Scaling Food Sovereignty: Biopolitics and the Struggle for Local Control of Farm Food in Rural Maine

Abstract

Recent scholarship highlights the play of biopower in and through policies and practices shaping food systems, but says little about the practices of resistance to such power. Alternative food movements mobilize critique of and resistance to an industrialized food system from many perspectives. This article examines food sovereignty activism in Maine as an illuminating instance of contemporary biopolitics. This article investigates a “food sovereignty ordinance” passed in eleven towns in Maine since 2011 as an important moment in the biopolitical struggle over the nature of food systems. The ordinance exempts direct transactions of farm food from licensure and inspection in an effort to maintain the viability of small, diversified farms in a struggling rural economy. The ordinance effectively carves out a space of food sovereignty in each town that enacts it, thereby protecting conditions of life and livelihood within local food networks. The analysis focuses on the spatiality of the practices that comprise biopolitics, with attention to the scalar politics in play as well; that is, the ways in which modalities of power shape and are shaped by social, economic, and political scales of organization. This exploration of the scaling of biopolitics in relation to the concept of food sovereignty suggests insights into the contours of other moments of struggle over food regulations.

晚近的学术研究，强调生命政治在政策及实践中、同时透过政策及实践，形塑粮食系统的角色，但却鲜少提及抵抗此般权力的实践。另类粮食运动，则从多方观点，动员对工业化的粮食系统之批判，并与之对抗。本文检视位于美茵（Maine）的粮食主权倡议，作为阐明当代生命政治的实例。本文探讨自2011年以来，美茵的十一座城镇通过的 “粮食主权条例”，作为对粮食系统的本质进行生命政治斗争的重要时刻。该条例准许农场食物的直接交换免除执照与稽核，致力于维系勉强生存的农村经济中，小型、多样化农场的生命力。该条例有效地在每一个施行的城镇中，开拓出粮食主权的空间，从而保护在地粮食网络中的生活与生计条件。本研究分析，聚焦构成生命政治的实践之空间性，并同时关注运作中的尺度政治；亦即权力的形式如何形塑组织的社会、经济与政治尺度，并反之被这些尺度形塑的方式。此般探讨尺度化生命政治之于粮食主权的概念，为其他粮食规范斗争的重要时刻之概况，提供了洞见。

En la más reciente erudición se destaca el juego que cumple la bioenergía dentro y a través de las políticas y prácticas que configuran los sistemas alimentarios, aunque poco se dice acerca de las prácticas de resistencia a tal tipo de energía. Los movimientos alternativos en relación con los alimentos movilizan la crítica y la resistencia a un sistema alimentario industrializado, desde muchas perspectivas. Este artículo examina el activismo relacionado con soberanía alimentaria en Maine como ejemplo ilustrativo de la biopolítica contemporánea. En el artículo se investiga una “ordenanza de soberanía alimentaria” que se aprobó en once pueblos de Maine desde 2011, como momento importante de la lucha biopolítica sobre la naturaleza de los sistemas alimentarios. La ordenanza exime de licenciamiento e inspección a las transacciones directas de alimentos procedentes de granjas en un esfuerzo por mantener la viabilidad de explotaciones agrícolas pequeñas y diversificadas en una economía rural ya seriamente cargada de problemas. Ciertamente, esta ordenanza forja un espacio de soberanía alimentaria en cada pueblo que la aplica, protegiendo así las condiciones de vida y subsistencia dentro de las redes locales de alimentos. El análisis se enfoca en la espacialidad de las prácticas que comprende la biopolítica, igualmente con atención sobre la política de escala que está en juego; es decir, las maneras en las que las modalidades de poder configuran y son configuradas por las escalas sociales, económicas y políticas de organización. Esta exploración de la escala de la biopolítica en relación con el concepto de soberanía alimentaria sugiere un mayor entendimiento dentro de los contornos de otros momentos de lucha sobre las regulaciones de los alimentos.

Key Words:

• alternative food initiatives
• biopolitics
• food sovereignty
• local ordinances
• politics of scale

关键词：:

• 另类粮食倡议，生命政治，粮食主权，地方条例，尺度政治。

Palabras clave:

• iniciativas alternativas sobre alimentos
• biopolítica
• soberanía alimentaria
• ordenanzas locales
• políticas de escala

Acknowledgments

The work reported here was first presented at Yale Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue conference in September 2013, with the collaboration of Heather Retberg and Bonnie Preston. I am grateful to the many people who have taken time to participate in this research by sharing their perspectives and helping to refine my own. I also wish to thank the editor and three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive comments on earlier versions of the article.

Funding

The project was funded by a University of Georgia Faculty Research Grant awarded through the Willson Center for Humanities and the Arts and by the University of Georgia Provost's Summer Research Award.

Notes

1 Foucault used the terms biopolitics and biopower somewhat interchangeably; I follow Rabinow and Rose (2006) in this formulation.

2 These could be seen as more than three scales.

3 As in other work with scale frames, the meaning of scale is polyvalent in this construction, referring to jurisdictional scales as well as to the scales of economic activity within a complex production system.

4 Almy (2013, 793, note 34) indicated that 21 C.F.R. §131.110(a) (2012) defines milk as “lacteal secretion … obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows” that “shall have been pasteurized or ultra-pasteurized.”

5 Personal conversation, Theodore Kurtz, 20 June 2013.

6 The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 was signed into law by President Obama on 4 January 2011.

7 Vermont does not have home rule; it is a Dillon's rule state.