This article analyzes the institutionalization of the global organic agriculture field and sheds new light on the conventionalization debate. The institutions that shape the field form a tripartite ...standards regime of governance (TSR) that links standard-setting, certification, and accreditation activities, in a layering of markets for services that are additional to (and inseparable from) the market for certified organic products. At each of the three poles of the TSR, i.e., for standard-setting, certification, and accreditation, we describe how the corresponding markets were constructed over time and the role of the different actors in their evolution. We analyze the politics at stake among the actors at each pole, their competing or cooperative interests and visions, and the tensions between them in the promotion of markets. Through the lens of the TSR heuristic, we show that the institutionalization of the organic field beginning in the 1990s and its de facto inclusion in the broader sustainability field beginning in the 2000s contribute to a progressive distancing between the organic movement and its initial political project of alterity, to which public and private actors both contribute actively. As a set of interlinked market institutions, the TSR orients and narrows the scope of debate, which becomes restricted to “market-compatible” dimensions and objects. We conclude that the TSR is a promising heuristic for analyzing contemporary global regulation.
Despite a common legal framework at EU-level, organic farming has developed differently in Member States. Previous analyses showed the influence of various factors on the development of the organic ...sector, including public policies, discourses, and marketing channels. Building on a relational perspective, we propose a conceptual framework that provides a situated understanding of national trajectories. We argue that the organic sector emerges based on relations between organic actors, policymakers, mainstream farmers associations, advocacy groups, and actors along the food chain. Based on these relations, we analyse the development of the organic sector in Austria, Italy, and France. We show that its dynamics result from a complex and evolving intertwining of relations over time. These dynamics are unpredictable, as they depend on whether and how actors can build and maintain relations between organic agriculture and broader issues in the agrifood system, such as the maintenance of family farms, environmental protection, gastronomic heritage, fairness in the food chain, or export promotion. The relational perspective highlights the historicity of relations, as well as the extent to which relations are influenced by the temporal and the spatial context. By framing the agrifood system as an ensemble of emergent social practices rather than a field of invariant logic and automatic unfoldings, the relational perspective emphasises the importance of seizing windows of opportunity, and the role of creativity in actions.
•The trajectories result from a complex and evolving intertwining of relations.•They were shaped by relations with broader issues of the agri-food system.•Actors reframe and reinterpret the meaning of organic farming.•A relational perspective emphasises the role of creativity in actions.
Why and how organic agriculture has been developing in Africa is under-studied, especially from a political stance. We explore two contrasting empirical case studies of national organic trajectories: ...Uganda and Benin. In both countries, organic agriculture emerged in the 1980s around food security stakes and spread in the 1990s through certified export value chains, with a faster development in Uganda than in Benin. From a theoretical perspective, this paper proposes an original analytical grid to study national trajectories of institutionalization of organic farming in Africa, based on three main variables: the policy regime in place in the country (including socio-economic and agrifood dimensions); the relative interest of public and private foreign actors in organic agriculture; and the strength of the national organic agriculture movement. Our results show that the degree of institutionalization of the Green Revolution paradigm in the country is of capital importance for explaining developments in organic farming, particularly its materialization through the increasing use of synthetic inputs: institutionalizing organic farming means deinstitutionalizing agrochemicals. We also show that the high level of extraversion of organic agriculture development in Africa through its focus on certified export value chains raises long-term questions of farmers' empowerment and of local consumers/citizens' access to local organic food. Finally, national organic agriculture movements can play a crucial role by politicizing certain issues in national public debate, such as pesticides' impacts on human and environmental health, and by advising governments in organic policy framing and implementation. Applying the proposed socio-political analytical grid to new national or regional African case studies will help to further enrich the empirical knowledge on organic food and farming in Africa.
•Analysing organic agriculture development needs to look at political aspects rather than only technical and economical ones.•Focusing on certified export value chains questions farmers’ empowerment and local citizens’ access to safe products.•Institutionalizing organic agriculture implies deinstitutionalizing synthetic inputs use in both practices and imaginaries.•Organic agriculture movements can play a key role by politicizing pesticides (impacts on human health and the environment).•National organic agriculture movements can actively support governments in organic policy framing and implementation.
Large-scale agricultural investments (LAIs) transform land use systems worldwide. There is, however, limited understanding about how the common global drivers of land use change induce different ...forms of agricultural investment and produce different impacts on the ground. This article provides a cross-country comparative analysis of how differences in business models, land use changes, and governance systems explain differences in socio-economic, food security, and environmental impacts of LAIs in Kenya, Madagascar, and Mozambique. It brings together results on these aspects generated in the AFGROLAND project that collected data in a multi-method approach via household surveys, business model surveys, semi-structured household interviews, life-cycle assessments of farm production, analysis of remote-sensing data, key informant interviews, and document analysis. For the present project synthesis, we combined a collaborative expert workshop with a comparative analysis of 16 LAIs. The results show that the LAIs follow four distinctive impact patterns, ranging from widespread adverse impacts to moderate impacts. Results demonstrate how the following conditions influence how the global drivers of land use change translate into different LAIs and different impacts on the ground: labor intensity, prior land use, utilization of land, farm size, type of production, experience in local agriculture, land tenure security, accountability of state and local elites, the mobilization capacity of civil society, expansion of resource frontiers, agricultural intensification, and indirect land use change. The results indicate that commercial agriculture can be a component in sustainable development strategies under certain conditions, but that these strategies will fail without substantial, sustained increases in the economic viability and inclusiveness of smallholder agriculture, land tenure security, agro-ecological land management, and support for broader patterns of endogenous agra
To better understand policy integration dynamics, this paper analyses the early implementation of three urban food policies in France (Montpellier, Rennes, Strasbourg). A key challenge of food ...policies is their intersectoral nature, while policy design is usually meant to be sectoral. This article seeks to understand both levers and brakes to the implementation of effective integrated policies at the urban level. To explore the making and “everydayness” of the three policy case studies, we collected empirical data based on a multi-faceted methodology comprising a wide review of the grey literature, 29 in-depth interviews, and several series of participant observations on the ground. Our analysis indicates that dedicated organisational resources, including assigned units, trained staff and appropriate financial resources, are keys to the deployment of integrated food policies. We argue that such organisational resources should be more systematically studied in the policy integration literature. Local food policies should also be assessed more critically by putting the organisational resources they receive into perspective with the massive use the local government can make of them for communication purposes.
This article traces how 'agroecology' is co-produced as a global socio-technical object. The site of co-production, the Global Dialogue on Agroecology, was convened by the Food and Agriculture ...Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in different cities around the world between 2014 and 2018 (Rome 2014; Brasilia, Dakar, Bangkok 2015; La Paz, Kunming, Budapest 2016; Rome 2018). We analyze these 'expert' symposia and regional meetings by exploring how knowledge about agroecology circulates and frames the terms of debate. Our analysis is based on an ethnography carried out by the first author since 2013 and participant observations by both authors in the Global Dialogue. We focus on three key processes that contribute to the stabilization of a global agroecology: 1) the work carried out to define 'agroecology', 2) actors' interests and strategies that are revealed through the politics of circulation, and 3) the emergence of the 'evidence based' logic within this dialogue and the 'experts' who are legitimized. We argue that the version of 'agroecology' that was stabilized through the Global Dialogue is one that has been highly influenced by civil society actors, even though they were not recognized as 'experts' in the process. We conclude with reflections upon the politics of 'agroecological' knowledge and what this means for the institutionalization of agroecology.
Les crises sanitaires, environnementales et sociales des dernières décennies ont mis en question le modèle industriel de production agricole et alimentaire. Le grand public s’immisce désormais dans ...les débats sur les façons de fabriquer et distribuer nos aliments, auparavant confinés aux négociations entre pouvoirs publics, profession agricole et industriels. Fait biologique premier, fait social incontestable, l’alimentation s’affirme aujourd’hui comme fait politique. Qui gouverne le système alimentaire et influence les décisions publiques ? Qui innove et expérimente d’autres systèmes alimentaires ? Comment sont pris en compte les enjeux environnementaux et sociaux liés à l’alimentation ? À partir de recherches originales sur la défiance, la gastronomie, le gaspillage, la sécurité alimentaire, la FNSEA, l’agriculture raisonnée, la lutte contre l’antibiorésistance, les politiques locales, l’agriculture biologique, les marchés de gros, les circuits courts, la pêche durable ou encore la pisciculture, cet ouvrage aborde ces questions sous un jour nouveau. Malgré un consensus politique apparent faisant de l’alimentation un enjeu majeur, celui-ci s’avère particulièrement fragile lors de la définition et de la mise en oeuvre concrète des politiques alimentaires. Face aux attentes grandissantes des mangeurs, les acteurs du système alimentaire agro-industriel développent des stratégies de canalisation des critiques et de résistance aux potentiels changements. Un éclairage indispensable pour toutes les personnes s’intéressant à l’évolution contemporaine des systèmes alimentaires.
Food security, a long-established item on the international agenda, raises many issues including production, consumption, poverty, inequalities, healthcare and conflicts. However, in 2007/2008 the ...global food security debate was relaunched with a single dominant focus which continues to the present day: increasing agricultural production. This paper explains this productionist bias - which may translate into inadequate policies - by combining insights from institutionalist and cognitive analyses. We show that, despite recent reforms, the global food security field remains dominated by macro- and micro-institutions that put food availability and agricultural production at the heart of the problem and solutions. The political and discursive strategies developed by transnational corporations and private foundations to promote their productivist interests are also key, along with the demands of dominant farmers' unions in exporting countries. Although advocating opposite development patterns, civil society actors implicitly reinforce the productionist perspective through their focus on family agriculture.
Scholars describe the proliferation of sustainability standards by multi‐stakeholder initiatives as part of an organizational field for sustainability. The aim of this article is to gain a better ...understanding of the institutionalization process of this global organizational field by focusing on the case of the ISEAL Alliance (the global association for sustainability standards). We show how ISEAL puts specific strategies into place to both reinforce and expand the role and influence of sustainability standards. This institutional entrepreneurship consists primarily of two dimensions: institutionalizing macro‐standards based on a market‐driven and procedural vision of sustainability; and simultaneously legitimating both the tools and ISEAL through internal and external enrolments and entanglements. The characterization of ISEAL's activities in this way brings politics back into the analysis of sustainability standard‐related technical debates and extends our understanding of how the micro‐dynamics within organizational fields are interdependent upon macro‐dynamics outside organizational fields.
This introductory article to the special issue contributes to ongoing debates on pesticides in agriculture by focusing on their alternatives. Through a literature review, we explore the pluralism of ...those alternatives and the socio-political processes that support or hinder their expansion. The first section examines the obstacles encountered by public policies aimed at reducing pesticide use. Resistances are both external to public decision-making, i.e. agricultural players, agrochemical firms, and internal, related to the existing regulatory mechanisms, including the scientific expertise used to assess risks. The second section introduces the two main families of alternatives to pesticides, and their respective political and scientific underpinnings. On the one hand, solutions based on substitution through alternative technologies, such as biocontrol. On the other hand, solutions based on the systemic redesign of agricultural systems, such as organic farming or agroecology. The third section presents the contributions that make up this special issue. We highlight the political work carried out at the interface between policies, expertise and markets in order to legitimise one or the other alternative. Beyond a strictly technological approach, the papers stress the importance of considering the diversity of components, stakeholders and processes involved at the whole food system level. Farmers and practitioners make complex production choices and trade-offs. These decisions are influenced by policies and upstream companies, which offer inputs or plant health diagnostic technologies, and by downstream actors, i.e.processors, retailers and policymakers, who shape the markets for pesticide-free food. The approach we propose here calls for a fresh sociological look at policymaking and expertise involved in identifying and dealing with pesticides issues.
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