Tiny Trees for Trendy Produce: Technologies of Customization and Flexible Specialization in Modern Apple Orchards

• In Event: 207 - Regular Session. Rural Sociology: New Directions in the Study of Agriculture and Food Systems

Abstract

Apple varieties boom and bust as the vogue for new flavors cycle through the market. Dwarfing rootstocks, an old but freshly blossoming orchard technology, allows growers to intervene in trees in new ways and keep up with shifts in consumer demand. The rootstocks free market participation from ecological constraints in ways that support new trend cycles and niches in produce. Drawing on interviews and orchard tours with growers in the American Midwest and apple conference observations, this paper discusses the ways that rootstock technologies cultivate entrepreneurial customization and flexible specialisation in apple orchards. In doing so, it contributes substantively to work on the future of food and theoretically to conversations about the role of new materialist theoretical approaches in a political economy.

Author

• Katharine A. Legun, University of Otago