Organic agriculture is usually viewed as distinct from, if not in total opposition to, conventional agriculture. Over the last 30 years this method of food production has received increasing attention from a variety of actors, each with their own understanding of what “organic” means. Various developments in organic agriculture have led some academics and organic practitioners to express the view that organic farming is gradually being eroded and “conventionalised”, rendering it ultimately no different to the mainstream industrial agriculture it sought to avoid. Lockie and Halpin (2005, p.284) call this the “conventionalisation thesis”. This essay proposes to examine organic agriculture as a technical system and trace its development as such, and to apply concepts from the social construction of technology (SCOT) to try to uncover the different interpretations of “organic” that coexist and often conflict with each other.
In English-speaking countries we tend to talk about the organic movement as a unified system that deliberately positioned itself outside mainstream agriculture more on the basis of belief than science. The name of Lady Eve Balfour is usually mentioned in the founding of the organic movement, along with a person of the the appropriate nationality who helped popularise organic ideas and possibly founded a Soil Association in their home country[1]. The other system of alternative agriculture, better known perhaps in Europe (especially German-speaking Europe), is the biodynamic system, based on the ideas of Rudolf Steiner. While both movements overlap to some extent in purpose and technique and both have traditionally worked together in the common cause of alternative agriculture, this essay will focus on the organic movement, specifically in the context of the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand.
Organic agriculture as a technical system
Although founded on scientific ideas, organic agriculture appears on the surface to be not particularly technological at all, shunning synthetic inputs and seemingly disdaining of all the huge technological advances of industrial agriculture. But we can understand organics better as a technological system if we use Pacey's (1983) expanded meaning of “technology” and see the organic system as made up of interdependent technical, organisational and cultural aspects, which are all three evident in the practice of technology. Using this definition, we could track the changes in the organic system over time by noting how the technical, organisational and cultural knowledge, practices and beliefs have shifted. It can also help us explain how different groups frame the organic system differently – we could, for instance, argue that certain groups privilege certain types of definitions, and that for this reason the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will tend to define “organic” technically (food production without synthetic inputs), whereas sociologists might frame the “organic movement” in terms of the organisational forms it has taken (say, smaller farmers and self-sufficient communities) and the beliefs of its adherents (stewardship of the land, local food and so on).
In addition, Hughes' (1999) ideas about the evolution of technological systems helps us understand the development of the organic system. Identifying individual system builders might prove a little trickier, especially when we take into account the consumers who helped shape the evolving system quite directly in the US (cf. Goodman, 2000a).
The story of the organic system for its first 30-odd years is fairly similar in the US, UK and New Zealand. In the British Empire in the 1930s and 40s, in reaction to the use of synthetic fertilisers in agriculture, some scientists and influential people take up and promote the idea that soil health is fundamental to the quality of food and therefore human health (Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994). Through groups like Soil Associations, the idea of organic farming as a holistic practice which avoids synthetic chemicals is acted out, mainly by small farmers and gardeners. Being a minimal input method, the counter-culture movements of the 60s and 70s embraced organic practices in their own efforts toward self-sufficiency (Guthman, 1998). It is around the late 70s and early 80s that “conventionalisation” could be thought to have begun, with regional groups like the Soil Associations and other alternative growers' associations mobilising in their local areas to form regulatory bodies to oversee organic agriculture as the market for organic produce began to grow.
Conventionalising the organic system
The organic system, like any technological system, is open, allowing the entrance and exit of actors. From the 80s various actors who had previously very little to do with organic agriculture began to play a part, from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) in the UK to the USDA in America and various retailers, exporters and manufacturers of food products around the world. The process of regulation, begun at the local level, changed with the foundation of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) and became formally enshrined in national legislations of various countries, either through food marketing bodies or agricultural departments.
In the UK the process of self-regulation began in much the same way as New Zealand (cf. Campbell & Stuart, 2005), with three related organisations in the form of the Soil Association, Henry Doubleday Foundation and the Bio-Dynamic Agricultural Association coming together to establish third-party certification groups for organic agriculture (Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994). Conflict between the certification groups and the Soil Association meant that there were two different standards of organic produce being sold within and exported from the UK. Formalisation and closure, when it eventually came, was in the form of the United Kingdom Register of Organic Food Standards, as part of the national food marketing body (Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994).
The MAFF became interested in organic farming when policy shifted to reducing production in an attempt to reduce agricultural surpluses. Organic farming was also seen as a solution to the problem of conventional farming in nitrate-sensitive areas and treating organic farming as a less-intensive production regime sat better with the MAFF, traditionally promoters of intensification (Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994). From a systems perspective, one could say that the MAFF, an agency of conventional agriculture with much invested in the conventional agricultural system, framed organic agriculture as an innovation to help deal with the reverse salients of the conventional system, namely land degradation and the economic problem of surpluses.
In New Zealand there was never an ideological split between organic pragmatists and purists the way there was in the UK (cf. Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994, pp.63-64), but Campbell and Stuart (2005) note the perhaps equally important discursive event, when the meaning of “organic” shifted from the farmer to the food. This change occurred at the same time as the sites of production and consumption divided, so that the consumer of organic food was no longer also themselves a producer.
Standards for production locally and for export were never given over to the NZ government in any form, but remained in the hands of the NZ Biological Producers Council (subsequently renamed BIO-GRO NZ). Campbell and Stuart (2005) remark on the changing nature of those standards, from locally negotiated, flexible rules that were highly contingent on local conditions and problems of production and implemented with the intention of continuously “raising the bar”, as it were, of organic agriculture. But with the involvement of international bodies such as IFOAM and pressure to harmonise standards with other exporting nations, organic standards became more abstract and universal and less local, with less appreciation of the local production reality.
Formal regulation and standards also gave other, more economically inclined actors the confidence to enter the organic system. Organisations from the conventional food system, like processors and manufacturers, started to recognise and respond to the demand for organic products. Processors such as Heinz Watties began to encourage conventional producers to convert to organic production, but without any significant change in the way that they sourced their produce. In the case of Heinz Watties, this meant a reduction in the number of organic suppliers over the years, while in general the size of these suppliers grew, a trend which seems to display the economic logic of the conventional food system, with a concentration of suppliers close to the site of processing while the suppliers themselves grow as they are rewarded for increasing efficiency and economies of scale (Lockie et al, 2000).
In the US the organic and conventional systems were initially much better differentiated at the organisational level of food processing and especially retailing, with the vast majority of organic food sales taking place through dedicated alternative or health food retailers (Boström & Klintman, 2006). A plethora of different certification systems and labelling schemes for organics abounded in the US, which made the idea of a national standard appealing to some members of the organic industry[2]. Legislation was successfully passed in 1990 that gave responsibility for creating and overseeing the national standards to the USDA. Considering the USDA is a powerful state institution, heavily invested in the conventional system of agriculture and food production, this was bound to have some interesting consequences for the organic system in the US.
The power to define organic practice and processes was then definitively taken away from organic groups in the US. The primary purpose of the National Organic Program (NOP) standards set by the USDA was for the facilitation of trade, rather than ensuring the quality of food or adherence to any views on agricultural practices (Boström & Klintman, 2006). But while the USDA refused to commit to any ideas about organic agriculture being safer or better for the environment than conventional agriculture (Goodman, 2000a), the language they used to frame the NOP standards and regulations was very much the language of risk assessment, things that could be measured and known (Vos, 2000). Combined with the historical retailing of organic foods through health-food stores, there is clear potential here for organic practices and labelling to be confused with health standards in a way that isn't perhaps as obvious in the UK, Australia or New Zealand. However, the reductionist perspective of the organic system as just conventional farming but without the use of synthetic chemicals meant that the USDA saw fit to define a National List of proscribed and allowable inputs, which initially included genetically modified organisms (GMOs), irradiation and sewerage sludge as “allowable inputs” under the NOP (Vos, 2000)[3].
Resolution of this controversy over the precise meaning of 'organic' came from neither the organic groups nor application of authority by the USDA, but from the consumers of organic produce, the general public whose confidence the labelling was intended for in the first place. In public consultation the backlash against the inclusion of the “big three” (GMOs, irradiation and sewage sludge) was to huge to be ignored – the USDA subsequently bowed to public opinion and removed the offending inputs from the National List (Boström & Klintman, 2006).
On the other side of the fence...
Looking outside of the organic system for a moment, it is becoming increasingly clear that changes are afoot in the conventional system of food production as well. Could the conventional system be becoming, well, less conventional?
Especially if we characterise the organic system as sustainable, focused on achieving yields now and for the future, and the conventional system as productivist and therefore interested in optimising yields now without worrying too much about the future (Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994), we can see that some more sustainable techniques and methods are creeping into conventional practice. Soil conservation and health appear to be the new focus in agricultural research, as land degradation becomes a bigger and more visible issue (Macilwain, 2004, Anonymous, 2004). As consumers demand less pesticide use, less toxic and more target-specific methods are sought to control major pests, especially in the fresh produce industries (Macilwain, 2004). Eventually, alternative production standards adopted by the conventional sector, such as Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and Quality Assurance (QA) might receive their own labelling and branding schemes to capitalise on these environmentally-friendly and sustainable techniques (Lockie et al, 2000).
From a technological systems point of view, then, we could say that once the culture of groups in the conventional system changes, either from consumer end with demands for fewer chemicals in food, or from the production end with farmers who want to rehabilitate their land or themselves use fewer chemicals, then technical side of conventional food production will change too. If sustainability or health is the reverse salient of the system, innovations will be brought in to fix it.
The more things change, the more they stay the same?
The second part of the conventionalisation thesis is that the organic system will eventually split into two, with commercial producers joining the conventional food system as “certified organic” while smaller organic farmers, excluded from the formal process by the high cost of becoming certified, will continue to sell organic produce locally, on a trust system (Lockie & Halpin, 2005). Various observers think that this will be the case (for example, Goodman, 2000b), but a study of organic and conventional farmers in Australia shows that no such process of “conventionalisation” is presently occurring (Lockie & Halpin, 2005). For now, at least, there is no difference between small and large organic farmers in terms of their reasons for farming organic.
One of the more interesting results of the Lockie and Halpin (2005) study was that the attitudes, motivations and beliefs of organic and conventional farmers were not significantly different. Depending on how the organic system is characterised, either as in direct opposition to conventional farming or as totally ignored and simply passed over by the conventional system (for example, Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994 and Campbell & Stuart, 2005), we immediately have two different pictures of farmers. On the assumption of adversity, organic farmers occupy some sort of moral high ground, being the only principled, concerned producers of food we have. It would be very easy to see conventional farmers as unprincipled, uncaring vandals of the environment, lured to the side of organic production not for environmental or ethical reasons, but motivated only by profit. However, on the assumption of ignorance, the results of the Australian study (Lockie & Halpin, 2005) begin make sense. As far as farmers go, in the developed world at least, there aren't really two kinds of farmers, one with principles and one without.
So if the values of the social movements that embraced organics haven't been lost at the farm level (and indeed, probably never left), what then might “conventionalisation” mean? I would argue that as the organic system has grown, organic food is increasingly being consumed by people who never held the various values ascribed to organic methods and foods in the first place, and the way food is taken from the farm to the consumer reflects this. At the level of processing, manufacturing, retailing and consumption, the organic system and the conventional system have become intertwined and are unlikely to untangle without a radical shift in the organisation and culture of food. But if “conventionalisation” simply means becoming more mainstream, and describes the idea that organics is turning into a legitimate production system instead of an alternative or radical system, then perhaps conventionalisation is not an unintentional side-effect at all, but the culmination of a long-standing project within the organic movement itself, to be recognised as a mainstream farming method and contribute to agricultural policy making (cf. Clunies-Ross & Cox, 1994, p. 66).
In a sense, both the organic and conventional systems are descended from the same parent system of pre-industrial agriculture. Tracking the development of the two, it could be said that while the conventional system is quite mature, the organic system has just come into its growth phase, with the area of land under organic management rising and the number of regulating bodies, processors and retailers involved in overseeing, manufacturing and selling organic foods rising. Both systems have borrowed innovations from each other to fix their respective problems, with the organic system borrowing a formal regulation and labelling structure from conventional agriculture, while the conventional system borrows and adapts soil management and pest control techniques. To use a mathematical metaphor, the set of technical, organisational and cultural elements that comprises the organic system is no longer mutually exclusive of the set of elements that makes up the conventional system.
Unlike other technological systems, such as the telephone or car, which have at their heart a definite, tangible artifact, the organic system is not as easy to define or even accurately delineate. The site of meaning of “organic” has shifted between the organic person, to the organic food (Campbell & Stuart, 2005) and even the organic social movement. As more power is accorded to certification agencies and marketing bodies to define the technicalities of what makes something organic, it seems likely that the meaning of “organic” will be stabilised by the consumers' understandings of organic food, whatever that may turn out to be.
References
Anonymous (2004) 'Organic farming enters the mainstream.' Nature, 428(6985):783.
Boström, M & Klintman, M (2006) 'State-centred versus nonstate-driven organic food standardization: A comparison of the US and Sweden.' Agriculture and Human Values, 23:163-180.
Clunies-Ross, T & Cox, G (1994) 'Challenging the Productivist Paradigm: Organic Farming and the Politics of Agricultural Change' In: Regulating Agriculture, eds Phillip Lowe, Terry Marsden & Sarah Whitmore. David Fulton Publishers, London. pp.53-74.
Campbell, H & Stuart, A (2005) 'Disciplining the organic commodity' In: Agricultural Governance, eds Vaughan Higgins & Geoffrey Lawrence. Routledge, London. pp.84-97.
Goodman, D (2000a) 'Regulating organic: A victory of sorts.' Agriculture and Human Values, 17(3):212-213.
Goodman, D (2000b) 'Organic and conventional agriculture: materializing discourse and agro-ecological managerialism.' Agriculture and Human Values, 17(3):215-219.
Guthman, J (1998) 'Regulating meaning, appropriating nature: the codification of California organic agriculture.' Antipode, 30(2):135-154.
Hughes, T P (1999) 'The Evolution of Large Technological Systems' In: The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli. Routledge, New York.
Lockie, S & Halpin, D (2005) 'The “conventionalisation” thesis reconsidered: structural and ideological transformation of Australian organic agriculture.' Sociologia Ruralis, 45(4):284-307.
Lockie, S, Lyons, K & Lawrence, G (2000) 'Constructing “green” foods: Corporate capital, risk, and organic farming in Australia and New Zealand.' Agriculture and Human Values, 17(4):315-322.
Macilwain, C (2004) 'Organic: Is it the future of farming?' Nature, 428(6985):792-793.
Pacey, A (1983) The Culture of Technology. Blackwell, Oxford.
Vos, T (2000) 'Visions of the middle landscape: Organic farming and the politics of nature.' Agriculture and Human Values, 17(3):245-256.
[1] For example, see Clunies-Ross & Cox (1994), Vos (2000) and Campbell & Stuart (2005) for a quick overview of the organics movements and national founders in the UK, US and New Zealand respectively.
[2] The way this is recounted is always fairly vague, but I have noticed that authors all always specify the organic “industry”, as opposed to, say, the social movement, as responsible for lobbying the US government for a set of national standards for organics. So it would be fair to guess that whether or not these lobbyists had a strong commitment to organic principles, they also had a strong commitment to expanding and establishing the US domestic and export market. However, the exact groups who lobbied for national standards in the US and their motivations do not appear to have been examined at all, let alone in any great depth. For example, see Guthman (1998), Vos (2000) and Boström & Klintman (2006) for totally unsatisfactory accounts of how the USDA got put in charge of regulating organics in the US.
[3] The inclusion of GMOs as allowable inputs in the first draft of the NOP Proposed Rule meant that the issue of the definition of 'organic' also became valid for advocates of GM food labelling. The organic label was (and still is at present) a de facto 'GM free' label in the US, where the mandatory labelling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients has never been instituted, unlike the EU, Australia and NZ.
No comments:
Post a Comment