Escaping the Local Trap: Insights on Re-localization from School Food Reform

Abstract

Building on the stimulating critique of normative views of scale provided by the literature on the ‘local trap’, some agri-food researchers have recently argued that local food initiatives (including, for example, American Farm-to-School programs) reproduce neo-liberal values and forms of governance. By focusing on school food reform in two devolved sites of the UK, this paper aims to show that, even when embedded in the power dynamics and values of neo-liberalism, the local can produce sustainable development outcomes. This raises the need for an inductive research approach that assesses the merits (or lack of) of localism in the concrete—while also taking into account the role of the State as a new powerful actor on the agri-food scene.

Keywords:

• School food
• sustainable development
• local food
• school meal systems
• food re-localization
• sustainable food systems

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper has been sponsored by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (RCTO373). The author would like to thank her research partner Kevin Morgan (School of City and Regional Planning). Thanks also to Dr. Peter Feindt (School of City and Regional Planning) for providing comments on an early draft of this paper, to the editor and to two anonymous referees for their very helpful comments. The responsibility for the views expressed in this article remains mine.

Notes

Research on school food reform in the UK was conducted between 2005 and 2008. Methodologically, it relied upon the analysis of tendering documents and dissemination material and on roughly 20 in-depth interviews with key actors in the school food chain in England, Scotland and Wales. Over the years, I have formally and informally interviewed policy-makers, catering managers, procurement officers, suppliers and representatives from NGOs who have been actively involved in school food reform at the national, regional and local level. Interviews have been taped, transcribed and analysed in relation to one main research theme: the actors' varying perceptions and applications of the relationship between school food and the economic, environmental and social objectives of sustainable development.

In 2005, Scotland was at the bottom of a number of European league tables in terms of premature death rate (which is 30% higher than in the rest of the UK), incidence of low birth weight, number of infant deaths and number of underage pregnancies (Lang et al., 2006, pp. 18–22).

In 2008, the unemployment rate (3.5%) was the sixth highest in Scotland. The percentage of people affected by cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke was also higher than the Scottish national average. Finally, in 2004/2005, 34% of primary school children were overweight and 30% were obese.

Specifically, fruits, vegetables, milk, flour, pulses, pasta, couscous and brown rice are organic; bread, cheese, red meat, poultry and eggs are locally sourced.

Currently, 12 of the 15 products in East Ayrshire are sourced from within 40 miles and 50–60% of the vegetables purchased are grown in Scotland. A recent study has calculated that organic and local sourcing have helped the council to save almost £100,000 on environmental costs. More generally, it has been calculated that the school food reform in East Ayrshire has a social return on investment index of 6.19. This means that for every additional £1 invested in the initiative, over £6 of value is created in economic, social and environmental outcomes (Lancaster & Durie, 2008).

At the time when the research was conducted, Carmarthenshire had just started its school food re-localization process. To give an idea of the size of the emerging market, in 2005 the council held surgeries at 9 locations across the county, where as many as 214 local businesses met procurement staff to discuss trading opportunities. The council also worked with three small local cheese suppliers to help them form a cooperative that would have allowed them to achieve the capacity needed to supply all local schools (Welsh Procurement Initiative, 2005, p. 17).

The council has grounded its assessment of the environmental sustainability of the school meal service mostly on calculations of food miles. As many researchers have recently emphasized, this is far from being a perfect criterion to draw conclusions on the environmental impacts of a food chain for two main reasons. First, carbon accounting is not the only environmental issue that needs to be considered when comparing ‘local’ and ‘non-local’ foods; as Gareth-Jones et al. (2008) point out, the visual and pollution impacts of food production methods are equally important. Second, even within the context of carbon accounting, it is the carbon emissions per unit of produce over the transport chain that really matters (Coley et al., 2009). In general, these considerations raise the need for more nuanced life-cycle assessments of food products, but they should not undermine the achievements of East Ayrshire's Council, which is attempting to devise an innovative approach to development based on a more careful consideration of the environmental externalities of its political actions.

When driven exclusively by market forces, the process of scaling up in the agri-food sector often raises dangers of ‘conventionalization’ (that is, co-option of alternative food practices by powerful actors in the conventional sector). As Guthman (2004) shows, in California, for example, the involvement of agri-business in organic farming has embedded expectations of intensification in land values, putting organic farmers under constant pressure to adopt technologies or cropping systems that create more crop value per hectare. To prevent the profound changes in the meaning and nature of alternative food practices that conventionalization creates, there is a need to carefully calibrate demand and supply—a goal that, again, raises important questions about the role of the state, given its unique power to regulate production, consumption and distribution of resources.