OXFORD GEOGRAPHICAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Editors: Gordon Clark, Andrew Goudie, and Ceri Peach
WORLDS OF FOOD
Editorial Advisory Board
Professor Kay Anderson (Australia)
Professor Felix Driver (United Kingdom)
Professor Rita Gardner (United Kingdom)
Professor Avijit Gupta (United Kingdom)
Professor Christian Kesteloot (Belgium)
Professor David Thomas (United Kingdom)
Professor B. L. Turner II (USA)
Professor Michael Watts (USA)
Professor James Wescoat (USA)
ALSO PUBLISHED BY
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
IN THE OXFORD GEOGRAPHICAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES SERIES
The Globalized City
Economic Restructuring and Social Polarization in European Cities
Edited by Frank Moulaert, Arantxa Rodriguez, and Erik Swyngedouw
Of States and Cities
The Partitioning of Urban Space
Edited by Peter Marcuse and Ronald van Kempen
Globalization and Integrated Area Development in European Cities
Frank Moulaert
Globalization and Urban Change
Capital, Culture, and PaciWc Rim Mega-Projects
Kris Olds
Sustainable Livelihoods in Kalahari Environments

Edited by Deborah Sporton and David S. G. Thomas
ConXict, Consensus, and Rationality in Environmental Planning
An Institutional Discourse Approach
Yvonne Rydin
Social Power and the Urbanization of Water
Flows of Power
Erik Swyngedouw
An Uncooperative Commodity
Privatizing Water in England and Wales
Karen J. Bakker
Manufacturing Culture
The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice
Meric S. Gertler
Thailand at the Margins
Internationalization of the State and the Transformation of Labour
Jim Glassman
Industrial Transformation in the Developing World
Michael T. Rock and David P. Angel
Worlds of Food
Place, Power, and
Provenance in the Food
Chain
Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and
Jonathan Murdoch
1
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in

Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With oYces in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
ß Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch 2006
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2006
First published in paperback 2008
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Dep artment,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Morgan, Kevin.

Worlds of food : place, power, and provenance in the food chain /
Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch.
p. cm.—(Oxford geographical and environmental studies)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0–19–927158–5 (alk. paper)
1. Food supply. 2. Agricultural industries. 3. Food industry and trade. 4. Sustainable agriculture.
I. Marsden, Terry. II. Murdoch, Jonathan. III. Title. IV. Series.
HD9000.5.M675 2006
338.1—dc22
2005023275
Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India
Printed in Great Britain
on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk
ISBN 978–0–19–927158–0 (Hbk.) 978–0–19–954228–4 (Pbk.)
13579108642
EDITORS’ PREFACE
Geography and environmental studies are two closely related and burgeon-
ing Welds of academic enquiry. Both have grown rapidly over the past few
decades. At once catholic in its approach and yet strongly committed to a
comprehensive understanding of the world, geography has focused upon the
interaction between global and local phenomena. Environmental studies, on
the other hand, have shared with the discipline of geography an engagement
with diVerent disciplines, addressing wide-ranging and signiWcant environ-
mental issues in the scientiWc community and the policy community. From
the analysis of climate change and physical environmental processes to the
cultural dislocations of postmodernism in human geography, these two Welds
of enquiry have been at the forefront of attempts to comprehend transform -
ations taking place in the world, manifesting themselves as a variety of
separate but interrelated spatial scales.

The Oxford Geog raphical and Environmental Studies series aims to reXect
this diversity and engagement. Our goal is to publish the best original
research in the two related Welds, and, in doing so, to demonstrate the sig-
niWcance of geographical and environmental perspectives for understanding
the contemporary world. As a consequence, our scope is deliberately inter-
national and ranges widely in terms of topics, approaches, and methodo lo-
gies. Authors are welcome from all corners of the globe. We hope the series
will help to redeWne the frontiers of knowledge and build bridges within the
Welds of geography and environmental studies. We hope also that it will
cement links with issues and approaches that have originated outside the
strict con Wnes of these disciplines. In doing so, our publications contribute to
the frontiers of research and knowledge while representing the fruits of
particular and diverse scholarly traditions.
Gordon L. Clark
Andrew Goudie
Ceri Peach
This page intentionally left blank
To the memory of Jonathan Murdoch
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Some books are more of a collective endeavour than others, and this is
emphatically one of them. From start to Wnish we have received a wide
array of support—intellectual, practical, and emotional. In the United States
we must thank Bill Friedland, Melanie DuPuis, David Goodman, Michael
Watts, Dick Walker, and Elizabeth Barham. In Italy we’d like to thank
Gianluca Brunori and Claudio Cecchi. In the United Kingdom we must
thank David Barling, Bill Goldsworthy, Duncan Green, Tim Lang, Bob
Lee, Peter Midmore, Louis Morgan, Robin Morgan, Sue Morgan, Rory
O’Sullivan, Pam Robinson, Andrew Sayer, and Neil Ward. Among our
colleagues in the School of City and Regional Planning we would like to

thank Janice Edwards, Andrew Flynn, Mara Miele, Selyf Morgan, Cynthia
Trevett, and Diane Tustin. We also acknowledge the marvellous research
assistance of our colleague Joek Roex. We owe a very special debt of
gratitude to Roberta Sonnino for helping us through a very diYcult period
in the closing stages of the book. Her editorial contribution was second to
none and it went way beyond the call of duty. We are also enormously
grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council for supporting our
work on local and regional food systems. Last but not least, at Oxford
University Press we shall always be grateful to Anne Ashby for her patience
and humanity when schedules slipped (again and again). Needless to say,
none of the above is in any way responsible for the shortcomings of the book.
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
List of Figures xii
List of Tables xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
1. Networks, Conventions, and Regions: Theorizing
‘Worlds of Food’ 7
2. The Regulatory World of Agri-food: Politics, Power,
and Conventions 26
3. Geogra phies of Agri-food 53
4. Localized Quality in Tuscany 89
5. California: The Parallel Worlds of Rival Agri-food Paradigms 109
6. The Commodity World in Wales 143
7. Beyond the Placeless Foodscape: Place, Power, and Provenance 166
References 198
Index 217
LIST OF FIGURES
3.1a. Cargill/Monsanto joint ventures and strategic alliances 56

3.1b. ConAgra joint ventures and strategic alliances 57
3.2. Rural space as competitive space and the ‘battleground’
between the co nventional and alternative agri-food sectors 72
6.1. The structure of the Agri-Food Partnership in Wales 158
6.2. The Agri-Food Strat egy in outline 160
Box Figures
1. The Graig Farm network 78
2. An organigram of the Waddengroup Foundation 80
LIST OF TABLES
2.1. EU and US farm support systems in comparative perspective 37
2.2. Rival approaches to biotechnology regulation 45
3.1. Theorizing food quality—opening up the quality
food spectrum: the SFSC battlegroun d 73
5.1. California agri-food initiatives 137
7.1. The top ten food retailers in 2002 179
This page intentionally left blank
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AFI Alternative food initiative
AFN Alternative food network
ANT Actor–Network theory
AoA Agreement on Agriculture
AOC Appellation d’origine contro
ˆ
le
´
e
CAFOD Catholic Agency for Overseas Development
CAP Common Agricultural Policy
CCOF California CertiWed Organic Farmers
COFA California Organic Foods Act

COOL Country of Origin Labelling
CSA Community supported agriculture
DEFRA Department for Environment, Food and Rural AVairs
DOC Denominazione d’Origine Controllata
DOCG Designation of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
EQIP Environmental Qual ity Incentive Program
FDA Food and Drug Administration
FSA Food Standards Agency
FT Fairtrade
GATT General Agreement on TariVs and Trade
GI Geographical Indication
GMO Genetically modiWed organism
LFA Less Favoured Area
MAFF Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
MAP ModiWed atmosphere packaging
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NGO Non-governmental organization
NIMB Not in my body
PDO Protected Designation of Origin
PGI Protected Geographical Indication
PSE Producer Support Estimate
rBGH Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone
RDP Rural Development Plan
RDR Rural Development Regulation
SDT Special and DiVerential Treatment
SFSC Short food supply chain
TSE Total Support Estimate
USDA United States Department of Agriculture
WTO World Trade Organ ization

This page intentionally left blank
Introduction
When Guillermo Vargas from Costa Rica visited the British House of
Commons in 2002 to publicize Fairtrade For tnight, he delivered a stark
message. ‘When you buy Fairtrade’, he said, ‘you are supporting our dem-
ocracy’. It is hard to imagine a more powerful testament to the ripple eVect of
our food choices. Buying food may be a private matter, but the type of food
we buy, the shops or stalls from where we buy it, and the signiWcance we
attach to its provenance have enormous social consequences. Our food
choice has multiple implications—for our health and well-being, for eco-
nomic development at home and abroad, for the ecological integrity of the
global environment, for transport systems, for the relationship between
urban and rural areas and, as the Fairtrade story shows, for the very survival
of democracy in poor, commodity-producing countries.
Although food consumption habits show considerable diVerences between
countries, and between social classes within countries, a number of generic
trends have emerged in recent years, some of which have been attributed to
the globalization of style and taste. In the processed food cultures of the US
and the UK, for example, the key trends include the increasing popularity of
convenience foods, the decreasing amount of time devoted to preparing
meals, the falling share of money de voted to food in the household budget,
the primacy of price when buying food, and, more recently, burgeoning
concerns among all classes of consumer about the quality and safety of food.
Some of these trends appear to be contradictory, particularly the emphasis
on cheap food on the one hand and the growing demand for healthy food on
the other. Another example might be the growing interest in local food,
which is often equated with fresh and wholesome produce, and ‘global
sourcing’, which aims to transcend the constraints of locality and seasonality.
Conventional food retailers are acutely conscious of the need to accommo-
date these conXicting signals, as a trade body in the UK freely acknowledged

when it said that ‘the industry challenge is to Wnd a balance between support-
ing Briti sh farmers and reducing food miles, and satisfying consumer de-
mand for year round availability of an increased number of products, at ever
lower prices’ (IGD, 2002).
However, these diVerent food trends may be less contradictory than they
appear considering that, to a large extent, they reXect the food choices
of diVerent social segments of the market. These consumer patterns also
correspond to very diVerent agri-food systems. Although we try to eschew
binary oppositions in this book, it is useful to draw a stylized distinction
between two agri-food systems, namely: the conventional system, which is
dominated by productivist agriculture and large companies producing, pro-
cessing, and retailing food on a national and global scale, and the alternative
system, which tends to be associated with a more ecological approach to
agriculture, with smaller companies producing and retaili ng food for local-
ized markets. This distinction is of course something of a caricature because,
as we show later, the border between these systems is becoming more and
more porous. For example, not only are conventional supermarkets increas-
ingly interested in selling local food, but they are already the largest retailers
of organic food—two categories of food that are indelibly associated with the
received image of the alternative sector (Morgan and Murdoch, 2000).
From the standpoint of the conventional system, the history of agriculture
is a productivist success story of the highest order. One of the proudest boasts
here is that agriculture has delivered something that previous generations
could only dream about, namely a ready supply of cheap food that is
accessible to, and aVordable by, the vast majority of people in the (western)
world. Certainly on the conventional metric, that extols quantity over quality
in a mass production system designed to reap economies of scale for produ-
cers and low prices for consumers and that is deeply embedded in Anglo-
American corporate culture, the record looks like one success story after
another, as food supply became progressively ‘liberated’ from nature and her

seasons. Agriculture, in this conception, is just another economic sector, part
of the consumer goods industry.
In recent years, however, a rival interpretation has emerged. This is based
not on the productivist metric of mass production, but on the ecological
metric of sustainable development, a metric that invites us to internalize the
costs that are externalized in the conventional food system. The externalized
costs of the conventional food system are perhaps most apparent in terms of
environmental and healthcare costs. The main environmental costs are re-
lated to the global production and distribution of food. On the production
side, the costs are mainly associated with the intensiWcation of agricultural
production, which has caused declining soil fertility, water pollution, animal
welfare problems, and the loss of valuable habitats and landscape features
(Pretty, 1998; 2002). On the distribution side, the environmental costs of food
miles have been well docu mented. Moreover, despite the fact that aviation is
the most damaging mode of transport, there is no tax on aviation fuel, a
glaring anomaly from the ecological standpoint (A. Jones, 2001).
Human health is another sphere where the externaliz ed costs of the con-
ventional food system are becoming ever more apparent. Among nutrition-
ists, the year 2000 was very signiWcant because for the Wrst time the number of
overweight people in the world matched the number of undernourished
people, with 1.1 billion people in each category (Nestle, 2002). The escalating
2 Introduction
Wnancial costs of diet-related disease are placing intolerable burdens on
healthcare systems, particularly in the US, where the consumption of foods
high in fat, sugar, and salt is associated with high levels of obesity throughout
the population. Recent scientiWc Wndings suggest that fast food creates an
addictive eVect not unlike that of tobacco, leading some authors to argue that
obesity may be less a problem of gluttony and fecklessness, and more a
problem of vulnerable human genes in a hostile food environment (E. R.
Shell, 2002). Whatever the precise cause, obesity presents the conventional

food system with an enormous problem—the problem of anti-obesity litiga-
tion from aggrieved consumers and cash-strapped governments. The under-
lying rationale of anti-obesity litigation is to make the conventional food
system face up to, and pay for, the costs it has externalized on to others.
Disquiet about the health and environmental eVects of the conventional
food system has fuelled increasing anxiety about both food sup ply and the
regulatory regime that is responsible for policing it. Arguably, the Weld of
food provision has become one of the most controversial in the political
arena as well as at the level of everyday life (Harvey, McMeekin, and Ward,
2004). One of the eVects of the decline of public trust in the conventional
food system is that certain consumers—particularly educated, middle-class
consumers—are becoming ever more concerned about where their food comes
from and how it is produced and distributed (Bell and Valentine, 1997). A
growing sensibility to the place and provenance of food provisioning is often
construed as a boon for the alternative food system, which trades on the
quality attributes of authenticity and traceability. What is less often appre-
ciated, however, is the extent to which place and provenance are insinuating
themselves into the conventional food system. For example, the current
political struggle in Europe and the US over food labelling policy is in part
a conXict about whether consumers have the right, or even the need, to know
the social and spatial history of their food. As we shall see, the corporate agri-
business sector, particularly in the US, argues that consumer s have little or
no interest in the place and provenance of their food, whereas consumer,
health, and environmental campaigners beg to diVer. Far from being an
innocent technical arena, then, food labelling policy is a key site of ‘the
quality battleground’ in the contempor ary food chain (Marsden, 2004b).
The underlying themes of the book—place, power, and provenance—were
chosen because they encapsulate some of the most compelling political issues
in the agri-food system. Place has always bedevilled social and spatial the-
orists because of its inherent ambiguity. Like D. Harvey (1996: 208), how-

ever, we consider the ‘multiple layers of meaning’ an advantage, rather than a
problem. These multiple meanings range from ‘place’ as a jurisdictional
entity, such as a local authority district, to ‘place’ as a relat ional construct,
where social or political relations are the determining forces, rather than
formal administrative boundaries. Although the capitalist process of ‘cre-
ative destruction’ is ultimately what drives the making and breaking of
Introduction 3
places, this is a deeply mediated process, especially when state action is
invoked to temper or resist the logic of market forces. Some of the rural
places that we examine in later chapters are highly distinctive because, for
much of the post-war period, they were part of a state controlled agri-food
system, rather than a market regime. As this state system in Europe and the
US is gradually liberalized, these rural places have to invent new vocations
for themselves, for example by diversifying into quality products that play
upon their association with place and provenance. Adjusting to a more
spatially conscious world of producti on and consumption is much less of a
challenge for such countries as Italy and France, where a link between places
and products has been maintained, than for such countries as the US and the
UK, where regionally distinctive products long ago gave way to the anon-
ymity of manufactured products, the legacy of which is a ‘placeless food-
scape’ (Ilbery and Kneafsey, 2000: 319).
Although it is often conXated with place, provenance has a much wider
meaning. Its literal meaning—which is the place of origin or the earliest
known history of something—is an ambiguous amalgam of the spatial and
the social, of geography and history. With respect to food, we use the term in
the widest sense to embrace a spatial dimension (its place of origin), a social
dimension (its methods of production and distribution), and a cultural
dimension (its perceived qualities and reputation). The social dimension is
particularly important because it helps consumers to deal with the ethical
issues in globally dispersed food supply chains, including the employment

conditions of food production workers; the welfare of animals farmed as
food animals, such as battery hens and veal calves for example; the integrity
of some food production methods, such as adding hormones to beef for
instance; the environmental e Vects of certain production methods, such as
the use of pesticides and the destruction of Xora and fauna. To the extent
that a new moral economy is beginning to emerge around food issues,
this question of provenance assum es a central importance in food chain
regulation.
If place has multiple layers of meaning, so does power. Runn ing through
the manifold forms of power addressed in this book is a conception that
understands power in terms of a capacity to mobilize, control, and deploy
resources—be they economic, political, cultural, or indeed moral—a concep-
tion that recognizes the distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power. The
common currency of the corporate and political worlds, hard power ulti-
mately involves the power to cajole, to compel, and to command by force if
necessary. As we shall see, the exercise of hard power is a routine feature of
the conventional food system, especially in retailer-led supply chains where
primary producers have been so emasculated that, in some cases, the prices
they receive from supermarkets can be lower than their costs of production, a
manifestly unsustainable relationship. Soft power , by contrast, refers to
the capacity to enlist, to inspire, and to persuade through ethical and/or
4 Introduction
intellectual argument, a form of power that is more prevalent in the alterna-
tive food system and something we explore through the prism of the new
moral economy of food.
A moral economy perspective could signiWcantly enrich the agri-food
literature, a burgeoning but under-theorized Weld. While economic geog-
raphy and rural sociology have both punched above their weight in the
past to establish the subject we know today as ‘agri-food studies’, these
disciplines need to be supplemented with new perspectives. As well as open-

ing itself up to moral economy, agri-food studies could also beneWt from
more critical engagement with theories of multilevel governance because, far
from being a local matter, food chain localization will need to draw support
from every tier of the multilevel polities that govern our lives today.
The twin perspectives of moral economy and multilevel governance help to
shape the analysis in the following chapters. Chapter 1 reviews some of the
theoretical literature that we consider to be most relevant to the task of
theorizing the ‘worlds of food’ that straddle the conventional and alternative
food systems. In particular, we focus on the contribution of three sets of
theories, namely political economy, actor–network, and conventions theory,
to examine what each has to oVer. Chapter 2 examines the protean regula-
tory world of agri-food at three diVerent levels of governance: the global
level, where we focus on WTO eVorts to liberalize world agriculture; the EU
and US levels, where we show that the farm support systems are being
reregulated rather than deregulated; and the UK level, where we examine
the advent of a dedicated Food Standards Agency to champion the neglected
consumer voice in a food system hitherto dominated by producer interests.
Chapter 3 extends the thematic focu s by examining the changing geographies
of agri-food, contrasting the deterritorializing thrust of the conventional
food system with the reterritorializi ng logic of the alternative food system.
Following the three opening thematic chapters, we turn to consider three
regional worlds of food in Tuscany, California, and Wales. We selected
Tuscany because it is one of the pioneering regions in Europe for what we
call ‘localized quality’ production, a system that aims to oV er an alternative
to the productivist philosophy of the conventional food system. If Tuscany is
a European pioneer, then California is certainly an American pioneer, and
perhaps even a global pioneer, because it is deemed by some geographers to
be the world’s most advanced agricultural zone (Walker, 2004). As the
world’s sixth largest economy, and with a state population of 34 million
people, California is more akin to a European country than a European

region. However, as we were less interested in the issue of comparative scale
and more interested in a pioneering worl d of food, we decided to sacriWce the
former for the sake of the latter. What is perhaps most distinctive about
California from the perspective of this book is that it is playing a pioneering
role in the conventional and the alternative food systems. After focusing on
the frontier worlds of Tuscany and California, we turn to consider the
Introduction 5
peripheral world of basic commodity production in Wales. Paradoxically,
the situation in which Wales Wnds itself is probably much closer to the
majority of regions around the world than is the situation in Tuscany and
California. To this extent, the Welsh Agri-food Strategy, designed to help the
country escape the ‘comm odity world’ and break into the ‘quality world’,
may be far more instructive to other regions that are engaged in making this
transition. Finally, Chapter 7 examines how the three themes of place, power,
and provenance play out in the conventional and ecological food systems,
blurring the boundaries between them and creating increasingly complex
worlds of food.
6 Introduction
1
Networks, Conventions, and
Regions: Theorizing ‘Worlds of Food’
Introduction
Food is a long-standing productive activity which carries a number of
diVerent production and consumption attributes. However, much of the
recent literature focuses on a limited number of such attributes—namely,
the transformation of the foo d chain and, more in general, of production
sites. In particular, much attention has been paid to globalization, the
growing power of transnational corporations and their relentless exploit-
ation of nature.
In this chapter we argue that this kind of focus is not alone suYcient to

account for the growing complexity of contemporary agri-food geography.
Growing concerns about food safety and nutrition are leading many con-
sumers in advanced capitalist countries to demand quality products that are
embedded in regional ecologies and cultures. This is creating an alternative
geography of food, based on ecological food chains and on a new attention to
places and natures, that, as we will see in Ch. 3, reveals a very diVerent
mosaic of productivity—one that contrasts in important respects with the
dominant distribution of productive activities so apparent in the global food
sector (Gilg and Battershill, 1998; Ilbery and Kneafsey, 1998).
Our aim is to develop an analytical approach that can aid our understand-
ing of this new agri-food geography and can introduce a greater appreciation
of the complexity of the contemporary food sector. To this end, we begin by
considering work on the globalization of the food sector and by showing that
recent analyses have usefully uncovered some of the key motive forces
driving this process—most notably the desire by industrial capitals both to
‘outXank’ the biological systems and to disembed food from a traditional
regional cultural context of production and consumption. After considering
the recent assertion of regionalized quality (which can be seen as a response
to the outXanking manœuvres inherent in industrialization), we examine
approaches such as political economy, actor–network theory, and conven-
tions theory that have made signiWcant in-road s into agri-food studies and
have revealed diVering aspects of the modern food system. In doing so, we
highlight what we consider the main limitation of these approaches: i.e. their
tendency to conceptualize the contemporary agri-food geography in terms of
binary oppositions—such as, for example, conventional v. alternative, and
global v. local.
In order to begin to overcome such binary thinking, in the last part of the
chapter we analyse and expand Storper’s theory of productive worlds. We
feel this theory helps to engage with the varied outcomes that now exist in the
contemporary food sector and can therefore highlight the implications of

diVerent productive systems on diVering spaces and places. However, we also
suggest that Storper’s theory needs some modiWcation if it is to be made
applicable to the analysis of the contemporary food sector. In particular, we
highlight two aspects that require further work: one , the key role that nature
plays in the production and consumption of food; two, the activities of
political institutions situated at diVering levels of the polity—including re-
gions, nation-states, and international organizations. We attempt to inte-
grate these two features into Storper’s general approach in order to con jure
up diVering worlds of food. The notion of worlds of food that emerges from
this analysis will guide the discussion in later chapters.
A Bifurcated Food Sector?
For some time now it has been widely believed that the agri-food system is
globalized. As a consequence, much recent research (see e.g. Goodman, 1991;
Goodman and Redclift, 1991; Goodman and Watts, 1994; 1997; Goodman,
Sorj, and Wilkinson, 1987; McMichael, 1994; Whatmore, 1994) has taken as
its main focus how processes of globalization come to be driven by the
reshaping of food production processes according to patterns of capital
accumulation. In many respects, the globalization of the food system follows
the same course as globalization in other economic sectors, that is, produc-
tion chains are increasingly orchestrated across long distances by a few large-
scale economic actors, usually transnational corporations (Dicken, 1998). In
other important respects, however, the development of the food system
follows its own course due to some speciWc characteristics of food produc-
tion, notably its close association with a natural resource base and cultural
variation in consumption practices (Goodman and Watts, 1994). In our view,
the globalization of the food sector is uniquely constrained by nature and
culture: food production requires the transformation of natural entities into
edible form, while the act of eating itself is a profoundly cultural exercise,
with diets and eating habits varying in line with broader cultural formations.
These two key aspects necessarily tie food chains to given spatial formations.

In other words, food chains never fully escape ecology and culture. Thus, in
order to understand the development of the agri-food sector it is necessary to
consider how forces promoting globalization interact with natures and cul-
tures that are spatially ‘Wxed’ in some way. In the following pages we consider
8 Networks, Conventions, and Regions