Local Food Global Capital Proposal - Dissertation Desk Notes

See also [[Albie notes on local food, global capital proposal]] # Local Food, Global Capital: Agrarian Change in Hawaii ## Introduction In 2016, the last sugar plantation in Hawaii, Hawaii Commercial & Sugar (HC&S), shut down its operations. Two years later their 41,000 acres were purchased by Mahi Pono LLC, a partnership between Pomona Farming LLC, a California based agrocapital investment firm, and Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments), one of Canada's largest pension investment managers. As the closure of HC&S ends over a century of colonial agribusiness control of land and water resources, the acquisition by Mahi Pono begins a novel form of capital accumulation through agriculture. This novel approach utilizes State interest in increasing agricultural productivity and subverts resistance to global food systems by emphasizing the production of local food. Why would investors want to enter such a relatively low return industry, especially in a pocket market where price is so sensitive to volume fluctuations? Is there something about their scale that will enable greater profitability than the extant capitalized farm operations they are likely to displace? Or is there some other strategy at work that will ensure returns and enable their operations to circumvent the barriers to viability that have plagued Hawaii’s farms? To answer these questions we must first understand how agricultural operations have reproduced themselves over time in Hawaii. >[!note] Krisna's suggested adds >- Agriculture reproduction in the context of shifting food regimes >- Identify changing food regimes in history > - parcel to plate > - Number of farms, farm size distribution= > - Local production as ratio of total food consumption > - Food provisioning shifts (‘supermarket revolution’) >- What are the enabling conditions in each > - Irish Potato in Hawaii >- What are the interplay local / global <table> <tr> <td>Working Questions </td> <td>Operational Questions </td> <td>Sources of Data </td> </tr> <tr> <td>How have food regimes changed in Hawaii over time? </td> <td>“Parcel to Plate” Who were the key actors in food provisioning? What was the average farm size over time? What has local production, as ratio of total food consumption, been over time? (import ratio) What channels were the most important provisioning in different eras <ul> <li>Describe how cooperatives worked <li>Challenges of coops <li>Scale of their operation What infrastructure and enabling conditions supported each of these channels? Which policy was instrumental in xxx How much food supply has moved through: <ul> <li>Cooperatives <li>Farmers markets? <li>government markets? <li>Supermarket? What has facilitated local production integrating into food provisioning in different era? <ul> <li>What are the missing /critical links </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </td> <td> <ul> <li>Legislative and policy documents <li>Planning and research documents <ul> <li><a href="http://agcensus.mannlib.cornell.edu/AgCensus/homepage.do">USDA Census of Agriculture Historical Archive</a> <ul> <li><a href="https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/1877">UH CTAHR Extension publications</a> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>What government programs supported local agriculture changed over the 20th century? Traces the social, economic, and political forces that reproduced local agriculture History of local food development interventions in Hawaii How did material and discursive support for agriculture change during this period? </td> <td>“Farming/Feeding Like a State” How do visions of local agriculture conflict and align between the state, civil society, and capital interests? How is the state pursuing increasing food production for local consumption? Who is providing material support? Who What programs have focused on agriculture for local consumption? </td> <td> <ul> <li>Planning and policy documents <li>Government press releases <li>Popular press <li>Investor company information </li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td>How can local agriculture be reproduced? </td> <td>What are the needs of existing producers across the state? How do producer needs align with state approaches? What interventions can address producer needs and state goals? </td> <td> <ul> <li>Farmer survey data </li> </ul> </td> </tr> </table> Though the diversification of agriculture in Hawaii had been a government interest for over a century, increasing food production for local consumption is now part of statewide policy goals that are restructuring the economic and social relations of post-plantation agriculture. New technologies, marketing, and investments are forwarded as means to meet these political and popular ends. Among these new strategies, the State of Hawaii has shown particular interest in supporting investment by finance capital and large agribusinesses to meet goals to double food production for local consumption. While these myriad interventions all hold some promise to increase and diversify local agriculture, these supports and narratives often have conflicting and competing visions for the future of agriculture in Hawaii. ### Problem Statement Increasing production for local consumption in Hawaii is viewed to have great potential to produce positive environmental, social, and economic outcomes. In recent years, the State of Hawaii has set goals to double local food production and significant private financial investments in local agriculture have been made. While the alignment of government goals and private finance interests is poised to increase local food availability, civil society, the state, and capital have different and likely conflicting visions of local agriculture. These conflicting outlooks color the acceptance of proposed interventions to support local agriculture. As the currents of material and discursive support for increased food self-sufficiency continue to shift, understanding how local agriculture is produced and reproduced is critical to assessing the ability of plans, goals and investments to achieve their various aims. ### Identified deficiencies in knowledge To date there has been no assessment of the spectrum of recent agricultural investments in Hawaii. Changes in the support of production for local consumption by the government, private capital, and civil society over the past century have not been collated, nor contextualized in theories of agrarian change. Finally, a grounded study of the needs of agricultural producers hasn’t been pursued in over six decades. In seeking to assess the viability of state and private interventions, and the extent to which existing producers needs are incorporated or marginalized by these approaches this research endeavors to a) historicize efforts to support agricultural diversification in Hawaii, b) understand the mechanisms that have enabled local agriculture to reproduce itself, c) outline the factors contributing and framing today's moment in agricultural investment and planning, and d) the examine how current investment and planning can facilitate the development of agriculture in the islands that is diversified and able to deliver on the various goals of food system localization. ### Importance & Research Audience Failure to consider the implications of corporate driven restructuring of agricultural development, found in various analyses from land grabs to financialization, leaves Hawaii’s agrofood systems exposed to the further integration of the risks inherent in global capital and commodity markets. The privatization approach by the state to coax investment and development to feed production interests has the potential to further brittle the tenuous local markets many existing producers participate in. Analysis of the confluence of productivism frames held by the state, corporate agribusiness, and investment firms will provide a novel understanding of the means by which capital is finding a new market in production for local consumption. This research will contribute to scholarship on agrarian change, agrofood system localization, and sustainability transitions. Civil society groups and government bodies focused on facilitating the development of robust local agrofood systems will also find value in the analyses of producer needs and mechanisms of material reproduction of agriculture for local consumption. ## Literature Review Food regime analysis is ideal for articulating connections between state and global governance and identifying trajectories of accumulation in agrofood sectors (Marsden, Munton, Ward, and Whatmore, 1996). Each food regime is a post hoc bounding of moments to aid in “the understanding of agriculture and food’s role in capital accumulation across time and space” (McMichael, 2009). In the first global food regime, dominated by British colonialism from 1870-1930s, foreign capital reconfigured agriculture across Pacific Islands to produce bulk commodities for export to colonial centers (Plahe, Hawkes, & Ponnamperuma, 2013). In the second food regime roughly from the 1950s through the 1970s, United States ascension and global north productivity drove exports to postcolonial states, shifting the net flow of goods and creating food import dependence across much of the pacific (Plahe et. al, 2013). The third global food regime from the 1980s to today, framed by the politics of neoliberalism and evidenced in the “corporatization of agriculture and agro-exports” (McMichael, 2005), has shifted the “locus of control for food security away from the nation-state to the world market” (Plahe et. al, 2013). McMichael posits that “the food regime is not a political–economic order, as such, rather it is a vehicle of a contradictory conjuncture, governed by the ‘double movement’ of accumulation/legitimation” (2005). And indeed, in Hawaii today corporatized agrofood development is used as a means of state legitimation, clearly reflected in a recent newsletter from the Governor’s office stating that “businesses ... have heard about our commitment to doubling local food production and are interested in making significant investments here.” (Office of the Governor, 2019). Accumulation by capital in this regime is accomplished through the “appropriation of agricultural resources for capitalist consumption relations … realized through an expanding foundation of human impoverishment and displacement, and the marginalization of agrarian/food cultures” (McMichael, 2005). The recent spate of land grabs by financial and corporate interests are exemplary of this type of appropriation, while marginalization is evidenced by the lack of material support for existing agricultural producers that was present in previous decades. Food system localization, the kneejerk antipode of globalized food, seeks a “voluntary regional closure that links production and consumption around particular sites” (Allen, FitzSimmons, Goodman and Warner, 2003). Allen et. al’s review of California’s early aughts alternative agrofood initiatives considered whether the programming provided alternatives within global food hegemony or acted directly in opposition to such a regime. In both cases localization narratives were present. Questions of who constructs these narratives and who benefits abound (Guthman on alternative food practice, 2008; Louis on transnational food sovereignty, 2016). Born and Purcell (2006) argue that local food systems are not inherently more sustainable or global ones and that localism for its own sake is a form a nativism that can impede social justice goals. Conscious use of relational scale and development of networks (both horizontal and vertical) are advised as complementary tools to navigate past the“local trap” (Born and Purcell, 2006). While DeLind (2006) agrees that enabling local consumption and production is insufficient to achieve the broad goals of local food, she finds the deficit coming from too great an emphasis on market-based solutions to the detriment of sensual, emotional, and cultural facets that undergird the values of local food movements. Similarly, Morgan (2010) echoes that local food chains are not inherently more ethical than global ones and, more importantly, that ethical consumerism is an insufficient tool to address social justice or environmental sustainability. DeLind (2011) decries the developmental direction of local food movements: the rise of locavorism and its individualistic consumerism, local being increasingly defined by corporate actors pursuing greater market share, and food localization celebrity edicts filling the place of democratic local foodway specificity. Connecting these concerns is a call for the “reintegration of local food into place-based practice”. Analysis in Hawaii has explored the interplay between “local” as both a place-based identity and a geographic distinction of foodways (Hobart, 2016) and recounted the trials of local food placemaking (Inda, Washburn, Beckham, Talisayan and Hikuroa, 2011). Yet unexamined are who constructs the narratives around local food in Hawaii; the degree to which programming, planning, and policy are caught in the “local trap”; and how an embrace of “local” as identity in place-making and value-based initiatives aids or inhibits achieving local food movement goals. While not a perfect synecdoche of global changes in agrofood, Hobart’s take that “Hawai‘i’s food system represents the myriad issues that challenge communities in the continental United States and beyond” (2016) clearly has purchase. With the closure of the last sugarcane plantation in late 2016 (HNN Staff, 2016) the future of agriculture in Hawaii remains both uncertain and a broad field of opportunity. Melrose, Perroy, and Cares (2015) agricultural baseline study provides the most thorough snapshot of agricultural land use across the state in decades. Their review found increases in diversified agricultural production (Perroy, Melrose, and Cares, 2016) and potential to capture some of the previously identified considerable economic opportunity of increased local production (Leung and Loke, 2008). Despite uncovering a trend towards smaller diversified operations the baseline study only reviewed parcels three acres or larger, leaving a considerable portion of producers, albeit maybe only marginally productive, out of the analysis. From an economic perspective Arita, Hemanchandra and Leung (2014) pointedly examined if Hawaii farms can survive globalization. While all diversified producers are the subject of their inquiry, the results find that smallholders are likely to be most negatively impacted. While the globalization they consider focuses on imported goods the new wave of agribusiness investment, in part focused on production for local consumption, is a new facet of globalization that this study intends to explore. ## Purpose & Research Questions The purpose of this research is to understand how new supports and strategies to increase food production for local consumption interact with structural challenges of, and competing visions for, reproducing and expanding agriculture in Hawaii. ## Methods of Understanding The historically focused first working question will be explored through historical political economic analysis. Through examination of data ranging from the Agricultural Census to policy documents, and contemporary academic research the aim is to construct a timeline of the shifting material and discursive support over the 20th century in Hawaii. Documenting the 2nd food regime change in Hawaii - does it hold up? 2nd food regime 1950s-1970s, United States ascension and global north productivity drove exports to postcolonial states, shifting the net flow of goods and creating food import dependence across much of the pacific (Plahe et. al, 2013). Looking through CTAHR publications (‘Honolulu Unloads’, etc), USDA Ag Census The second working question will utilize document and sentiment analysis to understand the material and discursive support for the reproduction of agriculture and to collate information about the production of novel social and economic agricultural relations through corporate agribusiness investment. A primary goal being to theorize the conjuncture of state and private finance interests responding to civil society interest in local agriculture. The final working question will draw from a statewide farmer needs assessment survey to characterize the barriers to increased production, as a proxy for barriers to the reproduction, by existing agricultural producers. ## Proposed Outline ##### Chapter Outline 1. Introduction: Hawaii’s Hunger for Local Food: Competing Economic, Social, and Environmental Goals 1. Global Food Regimes and Agriculture in Hawaii 2. Uala Kahiki: The Irish Potato in Hawaii 2. _Traces the social, economic, and political forces that reproduced local agriculture 3. History of local food development interventions in Hawaii 4. What influence has global agrofood system restructuring had on the development of agriculture in Hawaii? 5. What state programs have focused on agriculture for local consumption? 6. How did material and discursive support for agriculture change during this period? 7. _Mahi Pono’s potato production and subsequent donation highlight issues in competing ideas about local food_ 3. Parcel to Plate: Local Food Provisioning 8. _Outlines the changes in production, imports, and markets_ 9. How have farm operations changed in size over time? 10. How has local production contributed to overall food supply over time? 11. What changes have happened in consumer food provisioning? 12. How ag parcels and farms have or have not changed 4. The ‘Local Shift’ in agrofood planning and investment 13. Documents today's politics of local food planning and investment 14. How is the State pursuing increasing food production for local consumption? 15. Who is providing material support? 16. Who are new actors in local food production? 17. How do visions of local agriculture conflict and align between the state, civil society, and capital interests? 18. ‘Accumulation by localization’ a la Nally’s (2011) ‘accumulation by molecularization’ 19. How new ‘local’ growers match scale of markets 5. Structural Barriers & Increased Productivity: Hawaii Farmer Needs Assessment 20. _How can local agriculture be reproduced?_ 21. What do Hawaii producers need? 22. How/do producers’ needs align with state approaches? 23. What interventions can address producer needs and state goals? 24. How can diversified agriculture and local food provisioning bridge scales? 6. Conclusion: Bridging needs and action 25. What can be expected as agriculture continues to change? ## Work Plan & Timeline **Spring 2020** * Defend dissertation research proposal * Submit Form II * Restructure proposal into introductory chapter draft * Finish historical data collection on local agricultural support * Draft ‘Uala Kahiki: The Irish Potato in Hawaii’ * Draft ‘Parcel to Plate: Local Food Provisioning’ * Submit abstract(s) for professional conference paper or poster presentation **Summer 2020** * Apply for USDA EWD funding * Collect current data on agrofood investments and policy initiatives * Draft of farmer needs assessment results paper * Draft ‘The ‘Local Shift’’ paper * Submit abstract(s) for professional conference paper or poster presentation **Fall 2020** * Data analysis completed * Polish existing drafts * Compile into dissertation draft * Draft conclusion chapter ‘Bridging Needs & Action’ * Submit draft to committee for review **Spring 2021** * Edit, edit, edit. * Defend dissertation * Final draft complete by end of May with committee revisions ## References Allen, P., FitzSimmons, M., Goodman, M., & Warner, K. 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