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Lost in the Supermarket: TheCorporate-Organic Foodscape and the
Struggle for Food Democracy
Josee JohnstonDepartment of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;
Andrew BiroDepartment of Political Science, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS, Canada;
Norah MacKendrickDepartment Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada;
Abstract: The corporatization of organics has been critiqued for the concentration of
ownership, as well as the ecological consequences of the long distances commodities travel
between field and table. These critiques suggest a competing vision of food democracy which
strives to organize the production and consumption of food at a proximate geographic scale
while increasing opportunities for democratically managed cooperation between producers
and consumers. This paper examines how the corporate-organic foodscape has interacted and
evolved alongside competing counter movements of food democracy. Using discourse and
content analysis, we examine how corporate organics incorporate messages of locally
scaled food production, humble origins, and a commitment to family farms and employees,
and explore some of the complexity of the corporate-organic foodscape. This paper contributes
to the understanding of commodity fetishism in the corporate-organic foodscape, and speaksmore generally to the need for sophisticated understandings of the complex relationship between
social movement innovation and market adaptation.
Keywords: organics, food democracy, commodity fetishism, corporate foodscape, place
Introduction
We strongly believe that buying organic foods is a form ofenvironmental activism. When you choose organic products, you are
consuming products that not only are good for you, but also are
good for the biosystem of todayand thats good for tomorrow. In
many ways, you are eating and drinking for the futureyours and the
planets (The Organic Cow website, http://www.theorganiccow.com/)
Antipode Vol. 41 No. 3 2009 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 509532
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00685.xC 2009 The Authors
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For the past half-century, the primary manifestation of an alternative to
industrialized agriculture in North America has been the organic food
movement. The original movement emphasized the agrarian ideals of
small-scale food production, community engagement, and ecological
responsibility. While at least a rhetorical commitment to those goals
is maintained, todays organic food sector has moved considerably
beyond small-scale farm to table distribution to a corporate model of
large factory farms supplying distant supermarkets (Guthman 2004a), a
phenomenon we refer to as corporate organics. Organics is one of
the fastest growing sectors in agriculture in both the United States
and Canada (Canadian Organic Growers 2006; ERS-USDA 2005),
with annual growth rates in both countries around 20% (Canadian
Organic Growers 2006; Oberholtzer et al 2005:4). This production and
distribution structure has raised questions about the ecological and socialimpacts of organic food production, particularly in terms of the fossil
fuel required to transport organic products within global commodity
chains (Fromartz 2006; Halweil 2002; Pollan 2006b). Consequently,
the organics industry is viewed skeptically by many alternative food
system activists, particularly since many of the original small organic
companies have been purchased by the worlds biggest food processors
(Howard 2005, 2007).
The corporatization of organics can be contrasted with a competing
vision of food democracy articulated by activists in alternativeagricultural initiatives. While food democracy represents a decentralized
terrain, these projects are commonly animated by an imperative to
organize the food system at a scale where democratic needs are
met, sensitivity to resource depletion is heightened, and privileged
core regions do not live off the carrying capacity of the periphery
(Halweil 2005; Hassanein 2003; Shiva 2003). Food democracy projects
include farmers markets, community supported agriculture (CSA),
and food box schemes, all of which are represented as alternativesto a corporate supermarket system that sells food grown, processed,
and controlled thousands of miles away. The increasing popularity
of food democracy options represents part of collective efforts to
oppose the corporatization of agriculture and the commons more
generally (Belliveau 2005; Goldman 1998; Hinrichs 2003; Johnston
2003). Food democracy supporters advocate eating locally as a way
for communities to obtain greater control over the food system
and engage in more meaningful interactions with food producers
(Brecher et al 2000; Lappe and Lappe 2002; Thompson andCoskuner-Balli 2007). Calls for more local control and meaningful
interactions between farmers and consumers have diffused into the
public consciousness in North America and Europewith increasing
media coverage of the local food movement (eg The Economist
2006), the development of local food certification programs, and eatC 2009 The Authors
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 511
local marketing schemes (Dupuis and Goodman 2005:362; Friedmann
2007).
While the localization of food presents a promising alternative to
an increasingly globalized and corporatized organic sector, a local
versus global food binary is not as simple as it might initially appear
(Allen 2004:179; Hinrichs 2003:34; Watts et al 2005:31). Scholars have
identified significant problems with unreflexive localism, and caution
against equating localized scalar relations with democratically organized
social relations (see Belliveau 2005; Born and Purcell 2006:199;
DuPuis and Goodman 2005; Hinrichs 2003). In this paper, we continue
scholarly work critiquing the fetishization of specific features of the food
system, like localism, and also explore the complexity of the corporate-
organic foodscape while drawing lessons for food democracy projects.
As we explore below, developing a robust food democracy requiresconsideration of both the limitations and possibilities of local eating.
The corporatization of organics holds important lessons that clarify the
importance of democratizing the underlying socio-economic relations
of the food system. A central concern is the problem of commodity
fetishism or, put differently, a lack of transparency in the food system
that obscures how relations of production are socially produced rather
than naturally given. It is not just that corporate-organic food is
grown industrially or shipped long distances, but that food production,
distribution, and consumption are not democratically controlled andorganized, even though presented as such. Corporate-organic usage of
food democracy themes, like eating locally and developing meaningful
relationships with producers, demonstrates the potency of these desires;
in this paper we ask how the articulation of these desires takes on an
individualized, commodified form, and how this relates to collective-
oriented food democracy projects challenging centralized, privately
owned relations of production.
Analytically, our contribution is to emphasize that developing arobust food democracy requires a greater appreciation of the dynamic
relationship between corporate adaptation and social movement
innovation. Scholars have long identified how social movement themes
can be transformed into marketing opportunities (Frank 1998; Jameson
1991:49), and while the co-optation of messages from the organic
movement has received some attention (Thompson and Coskuner-
Balli 2007) this process requires further investigation. Rather than a
simple story of co-optation, we advocate a dialectical approach that
recognizes a dynamic relationship between market actors and socialmovements (Schor 2007) and sees the corporate-organic foodscape as
a hybrid entity drawing from movement themes while using market
mechanisms. This does not mean abandoning a critical perspective
towards corporate capitalism, but analytically it necessitates skepticism
towards simplistic binaries (good/evil, local/global, nature/culture) thatC 2009 The Authors
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obscure understanding of real-world hybridity (see Latour 1993). To
more closely examine the process of marketmovement interaction, we
develop the notion of the foodscape as a conceptual lens that focuses
our investigation into food democracy and corporate organics.
Empirically, our objective is to document how food democracy
themes are being incorporated by corporate-organic marketing
particularly in an individualized, commodified formand relate this
process to collective-oriented food democracy projects challenging
centralized, privately owned relations of production. To do so, we
look at the top 25 global food processors that have acquired some
of the smaller organic brands in North America to see how these
companies use product websites to incorporate themes from food
democracy projects, particularly themes of food being rooted in a
local place, with connections to real producers. We find that themarketing of corporate organics consistently draws on food democracy
images and narratives, connecting products to a particular locale and
family farms, and highlighting a personal history behind the brand
while obscuring spatially dispersed commodity chains and centralized
ownership structures.
The paper proceeds as follows. In the next section we outline the
material and ideological elements of the corporate-organic foodscape,
and chart key precepts of a vision of food democracy. We then map
the contemporary corporate-organic foodscape using a discourse andcontent analysis of corporate-organic food websites. In the following
section we analytically unpack our findings, arguing that the corporate-
organic foodscape operates as a hybrid entity that cultivates a fetishized
image of ecological embeddedness in locally scaled places, while
obscuring long-distance commodity chains, globalized trade, and
centralized corporate control over the food system. We conclude the
paper by examining challenges and opportunities facing food democracy
movements, particularly in light of the political-economic prominenceand ideational maneuverability of corporate organics.
The Corporate-organic Foodscape and the Struggle
for Food DemocracyThe term foodscape has been used generally to describe the spatial
distribution of food across urban spaces and institutional settings
(Winson 2004; Yasmeen 1996). Drawing from geographic and
sociological literature on the landscape (eg Mitchell 2001; Zukin 1991),we employ the term foodscape to describe a social construction that
captures and constitutes cultural ideals of how food relates to specific
places, people and food systems. As Cook and Crang emphasize, foods
do not simply come from places . . . but also make places as symbolic
constructs, being deployed in the constructions of various imaginativeC 2009 The Authors
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 513
geographies (1996:140). Just as a landscape painting has a mediated,
indirect relationship to physical ontology or place, a foodscape may
variously capture or obscure the ecological sites and social relations
of food production, consumption, and distribution. Foodscapes involve
elements of materiality and ideology and are contested spaces where
actors struggle to define the terrain of political action, including
the extent of market involvement and private ownership of food. In
the next section we describe how the corporate-organic foodscape is
both a material and political-economic phenomenon, and contrast this
foodscape with the activities and ideals of food democracy movements.
The Corporate-organic Foodscape
As demand increased for organic food in North America, organicsbecame part of the mainstream institutionalized food system, largely
owing to the efforts of the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA), which developed uniform national standards for organic
crop production in 1990, and further detailed those standards in 2002
(Guthman 2004b; Ingram and Ingram 2005). The path of regulation
and certification has been consistently controversial, and organic
standardization has been a political, rather than merely a technical issue
(see DeLind 2000; Ingram and Ingram 2005). The result of this political
struggle was to transform organic from a philosophy governingmany aspects of the food production and distribution process, to a
regulatory label that focused onor some would say, fetishizedthe
regulation of agricultural inputs. Organic certification institutionalized
what was originally intended, for many participants, to be an anti-
institutional movement (Goodman and Goodman 2001). Consequently,
other than synthetic inputs, the production conditions for many organic
products now mirror those of their conventional counterparts; they often
originate on large-scale industrial farms and are sold from supermarketshelves. Organic produce is commonly distributed with trans-continental
and even global commodity chains (Raynolds 2004)1 from farms in
California, and increasingly from China (Sanders 2006), to disparate
market niches ranging from Whole Foods Market to WalMartall in
direct contrast to the original aspirations of the organics movement.
The institutionalization of organic agriculture through federal
certification standards, along with a price premium and significant
consumer interest in organics, has helped increase the presence of
major corporate players in the organics industry (Fromartz 2006;Goodman and Goodman 2001:101). Most of the worlds largest food
processing corporations are now involved in some dimension of organic
food, acquiring many of the original organic food companies, as well
as developing their own organic brands (RAFI, 2003:19). With a
growing number of suppliers, a costly certification process has emergedC 2009 The Authors
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and the price premium for organics has declined, thereby pushing
(and keeping) small suppliers out of the market (Guthman 2004a;
Pollan 2006b). Importantly, while corporate buyouts and economic
concentration represent a significant shift in the ownership structure
of this sector, this shift is frequently imperceptible at the level of the
foodscape, as original product names and brands are retained by new
corporate owners.
Alternative Agriculture and the Struggle for Food DemocracyFor many in the food democracy movement, this corporatization process
represents a corruption or co-optation of organic ideals. At the core of
food democracy lies the idea that people can and should be actively
participating in shaping the food system, rather than remaining passivespectators . . . [it] is about citizens having the power to determine
agro-food policies and practices locally, regionally, nationally and
globally (Hassanein 2003:79; see also Lang 1999). Organics represents
one of the earliest manifestations of a vision of food democracy.
While there were important exceptions,2 many of the original organic
farming ventures were part of a social movement seeking to take
control of food production away from agro-food corporations, and
put it into the hands of smaller operators, communities, coops and
urban neighborhoods (Belasco 1989; Buck et al 1997; Goodman 1999).Reflecting the movements social ideals, organic food was distributed
primarily through small-market or non-profit mechanisms, fostering
direct connections between producers and consumers (Raynolds 2004).
With the corporatization of organics, proponents of food democracy
have been forced to rethink strategies for resisting the unsustainabilities
and inequities associated with industrial food production and distribu-
tion, and transforming the food system. This involves politicizing the
food system: pushing the notion that access to safe and nutritious foodis a basic righta notion that fundamentally contradicts the corporate
vision where food is principally viewed as a commodity produced
for sale (Hassanein 2003; Riches 1999)and using the concept of
food democracy to create new political spaces where agricultural
producers and consumers can act as citizens. On a pragmatic level, food
democracy is about creating alternative mechanisms for individuals and
communities to produce and procure food sustainably. Food democracy
encourages the expansion of organic agricultural production techniques,
but with greater attention to fair wages and living conditions for laborersand farmers (Halweil 2002; Shiva 2000). It resists cooperation with
transnational food producers and major supermarkets, and encourages
distribution mechanisms that foster meaningful interactions between
producers and consumers, such as through farmers markets, food boxes,
and CSAs (Halweil 2005). These mechanisms are thought to enable foodC 2009 The Authors
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 515
security and sovereignty by placing control over food production and
distribution in the hands of citizens rather than corporations (Riches
1999; Shiva 2000, 2003).
Localization is an important element in the vision of food democracy
(Halweil 2002, 2005).3 As Ostrom observes, local food is a unifying
theme among social movements challenging the modern agri-food
system, coming to signify all that is believed to be the antithesis
of a globally organized system where food travels great distances, is
controlled by behemoth, transnational corporations, and is wrought
with environmental, social, and nutritional hazards (2006:66; see
also Dupuis and Goodman 2005:359). Advocates for food system
localization make numerous explicit and implicit normative claims
that associate localism with democratic interpersonal relations, coop-
eration, decentralization, environmental and community sustainability,embeddedness in local systems, family farms, and resistance to global
corporate capitalism (Dupuis and Goodman 2005; Hinrichs 2003).
These themes are compatible with food democracy, but are nevertheless
susceptible to romanticized and unreflexive deployment. Scholars have
called for a de-reification of the local, arguing that eat-local activists
must carefully consider the meaning and limits of the local scale
(Belliveau 2005; Dupuis and Goodman 2005; Hinrichs 2003; Johnston
and Baker 2005), and guard against defensive localization (Hinrichs
2003:37). Localization defined as spatial proximity to the consumer maynot adequately capture energy use in food transport (Wallgren 2006),
nor necessitate equitable labor practices or meaningful interactions
between consumers and producers (Belliveau 2005). Spatial relations
of proximity also cannot be simply equated with social relationships of
democratic accountability and substantive equality, which we argue are
of primary importance to a meaningful vision of food democracy.
Mapping the Corporate-organic FoodscapeHaving discussed both the emergence of the corporate-organic
foodscape, as well as key facets of food democracy, we can now begin
to map the corporate-organic foodscape in greater detail. This section
describes a marketing aesthetic of locally scaled life that draws
on place-based ideals, while employing romanticized conceptions of
specific places, face-to-face community, and rural life. Using strategic
narratives emphasizing locality, place, and the connection between
brands and real producers this locally flavored marketing strategyis grafted onto production and distribution practices that, at least in part,
can be identified as part of globalized corporate agribusiness.
To map the corporate-organic foodscape, we conducted a discourse
and content analysis of the websites of organic brands (eg Lightlife,
The Organic Cow, Back to Nature) that have been acquired by NorthC 2009 The Authors
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Americas top food processors (eg Heinz, ConAgra, Kraft Foods). We
focused on acquisitions rather than the introduction of new brands
because of our interest in corporate organics use of food democracy
messages, a process that is especially visible after the transition of brand
ownership from a small company to a major transnational corporation.
We selected websites for analysis as they capture highly detailed and
comprehensive messages about the company, its products, and brand
image. Websites are identified in the marketing literature as virtual
storefronts that communicate corporate, product, and brand images, as
well as information on the brand that cannot be communicated through
product packaging and advertising (Argyriou et al Melewar 2006; Chen
2001; Singh and Dalal 1999). In short, websites are a part of integrated
marketing platforms that construct a coherent and consistent narrative
for corporate brands (Rowley 2004), that is highly amenable to empiricalstudy. While not all consumers access websites to learn about products,
websites provide a way to identify and interpret elements of the discourse
associated with corporate-organic brandsthe narratives, ideas, and
images that the purveyors of corporate organics seek to associate with
their products.
Corporate ownership was determined using a chart compiled by The
Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (Howard 2007).
This chart documents organic brand acquisitions by the top 25 North
American food processors, last updated in July 2007.4 Our sampleincludes 34 organic retail brands that are partly or wholly owned by,
or involved in strategic alliances with, these corporations. The organic
commodities sold by these companies include dairy products, processed
foods, canned produce, seeds, and tea. Some companies sell only a few
organic commodities, while others are entirely dedicated to organic
products.
Content Analysis: Assessing the Prevalence of Food
Democracy ThemesAnalysis of the websites led to the inductive identification of prominent
themes within the corporate-organic foodscape, which were then related
to values associated with food democracy. This allowed us to make
explicit the mostly implicit messages about how corporate-organic foods
were seemingly connected to locally scaled places and identifiable
individuals, rather than being part of a larger and faceless commodity
chain. We then conducted a content analysis to assess the prevalence offood democracy themes identified (Table 1).5 Because some subjective
elements of the corporate-organic foodscape could not be reliably
coded (eg feelings of simplicity and authenticity conveyed through web
design), our coding provides conservative counts of food democracy
themes used in corporate-organic foodscapes.C 2009 The Authors
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 517
Table1:
Fooddemocracythemesidentifiedinc
orporateorganics
Parent
Brand
Referenceto
Useofan
Specific
Personalstories
Connection
Explicit
corporation
sm
all/humble
ourstory
geographic
offounders/
tofamily
connectionto
b
eginnings
narrative
references
employe
es
farms
par
entcorporation
Cargill+
FrenchMeadows
CocaCola
Odwalla
Con-Agra
Lightlife
DeanFoods
Alta-Dena
DeanFoods
HorizonOrganic
DeanFoods
TheOrganicCow
DeanFoods
Whitewave/Silk
GeneralMills
CascadianFarms
GeneralMills
MuirGlen
HC
EarthsBestOrganic
HC
ArrowheadMills
HC
Casbah
HC
CelestialSeasonings
HC
Deboles
HC
GardenofEatin
HC
HainsPureFoods
HC
HealthValley
HC
ImagineFoods
HC
SoyDream/Rice
Dream(ImagineFoods)
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Table1:
Continued
Parent
Brand
Refe
renceto
Useofan
Specific
Personalsto
ries
Connection
Explicit
corporation
small/humble
ourstory
geographic
offounders/
tofamily
connectionto
beg
innings
narrative
references
employee
s
farms
par
entcorporation
HC
NileSpice
HC
Shari-Anns
HC
Tofutown
HC
WalnutAcres
HC
WestSoy
HC
WestbraeLittle
BearandBearitos
HC
WestbraeNatural
HC
SpectrumOrganics
HersheyFoods
Dagoba
Kellogg
Kashi
Kellogg
MorningstarFarms
KraftFoods
Boca
KraftFoods
BacktoNature
MarsM&M
SeedsofChange
Pepsi
NakedJuice
Total
23
21
19
14
10
19
Percentage
68
62
56
41
29
56
:themepresent;:
themeabsent.
+CargillinvolvedinastrategicalliancewithFrenchM
eadows.
HC:Hain-Celestial.
HeinzhaspartialownershipinHain-Celestial.Hain-Celestialisalsoinvolvedinastrategicalliancew
ithCargill.
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 519
Codable themes that we found included the following: connection
to family farms, which were used to demonstrate an attachment to
a particular rural locale and/or to symbolically connect consumption
of the brand with an idealized agrarian mode of life (29%); personal
stories of founders or employees, which worked to humanize the
commodity, and suggest a sense of a locally scaled operation (41%); an
explicit emphasis on the firms small-scale, humble beginnings (68%);
the use of an Our Story narrative that also created a humanizing
effect for the corporate commodity, suggesting a local rather than
transnational scale of operation and constructing a foodscape quite
distinct from the imaginary of the faceless corporate food system (62%);
and specific geographic references to locally scaled places, which tended
to involve descriptions of the companys history in a particular locality,
even though current operations for corporate firms are clearly muchmore geographically expansive across national and transnational spaces
(56%). At least one of these themes was present in all of the brands
examined, suggesting that themes associated with food democracy are
a broadly utilized corporate-organic marketing tool.
We also examined brand websites to see if they openly acknowledged
an association with a corporate owner or strategic partner. Here we
looked to see if copyright information showed an association, if news
release sections included details of the buyout, or if pages describing
the brand history or profile acknowledged ownership or strategicpartnerships with a major food processor. We found that just over
half of the brands acknowledged corporate ownership/partnership on
their website (56%). However, of these brands, most (86%) are owned
by the Hain-Celestial company, a company that specializes in organic
and natural foods, but is partially owned by Heinz and is involved
in a strategic partnership with Cargill. Importantly, no Hain-Celestial
website mentioned an affiliation with Heinz or Cargill, and as such we
found all but three of the 34 brands (91%) did not acknowledge the fullextent of corporate ownership and partnerships.
Discourse Analysis: Putting Food Democracy
Themes to WorkGiven the diversity of products under discussion and the large scale of
corporate-organic operations, our content analysis revealed a substantial
presence of food democracy themes. To better understand the ideological
work occurring in the corporate-organic foodscape, discourse analysis
was used to demonstrate the construction of a narrative focused onspecific places, humble origins, as well as face-to-face social and labour
relations. For instance, many organic brands, such as Arrowhead Mills,
Horizon Organic, Cascadian Farms, and Dagoba provide a romanticized
description of a specific locality where the company began, whether it
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or a humble store located in a certain city or town. Invoking a specific
geographic place is often done in conjunction with an emphasis on the
small-scale nature of the operation, at least in its original incarnation, and
most often with no mention of the firms current corporate ownership.
Arrowhead Mills, for example, provides a map of the exact location
of the founding office in Texas and includes the following description,
which is emblematic of the Our Story feature found on many websites:
Arrowhead Mills was founded over 40 years ago in a tin roofed
building in the Texas panhandle by Frank Ford. Frank believed
synthetic pesticides and herbicides weakened crop varieties, broke
down resistance to disease and pests, and ultimately, polluted the food
chain. He put his life savings down on a tractor and set out to farm
organically grown corn and wheat. With a stone mill he ground his
harvest and delivered it to local stores from the back of his pickuptruck (Arrowhead Mills 2007:para 1).
References to highly specific geographic locations, and the metonymic
identification of the company with a single individual that we can know
on a first name basis, fosters an image of a company rooted in locally
scaled places, engaged in personalized transactions, and dedicated
to ecological principles, even when these roots have long been
transcended in the process of corporate consolidation and expansion.
Similarly, to maintain the image of a connection to a locally scaledplace of food production, some brands prominently feature home
farms or factories designed for public tours. As part of its proud
history, Cascadian Farms website details the companys origins on a
single farm in the Upper Skagit Valley of Washingtons North Cascade
Mountains. The corporate buyout of Cascadian Farm (it was bought
by General Mills in 2000) is briefly noted, but what is emphasized is
the home farm as a real placea working, active, productive farm
that can be viewed online and visited in person (Cascadian Farms 2007:
para 1). However, even Cascadian Farms corporate founder, Gene Kahn,admitted to journalist Michael Pollan that the Skagit Valley farm is a PR
farm for General Mills (Pollan 2006a:145), not a farm that produces
goods for Cascadian Farms internationally distributed commodities.
Physical sites such as the Cascadian demonstration farm project an
image of locally embedded and publicly accessible operations, but are
fundamentally disconnected from the actual industrialized, large-scale
operations where food is grown, processed, and packaged, as well as
the geographically dispersed commodity chains.Of course, the social constructions of the corporate foodscape are
open to contestation, and corporate organics in particular is a dynamic
hybridized entity. The view that corporate-organic marketing is no more
than an ideological veil for transnational agribusiness, while containing
some truth, is too simple. Marketing campaigns can be deconstructed,
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 521
and advertisements and websites can be read critically, and it is clear
that many food analysts and at least some eaters are aware of the
disjuncture between the claims embedded in corporate marketing and
actual conditions of production. Corporations may respond to criticisms
by changing their material practices and/or the discursive framing or
marketing of their products. Thus The Organic Cow of Vermont changed
its name to The Organic Cow in April 2006, after critics challenged
its claim to be a Vermont-based company when it is headquartered
in Boulder, Colorado (Totten 2004).6 Yet despite this challenge, the
website for The Organic Cow continues to describe the companys
Vermont origins, and outlines its support for Vermont family farms
(The Organic Cow nd). Similarly, the producer profiles page on its
website describes two farms, both located in Vermont (The Organic Cow
ndb). These messages work together to construct a marketing discourseimbued with localism, and as instances of integrated and doubtless
carefully constructed marketing campaigns, provide insight into the
kinds of affective associations that transnational food corporations think
consumers want to associate with organic food.
The local scale and personalized relations can be seen as a rhetorical
proxy for socially embedded and just labour relationsanother keystone
of food democracy. Food sourced from the global South, however,
presents distinct challenges in this regard, given the deep structures
of global inequality. For example, the Dagoba website explains that itschocolate comes almost exclusively from small farms and co-ops but
notes that when a higher-producing farm estate was discovered, we
saw how equitable this farm was and tasted their amazing cacao [and]
we were hooked. This partnership has yielded exquisite cacao, a better
quality of life for cacao workers and their families, and the preservation
of many plant, animal and insect species in the face of environmental
degradation (Dagoba 2007:para 2). The Dagoba website then provides
testimonials from current farm employees, which show the farm to bea relatively benevolent work environment, but simultaneously reveal
deeply ingrained hierarchies and paternalism at odds with the ideals of
food democracy:
Always when I needed something, the bosses reached out their hand
. . . The bosses treat us very well. They do not exploit the workers.
Therefore I would like to offer my gratefulness for the treatment
received . . . Don Hugo . . . is not a boss like so many who are always
punishing or complaining or abusing the workers with bad words.
(Dagoba 2007:para 79)
For corporate organics sourced from the global North, the idea of
buying food from a family farmer is prevalenta theme which reflects
deeply seated North American ideals of agrarianism (Guthman 2004a).
Horizon Organic, for example, emphasizes that: [f]amily farms hold
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a very special place in our company (Horizon Organic 2006:para 1).
Corporate-organic marketing links its products not only with farms, but
also with specific people working for the companyemployees, farmer-
suppliers, and even consumers. Spectrum Organics website similarly
explains that: Here at Spectrum we recognize that the sum of our parts is
greater than the whole. That means we value every individual involved
whether the family olive farmers from the Cretan Agri-Environmental
Coop who make Spectrums Organic Greek Olive Oil or Kristy in
Quality Control who makes sure the caps fit tight. Youll soon be able
to check out their profiles and stories here, or add one of your own
youre Spectrum too! (Spectrum Organics nd:para 1). These narratives,
along with links to employee profiles, represent an effort to humanize
the process of commodity exchange, even if the commodity chain
is globalized and the production process is industrialized. While thecompanys website demonstrates responsiveness to consumer demand,
it is not clear what youre Spectrum too! actually means in terms of
food democracycan a profit-driven company in strategic partnership
with food conglomerates like Heinz and Cargill meaningfully devolve
control over the food system to Spectrum consumers?
The question should not be seen as entirely rhetorical, but as a
push to discuss the pragmatic implications and contradictions for this
type of humanizing discourse in the corporate-organic foodscape
especially if we are to take seriously the idea that the corporate-organic marketing constitutes a hybridized identity that both opens and
closes political opportunities. The contradictions and possibilities are
perhaps best revealed when corporate-organic brands explicitly try to
engage consumers in specific projects of food politicseven when these
projects contradict the imperatives of industrial food production. The
Kashi brand of cereals and crackers (owned by Kelloggs), for instance,
has a page on its website dedicated to designing personal challenges
for consumers and employees. Included among these challenges is aninjunction to Discover a local farmers market, because [l]ocally
grown foods are not only beneficial for the environment, theyre often a
lot fresher and cheaper too. Then, theres the added bonus of supporting
local businesses. Make an effort this week to find out where and when
your communitys next local farmers market takes place. Plan a trip
(Kashi 2007:para 1).
The apparent contradiction between the basic purpose of the Kashi
siteto promote a brand that sells processed commodities made with
grains sourced globally and distributed through global commoditychainsand the politics of local food provisioning, supports the view
that corporate organics represent a complex case of hybridization rather
than a simple, black and white instance of ideological obfuscation. One
way to understand this contradiction would be to note that within the
hybrid corporate-organic foodscape, there is space for a core of corporateC 2009 The Authors
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 523
food provisioning, as well as a periphery of food democracy projects. In
addition, we could observe that the particular types of products sold by
Kashiand even Kelloggs more generallyare not frequently found
at farmers markets. So in this particular instance, support for farmers
markets might be seen as a less threatening motif of food democracy (or
even eat-local more narrowly) than, say, committing to eat exclusively
within a 100-mile radius (Smith and McKinnon 2007).
A different, but related response would focus on the differing
conceptualizations of the farmers market on offer. In the vision of
food democracy, farmers markets are a core site where the relations
between food producers and consumers are concretized; the force of
the food democracy vision lies in the fact that these relations are
humanized, rather than objectified or commodified. This distinction
between humanized and objectified relationsthe essential distinctionon which the Marxist category of reification is foundedin turn grounds
the possibility of subjective agency (Loftus 2006). As these relations are
recognized as socially produced rather than naturally givenor in other
words as they are defetishizedgreater possibilities for democratically
remaking those relations are opened. The Kashi website, by contrast,
presents farmers markets as a consumer choice that exists within the
corporate-organic foodscape. The injunctions to discover and Plan a
trip to the farmers market situates this environment as something more
akin to a novel consumption object, rather than a site in which socialrelations are negotiated and community and citizenship are generated.
To make farmers markets a democratic food issue and part of a larger
struggle for universal food rightsrather than an elite niche market
where markets are available for only a few hours or one day per
week and accessible mainly to affluent consumersrequires more than
passive consumer consumption, but mandates active participation of
citizens organizations, social movements, and producers, as well as
state involvement. More generally, for food democracy projects to avoidbecoming yuppie chow excursions that map onto class hierarchies
(Guthman 2003:55), we require active and ongoing citizen attempts to
democratize and defetishize the food systema topic to which we now
turn.
De-Fetishization and the Limits of Consumer RegulationTo recap, our discourse and content analysis suggest that many elements
of the food democracy movementparticularly the most recent, eat-local variantshave been taken up and woven into the marketing dis-
course of the corporate-organic foodscape. These marketing narratives
fetishize locality and obscure spatially dispersed commodity chains as
well as the corporate ownership structures antithetical to democratically
controlled food systems. The attempt by transnationalized agribusinessC 2009 The Authors
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524 Antipode
to recuperate or preserve a connection to locally scaled placesalong
with the specific farmers stories and humble, small-scale operations
associated with local foodrecapitulates the more general dilemma of
corporate-organic foodscapes, where ideals of sustainability and social
justice grind against the drive toward mass production and consumption
through spatially expansive distribution networks.
Food analysts have documented an ongoing debate between small-
scale local organics and corporate long-distance organics (Fromartz
2006; Pollan 2006a). The corporate-organic foodscape might seem to
confound this distinction, insofar as it incorporates local themes into the
messages used to sell long-distance corporate products. At one level, it
could be argued that the corporate-organic foodscapes usage of food
democracy themes constructs a sense of foods origins that is largely
divorced from material, social, and ecological considerations, and is thusa fetishized one: local places are understood in a reified fashion, with
human and ecological communities romanticized, and the real ensemble
of ecological and social relations underlying the commodity obscured.
While there is some truth to this view, we need to look beyond simply
exposing the hypocrisy of globalized agribusinesses, and explore how
this particular form of commodity fetishism arises, and what flags it
raises for food democracy projects. In other words, we must ask what
does it mean when organic foods are sold using the food democracy
discourse of local embeddedness?As organics become mainstreamed and corporatized, the focus
on place and locality in the marketing of corporate-organic brands
suggests that unique localities and thus unique food experiences are
still possible, a theme that works against the increasing sameness
and homogenization in the corporate foodscape more widely. The sheer
range of corporate-organic products on the one hand provides consumers
with the benefits of cosmopolitan globalization, while on the other, the
marketing of these products seeks to communicate a sense of inhabiting(or perhaps more precisely, consuming) locally embedded places or a
distinct socio-ecological community. Corporate organics offers a world
of multiple local products shipped globally. But it is important to ask
to what extent it can deliver on what it promises, and in particular, to
what extent its objectives clash with the ideals of food democracy.
Images and messages associated with place, locality, and real
producers do seem compatible with food democracy ideals, yet
become more problematic when we consider how these messages have
been produced within a corporate foodscape designed to maximizeprofitability through long-distance commodity chains, economies of
scale, and centralized corporate control. The corporate vision necessarily
sees food as a commodity, or in other words, a vehicle for the
accumulation of value. The concept of food democracy, however, defines
food as a life good that should ideally exist within democratic control inC 2009 The Authors
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The Corporate-organic Foodscape 525
the commons.7 What the corporate-organic foodscape arguably provides
is thus a simulation of place, locality, and humanized producers: images
of precisely those things that are destroyed by capitalisms tendency to
subsume everything to the law of value. In this view, if corporate organics
represent a bridge between corporate agriculture and food democracy,then they are in fact a fetishized link with an era, and a localized form
of social exchange, that predates globalized capitalism.
It is this fetishized relationship that illustrates the crucial limitations
of corporate organics, as well as the potential pitfalls for newer iterations
of food democracy such as the eat-local movement. Corporate organics
attempts to bridge the two worlds require that food democracy be
identified as a product with particular reified features, whether this is
organic (defined in terms of non-synthetic inputs), local (defined
as specific geographical locations and/or geographical proximity),small-scale (defined as involving identifiable individuals), or some
combination of these features. Without denying that products with these
features may be more ecologically sustainable than their conventional
counterparts, as long as these features in and of themselves are taken to
be a static index of food democracy, then the conception of democracy
here remains thin and staticit is a vision closely identified with
consumerisms ideals of individual choice and voting with your
pocketbook, and resists the more challenging elements of democratic
process, such as moving towards decentralized ownership structures and
creating non-commodified social and economic relationships around
food.
While consumer-based activity is recognized as an important source
of social change (Miller 1995; Stolle et al 2005), the contradictions and
limitations of consumer-based forms of political action are increasingly
well documented, theorized, and linked to neoliberal agendas (Freidberg
2004; Goodman 2004:909; Guthman 2007:263; Johnston 2008). Work
by Barnett et al (2005) casts doubt on the assumption that ethicalshopping is a straightforward affair, or that information defetishizing
commodities automatically leads to different purchasing decisions, and
hence social change. Part of the reason for this may be precisely the
thin conception of democracy that such a view of consumer-based
social change entails. Because consumer identities, social relations, and
capitalist institutions are taken as pre-given, consumer-based politics
are often focused on in-store decision-making, and less concerned with
the myriad of decisions made long before shoppers confront products
on store shelves.The robustness of food democracy therefore depends less on the
ability to vote with ones dollar, and more on the capacity to
defetishize. But defetishization involves more than revealing the
real production relations that lie beneath the ideological veneer, or
exposing marketing hypocrisy. As Castree (2001) argues, followingC 2009 The Authors
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526 Antipode
Jean Baudrillard, the semiology of commodity surfaces deserves to
be taken seriously as a kind of productive reality in its own righta
reality that we incorporate into our conceptualization of the foodscape
as a material and ideational realm producing corporate organics as a
hybrid entity. The point of defetishizationof the corporate foodscape
as well as of capitalist relationships more generallyis not to posit
another pre-given, essentialized understanding of the nature of social
reality, but rather to open the constitution of that social reality up to
question. In other words, it is not just a matter of revealing the reality
of corporate-organic hypocrisy, but a matter of making the social
relations of food production, distribution, and consumption transparent
and open to political contestation and transformation.
In the face of increasingly globalized agribusiness, a first step for
defetishization and democratization would be a challenge to concen-trations of corporate power that marginalize community and citizen
capacities. In the face of corporate hybridization and appropriation of
food democracy themes, new modes of discursively organized food
democracy constantly need to be developed, with past lessons kept
firmly in mind. The challenges of creating new citizen-based modes
of engagement, versus a menu of new, guilt-free shopping options
for affluent consumers, should not be underestimated. Conceptions of
farmers markets or CSAs that see participants as individual clients or
consumers (particularly in urbanized settings, where these can operateas a boutique mode of food procurement), work to reproduce a mode
of political engagement grounded in individual consumer choice and
favoring elite social classes, rather than aiming for the conscious
re-constitution of more equitable, democratic, and sustainable socio-
ecological relations in the food system.
Conclusion
Our mapping of the corporate-organic foodscape illustrates that thebiggest and best-selling organic brands have adopted and fetishized key
themes from a vision of food democracy. Brand websites are heavily
imbued with the imagery of specific places, family farms and rural
landscapes, and personalized narratives. These have become a key
marketing feature, even if they have little relationship to the long-
distance commodity chains and centralized ownership structures that
also characterize corporate agribusiness.
The corporate expansion and industrialization of organics has raised
the possibility of the organic label losing the public trust (DeLind2000:204), and the emphasis on local places and people in corporate
organics can in part be explained as an adaptation to accommodate
resistance to emerging public critiques. Corporate-organic marketing
strategies provide a commodified way to consume locality (rural
Vermont dairy products, or olive oil from Cretan family farms), andC 2009 The Authors
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respond to anxieties about placelessness that accompany globalized
production processes.
The inclusion of food democracy themes in corporate-organic
advertising presents real challenges for food democracy movements.
For food system activists, it raises the question of how best to make
food democracy projects an attractive option in a sea of corporate
commodities, many of which seem to offer the promise of a locally
embedded, socially just food system. While it is important for food
system activists to think strategically, to pose the question exclusively
as a concern of market differentiation risks missing an essential point:
that food democracy is not simply a product to be marketed. One way
of understanding the corporate appropriation of food democracy themes
is to recognize that the desires for humanized socio-ecological relations
have public resonance, and that corporate-organic marketing campaignsmay open up further spaces for the articulation of those desires. In
addition to encouraging greater attention to ecological stewardship,
food democracy also entails the opportunity to realize those desires
through the collective constitution of the relations of food production,
distribution, and consumption. Food system sustainability needs to
be seen as much more than a set of ecological standards easily met
by discerning consumers: it is a fundamentally political project with
obligatory cultural, social, and ideological dimensions.
Just as food democracy needs to be conceptualized as both anecological and political project, an additional challenge is the simul-
taneous embrace and transcendence of localism (Hinrichs 2003:34).
While proximity is an important starting point for a food system,
particularly since re-localization can provide manageable opportunities
for civic engagement (Allen 2004:207; Hendrickson and Heffernan
2002:364366), for defetishization to work all the way down into
food democracy requires that we let go of a local that fetishizes
emplacement as intrinsically just (DuPuis and Goodman 2005:364).Advocates of a new politics of scale call for a reflexive localism which
avoids defensive xenophobiait is rooted in place, but simultaneously
looks outwards to establish solidarity and equality translocally, and
even transnationally as in the case of fair-trade (Allen 2004:176177;
Castree 2004; DuPuis and Goodman 2005; Goodman 2004; Grenfell
2006:241242; Johnston et al 2006). In other words, while the local
scale may be appropriate in some cases (eg progressive community
projects), in other cases governance and ownership issues may be more
effectively organized at the regional or state scale, where demands forfood sovereignty in the international political economy can be negotiated
(Allen 2004:175; Johnston and Baker 2005).
While the challenges facing food democracy are significant, it is
politically and analytically important to avoid deterministic conclusions.
The rise of corporate organics is in part a response to the feelingC 2009 The Authors
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that consumers are implicated in ecosystem crisis and globalized
networks of exploitation with every trip to the grocery store (see Le
Billon 2006), and embedded within a political economic system that
provides a profusion of consumer choices which contribute to feelings
of disorientation (Iyengar and Lepper 2000; Jameson 1991). The rise
of corporate organics appears compatible with a story of capitalist co-
optation, but, as we have emphasized, this is not simply a story about how
genuine alternative practices are annulled by corporate appropriation.
The articulation of food democracy themes in the marketing of corporate
organics speaks to the powerful social meanings of food democracy
themeseating locally, supporting local growers, organizing production
on a manageable scale. Food democracy activities attempt to channel
these themes through non-commodified programs, while marketers
produce similar narratives to sell their products. A process of corporateappropriation is indeed occurring, yet the meanings and social critiques
within these marketing messages may escape the authors intentions.
The feeling of being lost in the supermarket can also work to motivate
eaters to search for meaningful alternatives, and think beyond a political-
economic and ideological foodscape that favors corporate agribusiness.
Most crucially, this collective re-thinking of the industrial food system
can, and must, motivate a collective challenge to the neoliberal reliance
on consumer choice as the optimal means of regulating how and what
we eat.
AcknowledgementsThe authors would like to thank anonymous Antipode reviewers for their useful
comments on this paper. Other useful feedback was provided by commentators at
meetings of the Canadian Communications Association (2006) and the Social Research
in Organic Agriculture conference in Guelph, ON (2007). This research was undertaken,
in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program.
Endnotes1 One British study estimates that a shopping basket with 26 imported organic goods
travels up to 241,000 km before reaching the consumer (Jones 2001:1).2 In California, organic agriculture began as industry with large corporate-owned
organic farms and few smallholders (Guthman 2004a).3 While the parameters of locality are debated by eat-local activists, the term generally
refers to food that travels hundreds (rather than thousands) of miles from farm to fork;
local foods can be transported to market within a few hours of truck transport, rather
than a few days of transnational air-transport supply chains (see Halweil 2005).4 Our sample of brands, generated in October 2007, is slightly different because of the
absence of some product websites (eg Fruiti de Bosca and Millinas Finest).5 The themes observed on the websites reviewed speak to the nature of the consumer
desires that the corporate foodscape seeks to satisfy. Because we see a dialectical
relationship between corporate marketing and consumer desires, a reception analysis
of consumer interpretations of the corporate-organic foodscape would be a useful
complementary piece of research to our corporate discourse analysis, but one which
is beyond the scope of this paper.
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6 The Organic Cow of Vermont was originally based in Stowe, Vermont, but the
headquarters was moved to Colorado once it was bought by Dean Foods in 1999.7 We are thinking here, for example, of community gardens, publicly subsidized good
food boxes, and the myriad other community food security projects that prioritize
sustainable, culturally appropriate access to food for low-income populations (Johnston
and Baker 2005; Norberg-Hodge et al 2002).
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