Making Heritage: The Case of Black Beluga Agriculture on the Northern Great Plains

Abstract

This article considers the perils and potential of an increasingly popular alternative food commodity: heritage and heirloom foods. Drawing on ethnographic research with Black Beluga lentil farmers in Montana, I develop a process-based means of conceptualizing heritage agriculture, to avoid the pitfalls of simply reifying old crop varieties. This article makes three contributions to scholarship on alternative food commodities: (1) modeling a method of generative critique of alternative food movements that are in danger of being undermined by their articulation as commodity markets, (2) demonstrating how feminist ethnography of situated knowledge production can provide insight into processes of cross-species learning through which alternative food systems are created and sustained, and (3) suggesting that a reflexive approach to alternative food movement praxis is the best means of fostering environmental sustainability and social justice.

本文考量一种逐渐流行的替代粮食商品之风险与潜力：袭产与祖传粮食。我运用对蒙大拿种植有机黑扁豆的农民进行之民族志研究，建立一个以过程为基础的概念化袭产农业之方法，以避免仅仅具体化早期作物品种多样性的陷阱。本文对于替代粮食商品的学术文献作出三大贡献：（1）针对另类粮食运动的具生产力之批判方法进行模式化，而该运动正因连结商品市场而面临受到破坏之危机，（2）证实女性主义民族志的情境化知识生产，如何能够对跨物种学习过程提出洞见，而另类的粮食系统便是透过该过程创造并维繫之，以及（3）主张对另类粮食运动实践的反身性取径，是促进环境可持续性和社会正义的最佳方法。

Este artículo explora los peligros y el potencial de un producto alimenticio alternativo cada vez más popular: los alimentos de la tradición y reliquias familiares. A partir de investigación etnográfica entre cultivadores de la lenteja Black Beluga de Montana, desarrollo un medio basado en proceso para conceptualizar la agricultura de heredad tradicional, para evitar caer en la trampa de simplemente reificar antiguas variedades de cultivos. Este artículo hace tres contribuciones a la erudición relacionada con productos alimenticios alternativos: (1) modelando un método de crítica generadora a los movimientos en favor de alimentos alternativos en peligro de ser socavados por su articulación como mercados de mercaderías, (2) demostrando la manera como la etnografía feminista para la producción de conocimiento situado puede producir mayor compenetración con procesos de aprendizaje trans-especie, a través del cual se crean y se conservan sistemas de alimentos alternativos, y (3) sugiriendo que un enfoque reflexivo a la práctica del movimiento de alimentos alternativos es el mejor medio para fomentar la sustentabilidad ambiental y la justicia social.

Key Words:

• alternative food
• feminist geography
• heirloom
• heritage
• situated learning

关键词：:

• 替代粮食，女性主义地理学，祖传，袭产，情境学习。

Palabras clave:

• alimento alternativo
• geografía feminista
• recuerdos de familia
• herencia
• aprendizaje situado

Acknowledgments

The ideas expressed in this article emerged in conversation with farmers, ranchers, and technical assistance providers, to whom I owe no small intellectual debt. Colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, particularly at the Center for Diversified Farming Systems, the Berkeley Food Institute, and the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, and Society, have been invaluable interlocutors. Several mentors and colleagues read earlier drafts of this article and provided insightful feedback: Nathan Sayre, Jake Kosek, Ryan Galt, Claire Kremen, Maywa Montenegro, Shannon Cram, Adam Romero, Jeff Martin, Julie Klinger, Jennifer Baca, Margot Higgins, Alexander Arroyo, Alastair Iles, Greta Marchesi, Patrick Donnelly-Shores, Michael Mendez, and Rachel Ceasar. I am also grateful to the editor and three anonymous reviewers for suggestions that substantially improved the article.

Funding

Fieldwork was funded by a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation and a grant from the Charles Redd Center, and writing was completed with the support of Soroptimist International's Founder Region Dissertation Fellowship, the P.E.O. Scholar Award, and the University of California, Berkeley's Graduate Division.

Notes

1 I borrow the term “generative critique” from Verran (2001), who elegantly defined it as an imaginary that could “enable futures different from pasts” (20). McFarlane (2011) further explained that generative critique does not merely debunk hegemonic knowledge, but is “constantly generating new associations, knowledges, and alternatives” (212). This approach is important here, because this article seeks to reorient understandings of heritage agriculture away from dominant, commoditized discourse by highlighting the knowledge production of an agrarian community engaged in making agricultural heritage.

2 This information was obtained in an author interview with Alfred E. Slinkard, 24 June 2012.

3 In 1995, this group of farmers organized a 130-person conference of producers, scientists, educators, and technical assistance providers entitled “Weeds as Teachers” (Hilander 1995).

4 The relationship between buckwheat and soil phosphorous is an emerging area of research. See Rick et al. (2011).

5 Like lentils, field peas are legumes, so they add nitrogen to the soil.

6 Chemical fallow refers to treating a field with herbicide and leaving it bare, a common rotational practice among conventional grain farmers on the northern Great Plains. By ensuring that nothing grows, this practice is thought to conserve soil moisture and prevent the buildup of a weed seed bank.

7 It might also be that this farmer did not discover collective agrarianism de novo by participating in this rooted network but, rather, came to realize that his practices of agrarian care were already collective and out of step with the libertarian rhetoric of his neighborhood. When I visited his farm, he showed me protest signs demanding “fairness” and “parity” for farmers, which he and his father had carried in National Farmer's Organization marches in which he participated as a child. This was one reason he had gotten interested in organics, the farmer explained, “because you get a little more fairness.” This farmer's encounter with the proposed coal plant highlighted a previously unproblematic disjuncture between discourse and practice. Membership in the Black Beluga community of practice gave him the social and epistemic tools to articulate this disjuncture and challenge the common sense of his neighborhood.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Liz Carlisle

LIZ CARLISLE is a Fellow at the Berkeley Food Institute at the University of California–Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-3100. E-mail: [email protected]. She is the author of Lentil Underground, and her research interests include sustainable food systems, agroecology, social movements, and agrarianism.