Globalizing the Local: Organic Food and the Problem of Production

• In Event: Food, Culture, and the Environment: New Directions in Critical Food Studies

Abstract

The United States Department of Agriculture's 1990 National Organic Program emerged in an attempt to offer an official marker for those producers not using synthetic substances in food production. With the rise of an $18 billion organic food industry, agribusinesses and corporate farms have made inroads by underbidding local farmers and ranchers, while also successfully lobbying for the inclusion of synthetics in organic production standards. Using examples of family farms and agribusinesses, I will argue that "organic" presently operates symbolically as a trope for the local while, at the same time, displacing the sustainable practices it once represented.

Author

• Jeff Motter, Wabash College