44
Chapter 10: Future scenarios for sustainable food and farming.......................................................44
10.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................................44
10.2 Towards sustainable food systems.......................................................................................44
10.3 Beyond productivist agriculture and ‘big food’: competing emergent paradigms and ‘food
wars’.............................................................................................................................................45
10.4 Technocentric approaches: sustainability through science?.................................................45
10.5 Ecocentric approaches: sustainability through agroecology?...............................................46
10.6 Sustainable diets and a decentralized food politics..............................................................47
2
,Geographies of food
Part 1: The place of food
Chapter 1: Introducing Geographies of food
1.1 Introduction
Food and eating is very geographical, it connects people with places and (trade) networks. There are
food networks of all different kinds. To understand this, geographical imagination was introduced. It
helps us understand and interpret the vast array of information and data now available concerning
food and all its many dimensions.
1.2 What are food geographies?
Food geographies
The concept to describe the spatial distribution, patterns, and arrangements of food
production, distribution, and consumption around the world. Complex interplay of many
relationships.
1.2.1 Multiple food meanings
Food is an essential ingredient for human life. What we eat shapes our physical identity: body shape
is partly related to eating behaviours. What humans eat determines their health and the health of the
planet.
Food beyond the fundamental human need: food has multiple meanings.
Material-semiotic
Food simultaneously has material, physical characteristics and is embedded with multiple
layers of meaning and cultural significance.
Material = food is physical
Semiotic = food is involved in the making and communication of meaning
The same food can taste different to different people or at different times in your life. Food
can be sacred, fuelling, nutritious, a political weapon, celebration, change your mood,
emotional.
Food has affect,
meaning more than (just) an association with meaning and identity, and implying an
inexpressible and sometimes profoundly moving set of feelings and sensations, potentially
both joyous and melancholic.
6 dimensions of food from Vivero Pol
Public good
3
, Food is available to all members of society, usually by public institutions.
Consumption by one person doesn’t reduce the availability of the good to another
person, or exclude anyone from access.
Cultural determinant
Food is a cultural determinant, it forms an integral part of cultural identities. Food
(the smell of food) can evoke memories. The production, preparation, consumption,
and disposal of food shapes the way our surroundings look, sound and smell (rural
and urban).
Essential for humans
Food is essential for human life.
Renewable resource
Food can be thought of as a natural, renewable resource, being based on
domesticated and wild plants and animals.
Tradable good (food as a commodity)
Food is moved around because it is a tradable good, since origin of settled agricultural
societies.
Increased distance to food, access to food is a market transaction and people need to
be able to pay for it.
Commodification of food as the root cause of hunger and environmental destruction.
Human right
The commodification of food presents a direct contradiction and challenge to the
concept of food as a universal human right
All these dimensions together are ‘food as a commons’. Commons are resources that can be accessed
and used by the community that governs their management, whether this be on a local, national, or
global scale. The end goal of a food commons should not be profit maximization but increased food
access, building community and reducing the disconnect between field and table.
Not only does food have multiple meanings and dimensions, but the boundaries of what counts as
food are themselves changing. Foods and food production can be transformed through new
technologies such as genetic modification and gene editing, for example.
1.2.2 Food, place, space and scale
Foods are shaped in unique ways by different places. Producing and consuming food shapes places.
Food thus plays a role in making geographies. Space is continually produced by circulations and
interrelationships, it is always under construction.
Food production/consumption and geography are co-produced. They are dependent on each other.
Relationships and relationalities are fundamental to food geographies because places are influenced
by relationships.
Places are relational to food and food is relational to places.
Scale is an important geographical concept. How are the global-scale processes of the food system
relational to what we actually eat every day.
Glocal = that it has embedded within it the relational scales of the local and global and everything in
between.
Politics of scale. What is local? Political meanings attached to local food. Social construction of food
networks. Critical and reflexive geographical imagination is required to know about the multiplicities
of food’s geographies.
Food’s places are connected to—but can also be disconnected from—other places across space.
These connections, no matter how short or long, are through what we and other scholars call food
chains, networks, and systems.
Food supply This consists of all the actors involved in moving a product from producer to consumer,
chain including farmers, wholesalers, distributors, and retailers. “Upstream” supply chains are
those which provide inputs to the farmer, such as seeds and fertilizers. “Downstream”
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