ABSTRACT
Food matters. It rallies people and it often induces unexpected changes in society. Food is contested and can be the object of ‘food wars’ (Lang and Heasman 2004). Food shortages and food riots show that the quantity and availability of food do matter to people, just as food scandals and associated scares make clear that the quality of food also concerns people a lot. Abruptly imposed limitations on exports in some major food-exporting countries and scarcities (or at least the fear of them) have once again put the origin of food production on the agenda: where does our food come from and how secure is its supply? Of equal importance are questions of whom and how: what is the identity of the producers and what is their style of farming? These questions cover a wide range of
I am very grateful to the participants in the Yale Conference on Food Sovereignty (2013) who stimulated me, with their comments and questions, to further develop this paper. I am indebted to the anonymous reviewers who helped me very much in fine-tuning the different lines of argumentation. I thank Nick Parrott for his valuable help in upgrading the different versions of this text. *Email: jandouwe.vanderploeg@wur.nl
Vol. 41, No. 6, 999-1030, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2013.876997
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issues that include gender relations, food safety, animal welfare and the attractiveness and accessibility of the countryside.
