Communicatively Enacting “Enlightenment” for Global Food Sustainability

• In Event: Critical Interventions for Sustainable Global Value Chain Communication: Suspicion, Critique, and Creative Engagement

Abstract

Food procurement has gradually come to rely on complex global supply chains, from research and development (R&D), to production and distribution, prompting recent protests, such as the Slow Food Movement and activism against genetically modified crops. This case study examines how the members of the agricultural commodities arm (”Agro”) of a well-known global conservation nonprofit frame the tensions of food sustainability. Specifically, Agro emphasizes a “Market” approach toward enlightenment, focusing on “solutions rather than problems,” and reaching out to a diverse set of stakeholders. Food sustainability is posed as a problem of goal optimization in the face of systemic risks that local/grassroots initiatives alone are ill-equipped to address, so that the global supply chain becomes irreplaceable. Even as Agro foregrounds technocrat discourses (e.g., apolitical R&D, life cycle assessment, broad-based scientific education), its members acknowledge the underlying political structures (e.g., funding lines, media coverage, measures/standards for R&D) at stake.

Author

• Rahul Mitra, Wayne State U