Aalborg University Development and International Relations Master’s thesis Alternative Food Networks: how artisan cheese reconnects producer, consumer and nature Source: Creamery “Varinis puodas” Author: Asta Slapikaitė Supervisor: Henrik Plaschke November 2017 Abstract The conventional agro-food system is a great achievement of the 21st century, involving industrialization and globalization of the food sector and complex food supply chains. On the one hand, it provides a great variety of food emerging from different parts of the world; on the other hand, it disconnects people from the places where food is grown. The industrial food system is also connected with climate change processes through unsustainable agricultural practices, long transportation distances and other factors. Different production processes and artificial additives in the food as well as in animal feed are connected with outbreaks of food scares such as BSE and the contamination of eggs with the insecticide fipronil. This causes governments and consumers alike to question the safety of the food system. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) emerged as a response to negative economic, social and ecological effects in the conventional food system. The European Commission (EC) has also started to pay more attention to the importance of the agro-food sector relocalization by shortening supply chains. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are seen as a means to reconnect production and consumption practices, and also as a way to increase food quality. In this master thesis, small-scale farming is analyzed in a rural Lithuanian context, taking the example of local artisan cheese producers. These small-scale cheesemakers form alternatives to the conventional modes of food provisioning by producing cheese from the raw milk of their own animals kept in their farms and then selling it directly to the consumers or through a single intermediary. The theoretical lens of this thesis is post- structuralism, which sees all actors as relational. The Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) is a tool used to research relationality among humans and non-humans. This paper aims at discovering how different actors interlink in AFNs through the lens of the ANT and how this relationality shapes the Lithuanian as well as the European food system. Keywords: Alternative Food Networks, Short Food Supply Chain, Actor-Network-Theory, small-scale farming, re-localization of agri-food, artisan cheese, Lithuania 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Gražina Auguvienė, Giedrius Tėvelis, Audrius Jokubauskas, Arūnas Degutis, Valdas Kavaliauskas, Rasa Ilinauskaitė, Kotryna Malikėnaitė and Šarūnas Večerkauskas for their participation in the research and for sharing their time, knowledge and ideas. These people show a great example of how small-scale farming can help to find an eco-equilibrium between land, animals and human-beings. I am also very grateful to my supervisor Henrik Plaschke for accepting various proposals for this thesis, as well as for his encouragement and support during the entire writing process. 3 Quotations “Mass extinctions could threaten the world’s food supplies as key species of plants and animals come under threat from climate change, disease and pests, scientists have warned. Three-quarters of humankind’s food today comes from just 12 crops and five animal species, and this lack of “agrobiodiversity” leaves our food chain vulnerable to a repeat of events like the Irish potato famine in which a million people starved to death.” (Murray, 2017) “Good food is a cornerstone of good health, and this fundamental relationship is widely understood. Yet profound changes in global food systems over the last decades have resulted in significant negative impacts on health and well-being that range from food insecurity to chronic disease, and from environmental degradation to diminished economic opportunity and the erosion of culture. These impacts are experienced unequally across the globe and between different groups of people in different places.” (Rocha et al., 2017) “So what is the future for 21st-century insects? It will be worse still, as we struggle to feed the nine billion people expected to be inhabiting the world by 2050, and the possible 12 billion by 2100, and agriculture intensifies even further to let us do so. You think there will be fewer insecticides sprayed on farmlands around the globe in the years to come? Think again. It is the most uncomfortable of truths, but one which stares us in the face: that even the most successful organisms that have ever existed on earth are now being overwhelmed by the titanic scale of the human enterprise, as indeed, is the whole natural world.” (McCarthy, 2017) “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” Hippocrates 4 Table of Contents: Abstract ................................................................................................................................................................2 List of Tables ........................................................................................................................................................6 List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................................6 List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................................................................7 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................8 2. Methodology ................................................................................................................................................. 11 2.1. Structure of the thesis ............................................................................................................................. 11 2.2. Concepts definition ................................................................................................................................. 12 2.3. Theoretical approach .............................................................................................................................. 13 2.4. Research methodology: Framework for exploring food production and consumption relationships ..... 15 2.5. Data Collection ....................................................................................................................................... 20 2.5.1 Primary sources: Introducing interwievees ...................................................................................... 20 2.5.2 Sources of information ..................................................................................................................... 21 2.6. Limitations of the research ..................................................................................................................... 22 3. Theory ........................................................................................................................................................... 24 3.1. Post-structuralism in agro-food studies .................................................................................................. 24 3.2. Actor-Network Theory and the agency of humans and non-humans ..................................................... 26 3.3. The emergence of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) ......................................................................... 27 3.4. Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) ....................................................................................................... 30 3.5. Local food systems in Europe ................................................................................................................ 33 3.6. CAP and rural development ................................................................................................................... 35 4. Analysis ......................................................................................................................................................... 38 4.1. Historical developments of the agro-food system in Lithuania .............................................................. 38 4.2. Explanation of analytical fields - presenting Lithuanian artisan cheesemakers ..................................... 42 4.3. The importance of alternative food places and spaces ........................................................................... 46 4.4. Constraints for the development of alternative food networks (AFNs).................................................. 49 4.5. Small-scale cheesemaking with farm animals and microbes ................................................................. 53 4.6. The role of the human and institutional actors in the food system ......................................................... 55 5. Discussion ..................................................................................................................................................... 58 6. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 60 7. Recommendations for future research ........................................................................................................... 62 References ........................................................................................................................................................