CULTURAL SCALE AND FOOD SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY IN THE PACIFIC
NORTHWEST: COLUMBIA BASIN CASE STUDIES
By
TROY M. WILSON
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of Anthropology
MAY 2011
To the Faculty of Washington State University:
The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of
TROY M. WILSON find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted.
______John H. Bodley, Ph.D., Chair
______Nancy P. McKee, Ph.D.
______Andrew Duff, Ph.D.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The completion of this dissertation owes much to my committee whose combined efforts strengthened the study considerably. My committee chair, John Bodley, helped me formulate this research and he facilitated its completion. John‘s enthusiasm for research, enduring patience as a mentor, and awareness of current issues in wide-ranging places will always amaze and motivate me. Nancy McKee supplied her marvelous wit, endless inspiration, and valuable discussions on research methods. Andrew Duff provided big picture questions, practical guidance, and valuable commentary on content and theory. I am extremely grateful for my committee‘s constructive comments and aid in editing this dissertation. I could not have had a better committee.
The research that led to this dissertation was supported by a National Science
Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (#0852618), a fellowship in Environmental
Studies from Boeing, and a fellowship from the Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service. Additional support came from the WSU Department of Anthropology via the Elaine Burgess Graduate Fellowship and the Phyllis and Richard Daugherty Scholarship for Graduate Student Excellence. Furthermore, parts of this dissertation benefited greatly through support and critical review from academic societies. An earlier form of chapter six entitled Costly Distribution: The Case of Washington Apples received honorable mention for the Society of Applied Anthropology‘s 2007 Peter K. New Award. Chapter eight – Organics for the Landgrant, Sustainability for the Community – was awarded the 2008 Christine
Wilson Prize by the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. In addition, I presented an earlier version of chapter seven – Alongside the Grain –as a Roy Rappaport
iii panelist for the Anthropology and Environment section of the 2008 American Anthropology
Association meetings.
A host of generous people brought this dissertation to life, including orchardist households, small farmer households, apple warehouse workers, migrant farmworkers, produce managers, nonprofit employees, farmers‘ market vendors, and individuals I met at food conferences, particularly those held by Washington Tilth Producers and jointly by
Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) and the Association for the Study of
Food and Society (ASFS). Special thanks go to Brad Jaeckel and Julie Sullivan at WSU‘s
Organic farm for their endless patience, farming lessons, and help in developing my perspective on small-scale farming and local food issues. I want to thank Charles Pomianek at the Wenatchee Valley Traffic Association and La Verne Bergstrom at the Washington Apple
Commission for providing me access to a long history of apple industry data. Kathleen Burns and the Moscow City Hall deserve thanks for graciously allowing me to search Moscow‘s farmers‘ market archives for an entire summer. I am also grateful for conversations with
William Willard and Alan Marshall for helping me rethink my perspective on Plateau food culture. Furthermore, my fellow graduate students in WSU‘s Department of Anthropology greatly enriched my approach, as did the numerous students in the courses I taught at WSU,
Lewis Clark State College, and Whitman College during this project.
This dissertation could never have been written without the support of my family. My parents – John and Teri – and my brothers – Todd, Dana, and Scott – have offered me endless encouragement since I can remember. Last, and most important, I would like to thank my wife, Jennifer, for sharing my enthusiasm for food and ideas, and for showing infinite patience and good humor throughout this project.
iv CULTURAL SCALE AND FOOD SYSTEM SUSTAINABILITY IN THE PACIFIC
NORTHWEST: COLUMBIA BASIN CASE STUDIES
Abstract
by Troy M. Wilson, Ph.D. Washington State University May 2011
Chair: John H. Bodley
To meet contemporary goals of long-term food system sustainability it is critical to analyze how people have constructed and maintained food cultures in specific geographic regions through time. This dissertation draws on theories of scale, nature, and place to examine the unique ecological relationships, practices, and social-political connections underlying existing and pre-existing food cultures in the Columbia Basin of the Pacific
Northwest. Columbia Basin peoples have produced and participated in a partially overlapping succession of three historically and ecologically distinctive food cultures: tribal, industrial, and civic. For more than 10,000 years, Plateau peoples practiced a tribal food culture based on non-market subsistence fishing, gathering, and hunting. Wide-ranging seasonal and geographic variation in the quality and quantity of subsistence resources stimulated a mobile
Plateau food culture upheld by cultural patterns of movement and exchange throughout the entire region. Upon Euro-American settlement, a commercial industrial food culture quickly developed, characterized by intensive irrigation, factory farming techniques, increased yields, product standardization, rapid environmental decline, corporate consolidation, and a reliance on fossil-fuel. Despite the rapid and recent development of this globally-orchestrated food
v system, Columbia Basin peoples have recently grown more concerned with food quality, security, and community well-being, developing a civic (or local) food culture alongside
(rather than replacing) the industrial food system. Sharing the small spatial scale of tribal food culture and the commercial-orientation of today‘s dominant, industrial food culture, civic food culture is characterized by farmers‘ markets and community gardens, smaller-scale production methods, and its central role in today‘s localism movement. Throughout case studies of each
Columbia Basin food culture, this dissertation demonstrates how an understanding of the principles of scale explains how tribal food culture persevered for millennia, why industrial food culture has become unsustainable, and where civic food cultures may develop. Finally, this work draws on its own historical and cross-cultural case studies to examine the localism movement and the potential for constructing local and regional food systems.
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii
ABSTRACT ...... v
LIST OF TABLES ...... xi
LIST OF FIGURES ...... xii
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION
Introduction ...... 1
Simple Illusions, Complex Inquiry ...... 4
Culture Scale, Culture Processes, and Food Systems ...... 8
The Problem of Global-Scale Food Systems ...... 13
The Columbia River Basin and Three Food Cultures ...... 17
Method and Organization ...... 20
2. CONCEPTUALIZING SCALE
Introduction ...... 25
Grasping Scale ...... 27
Power and Scale: An Anthropological Approach ...... 34
Nature, Place, and Constructionist Perspectives on Scale ...... 41
Contentions and Collaboration ...... 52
Scale and Food Systems: Sustainability, Localism, and the Contextualist Stance ...54
vii 3. THE COLUMBIA BASIN‘S SHIFTING SCALES AND SUCCESSIVE NATURES
Introduction ...... 58
Physiography, Vegetation, and Climate ...... 61
Prehistory: From the Paleoindian Period to Non-Aboriginal Influence ...... 68
Outside Impacts, 1600s to Mid/Late 1700s ...... 74
Early Exploration and Fur Trade Imperia, 1811-1840 ...... 77
Gold, Transportation, and Initial Settlement, 1840-1880 ...... 80
Railroad, Irrigation, and Rural Boom, 1880-1920 ...... 83
Depression, More Irrigation, and Power Development ...... 84
Conclusion: A Social-Ecological Imperative for the Columbia Basin ...... 85
4. COLUMBIA BASIN FOOD CULTURES
Introduction ...... 94
Conceptualizing Food and Food Systems ...... 96
Intersecting Regional Food Cultures: A Power and Scale Approach ...... 101
Tribal Food Culture: Small-Scale Groups and Basin-Based Regionality ...... 106
Industrial Food Culture: The Commercialization of the U.S. Food System ...... 109
Civic Food Culture: Food System Localization in a Global Economy ...... 114
Conclusion ...... 118
5. PLATEAU PEOPLES AND TRIBAL FOODSCAPES
Introduction ...... 119
Plateau Food Culture: Mobility, Group Size, and Exchange ...... 120
Local Subsistence Cycles: A Case Study Approach ...... 129
Conclusion ...... 137
viii 6. INDUSTRIAL FOOD SCALES: THE CASE OF WASHINGTON STATE‘S
GLOBAL APPLE INDUSTRY
Introduction ...... 139
More Fruit, Less Food ...... 140
The Evolution of Washington‘s Apple Industry ...... 144
Scale Subsidies and the Sustainability Problem ...... 161
Conclusion ...... 172
7. ALONGSIDE THE GRAIN: GROWING A LOCAL FOOD NETWORK IN THE
AGRO-INDUSTRIAL PALOUSE
Introduction ...... 175
The Palouse: A Historical Context of Agriculture and Food ...... 177
Growing a Local Food Network ...... 183
The Scalar Construction of Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market ...... 189
Conclusion ...... 197
8. ORGANICS FOR THE LANDGRANT, SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE
COMMUNITY
Introduction ...... 200
Sustainable Collegiate Farms ...... 203
WSU‘s Organic Farm: A Case Study ...... 206
Developing a Collegiate Farm/CSA within an Organic Major ...... 208
Connecting University Soil and Student Labor within Palouse CivAg ...... 212
Launching the Pullman Farm Fresh Market ...... 218
Pollan and WSU, CivAg and the Palouse ...... 222
ix 9. CONCLUSION: SUSTAINABLE SCALES AND MAKING SHIFTS
Introduction ...... 226
The Significance of a Place-Based, Food Culture Approach ...... 227
Situating Food Localism and Food System Scale ...... 231
Envisioning Alternative Food Economies ...... 236
Conclusion ...... 242
REFERENCES CITED ...... 244
x LIST OF TABLES
2.1 Definitions of Key Terms Related to the Concept of Scale ...... 31
2.2 Cultural Worlds, Scale, and Cultural Processes ...... 39
2.3 Historical Materialist Perspectives on Production of Scale ...... 50
3.1 Columbia Basin Timeline ...... 89
4.1 Functional Organization in Three Food Cultures ...... 105
4.2 Food Culture and Subsistence in the Columbia Basin ...... 118
6.1 Number of Apple Orchards and Acres of Orchard in Washington ...... 146
6.2 Stated Origin and Profession of North Central Washington Settlers ...... 150
6.3 Washington Apple Warehouses ...... 160
6.4 Exporting Washington Apples: Destinations (country and origin), Quantities (m-tons),
and Distances (air kilometers from Seattle to each country‘s major city)...... 166
7.1 Conflicting Localism Among Key Organizations to Palouse CivAg ...... 184
7.2 Characteristics of Ag Vendors at Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market ...... 191
8.1 Demographic Information of Survey Respondents ...... 214
8.2 Expectations of Survey Respondents ...... 215
8.3 Basic Rules for Pullmam‘s Farm Fresh Market, 2009 ...... 220
8.4 Pullman Farm Fresh Market 2009: Sales, Vendors ...... 221
9.1 Corporate Strategies for Co-opting Food Localism ...... 241
xi LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 Map of the Columbia River Basin ...... 18
3.1 Physiographic Areas of the Columbia Basin ...... 62
3.2 Indian Trade Network Centered at the Dalles and Celilo Falls ...... 78
3.3 Contemporary Reservations and Reserves in the Columbia Basin ...... 82
4.1 Framework for Interpreting Human Transformations of the Natural Environment ...... 98
4.2 Framework for Interpreting Food Systems with Socio-Natural Transformation ...... 99
4.3 Interrelationship between Food Culture and Cultural World ...... 103
4.4 Farmers‘ Markets and CSA Locations throughout the Columbia Basin ...... 117
5.1 Plateau Culture Area and Tribal Groups within Columbia Basin ...... 120
6.1 Washington Apple Destinations in 2004/5 ...... 141
6.2 U.S. Apple Import, Export and Washington State Export ...... 142
6.3 Washington Apple Country: Three Major Production Districts ...... 145
6.4 Washington Apple Production versus Rest of U.S...... 156
6.5 Washington Total Fresh and Fresh Export, 1970-2005 ...... 157
6.6 Washington Apple Export Promotion ...... 158
6.7 Flow Chart of Apple System ...... 159
6.8 WASD Formula and Spatial Diagram ...... 165
7.1 Map of the Palouse ...... 178
7.2 An Interlocked Support Network for Palouse CivAg Keystones ...... 189
7.3 Agricultural Vendors at Moscow Farmers‘ Market ...... 194
xii
To Jennifer, whose support and encouragement made this possible.
xiii CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
This dissertation explores the cultural production and reproduction of food systems organized at different scales in a particular region and specific places. Scale itself is here treated as a significant cultural variable. For most of human history, people consumed food at or near the location of its production, whether foraging, practicing subsistence agriculture, or engaging in commercial agriculture for local consumers in villages and small towns. However, the commercialization of food—the making of food into a commodity—allowed people to develop highly centralized food systems geared to serve metropolitan and foreign markets, and to produce financial return for investors. Now reliant on fossil fuels and sophisticated molecular-scale engineering, these globally-oriented food systems have largely supplanted ancient subsistence systems and locally-controlled markets that were customized to satisfy local nutritional needs in specific regions.
To meet present-day goals of sustainability we must examine how people have created and maintained food cultures in specific geographic regions through time. This dissertation draws on perspectives of scale, nature, and place to study the unique social-ecological relationships underlying existing and pre-existing food cultures in the Columbia Basin of the
Pacific Northwest. Columbia Basin peoples have produced and participated in a partially overlapping succession of three historically and ecologically distinctive food cultures: tribal, industrial, and civic. Throughout case studies of each Columbia Basin food culture, this dissertation demonstrates how an understanding of the principles of scale explains how tribal food culture persevered for millennia, why industrial food culture has become unsustainable,
1 and where civic food cultures may develop. Finally, this work draws on its own historical and cross-cultural case studies to examine the localism movement and the potential for constructing local and regional food systems within the present-day global economy.
The effects of commercializing and industrializing agriculture vary from place to place, but they involve the exercise of social power in ways that connect local people to regional and global power networks. Such spatial and hierarchical interconnections demonstrate the importance of the social and material production of both place and scale in the evolution of human food systems. As used here, place encompasses the history and culture of the human-built environment as it is understood in terms of its complex and dynamic interplay with nature (Hinrichs 2007). Thus, place, and more broadly region, is at once ―grounded‖ in local transformations of social relations and physical ecology and
―mobile‖ in the social relations operating through dynamically shifting distances (that may entail boundary construction) and perpetually reproduced scalar configurations. Scalar configurations are at once always central to social strategies and struggles for power and control. The multiple dimensions of scale—spatial, temporal, quantitative, and analyitical— have been used to argue for the efficiency of using fossil-fuel powered machinery and to increase crop yields through applying synthetic fertilizers, fungicides, and pesticides. Scale furnished explanations and warrants for moving animals from farms to feedlots, for subsidizing commodity crops grown in monocultures, for transporting Washington State apples all over the world, for replacing farmer knowledge with scientific expertise at land grant universities, and for letting agribusiness firms indirectly design school lunch programs.
The present scales of factory farming have reached into our everyday lives: they inform discussions about nutrition and necessary meal composition, prompt people to forget about
2 the seasonality of foods and the impact of their consumption patterns, and reach our biggest fears through campaigns that intentionally misguide us into thinking the world will go hungry if industrial food production does not constantly increase.
Over the last few decades, the great costs associated with our global-scale, industrial food system have grown increasingly visible. Food safety, food insecurity, environmental degradation, labor exploitation, urban sprawl, the loss of family farmers, and the breakdown of rural communities have become familiar concerns for producers, academics, political activists, and the public at large. These concerns have recently contributed to the rise and popularity of local food networks as a strategy for long term food security and for resisting corporate power manifest in the highly concentrated, globalizing food system. In effect, down-scaling the food system has become a centerpiece of anti-globalization movements and continues to make stronger connections to the promotion of environmental sustainability and social justice. In this context, scale is used to argue that large farms are unable to properly recycle nutrients and manage production in an ecologically responsible manner. It is used to assure us that small farmers are better stewards of natural resources, contribute more to local community and economic development, and can be equally or more productive per unit area when compared to large-scale agribusiness. To some extent, this small-scale perspective sustains the local foods movement and is attracting food scholars and activists from all disciplines and walks of life.
Nevertheless, an analytical understanding of the scalar construction and reconfiguring of our food system(s) has eluded us and remains a matter of debate. ―Scale‖ has acquired several meanings, each with multiple nuances and some ambiguity (see Goodchild and
Quattriachi 1996; Sheppard and McMaster 2004). Widespread use of the multi-dimensional
3 concept ranges from mapmaking to examining the socio-ecological significance of cross- scalar interactions (e.g., between sub-basins, basins, and ecoregions) and absolute magnitudes
(e.g., population size, house size). In this study, I broadly conceive of scalar configurations as the outcome of elite decision-making, social struggle, and environmental dynamics; they are fundamentally linked to social power relations and thus ―make sense‖ only within the constraints of the dominant cultural processes that uphold both the means of production and the organization of social power in society. For example, farm size, land tenure, food transport requirements, and the sustainability prospects of monocultural cash-cropping agriculture are radically different than the socio-ecological scales of peasant subsistence farming. However, whether we look at today‘s global wheat market or the loosely-scattered and self-sufficient peasant villages of the Incan Empire, the different dimensions of scale seemingly ―synchronize‖ within the cultural system. That is to say that farm sizes, production quantities and distribution strategies relate to each society‘s extant foodscapes—food systems customized to fit particular landscapes and existing socio-spatial relations. Although I devote chapter two to clarifying both my conception of scale and how I employ it in my research, it is important to first call attention to erroneous perspectives regarding the effects of scale and scale changes in food systems.
Simple Illusions, Complex Inquiry
Unfortunately, researchers, activists and the general public tend to oversimplify the role of scale with respect to food systems, often supporting one of three flawed yet long-standing paradigms: 1) ―bigger is always better,‖ 2) small (or local) is simple and safe, and 3) scale is neutral (Kirschenmann 2002). More than just simplistic, these generalized paradigms
4 disregard the diversity of geographic places, the unequal distribution of social power throughout the world, and the multiple dimensions of scale—quantitative, spatial, temporal, and analytical—that may be applied to food system studies. A brief description of these paradigms will help us identify how they have been applied to many aspects of human life, not just food.
First, there is the ―bigger is always better‖ perspective. Since the food crisis years of the 1970s, premier development agencies have promoted comparative advantage, export- driven economic growth, market liberalization, and biotechnology as the keys to preventing another food crisis in developing countries. Economic development experts have looked askance at any policy proposing to strengthen national food self-sufficiency in a developing country. This perspective devoutly supports today‘s global-scale, commercial food system that favors the largest, most powerful agribusinesses and food corporations and progressively weakens the capacity of a nation-state to direct and organize its own food economy. Many praise industrial farming and promote the unrelenting infusion of bio-technology and agriculture, often perceiving global population limits as a food production and carrying capacity issue rather than a matter of social inequality and distributive justice.
A second cohort of thinkers (or cornerstone of ideas) assume small-scale and ―local‖ food systems to be inherently more socially just and ecologically sound than a larger-scale food system. Thus small family farms are always considered to be more ecologically sturdy, to do less harm to the environment, and to always form the basis of more stable communities.
Here, due to the mounting localist and anti-globalization movements, agro-food scholars increasingly call attention to a general consumer appreciation of ―the local.‖ For instance, local produce tastes better because it is fresher than nonlocal produce, knowing the origin of
5 one‘s food can be reassuring in a era of heightened concern with food safety, and people enjoy contributing to a region‘s overall quality of life—a sense of civic purpose—through supporting regional farms or by growing food in the community garden. Even so, while it is generally in relation to food that people begin to understand the benefits of localist economies, the relationships among localism, sustainability, and social justice are complicated
(Hess 2009). Furthermore, the geographical scope of ―local‖ has become a controversial topic that warrants more critical analysis and comparison (Dupois and Goodman 2005. Given their great diversity, making generalizations about localist movements would be misguided (Hess
2009).
The growing support of this localism/small-scale perspective has recently stimulated a long-standing argument that counters both previous stances: that scale is neutral. This third paradigm sees changes in scale to be inconsequential, that successful, environmental friendly farming is entirely a matter of management skill and appropriate technology. For instance,
Born and Purcell (2006) caution against the ―local trap‖—the tendency of food activists and researchers to assume something inherent about the local scale. They argue that the local trap is misguided and poses significant intellectual and political dangers to food systems research, not because local is inherently bad, but because ―there is nothing inherent about any scale‖.
Local-scale food systems are equally likely to be just or unjust, sustainable or unsustainable, secure or insecure. No matter what its scale, the outcomes produced by a food system are contextual: they depend on the actors and agendas that are empowered by the particular social relations in a given food system [Born and Purcell 2006:195-196]
While saying that ―the outcomes produced by a food system are contextual‖ is widely agreeable, suggesting that the context is independent of size goes against a long history of theoretical work that demonstrates how population and organizational size influence decision-
6 making and relevant distributions (See chapter two). Furthermore, the scale-is-neutral paradigm is particularly interesting given the central role scale plays in today‘s debates of economic growth, sustainability, and power. Why is scale so important to everyone if it does not matter? It is obvious that how one might conceptualize the relation between scale and food systems remains to be more fully specified.
In taking up this inquiry, my aim is not to develop a formal theory of the production and effects of scale within food systems, which is likely impossible because ideas of scale include numerousvariants, as do notions of food systems and what makes them sustainable.
As a cultural anthropologist, I believe that theoretical discussions need to be grounded in cases, in observed streams of behavior, and in recorded texts. I want to find ways of interrogating such materials to define the power relations that comprise food system arrangements and configurations, and to examine the ways in which these relations of power both implicate, and are implicated in, the scalar dimensions of the food system. To do this, I draw on a host of human ecological perspectives, but most notably follow a power and scale approach (Bentley and Maschner 2004; Bodley 1999, 2001; Colombi 2005). This requires paying attention to multiple analytical categories of socio-spatial scale, such as farm/plot sizes, production quantities, transport distances, organizational size and structure, notions of
―local,‖ etc., along with the significance of culture scale—the order-of-magnitude differences among cultures on various socioeconomic dimensions and modes of organizing social power
(Bodley 1999).
7
Culture Scale, Culture Processes, and Food Systems
Bodley‘s (1999, 2003) power and scale approach, places the past 50,000 years of cultural development—from foragers, tribals, and chiefdoms to agrarian civilizations and globally integrated commercial cultures—into a single explanatory framework. From this perspective, over time people have developed three distinctive cultural worlds distinguished by both the means of production and the organization of social power: tribal (by means of kin), imperial
(by means of rulers), and commercial (by means of markets) (Wolf 1982; Bodley 1999). To
Bodley, cultural worlds are the broadest social-ecological environments where people routinely interact to secure their existence. Each world can be defined by the size of the largest independent societies they contain(ed) and the size of global population they sustain(ed).
Tribal world cultures—the only to exist until roughly 7,000 years ago—coevolved with the human species and are concerned primarily with the humanization process—―the biological production and maintenance of human beings and with the cultural production and maintenance of human societies and cultures‖ (Bodley 2008:3). Social power was directed by autonomous household heads who negotiated within a small interdomestic society of about
500 to 2,000 people. These small-scale societies and cultures maximized domestic self- sufficiency and proliferated around the planet, adapting to virtually all ecosystems. All humans share in the humanization process and the subprocesses involved. There are at least five cultural subprocesses that people use to meet their human needs: symbolization— producing abstract concepts; materialization—giving physical form to concepts;
8 socialization—producing permanent human societies; verbalization—producing human speech; and enculturation—reproducing culture (Bodley 1999).
In the world before the state, tribal peoples mostly lived in mobile, foraging societies that operated in a world of small-scale societies. Subsistence practices were specific to their environment, central to their cultural world, and typically consisted of hunting, fishing, gathering, and later, small-scale farming and herding. Sahlins (1972) famously argued that what makes ―Stone Age‖ or tribal economies unique in comparison with more technologically advanced economies is that in tribal economies the fundamental production unit, and thus the dominant institution, is the household. According to Sahlins and others, when food production is primarily for local, household, or village domestic consumption, as in tribal cultures, actual production tends to be far below the maximum that might be sustained given the potential limitations of technology, labor force, and resources (Carneiro 1960, Brown and Brookfield
1963; Birdsell 1971; see also Bodley 2001: 108-111). In other words, foragers generally do not exploit their food resources to the maximum potential. Furthermore, in small-scale cultures, household production norms are culturally set at average levels; the potentially most productive households (that have the most laborers) tend to slack off rather than out-produce the smaller households (Chayanov 1966; Sahlins 1972). Such equilibrium mechanisms within domestic-scale cultures help maintain production at sustainable levels—everyone eats and resources are not exhausted. A further stabilizing factor is reciprocal pooling of food and redistribution within kinship networks, which assure a relatively uniform distribution of nutrients (Bodley 2001).
9 The historic resilience and sustainability of tribal sociocultural systems was threatened and many sorts of changes were introduced by the following processes (Bodley 2008:4-5):
15,000 BP: sedentarization and the emergence of village life
12,000 BP: domestication and the emergence of farming and
herding
6,000 BP: politicization and the emergence of politically organized
large-scale societies
500 BP: commercialization and the emergence of commercially
organized global-scale societies
As these processes have unfolded, they have certainly changed the way that small-scale societies acquire, produce and distribute food. Nevertheless, small-scale tribal cultures still exist in diverse forms and often strive for autonomy in today‘s commercially-dominated world. Indigenous peoples, who identify themselves with a specific small-scale society, a unique cultural heritage, and an ancestral territory (Bodley 2008), have been forced to creatively draw on commercial world processes to satisfy their needs for nutrition and security in increasingly altered socionatural environments. Due to rapid urbanization and resource exploitation, their subsistence patterns have been in disarray for centuries, thus contemporary indigenous societies tend not to practice tribal food culture (though it may be their cultural goal), instead they have been encompassed by commercial food culture.
Beginning some 6,000 years ago, a few aggrandizing individuals managed to unseat the humanization process in particular regions by creating centralized political authority and the formal institutions of government (Bodley 2003). In these regions, the cultural process of
10 politicization replaced the social equality and domestic self-sufficiency of small-scale tribal societies with a small bureaucratic hierarchy that directed production and distribution. In large-scale imperial world societies, central political rulers take production and distribution functions away from households and individuals and promote subsistence intensification, new technology, and population growth to enhance their personal power networks. However, political rulers could not expand their influence everywhere and eliminate all autonomous tribal cultures, because such large-scale societies are costly to maintain and likely to collapse.
The coercive food systems of the imperial world, such as those operating in chiefdoms and agrarian civilizations, contrast sharply with tribal food systems. Chiefs and kings used coercive force and engaged both ideologies and cosmologies to extract food surplus from local villages and households in the form of taxes or tribute (Wolf 1999). The larger and more internally complex of these ancient civilizations had to support (feed) large labor forces for massive construction projects, permanent administrative bureaucracies, along with the peasant-farmer majority, which typically comprised 90 percent of the population (Bodley
2001). Such increased subsistence demands made it so political-scale cultures were often much closer to the carrying capacities of their environments than were tribal cultures.
Furthermore, the increased importance of social rank and status made it likely that nutrients were unevenly distributed so that nobles were overnourished at the expense of a malnourished peasantry. But because ancient rulers derived their power from human labor, it was in their interest to keep large segments of the population relatively well-nourished; one can argue that commercial world rulers have no incentive to worry about undernourishing large segments of the population (Bodley 2001).
11 The emergence of commercially organized global-scale societies, as with that of politically-organized societies, magnified material inequality and impoverished many people.
During the earliest, preindustrial phase of capitalist expansion, which was in progress by A.D.
1450, several European powers achieved political control over large areas of the new
American continents, the Caribbean, and eastern Atlantic islands (Bodley 2001). This marked the beginning of the colonial process of conquest and incorporation that continued into the twentieth century. By 1800, at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, preindustrial states, chiefdoms and many tribal societies existed, but the Western colonial powers had claimed 55 percent of the world‘s land area and controlled nearly two-thirds of the world‘s people (Clark
1936; in Bodley 2001). For the next 150 years, virtually all indigenous territory was conquered by colonizing industrial states, and an estimated 50 million indigenous people died as a result (Bodley 2008). This process created the modern commercial world system, where elites use industrial technology and new energy sources to increase the rate of commercial transactions to generate higher levels of social power for the top ranks through economic growth.
In the commercial world, the economy is imagined to have an independent existence, and economic growth is universally recognized as the highest priority for government policy, even when what is good for the economy conflicts with the nutritional and security needs of particular human groups. Enormous economic power is concentrated in giant corporations that are organizationally far removed from the domestic concerns of individuals and households. For instance, global-scale commercial food systems involve a vast concentration of political and economic power in ―food chain clusters‖—groups of a few dominant firms that together own the food products from gene and fertilizer processing to the supermarket
12 shelves (Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002). Such power networks produce vast profits for global elites that direct corporate decision-making for a variety of non-food enterprises as well; commercial elites are inherently insensitive to the needs of local human communities and ecosystems. The major features of these factory food systems are: 1) their costly fossil fuel energy subsidies and their reliance on genetic engineering to produce high per acre crop yields for very low inputs of human energy; 2) extreme complexity of the food system and the tendency to increase per capita energy and resource cost of food consumption through expanded dependence on synthetic and highly processed foods, and inefficiently produced animal protein; and 3) placing primary importance in producing financial return for investors rather than satisfying human nutritional needs (Bodley 2001:131-159). Global-scale commercial food systems place great demands on human resources and consequently have great potential for producing environmental deterioration.
Like water, food fuses the biophysical and socio-cultural realms regardless of cultural scale and the major cultural processes at work. For this reason, I use it as a conceptual and material entry into the social and material production of scale and the politics that perpetually re-scale the world we live in and define today‘s places and regions.
The Problem of Global-Scale Food Systems
Food provides a unique and experiential nexus that draws together many complicated problems facing society (Hinrichs 2007). In the past 10,000 years, in various times and places, humans have had considerable anthropogenic effects at local and regional scales (Redman
1999), but never before on a planetary-scale. Orders-of-magnitude increases in the scale of societies, global population, resource consumption rates, and the concentration of wealth and
13 power have dramatically intensified the same sorts of problems created by earlier societies and significantly reduced the resiliency of today‘s human and natural systems (Bodley 2008).
Contemporary global crises, such as the passing of ―peak oil,‖ global warming, and decreasing genetic diversity, trickle down to national, regional, community, and household levels, where they primarily raise concerns of food security. Individuals may temporarily ignore certain global- and even national-level crises, but at the community and household levels, where daily needs must be met, basic subsistence needs necessarily supersede other concerns.
A major problem with global-scale food systems is that they are detached from place, allowing non-local elites to structure the shape and use of wide-ranging locales (Giddens
1984; Harvey 1990; Kloppenburg et al. 1996). This problem has gradually produced a general localism movement in opposition to the dominant direction of world politics and economics.
Sudden and increasing support for localist food movements and agricultural sustainability reflects the current climate of fear and distrust surrounding the activities of giant food corporations and large-scale government food regulation. The fact is our food systems are operating beyond capacity and suffering periodic crashes at increasing rates. These episodic food breakdowns are too often blamed on proximate triggers that typically implicate slow government responses to agricultural factors, such as the global wheat shortage induced by a two year (2006-7) wheat crop failure in Australia (associated with prolonged drought).
Another example is how the price of U.S. corn increased dramatically, coinciding with early
2007 adoption of legislation providing financial incentives to use corn as a biofuel (ethanol) in order to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. While effort must be put into quickly fixing sporadic food breakdowns, which in these cases resulted in inflation on the global food
14 market, this dissertation is less concerned with proximate causation, instead focusing on long term food system functionality.
Of course, most political economic food scholars make note of the post-World War II macro-factors underlying contemporary food system struggles, most notably 1) population increases due to public health measures that reduced infant mortality and infectious diseases, in the absence of countervailing family planning practices, and 2) vast increases in agricultural productivity and ―efficiency‖ as the agricultural workforce simultaneously decreased (Katz 2008). There can be little doubt that rapid population growth and the absolute level of population are important aspects of contemporary food crises. But elevated populations that presently characterize world demography are just one problematic symptom of a world dominated by commercially-organized cultures and food systems, as associated high levels of poverty. Likewise, contemporary perspectives of agricultural productivity and efficiency are equally problematic. They require enormous fossil fuel inputs, essentially converting oil into food (Odum 1971; Manning 2004) and making the American diet include more energy-intensive processed foods.
When viewed from a cultural ecological perspective, the industrialization of agriculture raises troubling questions for the long-term viability of industrial civilization.
Factory farming produced wonderful crop yields, dramatically increasing the scale of food production and distribution, but the social, cultural and environmental cost has been substantial. Fossil fuel powered machinery such as tractors, combines, and sprayers replace human and animal labor (Bowler 1992; Symes and Marsden 1985). Commercial fertilizers, fungicides, and pesticides help to increase crop yields while reappearing in unexpected places and eventually altering natural equilibrium ecosystem cycles (Bodley 2001a; Lappe and
15 Bailey 1998). Meanwhile, the ever-increasing number of urban consumers became further removed from the source of their food and less likely to notice the social and environmental impact of their consumption patterns. By 2006, over half the world‘s population resided in urban environments dependent on purchased food rather than subsistence farming.
Urbanization, together with the rapid growth of world trade, has given rise to food systems that allow elite interests and the unstable dynamics of global food trade to govern local, regional and national food production systems.
It is generally agreed that the solution to the current world food crises requires focusing on diverse process-based problems that bring together magnitudes, spaces, and times. Therefore a more comprehensive understanding of the role (or non-role) of scale is essential for planners to envision more sustainable food systems. According to Salomon Katz
(2008), a leading food scholar, contemporary food crises demand a new focus on 1) the sustainability and diversity of food production, 2) the efficiency of food storage and transportation, 3) the dietary significance and opportunities of food processing to enhance and rebalance nutrients removed or harmed by depleted and contaminated soils, and 4) the cultural factors that lead to food waste, over-consumption and spoilage. The analysis of these goals requires contextual analyses of scalar dimensions, suggesting the importance of improving our thinking about absolute potential thresholds and cross-scalar interactions among existing food systems. If we resist developing our analysis of scale in society, it is easy to foresee the same three erroneous paradigms—bigger is better, small is simple and safe, and scale is neutral—pushed to the forefront of the debate. Alternatively, a framework to better conceptualize food systems and understand relationships between human decision-making and socio-spatial, cultural, and ecological scale variables will necessarily draw on a variety of
16 human ecological perspectives—historical materialism, political ecology, world systems theory, complexity science, power and scale theory, and social network theory.
The Columbia River Basin and Three Food Cultures
Whereas food systems are my conceptual and material entry into the study of scalar configurations, the Columbia Basin is the context where my fieldwork and research questions become grounded. It is both within and from the vantage point of the Columbia Basin that I approach the problematic of scale—the social and material production of scale, the making of scalar articulations, and the politics of rescaling particular food system configurations. Of course, a basin-focus in a connected world must also aim to accentuate the boundlessness of bioregionality—both social and natural processes flow in and out of seemingly bounded regions. Nevertheless, exploring the social relations that produce and perpetually reconfigure scalar dimensions of the food system, such as farm sizes, production quantities, transport distances, commercial consolidation, etc., literally cannot be examined without sophisticated reference to place.
The Columbia Basin is pysiographically defined by the complex of streams and rivers draining into the Columbia River—the fourth largest river in North America (Figure 1.1).
While the river itself flows roughly 1,240 miles from the Canadian Rockies to the Pacific
Ocean, its drainage basin encompasses an area of about 265,000 square miles (690,000 km2) that includes parts of seven U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. It is a region of high relief that is bounded on the west by the Cascade Range, on the north and east by the Rocky
Mountains, with a less pronounced boundary on the south that gradually merges with the
17 Great Basin. The Columbia River pours more water into the Pacific Ocean than any other river in North or South America.
Figure 1.1: The Columbia River Basin
18 Of course, the river and the region it drains bear little resemblance to the place Native peoples and settlers knew in the early twentieth century. From 1933 to 1984, new immigrants and their descendants transformed much of the river into a series of large reservoirs contained by 14 hydroelectric dams. While many lamented the loss of fisheries and culturally important places, others welcomed the newly tamed waterway that could manage floods, irrigate desert lands, and deliver electrical power to the growing region. In this way, the Columbia River can be seen through a succession of different lenses—as a bountiful fishery for the Indians and coastal/Anglo fishing fleets, as a snag-ridden and nearly impassable thoroughfare for the early
Euro-American explorers, as a hugely powerful manufacturer of hydroelectricity, as a source of irrigation for farmers, and as the town drain for the mining and nuclear weapons industries
(White 1995).
Columbia Basin peoples have produced and participated in a partially overlapping succession of three historically and ecologically distinctive food cultures. For more than
10,000 years, the regional subsistence system—Plateau food culture—was based on fishing, gathering, and hunting. Winters were spent in base camps located at lower elevations in the valleys of the Columbia River or its tributaries where winter temperatures were moderate and both fresh water and fuel were easily accessible (Walker 1998). During the warmer months, various resources were sought including fish, game, and plant foods either along rivers or in the uplands for immediate consumption or for processing and storage as winter supplies
(Walker 1998).
At the time of European contact, the aboriginal way of life along the middle Columbia
River had already been transformed by the introduction of the horse, trade goods, and Euro-
American diseases (Walker and Sprague 1998). Early Euro-American agriculture and
19 ranching began as predominately subsistence activities on small plots along rivers, yet many early agriculturalists were anxious for new transportation links and prospects for national and global markets. An industrial food culture quickly developed, characterized by intensive irrigation of the Columbia River system; factory farming techniques, such as large-scale monocropping of fruits and grains; increased yields of standardized and uniform products, most of which enter the metropolitan and global food market; a transfer of expertise from farmers to land grant university agricultural scientists; a concentration of power in a few large multinational food corporations; and rapid environmental decline.
Despite the rapid and recent development of this globally-orchestrated food system,
Columbia Basin peoples have recently grown more concerned with food quality, security, and community well-being, identifying with broad anti-globalism movements, food movements
(such as ―organic,‖ ―slow,‖ or ―local‖), and/or one of a variety of local-oriented paradigms.
From these concerns and social movements, a civic (or local) food culture is developing alongside (rather than replacing) the industrial food system. Civic agriculture is characterized by farmers‘ markets and community gardens, small-scale social networks, smaller-scale production methods, and by its tendency to develop in a variety of rural-to-urban places. It combines the ―smallness‖ of tribal food culture with the commercial-orientation of today‘s dominant, industrial food culture. It is the combinations of these latter two systems, and their transition from the earlier Plateau food culture, which this study seeks to explore.
Method and Organization
Whereas the study of food and eating is important for its own sake, because food is utterly essential to human existence and often insufficiently available, food research has also
20 proved vital for illuminating broad societal processes such as political economic value- creation, symbolic value-creation, and the social construction of memory (Mintz and DuBois
2002). Messer (1984) and Mintz and DuBois (2002) demonstrate a wide variety of disciplinary and theoretical approaches to study the impacts of larger political economic forces on food systems, focusing on the ―Columbian Exchange‖ of food crops (Crosby 1972;
Foster and Cordell 1992), agricultural involution (Geertz 1963), the cultural history of national diets (Anderson 1988; Chang 1977), the human significance of cash crops like sugar
(Mintz 1985) and butter (Chalfin 2004), the energy flows connecting subsistence and ritual
(Rappaport (1967), the values and norms in eating patterns that are symbolic in broader structures in society (Goody 1982), and the social backgrounds behind food insecurity and the projects meant to alleviate it (Pottier 1999). In anthropology and throughout the social sciences, food has also proved an important arena for debating the relative merits of cultural and historical materialism versus structuralist or symbolic explanations for human behavior
(Mintz and DuBois 2002).
This dissertation seeks to document and analyze the scalar construction of food systems in the context of changes in Columbia Basin food systems. Thus, the chapters also provide a bioregional history of food system development in the Columbia Basin. In chapter two, I chart the political- and cultural-ecological perspectives that have inspired my research on nature, place, and scale. This is where I address the scalar construction of socio-natural processes and the centrality of a politics of scale in the production of particular foodscapes.
In chapter three, I examine the bioregional history of the Columbia Basin concentrating on dramatic increases in human population and how biophysical characteristics both limit and guide how humans have ―scaled‖ this geographic region. As the Basin‘s
21 ―nature‖ perpetually changes, I explore how transformational processes jointly alter spatio- temporal and quantitative scales, only some of which can be socially contested. Geology, climate, animals, plants, and human settlement patterns all enter into the complex calculus of socio-spatial processes that regulate and organize social power relations and give rise to shifting scalar configurations that characterize various periods.
The historical analysis of chapter three sets the scene for chapter four, where I classify and systematically explore the scaled geographies and characteristics of the three food cultures in the Basin. This chapter examines the relationship between culture scale and food system configurations within the Columbia Basin, and discusses key foundational and historical aspects of each food culture.
Chapter five draws on ethnographic studies within the Plateau to examine socio-spatial and environmental dynamics of tribal food culture. It begins by reviewing the general patterns of Plateau subsistence cycles and intergroup relations, and then describes the subsistence cycles of the Wanapum, Chelan, and Nez Perce. The chapter pays particular attention to the importance of group size, mobility, and intergroup cultural development at the regional
(basin-wide) scale. By keeping their communities small, indigenous peoples could thereby stabilize their use of energy and materials, satisfy human needs, and keep decision-making widely distributed.
Chapter six examines the evolution of commercial-industrial food culture in the
Columbia Basin through a case study of Washington State‘s apple industry. This chapter identifies and analyzes the historical context of particular scale transformations—points in the apple industry‘s history where quantitative increases (in production totals, distribution distances, etc.) have induced major socio-cultural and ecological transformations
22 (organizational size, fewer warehouses, landscape alteration, etc.). This is accomplished through the use of ethnographic data, interviews, and participant observation at packing warehouses, large and small retailers, and seasonal harvests near the towns of Brewster,
Wapato, and Cashmere. I call attention to social and ecological costs of monocropping fruit along the Columbia River, and how increasing fruit production decreases the potential of local and regional food economies and essentially decreases regional sustainability.
Chapters seven and eight explore the local food movement in the Palouse from 1960 to present. There has been a recent wave of interest in local food networks and food system localization both as a strategy for long term food security and to resist corporate power manifest in the highly concentrated, global food system. Some scholars have been skeptical of these efforts, questioning the effectiveness and the effects of local food movements, and arguing for a more critical examination of the spatial content and construction of ―local‖ in particular contexts. These chapters respond to this call by drawing on perspectives of political ecology and spatial scale to examine the scalar construction of an agri-food community in the
Palouse region of the northwestern United States. Despite being one of the world‘s leading wheat-producing regions, increasing concerns with food quality, security, and community well-being have contributed to a surge of interest in smaller-scale production methods, farmers‘ markets, community gardens, and other manifestations of local food systems.
Whereas chapter seven focuses on the development of the local food network, chapter eight looks at the uneasy relations concerning the civic engagement of a land-grant university‘s organic farm and community-supported agriculture (CSA) venture.
We know that the global, industrial food system as presently constructed is unsustainable. Not only is it reliant on fossil fuels, but it increasingly allows distant elites to
23 structure the material and symbolic contexts within which local and regional populations act.
Because the growth logic of the commercial cultural world is largely driven by a financial system that rewards short-term growth in revenue and profitability, long-run solutions to the sustainability problem require developing alternative ways of organizing the global economy.
The construction of such alternatives will benefit from theoretical and cross-cultural studies concerning the concepts of place and scale. The ―placelessness‖ of a global food system makes it inherently insensitive to the needs of local communities and ecosystems. Any significant move toward a sustainable future would require a shift from costly energy and material inputs (fertilizers, machinery, agrochemicals) to information intensive service production based on place-based, sustainable goals and ethics. It would also entail the shortening of production and distribution chains. Such shifts align with the goals of today‘s localism movement, which is built on the sense that communities have lost political and economic sovereignty to multinational corporations (Hess 2009). The final chapter of this dissertation examines the localism movement and the potential for constructing place-based, local and regional food systems.
24 CHAPTER TWO
CONCEPTUALIZING SCALE
Despite the many meanings and problems in understanding scale, scholars from all disciplines are paying progressively more attention to this multidimensional concept, whether focusing on its spatial, temporal, quantitative, and/or analytical dimensions. Social scientists have long considered absolute scale, such as population size, resource abundance, and farm size, to be linked to both social power and cultural complexity in human societies. Many social theorists and researchers have examined this relationship, albeit with diverse interpretations of scale.
This includes the perceptive and influential works of such notable figures as C. Wright Mills
(1956), Walter Goldschmidt ([1944]1978), Roy Rappaport (1977), Vilfredo Pareto (1896-97,
1907), Kent Flannery (1972), Marshal Sahlins and Elman Service (1960), Allen Johnson and
Timothy Earle (1987), Robert Boyd and Peter J. Richerson (1985), Richard Adams (1985), and Robert Carneiro (1967, 1970), among many others. These studies laid the foundation for
Bodley‘s (1999, 2003) richly detailed and theoretically diverse examination of how increases in the absolute scale of material resources and population in any society concentrates social power among progressively fewer elites. This anthropological perspective draws on theoretical insights from various disciplines, including complexity science (Abel and Stepp
2003; Bentley and Maschner 2003), ecological economics (Daly 1992), biology (Bonner
1988; McMahon and Bonner 1983; Richerson and Boyd 1999; Read 2002; Stanley 1998), political science (Dahl 1989), and urban studies (Duncan 1980).
In other fields, particularly human geography and to a lesser extent sociology, shifting views on the role and nature of socio-spatial scale(s) have given rise to diverse approaches
25 concerned with how particular spatial, or geographic, scales have been culturally-constructed.
Whereas we immediately intuit in today‘s world that matters look different when analyzed at global, continental, national, regional, local, or household/personal scales, we have only recently challenged the seemingly immutable quality of these socio-spatial scales. Rather than perceiving these scales as ontologically given categories, as a preordained hierarchical nomenclature for ordering the world, scholars increasingly ask how scales come into existence for particular phenomena, and how their relative importance changes over time.
They suggest that socio-spatial scales are systemic products of changing technologies, modes of human organization and political struggle, and therefore perpetually transforming. This literature refers to spatial or geographical scales, but its focus is on sociospatial power relations, thus implicating the spatial scales of shared group identity, the social scale of organizational complexity, and the ways power relations interdigitate these spatial configurations.
This chapter begins with an overview of the concept of scale, examining its multi- dimensionality and various uses. Next, the two aforementioned bodies of scale-centered theory are examined: 1) the power and scale approach, and 2) the constructionist approach.
My concern is not only in examining how power relations relate to scale increases in populations, markets, cities, etc., and affect human and environmental health, but also to trace out how such power relations reconfigure spatial scales in terms of their extent, content, relative importance and interrelations. In this sense, this chapter may also be interpreted as further development of power and scale theory (Bodley 1999, 2003), or at least, how I aim to use the theory to examine Columbia Basin foodscapes. My hope is that focusing on the spatial dimensions of land-use, ownership, transport, network connections, partnerships, etc., will
26 cast further light on how quantitative scales (population size, resource abundance, and farm size) are culturally produced and maintained. The scale linkage problem—that observations and theoretical propositions derived about phenomena at one level on a spatial, temporal, or quantitative scale cannot be generalized to another level (smaller or larger, higher or lower)
(Gregory 1994) —need not preclude the analysis of local and regional relations and thresholds.
After examining points of accord and contention between these two bodies of theory, the chapter concludes with a discussion of localism and sustainability, and how they relate to both theoretical frameworks‘ proposed solutions to contemporary problems of scale from local to global socio-spatial levels. Considering that numerous social and ecological problems relate to scale, how may we draw on our knowledge of the concept of scale to best produce solutions to contemporary issues?
Grasping Scale
Owing to its several meanings and abstract complexities, the term scale has acquired multiple nuances and some ambiguity (see Gibson et al. 2000; Goodchild and Quattriachi 1996;
Sheppard and McMaster 2004). The most traditional and widespread use of the term is cartographic—to define the relationship between distance on a map image and the corresponding difference in reality. However, after this, the various ―types‖ of scale reflect the thinking of different communities of scholars and their divergent traditions of theory, philosophy, epistemology, and methodology. Whereas natural scientists are often concerned with scale dependence of phenomena and processes, and with finding principles and laws that operate at different scales, social scientists tend to perceive scale more broadly as a level of
27 spatio-temporal representation, experience, or organization of events and processes. Social scientists increasingly question the ―construction‖ or ―production‖ of scale, how differentially scaled ―networks‖ link places together across space, and how demonstrations and distributions of ―social power‖ both produce and arise from quantitative scale changes, such as increases in a city‘s population or a food-producing region‘s average farm size.
Attempting to facilitate scale-related dialogue between the natural and social sciences
Gibson et al. (2000:236) maintain that ―common definitions do not exist for scale—even within disciplines—and especially in the social sciences.‖ They go on to broadly define scale as ―the spatial, temporal, quantitative, or analytical dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes‖ (Gibson et al. 2000:236). Beyond its wide coverage, the quality of this definition resides in emphasizing multidimensionality. These distinct scalar dimensions, save the analytical dimension, are easy to see when considering extent (or size or magnitude). In regard to space, extent may range from smaller than a two-acre farm to bigger than a massive watershed. In regard to time, extent may involve a day, a week, a season, a year, a generation, a century, or many millennia. In regard to quantity, the number of individuals, goods, and other entities may vary from two to billions. Alternatively, the range of size in analytical scales depends on the make-up of a conceptually and/or causally linked system, such as a hierarchy, which groups phenomena along an analytical scale (e.g., Linnaean hierarchy of taxonomic categories, personnel ranking, and a food chain). It is important to note that there is considerable overlap among these four dimensions; it is difficult to claim any object or process as one-dimensional. For instance, constitutive hierarchies, such as that of social arenas (ranging from household to neighborhood to village to city to region to nation to continent to globe and some levels in between), at once represent spatial spheres of socio-
28 ecological interaction and signify temporal dimensions of transport and land-use histories, but are mostly analytical categories between which there are no clear boundaries.
Upon exploring how different disciplines have used scale in their research, Gibson et al. conclude that because social scientists work with ―scales of less precision and of greater variety,‖ they should adopt the relatively well-defined hierarchical systems (and language) of analysis used by natural scientists (2000:217). The growing need for interdisciplinary work across the natural/social science divide demands a common ground of understanding about scaling issues. It is in fact deluding to separate scientific discourses on the ―reality‖ of environmental problems from humanistic discourses on the representations of such realities, simply because the representations (including all our discourse) tend to be active ingredients in reality (Hornborg 2001; Wolf 1999). However, Gibson et al.‘s (2000) proposition too closely resembles Wilson‘s (1998) claim that the concept of scale, as used by natural scientists, could lead to ―consilience‖—the unity of knowledge. These attempts gain little sympathy in the humanities and social sciences, where multiple perspectives are encouraged and overly-reductive reasoning is suspect. Instead, we should seek out a common groundwork for explanation that is accepting of the great diversity in human knowledges, rather than promote and rally around a single perspective of the human and natural world (Harvey 2000).
I am comfortable with Gibson et al.‘s (2000) broad definition of ―scale‖ as the spatial, temporal, quantitative, or analytical dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes. However, two issues come to mind. First, it is difficult and inaccurate to isolate scalar dimensions in the study of social phenomena. For instance, focusing on analytically- and spatially-defined spaces, such as community/city/region/nation or a measured distance respectively, clearly embeds quantitative (community energy-use, city population) and
29 temporal (e.g., time-distance relationships) dimensions within spatial analysis. Second, magnitudes and processes are equally important. The process through which particular scales become constituted and subsequently transformed is as important as the potential for quantitative scale changes to drive qualitative results—scale itself is both a driving force and a limiting variable. For our purposes in the present research, we need to be concerned with growth thresholds, order-of-magnitude increases in the size of food systems, the cultural features required to sustain food systems of diverse sizes, as well as the sociospatial processes that regulate and organize social power relations concerning food.
Essential to a useful discussion of scale is the concept of hierarchy and the related key terms defined in Table 2.1. A hierarchy is a conceptually or causally linked system for grouping phenomena along an analytical scale. Because there are different kinds of hierarchies, scholars must be careful in applying hierarchy theories to all types of scalar configurations as it may impose a particular and rather remote kind of order on worldly chaos.
Some hierarchies are exclusive, whereby the objects at the higher level do not contain the objects at the lower level (i.e., they are not nested). Exclusive hierarchies are seen in systems of personnel ranking (generals command captains who command lieutenants and so on, down to privates) and along the food chain (top carnivores eat carnivores that eat grazers who eat plants). Other hierarchies are nested, of which there are two types: inclusive and conceptual.
Inclusive (or aggregational) hierarchies, such as those in Linnaean taxonomy (e.g. kingdom, phylum, class, order and so on) involve orderings whereby phenomena grouped together at any one level are contained in the category used to describe higher levels, but having no particular organization at each level. The other nested hierarchy—most characteristic of
30 Table 2.1. Definitions of Key Terms Related to the Concept of Scale
Term Definition Scale The spatial, temporal, quantitative, or analytical dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes.
Spatial Scale Spatial dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes, such as farm household, city, basin, nation, foodshed.
Temporal Scale Temporal dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes, such as food seasonality, storage length, food life cycle.
Quantitative Scale Quantitative dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes, such as size of food enterprise, production acreage, crop quantities, transport distances, fuel use, marketing costs, food miles.
Analytical Scale Analytical dimensions used to measure and study objects and processes. See hierarchy types below.
Extent, Magnitude The size of the spatial, temporal, quantitative, or analytical dimensions of a scale.
Hierarchy A conceptually or causally linked system of grouping objects or processes along an analytical scale.
Inclusive hierarchy Groups of objects or processes that are ranked as lower in a hierarchy are contained in or are subdivisions of groups that are ranked as higher in the system, such as in taxonomic classifications.
Exclusive hierarchy Groups of objects or processes that are ranked as lower in a hierarchy are not contained in or subdivision of groups that are ranked as higher in the system, such as in a personnel ranking system.
Constitutive hierarchy Groups of objects or processes are combined into new units that are then combined into still new units with their own functions and emergent properties.
Imperium (pl. imperia) Personal power networks and elite organizational structures where human decision makers have commanding roles. Such as households, enterprises, USDA, governments.
Levels The units of analysis that are located at the same position on a scale. Many conceptual scales contain levels that are ordered hierarchically, but not all levels are linked to one another in a hierarchical system.
Absolute Scale The distance, time, or quantity measured on an objectively calibrated measurement device.
Relative Scale A transformation of an absolute scale to one that describes the function relationship of one object or process to another. food gathering values in a cost/benefit scale.
31 complex systems—is a constitutive hierarchy, where the lower level can combine into the new units that have new organizations, functions, and emergent properties. All living organisms and most complex, nonliving systems are linked in constitutive hierarchies.
Molecules are contained in cells that are contained in tissues just as individual humans are contained in households that are contained in neighborhoods, which are contained in villages or cities and so on.
The concept of emergence is important when trying to understand constitutive hierarchies. In complex, constitutive hierarchies, characteristics of larger units are not simple combinations of attributes of smaller units, but can show new, collective behaviors. Some important examples of emergent properties include the general situation of a client and a server—with the interactive help from the server, the client may perform tasks that none of them could do separately), and consciousness—not a property of individual neurons, it is a natural emergent property of the interactions of the neurons in the nervous system.
Many phenomena associated with global change are linked together in constitutive hierarchies. Individual humans are contained in families that are contained in neighborhoods, which are contained in villages or cities, which are contained in regions, which are contained in nations, which are contained in international organizations. Furthermore, matters look differently when analyzed at each scale, or hierarchical level—what may be significant at one scale may not even register at the other. In such systems, there is no single ‗correct‘ level to study. Phenomena occurring at any one level are affected by mechanisms occurring at the same level, and by levels below and above. Indeed, processes of scale formation are crosscut by all manners of fragmenting, conflict-ridden and differentiating processes (nationalism, localism, class differentiation, competition) (Swyngedouw 2004). Thus, research on global
32 change processes should examine the world from multiple levels and question how power networks traverse and create spatial boundaries and establish control over distant regions.
Additionally, global change research must heed that fact that human societies do not grow forever; they meet scale thresholds. Perpetual growth in a finite world is impossible. At present, we are clearly running up against basic limits to the planet‘s ability to supply the resources we consume and to absorb our industrial by-products (Bodley 2001; Moran 2008).
Sure enough, current levels and rates of consumption are in many respects more critical than population size alone (Bodley 2001: 65-91), but there is little doubt that rapid population growth and the absolute population levels are important aspects of contemporary, local-to- global sustainability problems.
Population size has long been considered an important, if not primary, variable in theoretical discussions of cultural development and growth thresholds (Carneiro 1967, 1970;
Fried 1960; Johnson and Earle 1987; Sahlins and Service 1960; Service 1975; White 1949).
Population influences structural parameters of human groups, which both influence the efficiency of decision-making organization and signify thresholds that demand structural responses or adjustments (Duff 2002:14-19). For instance, Johnson (1978, 1982, 1983, 1989) argued that inherent limits in humans‘ capacity to successfully integrate information have profound implications for the organization of human groups. Potential face-to face interactions between group members and decision-makers increase exponentially as groups increase in size, and this can inhibit the ability of a group to arrive at consensual decisions
(Johnson 1978). Kosse (1990, 1996) suggests that thresholds in individual capacities to process specific information create regularities in the size of social groups. She indicates that a person can have specific social knowledge of a maximum of approximately 500 individuals.
33 Kosse suggests that symbolic partitioning should characterize groups of about 500 when they are embedded within larger social groups (1990:295-6). She also documents a second threshold with regional populations of 2500 to 3000 persons (1996:95). Lekson (1985, 1989,
1990) suggests similar thresholds, stipulating that aggregate groups of two thousand to twenty-five hundred persons trigger group fission or hierarchical organization, with chief, king, or elite power increasing with population size.
Power and Scale: An Anthropological Approach
A long history of theoretical work quantifies elite power in human societies as functionally related to the absolute scale of material resources and population in a given society (Bentley and Maschner 2003; Bodley 1999, 2001, 2003; Colombi 2005; Mayhew 1973; Mayhew and
Schollaert 1980a, 1980b; Mosca 1939; Pareto 1907). Essentially a formalization of the maxim
―the rich get richer,‖ this systems-based argument implies that as the sociocultural system grows, each agent acquires additional attributes at a rate proportional to what it already has.
Therefore, the most well-connected individuals stand to make the greatest gains at the expense of others. Complexity scientists refer to this growth outcome as ―scale-free growth,‖ and it is often characterized by a power-law distribution, which has been shown to frequently occur in natural and social systems, including the connectivity of internet sites (Albert and
Barabasi 2002; Albert et al. 1999, 2000; Broder et al. 2000; Huberman and Adamic 1999), university research funding (Plerou et al. 1999), Hollywood actor networks (Barabasi and
Albert 1999), citations (Bentley and Maschner 2000, 2003), word use in the English language
(Zipf 1949), and the empirical growth dynamics of corporations (Amaral et al. 1998). In fact, scale-free growth may be the norm in the competitive acquisition of properties that arise in
34 human social networks, such as wealth or status. This work suggests that, in scale-free systems (such as all commodity systems), predictions can be made based on these ―naturally occurring‖ inverse relationships between number of members at a given rank and their power.
Combining this body of work with anthropological theory and C. Wright Mill‘s (1956) original insights on American society, Bodley (1999) formulated and tested the power-elite hypothesis—that socioeconomic growth is an elite-directed process that concentrates social power in direct proportion to increases in scale. This hypothesis is heuristic in that it is useful to describe social processes, which here demonstrates that elites, whether knowingly or not, often take advantage of ―the ‗natural‘ power-concentrating effects of scale increase‖ (Bodley
1999:617). Subsequent work has given rise to a more-encompassing power and scale theory
(Bentley and Maschner 2003; Bodley 1999, 2001, 2003; Colombi 2005; Ross 2005), which assumes that human well-being is determined by three variables deeply rooted in human nature and culture: 1) the scale at which people organize their socio-cultural systems; 2) how people control other people, and 3) how we use culture to deceive each other about what is really happening (Bodley 2009). The continuation of chronic poverty, war, and environmental degradation in the world after two centuries of astounding economic progress suggests widespread and systemic socio-cultural dysfunction. Power and scale theory argues that scale itself, not a failure of human intention, may be the primary cause of this dysfunction. From this perspective, our contemporary human problems are caused by a collective social failure to restrain individuals from promoting growth to increase their personal power networks at the expense of others.
Along with these central presuppositions, power and scale theory has thus far been built upon at least five key concepts: imperia, household, power, scale, and sustainability (see
35 Bodley 2003:4-6). As a multidimensional concept, imperium is shorthand for any personal power network and elite organizational structures, and applies to households and many kinds of corporate groups, including businesses, agencies and governments, where particular human decision makers have commanding roles. Imperia are command structures that exist from local to global and wherever control is permanently exercised by an individual or elite minority who are fewer than half of the members of any social group. The household controlled by its adult members is a universal imperium in all societies. Imperium also means empire, and refers to absolute power or domination by a ruler, or an elite few, in any power domain—political, economic, ideological, or military—following Mann‘s (1986) analysis of social power. Power, which refers to social power in this context, refers to the ability of individuals to influence other people and events in order to maintain or improve their own life chances. In societies where social power is differentially distributed, the superior life chances of the more powerful are likely to be reflected in their larger, more comfortable households, superior health, life expectancy, nutrition, greater esteem, privilege, and overall security.
Scale refers to the absolute size of populations, economic enterprises, markets, armies, cities, or anything that affects human well-being. Scale is fundamentally about growth and power, and it calls attention to growth thresholds, order-of-magnitude increases in societal size, and the new cultural features required to sustain larger systems. Finally, sustainability refers to the ability of the members of any human society to acquire the energy and materials needed for successful cross-generational maintenance and reproduction of individual households, society, and culture. Sustainability is the global problem of how to meet human needs in a world of declining material resources, persistent poverty, conflict, and resource degradation.
36 In power and scale theory, growth in scale is the central problem, and the objective is to explain why perpetual growth occurs, to understand its human consequences, and to consider the alternatives. Because individuals are presumably genetically programmed to act in their own self-interest and much of their decision-making focuses on short term personal goals (Flinn et al. 2005), it makes sense that as hierarchies grow in scale and complexity, higher level human decision-makers become increasingly insensitive to their impacts at lower levels (Bodley 2003; Rappaport 1977). Human rationality is bounded: we filter information, forget mistakes, and make choices that often do not produce intended results (Simon 1957).
These human limitations are amplified when individuals possess too much social power and are able to manipulate culture and society for their personal advantage (Bodley 2003; Wolf
1999b). In this sense, scale matters because growth in effect shrinks the social brain by placing decision-making in proportionately fewer hands.
As briefly mentioned in Chapter 1, the power and scale approach proposes a broad explanatory framework to examine the past 50,000 years of cultural development—from foragers to globally integrated commercial cultures. The organization of social power is such an important determinant of the conditions of human life and well-being that all cultures can be sorted by their dominant forms of imperia into just three distinct cultural worlds: tribal
(dominated by kin), imperial (dominated by political rulers), and commercial (dominated by economic elites). While it may seem crude and even petty to reduce all of cultural evolution and diversity to such a sweeping generalization, it is important because ―imperia not only determine human well-being, but they determine how cultures develop and grow, how and why growth occurs, how growth is regulated, and when it stops. Imperia focus our attention on who controls and directs culture, and for what purposes‖ (Bodley 2003:7). Each world can
37 be defined by the size of the largest independent societies they contain(ed) and the size of global population they sustain(ed), but a closer look at the dominant processes of each cultural world provides greater understanding for their theoretical separation (Table 2.2).
Cultural worlds are the most extensive social-ecological environments where people routinely interact to secure their existence. Peoples in the same cultural world may speak different languages, represent different ethnicities, and affiliate with different autonomous societies, but they share the same worldview and notion of how available cultural tools may be employed. In the tribal world, the only world up until roughly 7,000 years ago, people had direct access to all forms of social power by means of personal imperia based on kinship and marriage relations. Virtually everyone in the social universe was treated as family, and the household is the central social institution. In the imperial world, political rulers monopolize military, economic, and ideological sources of institutionalized power. In the commercial world, business elites use unequal exchanges to amass tangible and intangible wealth, and income, even as they use their economic power to gain political and ideological power.
Distinct imperia in each cultural world give rise to wide-ranging differences in levels of economic productivity, standard of living, and overall well-being of households. These differences are consistent with scalar configurations of settlements, societies, and regional and global populations. While these scalar distinctions permit diverse sets of human activities, they also drastically alter the scale and rate at which humans transform the natural world they live in. The profound social and ecological consequences of life in each cultural world are largely the fallout of how imperia operate in combination with scale differences.
38 Table 2.2 Cultural Worlds, Scale, and Cultural Processes (Bodley 2003)
I. Tribal World, domestic-scale culture humanization: producing and maintaining human beings, societies and cultures. . Conceptualization: producing abstract concepts and symbols . Materialization: giving physical form to concepts . Verbalization: producing human speech . Enculturation: reproducing culture . Intensification: producing more food/km2 . Sedentism: settled village life
II. Imperial World, political-scale culture politicization: concentrating social power by co-opting the humanization process to produce and maintain political institutions. . Taxation: extracting surplus production to support government . Specialization: government employment . Militarization: use of organized violence . Urbanization: development of cities
III. Commercial World, global-scale culture commercialization: concentrating social power by co-opting the humanization and politicization processes to produce and maintain for-profit business enterprises. . Industrialization: mass production and distribution . Commodification: markets for land, labor, money, and everything else . Capitalism: control of capital separated from producer-consumers . Externalization: costs of business enterprise socialized . Corporatization: business enterprise becomes suprahuman . Elitization: elites physically detached from larger community . Supralocalization: business enterprise detached from community . Financialization: investment detached from industry
39 Though the power and scale framework is extremely broad, its focus on social power and scale raises many important questions. The approach calls attention to a suite of variables that have been either ignored by other theoretical approaches, or not treated as interconnected, including: wealth and income as sources of power, diverse forms of wealth and income, order–of-magnitude differences in the distribution of social power to individuals and organizations, growth limits, scale optimums, the distinction between growth and development, the role of individual human decision-makers, and the personal power networks that cross-cut institutional hierarchies. Furthermore, it has been used to analyze urban growth
(Bodley 2001), hereditary inequality in prehistoric societies on the Pacific Coast of North
America (Maschner and Bentley 2004), hydroelectric development on the lower Snake River
(Colombi 2005), and resource management practices in the Columbia Plateau and Clearwater sub-basin (Ross 2005).
Both societal growth and the manner in which elites take advantage of corresponding scale increases implicate spatial relations and the reconfiguring (whether intentionally or not) of spatial scales—both materially and socio-culturally. For instance, Bodley maintains that today‘s elites concentrate social power by co-opting both people and their political institutions to produce and maintain for-profit business enterprises through processes that detach both them and their businesses from communities (elitization and supralocalization) (Bodley 2001,
2003). Although scale in our world may fundamentally be about growth and social power, its analysis is always intricately linked to spatial and temporal dimensions. Spatial and temporal scalar dimensions are particularly important when assessing food systems, which are strictly tied to production conditions, seasonality, crucial and varied storage requirements, and
40 diverse transport problems, among many other conditions that make space and time key for food system functioning and human survival.
Nature, Place, and Constructionist Perspectives on Scale
According to constructionist and/or historical materialist perspectives, our conception of nature is a social process that humans have long steered for socio-political functions. That is, dominant ideas of nature are not simply shared but evolve as unifying efforts of the elites, ruling classes, and chiefs, who use and enhance cultural material to their perceived benefit. As power shifts, older views and visions of nature do not necessarily lose significance, but are manipulated for present day purposes. Such purposes may shift the social dynamics and physical ecologies being transformed, but the transformation of old socionatures into new socionatures is ongoing. Humans everywhere need to transform nature to survive. The social relations that embody such transformations are at once grounded in particular places and extended over certain distances producing a nested articulation of significant, but intrinsically unstable, geographical scales. A brief focus on the concepts of nature and place furnishes the description of this constructionist perspective on scale.
On Nature
Smith (1984) triggered debate within social theory when he argued that the idea of some sort of ―pristine nature‖ becomes increasingly problematic as entirely new natures are produced over space and time. Consider, for example, the transformation of entire ecological systems through agriculture, road-making, and urbanization. Smith insisted that nature is an integral part of what Lefebvre referred to as the ―process of production,‖ which 1) suggests that nature itself is a historical geographical process (time/place specific), 2) insists on the inseparability
41 of society and nature, and 3) maintains the unity of socionature as a historically produced thing (Swyngedouw 2004).
Indeed, the emergence of industrial capitalism, more than any other identifiable experience, is responsible for setting up today‘s problematic, dualist conception of nature
(Smith 1984:1-31). On one hand, nature is believed to be external, a realm of non-human objects and processes existing outside of society—it is ―pristine, God-given, autonomous; it is the raw material from which society is built, the frontier which industrial capitalism continually pushes back‖ (Smith 1984:2). On the other hand, nature is also plainly thought of as universal, where human beings and their social behaviors (often referred to as ―human nature‖) are every bit as natural as the so-called external aspects of nature. Nature, then, is simultaneously external to human existence and a worldly aspect of both nonhuman (external) and human (universal or internal) activities. This conceptual opposition manifests in other more intuitively appealing dualisms such as mind versus nature, society versus nature, and culture versus nature (Smith 1984:3), all of which partially sustain the illusory distinction that nature (material) and human society (semiotic) are mutually exclusive domains of reality.
The external conception of nature is a direct result of the objectification of nature in the production process (Smith 1984:15). It is important to recall that physiocrats of the eighteenth century political economic tradition once conceived nature as the direct source of value, and agricultural labor as the sole means of producing value (Smith 1984). However, with Adam Smith‘s labor theory of value, the priority of agricultural production was denied, giving way to an economic tradition that increasingly treated nature as a limiting boundary to commercial growth rather than integral to economic theory (Smith 1984; Wolf 1982). Nature became the object studied by natural science, as did technology and the material aspects of
42 production (Smith 1984:17). This gave rise to a delusional perspective of technology, as a simple matter of applying rational thought to nature (Hornborg 2001: 9-12). Meanwhile, society became the object studied by the new social science disciplines ( anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, etc.), which compartmentalized their often isolated perspectives around flawed theoretical postulates that ―predisposed one to think of social relations not merely as autonomous but as causal in their own right, apart from their economic, political, or ideological context‖ (Wolf 1982:9). The division of political economy into separate disciplines distorted reality by isolating elements of the natural and human world, thus (however awkwardly) legitimating nature‘s subjugation simply by isolating an external, non-human, nature for theoretical examination. It also devalued nature in social theory, objectified it in a science of technology, and, along with the continued reiteration of this dualist conception in theory, helped to debase it in reality, from the metropolis to the rural countryside.
Alternatively, the universal conception has observable ideological functions for today‘s commercial world (Smith 1984:15). First, it serves as a moral vision to stimulate social behavior suitable to the individual and unified efforts of global elites. Second, it acts as a ―rhetorical screen‖ to justify the subjugation of external nature. While the target is social behavior, the effect is conquest and control. Smith points out how, today, the universal conception of nature primarily functions to ―invest certain social behaviors with the status of natural events‖ so that these behaviors and characteristics are ―normal, God-given, unchangeable‖ (1984:16)
Competition, profit, war, private property, sexism, heterosexism, racism, the existence of haves and have nots or of ‗chiefs and Indians‘ – the list is endless – all are deemed natural.
43 Nature, not human history, is made responsible; capitalism is treated not as historically contingent but as an inevitable and universal product of nature which, while it may be in full bloom today, can be found in Rome or among bands of marauding monkeys where survival of the fittest is the rule. Capitalism is natural; to fight it is to fight human nature. [Smith
1984:16]
The universal conception of nature depends on its illusory and problematic contradiction with external nature to make it seem as if the current external nature is not the product of historical experience—human labor and social relations (Smith 1984:16). Bearing in mind Wolf‘s (1999:4) insight on ideologies as ―unified schemes or configurations developed to underwrite or manifest power,‖ such a universalist conception of nature, however contradictory, fulfills ideological functions for contemporary elites.
This dualist ideology of nature relates to our conception of the ―material‖ world as natural, nonnegotiable, open to scientific revelation and manipulation, but in its fundamentals immune to contamination by human thought and society. We seem to have difficulties understanding that technology and industrial machinery depend on social relations for their very existence –if technology is nature plus knowledge plus exchange, we tend to forget the last part of the equation (Hornborg 2001). The social processes through which its components are supplied are visualized as external to the definition of technology. In addition, whereas the social relations that transform nature operate over certain distances (in various arenas), the production process is necessarily confined to particular places.
44 On Place
The importance of place has long been significant in what has become the sub-field of ecological anthropology. Steward‘s cultural ecology causally linked the cognized environment, social organization, and the behavioral expressions of human resource use.
Although his approach required practical modifications (Netting 1993) and his concepts underestimated the scope, complexity, and variability of environment and social systems
(Wolf 2001), it led to useful analyses of human-environment interaction, such as Rappaport‘s insightful research on the overlap and structure of ―operational‖, and ―cognized‖ environments (Rappaport 1979; Wolf 1999a). Meanwhile, the ecosystems approach provided valuable insights into energy flows, social organizational aspects of subsistence strategies, and efficiency rates of various forms of organization and cropping practices (Moran 1990).
Furthermore, Harris‘ (1979) cultural materialism advanced a more explicit and systematic scientific research strategy that employed the concept of adaptation as the main explanatory mechanism.
In the late 1970s, social scientists such as Karl Butzer and Roy Rappaport grew inspired by the Odum-derived (1971) thought that human systems might, after all, be living organisms. They applied the precepts of organic evolution to cultural adaptation and tried to sort out its mechanisms in various simulations of real life—for example, in the feedback loops of a land management bureaucracy dealing with an environmental crisis. While Butzer wondered whether entire human civilizations might not be organisms, Rappaport went on to assert that ultimately adaptation‘s function is the same whether it occurs in organisms or societies; that function is to aid survival. Since survival is entirely biological, a social- ecological system may be considered maladaptive when political economic institutions are
45 maintained and reproduced at the expense of individual and social-ecological well-being
(Rappaport 1977). In Rappaport‘s view, then, adaptation is critical to understanding long-term successes and/or short term failures of human cultures in specific places, and positive adaptations are those that intertwine cultural choices with the dynamism of particular bioregions into a mix that survives (Flores 1999). Regardless of theoretical tension associated with merging the concept of adaptation with human social systems, such a bioregional focus contemplates the degree to which global processes differentially impact various bioregions, as well as different social groups within that bioregion.
Considering this overview, there are at least three reasons for which place-based differences need more careful scrutiny in social-ecological studies. First, the disregard for geographic context promotes a historical perspective that ignores how unequal power relations between rich ―core‖ areas and impoverished ―peripheries‖ parallel the global distribution of environmental burdens (Hornborg 2007; Wallerstein 2007). Environmental problems are socially distributed; they are not ―the inevitable side effects of ‗our‘ global success story‖ (Hornborg 2001, 2007:1). In addition to distorting reality, the ―global we‖ perspective has proven itself futile in offsetting human impacts that now produce global-scale consequences. Second, humans, as a species, struggle to understand their cumulative, global impact because ―we think and act locally‖ (Moran 2006). This may be due to our evolutionary tendency to think primarily of local territories (Moran 2006). And third, similar types of people who live in regions with different natural resource endowments and economic compositions end up experiencing very different opportunities and burdens (Berkes and Folke
2002; Lyson 2004; Netting 1993). There are anthropologists who would like to jettison the idea of culture entirely; if humans are biological creatures, we should be able to analyze them
46 the way we do other animal species. Yet reduction to biology or ecology misses the key dimension that distinguishes human troubles and adaptations from those of other animals—
―the ability to generate regular forms of behavior by making and manipulating signs that allow people to imagine the world they thus create‖ (Wolf 1999:288). Such cultural manipulation is grounded in social relations, which are themselves grounded in places by virtue of our need to acquire food (and thus perpetually transform and modify nature) to survive. These contextual factors have important implications for how people in different regions experience crises and organize in efforts to respond.
All historical study—whether analyzing politics, ethnicity, technology, environmental issues, etc.—cannot be examined without first being ―situated.‖ Everyday human activities are placed or situated throughout landscapes by virtue of our need to modify environments in ways that are conducive to our sustenance and reproduction. In this way, places embody a historical layering of crystallized social relations (Swyngedouw 2004). Any inquiry into the connection between food systems and scale must be grounded in a particular place, and must incorporate history, political economy, ecological conditions, and epistemology. Furthermore, because of the dynamic nature of both ecosystems and social life, analysis cannot simply focus on a specified number of scales (e.g., local or basin or county) without arduously accounting for cross-scalar (e.g. county/state/country) interactions. Engaging place as
―produced‖ nature is essential for human existence (Swyngedouw 1997).
On Scaling Socionature: A Constructionist Perspective
Beginning in the 1970s, political economic geographers began to argue that space, and by implication, spatial scale, are produced through the characteristic political-economic
47 processes of the dominant mode of human organization such as capitalism (Lefebvre 1974;
Smith 1984; Harvey 1996). The vital question became: If space is not an exogenous and fixed dimension, but is shaped by societal processes, how can we account for the construction of space, and spatial scale (McMaster and Sheppard 2004)? This quickly become a central concern to scale theorists in contemporary human geography and to some extent in related disciplines (Tilly 1984). Not only did it become important to consider how spatial scales came into existence, but they began questioning the legitimacy of geographical scales long taken for granted in human geographic writing—neighborhood, city, regional, national, and global.
Since then, Marston (2004) observes that case studies and abstract theorizing on the social construction of scale (which notably sees scale as a metric of spatial differentiation) tend to agree on at least three central tenets. First, scale is not a given and fixed, but socially constructed and perpetually redefined, contested and restructured in terms of extent, content, relative importance, and interrelations. This means that different spatial scales constitute and are themselves constituted through an historical-geographical structure of social interactions
(Delaney and Leitner 1997; Smith 1992; Swyngedouw 2004). Second, the particular ways in which scale is produced has material consequences. Scale construction is not only a discursive practice, it is also the tangible outcome of the practices of everyday life as they articulate with and transform macro-level social structures. Third, scale production is a political process; the continuous reshuffling and reorganization of spatial scales are integral to social strategies and an arena for struggles for control and empowerment (Swyngedouw 2004).
Over the past two decades, a plethora of research has been published on the social construction of scale and the deeply contested scalar transformations of the political-economy of advanced capitalist economies (Dicken et al. 2001; Howitt 1993; Smith and Dennis 1987;
48 Swyngedouw 1997a, 1997b, 1998). Emphasis has been put on the making and remaking of social, political, and economic scales of organization, of regulation, of social and union action, of contestation (see Swyngedouw 2004). Additionally, scholars have paid attention to the significance of differential scalar positioning of social groups and classes in the power geometries of capitalism (Kelly 1999; Leitner 2004; MacLeod 1999; Swyngedouw 2000a), and on scalar strategies mobilized by both elites and subaltern social groups (Brenner 1999;
Herod 1991; Smith 2004; Swyngedouw 1996b; Zeller 2000). Most notable of this vast body of research is recent work on nature and environmental transformation as integral to the social and material production of scale (Escobar 2001; Grainger 1999; Zimmerer 2000).
Coinciding with this constructivist turn in human geography has been a resurgence of historical-materialist thought on nature (see Swyngedouw 2004). Put simply, in order to live and acquire food, humans need to transform, or metabolize, the natural world they live in
(Castree 1995; Grundman 1991; Smith 1984; Swyngedouw 2004). Through this transformation, both humans and ―nature‖ are changed. Marx insisted that this metabolic transformation of nature is always a social and historical process. It necessarily takes place in interaction with others, under specific ―social relations of production,‖ and produces historically specific social and physical natures that are infused by a myriad of social power relationships (Swyndgedouw 1996). In this sense, nature and social life are part and parcel of the same socio-natural process, infused with political power and cultural meaning.
Furthermore, the perpetual transformation of socio-nature is embedded in a series of social, political, cultural, and economic relationships that operate within a nested articulation of significant, but intrinsically unstable spatio-temporal scales (Smith 1984; Swyngedouw 2004).
49 Nature and environmental transformation are integral parts of the social and material
production of scale. More importantly, scalar reconfigurations also produce new
sociophysical ecological scales that shape in important ways who will have access to what
kind of nature, and the particular trajectories of environmental change. Swyngedouw
summarizes:
. . . the condition of everyday life resides in the twin condition of the essential transformation of nature (place) on the one hand and socio-spatial relations through which this transformation is organized and controlled on the other (Swyngedouw 1992). It is exactly this process that Lefebvre (1991) refers to as ―the production of space‖ and it involves the production of scalar or scaled geographical configurations. The geometries of power, of course, fragment and differentiate them in multiple ways. [Swyngedouw 2004:134]
Table 2.3 summarizes the historical-materialist perspective on the social and material
production of scale in ten points (Syngedouw 2004:132-4).
Table 2.3. Historical-Materialist Perspectives on Production of Scale
1. Scalar configurations, whether ecological or in terms of regulatory order(s), are always a result, an outcome of perpetual movement of the flux of sociospatial and environmental dynamics. 2. Spatial scales are never fixed, but are perpetually redefined, contested and restructured in terms of their extent, content, relative importance and interrelations. The continuous reshuffling and reorganization of spatial scales are integral to social strategies and an arena for struggles for control and empowerment. It remains important to demonstrate the fluidity of scalar transformation. 3. In many instances, the struggles that give rise to scale transformation pivot around the appropriation of nature and control over its development. These sociospatial processes change the importance and role of certain geographical scales, reassert the importance of others, and on occasion create entirely new scales. These scale redefinitions in turn alter
50 the geometry of social power by strengthening the power and the control of some while disempowering others (Swyngedouw 1989; 1997b; 2000) 4. Smith (1984) refers to ―jumping of scales,‖ a process that signals how politics are spatialized. That is, scalar political strategies are actively mobilized as parts of strategies of empowerment and disempowerment 5. There is a simultaneous, ―nested,‖ yet partially hierarchical, relationship between spatial scales (Smith 1984; 1993). Clearly, social power along gender, class, ethnic or ecological lines refers to the scale capabilities of individuals and social groups. Engels (1844) already suggested how power of the labor movement, for example, depends on the scale at which it operates, and labor organizers have always combined strategies of controlling place(s) with building territorial alliances that extend over a certain space. 6. Scalar configurations change as power shifts, both in terms of their nesting and interrelations and in terms of their spatial extent. In the process, new significant social and ecological scales become constructed, while others disappear or become transformed. 7. Ecological scales are transformed as and when the socio-ecological transformation of nature takes new or different forms. For example, the multiscalar configurations of monocultural cash cropping agriculture are radically different than the socioecological scales of peasant subsistence farming. 8. Scale also emerges as the site where cooperation and competition find a (fragile) standoff. For example, national unions are formed through alliances and cooperation from lower scale movements, and a fine balance needs to be perpetually maintained between the promise of power yielded from national organization and the competitive struggle that derives from local loyalties and interlocal struggle. 9. Processes of scale formation are cut through by all manner of fragmenting, divisive and differentiating processes (nationalism, localism, class differentiation, competition, and so forth). Scale mediates between cooperation and competition, between homogenization and differentiation, between empowerment and disempowerment (Smith 1984; 1993). 10. The mobilization of scalar narratives, scalar politics, and scalar practices, then, becomes an integral part of political power struggles and strategies. This propels considerations of scale to the forefront of both ecological and emancipatory politics.
51 Contention and Collaboration
Power and scale theory and the constructivist perspective on scale supplement each other in examining the scalar construction of food systems. Many points of accord have been made evident up to this point, and these points are further elaborated in the following section. But first, it is important to note three points where the theoretical frameworks diverge. Such an analysis of framework divergence also serves to highlight a central question explored in this dissertation: how may we draw on our knowledge of the concept of scale to best produce solutions to contemporary problems at all spatial levels? The first point of divergence is in regard to economic motivation. Bodley assumes individuals to be motivated by rational, self- interest (Boone and Smith 1998), while constructivists mostly perceive individual economic motivation as either structured by social rules—―instituted in society‖ (Polanyi 1957)—or through class participation. Power and scale‘s focus on imperia highlights the role of individuals rather than social classes and emphasizes the diverse pathways to power, multiple power domains, hierarchies, and networks.
The second discord is over the primary force of socio-cultural evolution, a debate that has long existed and will continue due to the importance of considering both causation and contributory circumstance. This debate has a particularly long history in anthropology, where in various contexts, scholars have granted primacy to population growth (Boserup 1965;
Carneiro 1970; Harris 1977), environmental constraints (Steward 1955), technological development (White 1959), elite decision-making (Fried 1967; Hayden 1995), ―there isn‘t one‖ (Boasians—cultural relativists), or a combination of all of these, such as ―the process of feedback between population and technology‖ under environmental constraint (Johnson and
Earle 2000). Taking a process-based approach, constructivists notably avoid this debate,
52 focusing instead on the mechanisms of scale transformation through social conflict and political-economic struggle. Bodley, on the other hand, avoids personifying such cultural constructions as the state and corporations, and resists appealing to such impersonal forces as markets. In power and scale theory, no single driving force behind cultural development exists other than opportunistic individuals and the contingencies of culture, nature, and history.
The third divergence between these approaches, and the most important for this dissertation, is in regard to how each framework perceives and suggests solutions to contemporary human problems of scale. The majority of constructionists argue that capitalism, by its nature, is amoral and lawless. In this view, it is necessary to consider how contemporary crises can best be contained within the constraints of capitalism, but it is a fundamental error to talk about a regulated, ethical capitalism (Harvey 2010). Constructionists ultimately argue for socio-cultural transformation to a social order that would allow people to live within a responsible, just, and humane system. Although power and scale theory does not disagree with this, it focuses on the need to scale down, drawing on numerous cases of corporations, social networks, and small nations that continue to develop solutions to global problems based on the principles of economic and political democracy to prevent, reduce, or mitigate social and ecological problems both internally and those impacting them externally
(Bodley 2003: 235-262). In the power and scale perspective, achieving a sustainable future requires the construction of a world system composed of many independent regional cultures, each working to establish a humane balance between the cultural processes that sustain households and those that sustain communities, polities, and commercial activities. Getting there from today‘s world would require localization (or relocalization) processes to diffuse social power by limiting growth and reducing the scale of both government and business
53 enterprise. To make these changes, people in each region of the world need to be free to manage culture scale and social power in ways that are most sustainable in their particular natural and cultural settings.
Of course, an optimally-scaled and ethical capitalism may not be possible simply because its existence would likely entail local-oriented re-ordering of the social system. The re-scaling, itself, would require transformation. This debate is found in recent work on localism, especially descriptions of successes and failures of the local foods movement.
Scale and Food Systems: Sustainability, Localism, and the Contextualist Stance
Regardless of their theoretical divergences, it is useful to draw on both frameworks when examining food system changes and development. As touched upon in the previous chapter, the major problem with large-scale food systems, one that is explicitly rejected by local food movements across the globe (Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002), is that space has been disconnected from place, so that distant others are structuring the shape and use of locales in which they do not reside (Giddens 1984; Harvey 1990; Kloppenburg et al. 1996).
Furthermore, as urban areas grow in size, this phenomenon intensifies, because the percentage of resident organizations become increasingly ―supralocal‖ or externally headquartered
(Bodley 2001b; 2003). The dilemma of supralocalization relates to contemporary issues of sustainability, where the critical problem is how to meet human needs in a world of declining material resources, persistent poverty, conflict, and resource degradation. To solve such linked problems, of urbanization, supralocalization and sustainability, an increasing number of scholars are critiquing historical patterns and promotions of growth, and advocating reducing consumption levels and, in general, scaling down.
54 Scale is intrinsic to nearly all objective and subjective inquiry into this planet, thus it is essential to expose how most quantitative and analytical uses of the scale concept concern spatio-temporal phenomena. Humans inhabit a world, a life space and are thus constrained by the limitations of biogeography and the models we construct of the world and its workings
(Wolf 1999). Given these obvious limitations, it is important to highlight and critically analyze spatio-temporal aspects of scalar data regarding absolute sizes, such as populations, economic enterprises, markets, armies, and cities, simply because they do not grow or decline in a vacuum. The absolute quantification and formulaic expression of these socio-spatial phenomena risks ignoring how they necessarily push and pull from like and/or linked social components at a range of pertinent spatial scales—from household and community to watershed and nation—with intensity often increasing with relative proximity. In this way, spatial and temporal scales, like the quantitative scales stressed in power and scale theory, are fundamentally linked to modes of human organization and distributions of social power. In turn, social power is woven into social relations in diverse ways depending on scalar contexts, working differently in interpersonal relations, in institutional arenas, and on the level of whole societies (Wolf 1999:5)
Even though many scholars, particularly those upholding the Marxist tradition, have long stood in opposition to the still dominant dualistic conception of the world, only recently have researchers begun to examine and theorize the inevitable physical transformation of nature and the production of ―new natures,‖ both materially and socially. The obvious reason for such disregard is that our Cartesian compartmentalization of knowledge divides society and nature so much that attempts to bring them into a common framework, such as
Rappaport‘s Pigs for the Ancestors (1968), are criticized in the very dualist language that it
55 had hoped to transcend (Hornborg 2001:176). Hornborg (2001) argues that Pigs for Ancestors should be understood against the backdrop of two diametrically opposed approaches to ecological anthropology, the materialist ―cultural ecology‖ pioneered by Steward and White, and the mentalist ―Ecology of Mind‖ of Bateson (1972). To be sure, Rappaport‘s cybernetic formulations are far from flawless, which he himself concedes (Rappaport 1979; 1990).
However, the shortcomings of Rappaport‘s work ―largely derives from a failure to more decisively extricate the contextualist argument from a dualist vocabulary‖ (Hornborg
2001:177). To Hornborg, the contextualist stance ―is one that denies the capacity of abstract, totalizing systems such as science or the market to solve the basic problems of human survival, recognizing local and implicit meanings as the essential components of a sustainable livelihood‖ (Hornborg 2001:175-76).
My own attempt to build on this contextualist argument and resist thinking in dualistic vocabulary incorporates both materialist and constructionist paradigms of scale and focuses on the most obvious connection humans have with the natural world—food. Overall, it is often in regard to food that people understand localism and the importance of scale: we ingest food, and it is closely linked to how we feel in the short term and how healthy we are in the long term (Hess 2009). Although it may be intuitively appealing to think of socio-cultural and so-called natural scales as distinct, they are inseparable. Inasmuch as social scales are systemic products of changing technologies, power plays and modes of human organization, they are not defined outside of ecological and physical processes that regulate the conditions of lands, waters, and atmospheres.
As food culture is central to cultural systems, food system sustainability is central to our overall goals of social-ecological sustainability, which above all integrate with
56 dimensions of scale. On one hand, sustainability is the global problem of equitable, ethical, and efficient use of our planet‘s resources. On the other hand, it is place-based problem (local, regional, national, etc.) of how to meet local and regional human needs within the same critical global context. As used throughout this dissertation, scale involves size and spatial dimensions of socio-cultural system and constituent social units, as well as volume, distance, and rate of material and energy flows and accumulations derived ultimately from ecosystems.
And sustainability refers to the ability of the members of any human society to acquire the energy and materials needed for successful cross-generational maintenance and reproduction of individual households, society, and culture.
The widespread malnutrition in the modern world indicates that many food systems are not performing adequately, but in many cases the immediate problem is distribution, not production. Ultimately, there are physical limits to production, but culturally defined dietary patterns, production technologies, and distribution systems have a great effect on per capita energy costs of food production. Human control is increasing, but unlike other commodity systems, food systems are dependent upon: 1) production conditions reliant on soil, sun, and water, 2) the perishability of foods, and 3) the physical limit to food consumption (Fine 2002).
Considering the ecological constraints of the planet together with the social and ecological impact of factory farming on a global scale, it is necessary to consider and search for alternative ways of feeding people without degrading the environment and treating food like any other commodity.
57 CHAPTER THREE
THE COLUMBIA BASIN’S SHIFTING SCALES AND SUCCESSIVE NATURES
―What humans call the river’s basin is the landward redoubt of a salmon empire reaching far into the North Pacific Ocean, where fish mature for two to four years before returning to their native streams to reproduce‖ (Lee 1993:20)
The Columbia River and the region it drains bear little resemblance today to the place Native peoples and settlers knew in the early twentieth century. Between 1933 and 1984, an unparalleled fervor of engineering transformed much of the river into a series of large reservoirs contained by fourteen hydroelectric dams (Dietrich 1995). While many mourned the loss of the free-flowing river, others embraced a newly tamed waterway that could control floods, irrigate desert lands, serve as a transportation corridor for commodities, and supply electrical power for the growing region. In this way, the Columbia River can be seen through a succession of different lenses—as a generous fishery, a thorny thoroughfare, a spring of hydroelectricity, a source of irrigation, etc. White (1995) argues that we need to look through all of these lenses to truly understand the Columbia River, that we need to see the river as an
―organic machine‖, as an energy system that maintains its natural ―unmade‖ qualities despite the human need to constantly modify it.
The perpetual transformation of both the Columbia River and Pacific Northwesterners is just one example from a growing number where the commercial world distinction between nature and culture becomes hazy, confusing, and problematic. Further examples include the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere, the contested ―making‖ of increasingly more transgenic food, and recent bird flu outbreaks, where struggles often pivot around the appropriation of
58 nature and control over its metabolism (see Swyngedouw 2004). Another example specific to the Columbia Basin involves Washington State‘s land grant university: Washington State
Univeristy. In 2004, Lane Rawlins, the president of Washington State University, made the decision to upgrade the WSU golf course, from a 9-hole student-oriented facility to an 18-hole
―state of the art,‖ ―world class‖ golf course and club. The golf course proposal quickly generated controversy over its water usage. The water supply in the Palouse region of the
Columbia Basin was already at risk because of a persistent, decades-long decline in the water levels of the Grande Ronde Aquifer – the sole source of water for the region. Five years later,
WSU‘s new $12 million Palouse Ridge Golf Course and Club drains alarming amounts of water from the increasingly depleted Grand Rhonde aquifer, thus depleting community water supply and hastening the date when water is not available for basic human needs.
Although corresponding to different sociospatial and ecological scales, the decline of the Grande Rhonde aquifer and the contested ―re-making‖ of the Columbia River similarly fuse physical-environmental metabolisms with sociocultural and political-economic relations.
According to Swyngedouw (2004), these ―socionatural‖ events suggest 1) how nature and society are constituted as networks of interwoven processes that are human and natural, real and fictional, mechanical and organic; and 2) how the social and physical transformation of the world is inserted in a series of scalar spatialities. Both the Columbia River and the Gran
Rhonde aquifer embody and express social and physical processes, whose drivers operate at a variety of interlocked and nested geographical scales. These scales perpetually transform as different peoples and cultures occupy the same spaces and create their own succession of places. It not only demonstrates the importance of considering how each successive culture essentially interacts with a ―nature‖ more or less altered by previous inhabitants (Cronon
59 1991; Flores 1999), but also how socionature has been and is being spatially configured. The continuous reshuffling and reorganization of spatial scales are integral to social strategies and an arena for struggles of control and empowerment (Swyngedouw 1997a, 1997b). How have the Columbia Basin and its peoples changed and what socio-spatial scales gained and lost importance throughout this history? Likewise, how do quantitative increases in populations, resource use, and complexity of social units relate to the importance given particular spatial scales through time? What was ―nature‖ to fifteenth century Plateau peoples, to nineteenth century settlers, and to twenty-first century urbanites?
This chapter examines the bioregional history of the Columbia Basin concentrating on the scalar construction of socio-natural processes, such as dramatic rises in human population and resource use, and the centrality of a politics of scale in the production of particular geographical configurations and subsistence arrangements. As the Basin‘s ―nature‖ perpetually changes, I show how transformational processes jointly alter spatiotemporal and quantitative scales, only some of which can be socially contested. Geology, climate, animals, plants, and human settlement patterns all enter into the complex calculus of sociospatial processes that regulate and organize social power relations and give rise to shifting scalar configurations that characterize various periods. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the importance of examining the contentious politics of scale construction and how individuals and groups actively organize cultural material through political agendas and strategies that focus more on short-term personal gain than on long-term local/regional sustainability.
Regarding data collection for this chapter, it is important to note that anthropologists have long examined human settlements and societies within the Plateau culture area, which
60 closely aligns with the geographical boundaries of the Columbia Drainage Basin despite differences in north and south boundaries of the Plateau culture area (Chatters 1998). The cultural area concept has given anthropologists the opportunity to compare societies within broadly similar environments and determine the extent of influence from groups outside a particular cultural area (diffusions, migrations, etc.). Yet, the concept is not without problems, such as defining a single area that contains considerable cultural and /or environmental diversity, the use of somewhat arbitrary criteria, the assumption that a static cultural area exists, and the tendency to equate environment with cause. Nevertheless, the culture area concept continues to be useful as a point of comparison, as a reference, and for bioregional approaches to the study of human organization. In this case, I am fortunate to draw on prehistoric, protohistoric and historic work on the Columbia Basin that has recently been recorded and grouped within the Plateau Volume (Vol. 12) of the Handbook of North
American Indians (Walker 1998).
Physiography, Vegetation, and Climate
The Columbia Basin is the region drained by the Columbia River (Figure 3.1). The drainage is roughly the size of France and extends into seven U.S. states and two Canadian Provinces.
The rims of this vast drainage system are set east and west by the summit crests of the
Cascade and Coast Ranges and the high Rocky Mountains. The northern wall sits near the river‘s origin in the Rocky Mountain Trench, which lies between the Continental Divide and
Selkirk mountain ranges in British Columbia. To the south, the low crests of the Blue
Mountains and the high desert of northern Nevada and Northwestern Utah set an arbitrary southern boundary. Moving northward from the Blue Mountains, the Basin‘s trough slopes
61 upward from west to east, beginning with the open and expansive Columbia Plateau and rising into the low mountains of the Okanagan Highlands, and the rugged Thompson Plateau.
Overall, the Columbia Basin is a region of high relief, varying from lowlands just above sea level to steep summits over 3,000 meters high (Chatters 1998).
Figure 3.1: Physiographic Areas of the Columbia Basin
62 Geological History
The story of how the Basin came into being remains at the interface of plate tectonics, volcanism, and glaciations. These processes, operating in concert, range widely in time scale, from the collision of continental and oceanic plates to the breaking of glacial dams and volcanic explosions. For this reason, geographers and geologists look at the history of a region in an assortment of time frames, such as ―deep time,‖ with spans of millions of years, and ―shallow time,‖ reaching back less than a million years (Kruckeberg 1999:52). Though broad, this distinction reminds us of how geological process is ceaseless: crustal plates are always moving, mountains are rising, and water courses are altering.
It was not until between 60 and 40 million years ago that the general outline of the
Columbia Basin took shape, but it lay under a large inland sea later subject to uplift. During the next 20 million years, tremendous volcanic eruptions frequently modified much of the landscape traversed by the Columbia. Then, between 17.5 and 6 million years ago, numerous outpourings of molten lava came from the north-south fissures along the present day border of
Washington and Oregon. These lava flows gave rise to an extensive basalt plain that covered most of what is now eastern Washington and northeastern Oregon with a blanket of rock up to
5,000 feet thick. This rise in the Columbia Plateau diverted the ancient Columbia River forcing it to make a massive detour, now called Big Bend, as it flowed from what is now
Canada. The river was forced west, then south, then east to meet the Snake River before it turned west again for its final run to the Pacific. Between five million and two million years ago, as the Columbia continued to bend around and eat away at the basalt, the Cascade
Mountains began to arch up. The river did not give ground and the mighty Columbia cut a deep V-shaped canyon for itself.
63 The Pleistocene era began roughly 1.8 million years ago and endured to the beginning of the Holocene about 10,000 years ago. The period is characterized by major environmental changes accompanying long periods of broad accumulations of global ice in the form of continental ice sheets. During the late Pleistocene (130,000 to 10,000 years ago), the
Cordilleran ice sheet (the western and smaller of the two North American ice sheets) advanced and retreated several times, encroaching south for the last time about 17,000-18,000 years ago, only to suddenly retreat around 14,000 years ago with the onset of climatic warming (Booth et al. 2003; Easterbrook 1993). The Cordilleran ice sheet flowed south from
British Columbia over low mountain ranges into northern Washington, northern Idaho, and northwestern Montana. In north-central Washington the surface elevation of the ice sloped from over 2,135 meters near the international border where the ice was about 1,830 meters thick to roughly 400 meters high (Easterbrook 2003). Although the ice sheet advance occurred mostly as lobes along trunk valleys, the Okanogan lobe advanced far out into the
Columbia Basin, as marked by the ice marginal coulees, small moraines, eskers and kame terraces that are still easily observed (Easterbrook 2003).
At the close of the Pleistocene, between 16,000 and 12,000 years ago, the Columbia
River system experienced a period of cataclysmic flooding resulting from multiple flood outbursts from ice-dammed glacial Lake Missoula (Breckenridge 1989), overspill of pluvial
Lake Bonneville through Red Rock pass in Utah (O'Connor 1993), and probably contributions from outburst releases of other, smaller ice-dammed lakes in the Columbia system. The best known of these are the Lake Missoula floods (see Bretz 1969). Advancing ice sheets from
Canada got stuck in a canyon in what is now northwest Montana. The ice formed a giant dam that stood roughly 2,000 feet high, forming the Glacial Lake Missoula. The lake measured
64 about 3,000 square miles and contained about 500 cubic miles of water, about half the volume of Lake Michigan. In a brief space of shallow geological time, Glacial Lake Missoula broke through the ice dam, allowing a tremendous volume of water to rush across the southward- dipping plateau. The floods occurred at least 40 times, ripping away silt, blasting rock, and etching the coulees, dry falls, and barren channels that characterize this region, now known as the channeled scablands. The great floods found their way to the Pacific by reaming out the
Cascade canyon that the Columbia River had been slowly cutting for several million years, changing the V-shaped canyon into a U-shaped gorge.
Climate and Vegetation: Past and Present
Glaciers receded and the climate generally warmed following the Pleistocene and entering the
Holocene. Despite this trend, there is abundant evidence for changing environmental conditions in the Columbia Basin over the next ten thousand years (Chatters 1998:42-46).
Acknowledging that climates continually change, Chatters (1998:42-46) notes synchronous transitions occurring throughout the region at particular periods:
By 9000 B.C. glacial ice had melted from all but a few of the highest
mountains and the next 1,500 years were the warmest and driest of the
Holocene.
The period 7500 to 4400 BC witnessed an apparent rise in moisture in
the uplands, while conditions in the Columbia Plateau and Okanogan
Highlands became more arid and sagebrush steppe began replacing the
grasses.
65 While the climate cooled from 4500 to 2500 B.C., effective moisture
increased sharply and the rates of ground water recharge increased in
the Columbia Basin.
From 2500 to 800 B.C. the climate was the coldest and wettest of the
Holocene.
Then, between 800 B.C. and 100 A.D. temperatures warmed and
modern vegetation distributions appeared.
There is little evidence for major environmental change in the last 2000
years.
The Little Ice Age, which caused alpine glaciers to advance worldwide
between A.D. 1400 and 1850 had little impact on the flora of the
Northwest.
These climate changes relate to the Columbia Basin‘s prehistory, primarily because resource productivity of the Basin environment varied according to two dimensions of climate: effective moisture and temperature. Typically warmth and drought, and cold and moisture coincided, but at least one warm wet period and several cooler, drier intervals occurred, demonstrating the relative interdependence of these variables (Chatters 1998).
Today, the Columbia Basin‘s climate is a blend of continental and maritime influences
(Chatters 1998; Heusser 1983). Moist maritime air moves inland from the North Pacific, often as cyclonic storms driven by the Aleutian Low pressure system, and is responsible for much of the precipitation the region receives. The Aleutian Low moves in a north-south axis with the seasons as the Subtropical Pacific High expands with summer warmth and contracts in
66 winter. Therefore, most storms move through and precipitation falls in winter in southerly parts of the region, but the farther north one proceeds, the more frequent cyclonic storms become at other times of the year. Continental air masses, which move south out of the arctic, tend to be drier and more often associated with high pressure systems. They bring fair weather and give the region its extreme temperatures both summer and winter. Occasionally, in summer, the Pacific Subtropical High will shift unusually far northward, deflecting marine air into southern parts of the Basin and generating frontal storms (Chatters 1998).
The mountains that form the east and west edges of the Basin block these various air masses and affect the local distribution of precipitation. As moist marine air encounters the
Cascade and Coast Ranges, it rises, cools, and releases moisture as rain and snow (orographic effect). As the air passes over the crest and down the eastern slope, it warms and its moisture- holding capacity increases. The lower the elevation it sinks to, the drier the air becomes, creating a rain shadow effect to the east of all the highest mountain chains. Each time the air encounters another mountain chain, the orographic effect occurs. As a result, mountain peaks, particularly the Cascade Range and the highest ranges of the Rocky Mountains, receive the most precipitation, typically over 250 centimeters a year, and lower elevations receive progressively less. Where mountain ranges are adjacent and parallel, the rain shadow effect is minimized, and even low elevations receive the benefit of the moisture releasing effect of the mountain masses.
In general, as one moves in any direction from the lowest point in the Basin, the land rises, temperatures tend to decline, precipitation increases, and shrub steppe gives way to grassland, then to ponderosa pine forest, mixed conifer forest, subalpine forest, and where elevations are high enough -- alpine tundra. The northern parts of the Basin are mountainous
67 and mostly covered by forests of pine and oak. The summers there are warm and the winters can be extremely cold with considerable snowfall. The mountains on either side of the central region receive substantial rainfall, while the interior has less precipitation. The southern Basin is not quite as mountainous, and some areas are characterized by extensive lava flows. In the southern Basin, the winters are cold and the summers are hot. The rainshadow effect of the southern Cascade Range limits rainfall to about 15 centimeters a year, making the southern
Plateau relatively arid. Much of the Southern Plateau is covered by sagebrush and grasslands, and many of the small basins contain marshes.
Prehistory: From the Paleoindian Period to Non-Aboriginal Influence
Given the reliance on ever-growing archaeological and historical records, the bookend dates for the prehistoric period in any region, and in this case the Columbia Basin, is never exact and always debatable. For instance, relatively little evidence suggests a Paleoindian occupation of the Columbia Basin (earlier than 11,000 years ago), but such an occupation may be masked by the Basin‘s history of huge floods and volcanic activity. Likewise, the written record arrived with Euroamerican explorers, but the exact dates of these first encounters are questionable. It is generally agreed that Columbia Basin inhabitants experienced first contact in 1805 when the American expedition led by Lewis and Clark passed through the region. But the Russians and Spaniards were exploring the Pacific Coast as early as the sixteenth century, and it is likely that first contacts came indirectly throughout the eighteenth century as northern and western inhabitants of the Columbia Basin made coastal visits for trading purposes (Walker and Sprague 1998). Despite complications in bounding the prehistoric period, the following treatment begins with the recovery of Paleoindian material
68 and ends before the arrival of pre-contact, indirect nonaboriginal influences (e.g., horse, epidemic disease, etc.)
As stated earlier, evidence of human occupation of the Columbia Basin during the
Paleoindian period is sparse. In 1987, a small cache of large fluted points was discovered during the excavation of an irrigation ditch in an East Wenatchee apple orchard (Mehringer
1989). The points were found in direct association with Glacier Peak ash deposited about
11,250 years B.P. The early prehistory in the Columbia Basin is little understood because of the small number of sites and the poor preservation of faunal and plant remains. Even so, subsistence during this early period is inferred to have been characterized by small mobile groups of people who hunted big-game animals including the now-extinct mastodon, mammoth, and bison. While the similarity of many of these Clovis sites with other sites implies an early link to areas south and possibly east of the Columbia Basin, it is unknown whether Clovis culture had any bearing on subsequent cultural development in this region
(Ames et al. 1998). More recently, several Paleoindian burials have been recovered. The
Kennewick burial in Washington appears to possess traits that distinguish it from contemporary Native Americans and has been radiocarbon-dated to approximately 9,400 years ago (Chatters 1997). The earlier Buhl burial in Idaho is also unusual and may represent an earlier manifestation of Paleoindians (Green et al. 1998).
Around 9,000 B.C., glacial ice had melted from all but a few of the highest mountains and the peoples of the Columbia Basin shifted to an ―Archaic‖ life-style that endures with only slight modification up to A.D. 1720. Chatters and Pokotylo (1998) divide the Plateau
Archaic period into three periods ranging. The Early Period, from 9,000 to 6,000 B.C., was the warmest and driest of the Holocene (Chatters 1998). A ―broad spectrum‖ hunter-gatherer
69 subsistence economy emerged, characterized by high seasonal and annual mobility, very low population densities (Ames 1988), and a technology geared toward exploiting a wide array of food sources throughout the year, depending on the seasonal potentials of their territories.
Emphasis to the north and possibly east was on large game hunting; the south was more diversified, including more collecting and fishing as represented in both artifact inventories and faunal remains. People moved frequently and there is no evidence of food storage, dwellings, or structures of any kind (Ames et al. 1998). Site assemblages suggest people typically lived in small groups and moved frequently from rivers to uplands while hunting jackrabbits and deer, fishing, and collecting river mussels.
By the Middle Period, from 6,000 to 2,000 B.C., the climate was warmer than today yet began to cool slightly becoming more maritime. There was an apparent rise in moisture in the uplands that increased forest cover, while conditions in the Columbia Plateau and
Okanogan Highlands became more arid and sagebrush steppe began replacing the grasslands
(Chatters 1998). This improved conditions for both large mammals in the north and promoted populations of root plants, such as balsam root, biscuitroot, and camas. Salmon fishing and roots were clearly important subsistence resources by 4,000 B.C.
At the beginning of the Late Period (2,000 B.C. to A.D. 1720) the climate began to cool significantly, giving rise to significant seasonal differences and cultural responses culminating in the ethnographic cultures of the region. A shift began from a broadly based hunter-gatherer economy with people living in small, mobile groups, to larger social units that stored food and lived in semi-permanent villages. The generalized subsistence strategy was maintained but semi-subterranean houses began to appear on river terraces indicating a shift to a logistic-type of subsistence strategy in which resources were collected and processed at
70 harvesting locations and brought back to residential sites for storage and consumption. Also around this time, exotic stone and shell recovered from archaeological sites suggests middle
Columbia people were trading with people on the coast and other distant locales.
Later in the Late Archaic period, between 1,500 B.C and A.D. 100 and coinciding with a period of cool and moist climate, housepits were constructed in a wider variety of landscape settings and average house size increased. The shift to a fully developed logistical land use system was complete and is marked by an increase in the variety of site types including central bases, extractive camps, and special-use localities. Diets became more focused on high-yield species, such as salmon and roots, but a wider range of environments also were being utilized. By 400 to 200 B.C., the density of semi-subterranean houses on certain sites increases markedly, suggesting village-sized settlements that were probably occupied during the winter months. Basin inhabitants were by then living on salmon, roots and large mammals.
After about 1,000 years ago, resource use, particularly of salmon, intensified. The reasons for this intensification are unknown but might be related to population expansion and/or pressures from other groups. Small projectile points begin to appear in the archaeological record, indicating the adoption of the bow and arrow. Beginning about 700 years ago, it appears that the Northern Paiute and Northern Shoshone began to expand north into the southern Columbia Basin, applying pressure to the Klamath and Nez Perce. This expansion was halted by European contact, but the Northern Paiute and Northern Shoshone remained enemies of the groups in the southern Columbia Basin. The Little Ice Age, which caused alpine glaciers to advance worldwide between A.D. 1400 and 1850, had little impact on the flora of the Northwest.
71 Before the arrival of Europeans, these rich ecosystems, and especially the massive salmon runs, supported some 50,000 indigenous peoples diversified into 13 cultural subareas
(Kroeber 1939). Allowing for the impact of European disease, the precontact population may have been twice this size (Boyd 1985; Hunn 1990:134-135). While Columbia Basin groups may have undergone some territorial realignments over the last several millennia, to some degree population movements during the first half of the nineteenth century altered and obscured earlier tribal boundaries. Walker (1998:3) identifies the distinguishing features of
Plateau peoples, or pre-contact Columbia Basin peoples:
Riverine settlement patterns.
Reliance on a diverse subsistence base of anadromous fish and
extensive game and root resources.
A complex fishing technology.
Mutual cross-utilization of subsistence resources among the
various groups comprising the populations of the area.
Extension of kinship ties through extensive intermarriage
throughout the area.
Extension of trade links throughout the area through
institutionalized trading partnerships and regional trade fairs.
Limited political integration, primarily at the village and band
levels, until adoption of the horse.
72 Relatively uniform mythology, art styles, and religious beliefs
and practices focused on the vision quest, shamanism, life-cycle
observances, and seasonal celebrations of the annual
subsistence cycle.
American Indians in the Columbia Basin occupied many different locales. What effects did they have on the natural environment? The full answer will never be known, since evidence for their early, precontact occupancy is scanty and largely biodegradable—objects of wood, fiber, and animal products. Their communities were small and the bulk of their subsistence resources came from nearby forests and bodies of water, and eventually through short-distance trade networks. Given stable, low population numbers and a spartan livelihood gained by a simple yet efficient technology, there is little reason to doubt that native impact on the environment was modest. What is harder to evaluate is the sentimental notion that these Plateau peoples practiced sound resource management, either by intuitive grasp of the workings of natural systems or by virtue of sacred and spiritual consciousness about accommodating to the functioning of the natural world (Hunn 1999). Recent evidence suggests that fire-setting, resource harvesting, and other practices altered nature in many ways. I further explore this point in Chapter 5, suggesting that the very nature and magnitude of their cultures (which both require cultural decisions) enabled them to avoid gross human- caused disturbance and loss of natural resources over milennia.
Outside Impacts, 1600s to Mid/Late 1700s
Pre-contact, non-aboriginal impacts severely disrupted Columbia Basin subsistence patterns.
Because subsistence activities formed the backdrop for much of their social organization and
73 spiritual beliefs, their entire cultural world was in disarray before the outsiders arrived arrived face-to-face. The protohistoric is the period between the first indirect introduction of nonaboriginal influences and the first recorded historic contact with non-Indian people
(Walker and Sprague 1998). In the Columbia Basin, the protohistoric lasted from roughly
1600 to the mid/late 1700s and is marked by transformational effects of epidemic disease,
Christian missionization, the horse, and trade goods (Hunn 1990; Walker and Sprague 1998).
Of course, the intensity of these outside impacts continued and often intensified at and after contact (the unknown beginning of the subsequent historic period), when the population of
Euroamericans in the region began an exponential rise that is yet to slow down.
The most devastating of these impacts was the introduction of fatal epidemic diseases.
While the first epidemics may have passed through the Columbia Basin as early as the late sixteenth century (Campbell 1989), we know relatively little regarding waves of protohistoric epidemics (Walker and Sprague 1998). Boyd (1985) suggests that the first wave of smallpox likely came around 1775 from explorers landing ships along the north Pacific Coast, rather than via the well-documented Missouri River epidemic that swept across the plains in 1782-3.
It then rampaged along the Columbia in 1801. These attacks are thought to have cut the original basin population in half by the time of Lewis and Clark‘s exploration. In their journals, Lewis and Clark describe old men with pockmarked faces among the Upper
Chinooks of the Lower Columbia River and were told that the disease had struck a generation before (Thwaites 1959 [1904]; cited in Boyd 1985). Although smallpox struck again, perhaps in 1825 (Boyd 1985) and was well- documented in 1852-3 (Maclellan 1855), a host of respiratory diseases and recorded outbreaks of measles and scarlet fever began arriving with immigrants crossing the continent over the Oregon Trail. The subsequent decimation of Basin
74 populations brought many changes as evidenced by altered burial practices, a heightened concern with death, and new religious practices.
It is very probable that epidemic disease, along with other protohistoric impacts, influenced the development of new religious practices among Columbia Basin groups, most notably the prophet dance, which has become the general heading for these changing practices
(Spier 1935; Walker 1969). The Christian idea of death and revival is thought to have spread to the Northwest early in the protohistoric era; some individuals were thought to have died and later to have come back to life. Upon returning from death, these people would announce that they had journeyed to the land of the dead, received a vision, and learned a new dance and song that followers were to perform. These prophecies sometimes included predictions of the coming of the White people and other world-transforming events that had numerous
Christian elements. Such Christian elements preceded missionaries in much of the region
(Duff 1964). The prophet dance may have been further stimulated by the eruption of a
Cascade volcano in the summer of 1800 that cloaked the sun and showered the basin with ash for days (Walker and Sprague 1998).
Haines (1938) traced the spread of horses to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 when the
Pueblos drove the Spaniards out of their camp in what is now New Mexico, and freeing thousands of Spanish horses to flee up both sides of the Rockies. Regional bands and tribes quickly acquired these horses and dealt them northward along existing trade routes. The
Northern Shoshone and southern Plateau tribes had horses by the 1700s. Most Plateau bands were quick to recognize the utility of the horse, and the Columbia Basin‘s lush grasses and excellent wintering areas provided tremendous horse country.
75 Owning horses significantly changed Plateau life (Chatters 1998:139; Hunn 1990:23-
26). Greater mobility expanded seasonal rounds, enabling people to travel greater distances and provided transport for heavier loads. The scale of both tribal gatherings and local grouping increased significantly (Ray 1960), as did wealth disparities among tribal members, which gave rise to an incipient system of rank. With greater mobility, the tribal knowledge of regions expanded beyond the Plateau, particularly spreading over the Rocky Mountains into the rich bison-hunting areas of the western Plains.
Increased mobility also gave rise to more extensive tribalization and provided an increased incentive for war (Anastasio 1972; Ray 1939). Amongst eastern Plateau groups, formerly autonomous villages and bands joined together to form composite bands, that then combined into larger, multitask groupings in order to counteract the power of the Blackfoot
Confederacy on the Northwestern Plains and the Northern Shoshone-Bannock in the northern
Great Basin. Warfare became especially evident on the eastern and southern peripheries of the
Basin during this time: the horse provided an increased incentive to engage in warfare, as mounted war parties could strike enemies at greater distances and with greater force than before (Walker Jr. and Sprague 1998). The Blackfoot, with both firearms and horses, established their dominance in the Northwestern Plains by 1750-1800. By the time of the
Lewis and Clark expedition, repeated Blackfoot attacks had produced a critical situation for many easternmost groups in the Columbia Basin. In turn, this gave rise to the importance of military prowess in the political organization of these eastern Basin tribes.
By the protohistoric period, most Columbia Basin groups were enmeshed in a widespread trade network connecting them with other groups throughout the west (Anastasio
1972; Walker 1967). Figure 3.2 depicts the importance of Celilo Falls and Kettle Falls in this
76 network. Both places saw large intertribal gatherings during the protohistoric period that extend back to prehistoric times. Columbia Basin groups relied on similar substantive resources, yet regional differences and unexpected circumstance made trade within the
Plateau desirable and necessary. Traditional trade partnerships were reinforced by systematic intermarriage, travel by horse, regular trade fairs, and regional economic specialization. Many
Basin groups participated in extraregional trade as well, including attending the annual
Shoshone rendezvous in southwestern Wyoming and traveling a long-distance trade route with the Spaniards in California during the late eighteenth century (Walker and Sprague
1998). This original system of trade formed the basis for the later fur trade, which enriched an existing system (Stern 1993).
Early Exploration and Fur Trade Imperia, 1811-1840
The outside impacts on Columbia Basin inhabitants intensified as explorers, traders, and settlers began filing into the region. For instance, the ownership of horses became ever more important for bartering at trading posts and as a result breeding intensified when and where possible. Likewise, by the time white settlers and soldiers moved into the region, the indigenous groups had suffered depopulation, which left them weakened and vulnerable
(Boyd 1985:73-83). This made the region easier and more secure for settler passage, further integrating the Columbia Basin into a global trade network and disrupting the accustomed social relations and cultural habits of indigenous peoples.
77
Figure 3.2: Indian Trade Network Centered at The Dalles and Celilo Falls (1750-1850). Redrafted after Stern (1998: Figure 1).
The fur trade best exemplifies the Basin‘s inclusion into the global marketplace— when distant individuals began, for the first notable time, to severely impact local communities and to alter Columbia Basin ecosystems. Late in the eighteenth century, elegant fur clothing was in demand among European and Chinese elites and two British companies vied ruthlessly for control of the lucrative industry: the Hudson‘s Bay Company (based in
London) and the Northwest Company (association of merchants based on Montreal). Shortly
78 after the Lewis and Clark expedition, American traders and trappers began to venture into the
Northwest and compete with the two British companies. This is when John Jacob Astor, the
United State‘s first millionaire business tycoon, attempted to gain full control of the fur trade across the continent to the Pacific Ocean by creating a subsidiary (of his American Fur
Company), Pacific Fur Company, to be based at the mouth of the Columbia River in a port town he named ―Astoria‖ (Bodley 2003:150-2). Due to Astor‘s fears of a British blockade at the outset of the War of 1812, Astor chose to sell his entire Columbia operation to the British- owned Northwest Company rivals (Hunn 1990:35). Many of Astor‘s employee‘s stayed on to work for the British company, playing important roles in the next decade of monopolized trade in the Columbia Basin for the Northwest Company (Meinig 1968:48-95). The Northwest
Company then merged with the Hudson‘s Bay Company in 1821, continuing to trap beavers and ship their pelts globally until the 1840s, when a big drop in the price of beaver pelts on the world market forced Hudson‘s Bay Company to move northward, diversify their exploitative goals, and begin ventures such as grain, raising livestock, harvesting timber, fish for export, etc.
While the fur trade expanded and increasingly connected the Columbia Basin to remote regions, local cultures and ecosystems paid a substantial price. The trapper or fur trader depended on circumstances beyond the Basin: ―upon the furs of distant districts, the ports of coastal fringe, and the political temper of remote governments‖ (Meinig 1968:95).
Fur posts quickly formed the nucleus of large winter concentrations of Indians, as many found it easier to rely on the obvious abundance in the fur trader‘s food store than on their own subsistence efforts (Hunn 1990). The introduction of an entirely new concept of trade, based on furs and the use of barter and money, led to Indian men acquiring rewards through the fur
79 trade that provided them more social power within their communities, upsetting customary political organization (Walker and Sprague 1990). Prostitution, drunkenness, and increased gambling characterized local relations at villages and trading posts during this period (Ross
1969:29-36). Additionally, the overhunting of beaver populations likely affected fishing. Due to declining beaver populations and spiking demand for furbearers, Indian groups began to jealously guard their hunting territories; hostilities increased as the beaver supply dwindled
(Walker and Sprague 1998).
The fur trade led to severe economic exploitation, and a dependency on Euroamerican material culture—in both cases, the results were deleterious to Indians (Schultz 1971:26). The fur trade brought many changes to Columbia Basin indigenous peoples: metal cutting blades replaced those of stone, bone, and shell; the gun replaced the bow and arrow, dagger, and club; tailored clothes and blankets replaced garments and robes of bark, wool, and skin, as well as the ancient techniques used in their manufacture; new forms of fishhooks and nets replaced the old, as did new paints and dyes, fire-making equipment, traps, jewelry; and houses change from large multifamily dwellings to smaller ones typical of Euroamericans. As the fur trade expanded westward it altered and intensified the patterns through which food was produced, and provided detailed maps and social openings for missionaries and later
Euroamerican settlers (Wolf 1982:158-194).
Gold, Transportation, and Initial Settlement, 1840-1880
Early Euroamerican settlement in the Columbia Basin began with the arrival of religious missionaries like Marcus Whitman, in the 1830s, signifying a change from a frontier economy of hunting-fishing-trapping to more domestic agricultural pursuits. American interests in the
80 region intensified as missionaries sent enthusiastic reports and letters back east praising
Oregon‘s climate, land, and economic potential. By 1844, Americans far outnumbered the
British in the Oregon country.
The decline of the fur trade, along with the establishment of American sovereignty to lands south of the 49th parallel, influenced the Hudson‘s Bay Company to limit their operations in the newly organized Oregon Territory. The military began to clear the land for organized settlement, putting Native Americans onto reservations (Figure 3.3).
Euroamerican pioneers, like the Native Americans before them, settled places where they could make a living, seeking out locales where water, game, building supplies, transportation, and other raw materials of basic subsistence were available. However, unlike the indigenous peoples, the extraction of global market commodities, such as furs and minerals, constrained their settlement choices as Euroamericans necessarily gravitated toward the most recent commodity finding. In this way, some say that the fur trade founded Astoria and Champoeg, Oregon; Vancouver, Washington; Fort Hall, Idaho; and Victoria, British
Columbia (Ewert 1999).
The Fraser River gold rush in 1858, along with gold discoveries in Idaho and in northern Okanogan encouraged further migration. Euroamerican miners exploited the bars along the mid and upper Columbia. The claims never proved as lucrative as discoveries in
Idaho, Montana, and British Columbia. Once considered ―played out‖ by the whites, the claims were taken over by the Chinese during the 1860s and 70s. Such mineral strikes gave rise to a quick explosion of ramshackle tent villages, producing Jacksonville, Canyon City, and Baker, Oregon; Roslyn, Cle Elum, and Black Diamond, Washington; and Coeur d‘Alene,
Idaho City, and Silver City, Idaho (Ewert 1999). Merchants, bankers, shopkeepers, capitalists,
81 hoteliers, saloonists, prostitutes, racketeers, bandits, and con-artists quickly gravitated to and set up shop at the latest strike. Around this time, steamers began bringing people and goods to the interior, but they were too slow to be used for exporting large quantities of perishable and profitable products.
Figure 3.3: Contemporary Reservations and Reserves in the Columbia Basin (redrafted after Lahren Jr. 1998:Figure 1).
82 By the 1840s, small parties of American settlers were reaching in the Columbia Basin via the Oregon Trail. There was a steady stream by 1843. In 1845, over 3,000 U.S. immigrants traveled the Oregon Trail through the Columbia Basin, 1,350 more entered the
Oregon territory in the following year, with over 5,000 arriving in 1847 (Ruby and Brown
1972; Walker and Sprague 1998). The American portion of the Columbia Basin was politically incorporated into the United States by the Oregon Treaty of 1846 with Britain, and was formally organized as the Oregon Territory in 1848. Euroamerican settlement took place quickly under the various terms of the Donation Land Act from 1850 to 1855, under which the government allotted titles to some 2.6 million acres to 7,437 adult settlers (Loy 2001:22).
The Homestead Act of 1862 brought further settlement, and statehood was granted as follows:
Oregon 1859, Washington 1889, Idaho 1890.
Railroad, Irrigation, and Rural Boom 1880-1920
While gold fields and the steamboat stimulated transient economic activities in the late 1850s, it was the railroad and irrigation/power development that provided a more stable and diverse economic base that attracted permanent settlement. With transcontinental railroads, agricultural output climbed dramatically as produce could reach distant markets quickly, as well as bring people to the frontier in greater numbers. The first transcontinental railroad in
Washington was completed in 1893. Between 1894 and 1910, towns along the railroad routes, and the railroads themselves, put on a nationwide advertising campaigns to lure farmers to the
Columbia Basin. Simultaneously, numerous irrigation ditch/projects were being proposed and started, but rarely completed. For instance, in 1892, the Yakima Irrigation and Improvement
83 Company began building a canal from down the Yakima River; despite failing to finish the canal, it set the stage for future irrigation development.
By 1920 the rural boom in the Columbia Basin was over. Rural population, like elsewhere in the west, had peaked during the previous decade. The era of limitless land and railroad expansion was over. All of the good land had been settled, while the large tracts of semi-arid, marginal lands would not be reclaimed for another two decades. Meinig says: The boom times after the turn of the century, the promise of diversification, the prospects for local industry, the assumed impact of electric railroads, and related movements, seem to have attracted more people to the towns than the trade of ensuing years could sustain‖ (1968:472).
Depression, More Irrigation and Power Development
By 1920, the Columbia Basin was experiencing depressed economic conditions typical of the many rural areas in the country that went into economic decline five to ten years before the nationwide depression. The rural community was no longer receiving the high return on their produce they had experienced during World War I. Years of poor agricultural practices, especially on submarginal lands like those found in the Columbia Basin, resulted in ―dust bowl‖ conditions. Thus, power development, like the Grand Coulee Dam, was geared towards supplying energy to the expanding urban centers. In 1936 the Pacific Northwest Regional
Planning Commission recommended a massive federally-directed and financed program to develop ten dams on the Columbia River to make it the largest source of hydroelectric power in the country, as well as to control floods, provide irrigation, and support navigation
(Johansen and Gates 1967:516-517). Development planning for the Columbia watershed continued in 1967 under the Pacific Northwest River Basins Commission. The Commission‘s
84 purpose was ―to provide a broad guide to the best use, or combination of uses, of water and related land resources … to meet foreseeable short- and long-term needs‖ (Pacific Northwest
River Basins Commission 1971). Development planning is now under the general direction of the Northwest Power Planning Council (established by the 1980 Northwest Power Act) in addition to the various state and local governments, and other federal agencies. While the initiation of the Columbia Basin Reclamation Project was intended to reclaim marginal lands that could only be cultivated with irrigation, it resulted in turning the Columbia Basin into the site of an on-going experiment in large scale, growth-maximizing and centralized planning, as exemplified by the combined population increases of Oregon, Washington and Idaho: 13,000 in 1850, to 1 million in 1900, 2.3 million in 1950, and 10.6 million in 2000.
Even though the Columbia Basin grew up around resource intensive industries, today‘s regional economy is much less driven by resource extraction. Since the early 1970s, a combination of resource exhaustion and market forces led to the closure of hundreds of sawmills and pulp mills and drove more than 5,000 farms and ranches out of business. As elsewhere in the U.S., the regional economy shifted toward service and high-tech sectors.
Accompanied by mechanization, employment opportunities in the extractive industries have diminished rapidly. More than most regions in the U.S., the Columbia Basin now depends on foreign trade.
Conclusion: A Social-Ecological Imperative for the Columbia Basin
Euro-American settlement and exploitation of the area began in the mid 1800s, and it intensified dramatically between 1875 and 1925. Historic activities include lumbering
(especially in the Okanogan Highlands), railroad construction, dam building, grazing, wheat
85 ranching, and irrigated farming. These activities have all created ecological effects on plant and animal species and other resources that far exceed those from prehistoric times.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century there were some six million people living within the Columbia's drainage basin (2.4 million in Oregon, 1.7 million in Washington, one million in Idaho, 0.5 million in British Columbia, and 0.4 million in Montana) (Bilby
2006). This is three orders of magnitude greater than the aboriginal population. It is not surprising that the region faces difficult and contentious natural resource management choices, as well as serious political and ideological divisions. A century of commercial growth has degraded ecosystems, threatened the great Columbia River salmon fishery
(Augerot and Foley 2005), and reduced the economic prospects for many forest-based, farming, and ranching communities (U.S., Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team
1993). Massive alteration of historic ecosystems has removed 80-90 percent of the old growth coniferous forests on the west side of the Cascades. Cutting, fire suppression and grazing have made the remaining forests vulnerable to fire and disease. Ninety percent of the sagebrush steppe in Idaho and 99 percent of the Palouse Prairie steppe, a unique ecosystem in
Washington and Idaho, has been removed. Fourteen mammal and bird species are gone from
Oregon and/or Washington (Iten et al. 2001:452), and the State of Oregon lists 42 additional birds and mammals as ―species of concern.‖ Researchers predict that in coming decades the sustainability of the entire Pacific Northwest socio-cultural system will be further threatened by the combined effects of global warming, water-shortages, and more severe stream flow fluctuations (Parsons et al 2001), and by likely increases in the price of all fuels as global peak oil production is exceeded (Deffeyes 2003). The obvious questions are how did this happen, and what can we do to restore sustainability?
86 Throughout the Pacific Northwest, sustainable development enjoys widespread public support as a goal of public and corporate business policy, yet the region is also characterized by increasing inequality, persistent poverty and underemployment. Recent research in the contemporary Columbia Basin has demonstrated that as both local level and Basin-wide populations grow, decision-making regarding social-ecological development becomes 1) more concentrated and 2) increasingly supra-local (Bodley 1999, 2001). For example, a computer database analysis of the 1997 assessed value of all individually-owned urban property in all
27 municipalities in two counties of eastern Washington showed that ownership became more concentrated as urban size increased (Bodley 1999). As the size of urban places increased, the value held by the top 5 percent of owners, ranked by size, increased by orders of magnitude more rapidly than the average value of holdings (Bodley 1999). A larger study examining all urban places in Washington State found that larger urban places not only produced more total wealth and more wealth per capita, but income, wealth, and economic power also appeared to become more concentrated as growth occurred (Bodley 2001). Furthermore, at larger scales, business headquarters are increasingly likely to be located non-locally and out-of-state, thereby making decision-making more remote. Municipalities with populations averaging under 1000, and that historically have grown the least, show the highest proportions of locally-headquartered, sole-proprietorship businesses, as well as the most equitable distributions of business revenues, property ownership, and income (Bodley 2001).
Important to the Columbia Basin‘s social-ecological health is the current endangerment of its most spectacular natural resource, the Pacific Salmon. Salmon are not only central cultural elements for indigenous peoples and widely recognized as a cultural and commercial symbol of the Pacific Northwest, but they also highlight regional sustainability
87 issues by focusing attention on conflicting demands on water resources. The Columbia River drainage historically produced up to more than 100 million kilograms of salmon (10 to 16 million fish) annually, making it the world‘s richest known inland fishery. An important food source for Native Americans for millennia, salmon also have a known relationship, typically as a source of food, with 137 other wildlife species, across all 32 recognized wildlife habitats in the Pacific Northwest (Johnson and O‘Neil 2001). They are a ―keystone species‖ in the sense that they serve as a convenient indicator of overall ecosystem health (Quinn 2005). The seven species of Pacific Northwest salmon (Oncorhynchus sp.) have presumably existed in their present form for six million years, however recent runs have now dropped to as low as
200,000 fish, and much of the decline can be directly linked to urbanization, hydroelectric development, intensive agriculture, mining, and logging.
Dams have largely replaced salmon as a dominant symbol of the Columbia River and its tributaries. While hydroelectric power, irrigated agriculture, and intensive logging have historically been crucial for economic development in the Pacific Northwest, these activities have polluted, diverted and manipulated Columbia Basin rivers, reducing the prospects for salmon survival. Hatcheries built to mitigate dam impacts have worsened pressures on wild salmon because hatchery fish compete with, interbreed with, transmit disease to, and lead to overfishing of their wild salmon as they swim in mixed schools (Ryan 2001). Because salmon are so sensitive to environmental conditions, are so directly impacted by development activities, and are at the same time so ecologically important, they are at the center of regional conflicts between pro-economic growth interests and pro-environment interests. Tribal peoples are often caught in the middle. There is an extensive literature on salmon ecology, restoration, and the public policy issues involved, yet only recently has work in the Pacific
88 Northwest viewed regional sustainability from a holistic scale and social power perspective that incorporates tribal groups historically into contemporary sustainability crises (Colombi
2005).
The Columbia River and its tributaries make up the largest hydropower system ever built. Although Columbia Basin ecosystems are inherently complex and poorly monitored, we do know that economic development in the Columbia Basin has depleted much of the region‘s natural capital. We also know that as the Columbia River watershed has been developed per capita income has increased, but poverty persists and income inequalities have become large.
The depletion of the Basin‘s natural resources not only reduces biological diversity but also makes future resource management more complex and difficult, especially as regional populations continue to grow. Young trees have replaced old-growth forests, grazing has converted tall perennial grasslands into swaths of short annual grasses and invasive species, and the loss and degradation of freshwater habitats has reduced fish populations.
Nevertheless, the Columbia Basin has yet to annihilate its natural inheritance, and options long lost to much of the world still exist here.
Table 3.1: Columbia Basin Time Line (Sources: Hunn 1990; Bodley 2006; Easterbrook 2003)
40-60m BP Formation of general outline of Columbia Basin
20-40m BP volcanic eruptions frequently modified much of the landscape traversed by the Columbia
6-17.5m BP Lava floods and formation of basalt plain
2-5m BP Cascade Mountains began to arch up. The river, did not give ground and the mighty Columbia cut a deep V-shaped canyon for itself.
1.8 m to The Pleistocene epoch is characterized by major environmental changes 10,000 BP accompanying long periods of broad accumulations of global ice in the form of continental ice sheets.
89 130,000— Cordilleran ice sheet advanced and retreated several times, but abruptly 10,000 BP retreated about 14,000 years ago with the onset of climatic warming. Erosion and stiff winds spread sand and silt across the Columbia Plateau, particularly in the Palouse region where southwesterly winds gave rise to dune-like rolling hills of loessial soils.
14,000- Scattered evidence of Paleoindian occupation 10,000 BP
11,000-8,000 Early Archaic Period: people lived in small, mobile groups and exploited a BP variety of resources for subsistence, including salmon, various shellfish, large mammals, and other fish
8,000-4,000 Middle Archaic Period: climate cooled slightly, increasing forest cover and BP improving conditions for large mammals and tubers. Salmon fishing was clearly important by 6,000 B.P., as were roots
4,000 BP – Late Archaic Period: climate cooled significantly, producing significant 1720 A.D. seasonal differences; a shift to larger social units that stored food and lived in semipermanent villages. After about 1,000 years ago, resource use, particularly of salmon, intensified.
1680 Pueblo Revolt in New Mexico; Spanish stock freed ca. 1710 Horses to the Flathead ca. 1730 Horses to the Cayuses and Nez Perces ca. 1775 Smallpox throughout, from coastal contacts
1782 Alexander Mackenzie explores the upper Fraser and Bella Coola rivers for the Northwest Company
1793 Smallpox on the Plains
1801 Smallpox throughout
1805 Lewis and Clark expedition descends the Snake and Columbia rivers in October
1806 Lewis and Clark return upriver in April and May
1807-10 David Thompson of the Northwest Company explores the upper Columbia, Kootenay, Clark Fork, and Coeur d‘Alene rivers; establishes fur-trading posts
1807-08 ―Distemper‖ spreads among the Interior Salish
90
1808 Simon Fraser descends the Fraser River to the mouth
1811 Astorians of the Pacific Fur Company establish Astoria at the Columbia River mouth, arriving by sea from Boston David Thompson descends the Columbia to Astoria; returns via the Palouse and Spokane Rivers D. Stuart and A. Ross of the Pacific Fur Company accompany Thompson up the Columbia, then proceed up the river to establish posts at Okanogan and Kamloops
1812 Pacific Fur Company attempts to establish posts at Lapwai and Spokane, but arouses ire of Indians
1813 Pacific Fur Company sold to Northwest Company under threat of war
1818 Donald MacKenzie, now working for Northwest Company, moves important interior post from Spokane to the mouth of the Walla Walla River to support Snake River fur brigades; Indians remain unsympathetic
1821 Hudson‘s Bay Company buys the Northwest Company
1824-5 Widespread epidemic, likely smallpox
1825 P. Ogden leads Hudson‘s Bay Company—Snake River brigade to Great Salt Lake, Humboldt River, Shasta and Klamath areas
1830-33 Malaria ravages Indians of lower Columbia and Willamette valley
1832-3 Capt. B. L. E. de Bonneville explores upper Snake River for U.S. fur interests
1834-47 Era of Missionization; American Board of Committees for Foreign Missions, Catholic, Wonderful Work of God,
1840-43 Some 250 Nez Perces and Cayuses farming
1843-45 Heavy use of Oregon Trail by immigrant wagons trains; 5,000 Americans settled in Willamette Valley by 1845
1844 Scarlet fever and whooping cough hit Columbia River Sahaptins, Cayuses, Nez Perces, 1846 U.S.A and Britain establish 49°N. boundary; Hudson‘s Bay Company abandons operations south of boundary
91
1847-8 Measles epidemic throughout central and southern Basin
1847 Whitman ―massacre‖ on Nov 29; 13 whites killed; P. Ogden ransoms 48 captives; beginning of end of mission era.
1848 Gold discovered in California
1850 U.S. Army post built at the Dalles; U.S. Congress passes Donation Act— prematurely opening Northwest lands for settlement.
1853 Washington territory separated from Oregon; I. I. Stevens named governor and Indian Agent McClellan railroad survey party explores Klickitat and Yakima country
1854 Intertribal council in Gran Rhonde called by Kamiakin to map out strategy of response to Steven‘s land grab
1855 Treaty council convened by Stevens at Walla Walla; treaties signed that established Yakima, Umatilla, and original Nez Perce reservations; later treaty signed at The Dalles for Warms Springs Reservation Gold discovered in Colville
1856-58 ―Indian wars‖; a series of skirmishes in the Yakima, Walla Walla, and Palus Country; Col. G. Wright defeats resistance of Paluses, Coeur d‘Alenes, and Spokanes in 1958
1859 Treaties ratified
1865 U.S. Civil War ends
1880 Immigrant Population Exceeds Native Population
1880-81 Severe Columbia Basin winter wipes out herds of livestock
1883 N. Pacific Railroad begins operating through Yakima valley bringing flood of settlers
1887 Dawes Severalty Act (General Allotment Act) passed
1890 Unsustainable Fossil-Fuel Dependency
1900 US PNW Population Exceeds One Million
1938-1942 Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams
92
1950 Big Increases in Per-Capita Energy Begin
1957 The Dalles Dam completed
1960 Dependency on Imported Energy
1970 US Oil Production Peaks
1977 Columbia River Inter-tribal Fish Commission established
1985-2003 Economy Doubles
1991-92 Salmon Listed Under Endangered Species Act
1994 Northwest Forest Plan
1997 Farmed Salmon Production Exceeds Wild Catch
2000 US PNW Population Exceeds Ten Million
93 CHAPTER FOUR
COLUMBIA BASIN FOOD CULTURES
In the Columbia Basin, individuals and human groups have produced and participated in a partially overlapping succession of three historically and ecologically distinctive food cultures. For at least 12,000 years, the region‘s tribal food culture consisted of many small- scale groups successfully managing food systems reliant on extensive human mobility to procure fish, roots, berries, and game. This food culture supported a social infrastructure of politically independent villages and societies along river valleys and an assortment of seasonal, mostly upland, camps situated at known harvest locations. The transformational effects of the horse, epidemic disease, trade goods, and Christian missionaries disrupted these food cultures and threatened the livelihood of tribal peoples throughout the Columbia Basin, albeit to varying degrees. Although many Columbia Basin Indians long-practiced a ―wild horticulture,‖ it differed from the mode of agriculture that Euroamericans brought and missionaries taught (Marshall 1999). For instance, ―rather than creating geometric, fenced, plowed fields of a single plant species, the Nez Perce people developed irregular plots by hand labor and fire‖ (Marshall 1999:173).
Agriculture and ranching began as predominately subsistence activities on small plots along rivers, yet many early agriculturalists were anxious for new transportation links and prospects for national and global markets. This attitude, along with private and government interests, quickly gave rise to a commercially-organized, global food culture. Large-scale production and long distance food trade quickly dominated early domestic goals. Settlers partnered with wealthy, distant actors who, hence forward, played roles in constructing
94 railroads, dams and diversion canals; harvesting rivers and aquifers; and converting thousands of the Columbia Basin‘s marginal arid acres into industrial, monocrop fields, or factory farms.
Despite the rapid and recent construction of such a large-scale, growth-oriented, and elite- directed socio-ecological infrastructure, Columbia Basin peoples have recently grown more concerned with food quality, security, and community well-being. Gradually more individuals and groups identify with broad anti-globalism movements, specific food movements (such as
―organic,‖ ―slow,‖ or ―local‖) and/or one of a variety of local-oriented paradigms. This has given rise to a civic (or local) food culture, particularly in the growing number of farmers‘ markets and community gardens, as well as in the surge of interest in smaller-scale production methods. Sharing the ―smallness‖ of tribal food culture and the commercial-orientation of today‘s dominant food culture, civic food culture has become prominent in some spaces, diffuse in others, but firmly established through a variety of linked social networks.
A framework for understanding a Basin‘s food culture history requires attention to scale, sustainability, place and practice (Bodley 1999, 2008; Hinrichs and Lyson 2007).
Bodley‘s (1999) schematic perspective on the cultural evolution of three distinctive cultural
(and food) systems—tribal, imperial, and commercial—structures my analysis of food cultures. Like cultural worlds, food cultures differ according to societal size, the organization of social power and culturally available means of production: tribal (by means of kin), imperial (by means of rulers), and commercial (by means of market) (Wolf 1982; Bodley
1999). Furthermore, the crucial variable determining the sustainability of a cultural world, and by extension its food culture, is the relationship between human (both individual and group) decision-making and social and ecological scale variables. In the Columbia Basin, small-scale tribal societies adapted to the extreme habitats produced by a remarkable geological history,
95 and achieved a balanced and varied diet by means of extensive upslope movements in spring and fall (Hunn 1999). Unlike tribal groups west of the Cascade and Coastal Mountains
(Northwest Coast culture area), where political-elites gained control over aspects of food production and distribution, tribal food culture in the Columbia Basin successfully prevented political centralization and limited resource use by way of the mobility requirements of culturally-reproduced and maintained seasonal practices (Hunn 1990, 1999).
This chapter begins by differentiating between my use of the concepts of food system and food culture. Next, I examine the relationship between culture scale and food system configurations within the Columbia Basin. The goal of this analysis is to distinguish the different ways people have used food culture—ideas, behaviors, and material resources—in the Columbia Basin to achieve their overall goals in relation to other people and the natural environment. After this, I briefly detail the historical development of all three Columbia Basin food cultures, which are further detailed in the case studies of chapters five through eight.
Conceptualizing Food and Food Systems
People must be fed, sheltered, and protected if they are to live and reproduce the species and the culture. Like sex (and perhaps war), food is something humans think about, talk about, and desire. Mintz explains how food, as a primary societal need, takes on numerous meanings:
For us humans, then, eating is never a ―purely biological‖ activity (whatever ―purely biological‖ means). The foods eaten have histories associated with the pasts of those who eat them; the techniques employed to find, process, prepare, serve, and consume the foods are all culturally variable, with histories of their own. Nor is the food ever simply eaten; its consumption is always conditioned by meaning. These meanings are symbolic, and communicated symbolically; they also have histories. These are some of the ways we humans make so much more complicated this supposedly simple ―animal‖ activity. [1996:7-8]
96
So even though food is central to our survival, it plays varying role(s) in society and culture. It has thus been interpreted from numerous perspectives within anthropology (Messer 1984:
Mintz and DuBois 2002). Linguistic anthropologists have analyzed ―ethnoclassifications‖ of food species and have called attention to ―food codes‖ as social markers of class, caste, or ethnicity (Douglas 1984). Cultural materialists have argued that food-related shifts in ecology can be traced to changes in political-economic power (Harris 1979). Archaeologists have traced population growth and the rise and fall of civilizations against transformations of food species, production and processing technologies, and water management (Flannery 1973).
Medical and nutritional anthropologists have combined scientific and folkloric analysis to map changing diets and their health consequences, interconnecting food and nutrition at individual, household, community, national, and global levels (Pelto et al. 1989). Much of today‘s food studies strikingly demonstrate how isolation from markets can be as food- depriving as floods, droughts, and other natural ecological disasters.
Food systems are cultural mechanisms for meeting basic human nutritional needs, and food system sustainability requires avoiding long-term depletion of the natural resource base and maintaining the distribution of essential nutrients to people (Bodley 2001). A society‘s food system is both central and interconnected to the rest of society. Accordingly, frameworks to interpret food systems are microcosms of frameworks for interpreting the ways humans transform their natural environment. Figure 4.1 demonstrates how humans as individuals, in communities, and comprising societies are continually making decisions on land use that profoundly affect the condition of the surrounding environment. But forces that drive environmental change emanate from a variety of socio-natural sources. It is more common to
97 conceive of them as either from the human environment, such as demand for food or other resources, or from the natural environment, such as climatic change or natural disasters.
Driving Changes in Forces of the Landscape Socio- Decision- Land- Human Change in Natural makers, cover and Response Land-use Environment Land Soil 1) Expansion e.g. demand for System managers change 2) Intensification food, climatic Changes in 3) Abandonment change, natural Biogeochemical disaster Process
Figure 4.1. Framework for Interpreting Human Transformations of the Natural Environment (redrawn after Redman 1999: Figure 1.3)
The idea of a ―food system,‖ is a convenient means of conceptualizing the relationship between the different forces—markets, elites, public policy, climate, biochemical research experiments, etc.—acting upon the food flows from producer to consumer. It refers to a chain of interconnected activities that take place in order to get food from the environment to people, including food production, processing, distribution, marketing, processing, and the knowledge and customs surrounding food and food consumption (Bryant et al. 2003). As demonstrated in Figure 4.2, the food system concept necessarily connects 1) natural processes used in food production and their ecological sustainability and 2) socio-spatial power relations and networks (both individual and organizational) that mobilize social labor, control resources, engage the world of symbols, ideas, and impact household reproductive potential
98 and patterns of maintenance. In this regard, primary objectives of our global institutions are to determine strategies to cope with the impacts of environmental change on food systems and to assess the environmental and socio-economic consequences of adaptive responses aimed at improving food security (Ericksen 2006). As defined at the World Food Summit (1996), food security is when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
Environmental Feedbacks e.g. water quality, GHGs
Driving Forces of ‗Natural‘ Drivers Natural Environment e.g. Volcanoes, Food System Activities Land cover & soils, Climate Solar Cycles Producing—natural resources, inputs, markets variability, Water availability & Processing &Packaging—raw materials, standards storage requirement Distributing & Retailing—transport, marketing, advertising quality, Biodiversity, Sea currents Consuming—acquisition, preparation, customs and salinity, Sea level
Driver Food System Outcomes & Interactions Social Welfare Food Security—stability over decision-makers, Environment •Income time for: land managers Welfare •Employment •Ecosystem •Wealth Food stocks and •Social capital Food Utilization Access flows •Political •Nutritional •Affordability •Ecosystem Value capital •Allocation Driving Forces of •Social Value services •Human •Preference •Food Safety •Access to Human Environment Capital natural capital Demographics, Economics, Socio- Food political context, Cultural context, Availabilty •Production Science & Technology •Distribution •Exchange
Socioeconomic Feedbacks e.g. livelihoods, social cohesion
Figure 4.2. Framework for Interpreting Food Systems within Socio-Natural Transformation (redrafted after Ericksen 2006:Figure 1)
99 Of course, it is a formidable and perhaps impossible task to describe the food system in its entirety. Nevertheless, the concept‘s strength lies in how it guards against making misleading inferences about bits or parts of the system (such as focusing only on food marketing or consumer behavior) and forces the analysis of interconnected parts. This is not to suggest that ethnographic and theoretical work focusing on particular food-related concepts and/or aspects of the food system do not further our understanding. Many useful studies emphasize concepts that integrate with food systems analyses, such as ―foodways‖ and
―cuisine.‖ Foodways are the ideas and behaviors that affect what people eat, including culturally specific definitions of what does or does not constitute food, the ranking of desirable foods, their preparation and cooking and how these together create a cuisine (Messer
1997). Cuisine refers to the foods, food preparation techniques, and taste preferences that are shared by the members of a group of people that share a common culture (Bryant et al. 2003).
Multiple food system variants may exist within a society, perhaps only benefiting or costing a portion of the members of that society. Thus it is necessary to examine how different food systems relate, how one or more encompasses others, and how humans may belong, subscribe, or prefer some food system variants over others. The highly contested cultural decisions regarding the maintenance and transformation of food systems always implicates a politics of scale—the manipulation of relations of power and authority by actors and institutions operating and situating themselves at different spatial scales (Brenner 2001;
Leitner 1997). Equating all food systems with the dominant food system masks the ways in which various local and regional populations carve out their own food network variants despite being linked and reliant upon aspects of the dominant food system. However, by assessing the connectivity of food system variants, we may question when and how they
100 cooperate and/or come into conflict while being subsumed by the dominant food system, which necessarily abides by the dominant mode of production, the dominant ideology, and dominant means of distributing social power throughout the entire cultural system (as discussed in Chapter two).
Academics are increasingly drawn to food studies, particularly the concept of food systems, only to find out how abstract and challenging the concept can be to examine. Food relates to all things/subjects in a human-ecological network, connecting the most intimate of sociospatial relations and inserting them in a complex political economy and political ecology of bodily, local, urban, regional, national, and international spatial scales. Whereas the spatial complexity of food systems clearly baffle us, the absolute size of cities, enterprises, and material resources (both used and remaining) increasingly challenge sustainable limits however they are defined. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the concept of scale is likewise generating more and more scholarly interest. As examined in chapter two, conceptions and uses of scale range across a spectrum of intimidating diversity. Not only does scale connote different dimensions, most notably spatial, temporal, quantitative, and analytical, but it is used in a variety of senses that incorporate one or more of these dimensions at differing points or periods of time.
Intersecting Regional Food Cultures: A Power and Scale Approach
Whereas a food system refers to a set of mutually interacting components/activities
(distinction, production, processing, distribution, preparation, etc.) undertaken to get food from the environment to a group of people, the concept food culture is broader, especially in how it engages the variability of human imaginings and the relations of power that direct food
101 system changes (Figure 4.3). As opposed to a food system, the concept of food culture is shapeless and all-encompassing; it draws together—synoptically and synthetically—a group‘s range of ideas, societal organization, and material relations regarding food acquisition and long-term cultural survival. It thus provides theoretical means to examine the co-existence of diverse food cultures that necessarily interconnect within the matrix and confines of a dominant food system. For instance, there exist many food commodity (milk, hops, emu, etc.) networks that are local or regional, but connect with multi-national retailers. (Indeed, the great variety of local and regional food systems make generalizing about civic food culture difficult). Such a civic orientation starkly differs from norms within today‘s global-oriented commercial food systems, and I suggest that both a small-scale, civic food culture and a global-scale, industrialized food culture coexist within today‘s global-oriented food system, which favors the latter food culture. Local food networks are becoming an enduring feature of both agricultural and theoretical landscapes (Hinrichs and Lyson 2007; Lyson 2004), thus analyses of these different cultural models—global-industrial and local-civic—are best cast as two separate yet connected food cultures.
Today, agro-food scholars from wide-ranging disciplines commonly examine how small-scale, or ―civic‖ food systems presently grow alongside large-scale agribusiness networks (Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002; Kloppenberg et al. 1996). While it is widely recognized that such small-scale networks are not fully insulated from the dominant, global- scale, food system processes, there exists a dearth of research on how differently scaled food systems interact in the same geographic space through time. Although they differ in material use, as organizational models, and in their configurations of ideas, both food cultures are commercial and thus susceptible to influence and domination by commercial imperia whose
102 leaders are dedicated to continuous expansion. It is in this context that we may come to grips with why and how local food networks thrive in some places, among some populations, and not others.
Figure 4.3: Interrelationship between Food Culture and Cultural World. Food systems are represented by background networks, suggesting how nature and society are constituted as networks of interwoven processes. Nodes represent different levels of connectedness among major parts of the social network, which depend on the type of food culture. The nodes may represent families and differentially scaled trade centers (tribal food culture); peasant subsistence communities and political rulers (imperial food culture); or local to global food networks marked by differently scaled enterprise, markets, and elite power (commercial food culture). The different shades of the nodes signify how food cultures rely on both aquatic- and terrestrial-focused foods that become intertwined in food system activities and social relationships.
103 Many scholars agree that cross-scalar food system interactions are likely to vary according to place (Hinrichs and Lyson 2007), but how do these different food systems cross- cut society? Do some people participate and ―belong to‖ both commercial food cultures
(local and global)? Furthermore, when and how did these food systems develop in or reach particular geographic regions and either displace or exist alongside prior food systems?
While it can be helpful to compare the sustainability of food systems in different regions, such analyses compare different regional contexts and thus the comparison necessarily neglects social and ecological histories tied to each place. Despite the fact that important regional variables (population size, energy and material use, distribution of social power, etc.) change through time in any given region, it remains crucial to comparatively examine what has worked for long historic periods in given regions simply because planning for sustainable food cultures requires thinking in both spatial scales and long time-scales.
Both the centrality and interconnection of food cultures to cultural worlds is so evident that contemporary U.S. concerns of health care, national security, and fossil-fuel depletion can effectively be analyzed through attention to food production, distribution, and the organization of each (Pollan 2008). Therefore, combining the concept of food culture with
Bodley‘s (1999) conceptual model of culture scale and social power provides an excellent framework to compare essential features of Columbia Basin food systems through time.
As Table 4.1 depicts, tribal food culture parallels the existence of the tribal cultural world in the Columbia Basin, from human settlement to European invasion and settlement.
Although aspects of tribal food culture have either persevered or have been revitalized, tribal food culture now interdigitates with the commercial processes and purposes that characterize aspects of the two commercial food cultures that dominate the region today, most notably
104 Table 4.1 Functional Organization in Three Food Cultures in the Columbia Basin. (Source: Bodley 2004; Harris 1980).
-- TRIBAL WORLD ------COMMERCIAL WORLD ------Tribal Food Culture Global Food Culture Civic Food Culture
Material Basis of Society and Culture
Human Populationª 87,000 + 1-6 million 50,000-6 million Nature, Energy, and natural resources and natural resources and natural resources and Materials services services, fossil fuels services, limited fossil fuels, emphasizing green energy
Technology Tools for foraging, Industrial tools, factory Locally produced tools, gardening, herding farming, mechanized integrated farming, transport, electronic electronic information information systems systems
Organization of Society
Economy Domestic subsistence, Global markets, Local and regional markets, feasting, reciprocal commodities, money, local economies, small exchange factories, financial firms, reciprocal exchange, institutions, public debt, a goal of local and corporations, capital sustainable subsistence, accumulation, unequal community welfare exchange Society Low density rural, bands of High density rural, rural Emphasis on small social 50, tribes and villages of crop towns, cities of networks regardless of 500, family, kin, affines, millions, capitalists, population density (i.e., young, old, male, female, laborers consumers, social rural towns, city language classes, local to global, neighborhoods), commercial commonwealth pragmatists, food citizens
Polity/Government Autonomous band and Constitutional nation states Food citizens connected villages of 500 descent of 100s of millions, courts, through linked social groups police, professional networks, often ranging military, democracy, from 500 to 2,500 universities people/network. Social movements, anti- globalization activism
Empirical Knowledge, Nominal Beliefs, Practice
Underlying Logic Irreducible Minimum Growth Benefits Everyone, Anti-globalism; Local Value Generalized Reciprocity and Localized Reciprocity
Ideology Animism, shamanism, Nationalism, patriotism, Contextualism, Holism, spirits, myth, ritual, taboo, monotheism, knowledge, multiple ecologies, magic, divination, animal advertising, economic sustainability, local sacrifice growth, progress, free reciprocity, recycling markets ª Tribal population estimates (Boyd 1998); minimum population estimate for Civic food culture refers to early settlement of the Basin, when epidemics decreased tribal populations but mission towns and early settlers were practicing subsistence agriculture.
105 the commoditization process and the generalized interchangeability of all commodities.
Indigenous peoples have proven to be successful at resisting challenges to their sociocultural sovereignty and autonomy, and tribal humanization processes still remain strong throughout the Columbia Basin, but much of their resource base has been either taken away or has deteriorated through commercially-driven politics, rapid urbanization, landscape alteration, and the commoditization of all natural resources.
Tribal Food Culture: Small-Scale Groups and Basin-Based Regionality
Before the arrival of European influences, the Columbia Basin‘s diverse ecosystems, and especially the massive salmon runs, supported some 90,000 indigenous peoples diversified into 20 cultural subareas, speaking 15 languages, most of which belong to two large and territorially extensive language groupings: Salishan speakers to the north and Sahaptin speakers to the south (Boyd 1998; Walker Jr. 1998). Most significantly, indigenous people were able to endure for more than 10,000 years, perhaps because they were able to keep their societies small and reliant on sustainably harvested natural resources. The native population lived dispersed over hundreds of small independent villages (Hunn 1990; Walker 1967,
1998a, 1998b). Most people lived within closely overlapping networks of about 150 people, and before 1850 few native villages probably ever exceeded 2000 people (Anastasio 1985), which is the threshold beyond which political centralization, or formal hierarchy would become increasingly necessary in order to maintain social integration (Carneiro 1987b; Kosse
1990; Naroll 1956).
For the last 5,000 years, groups spent much of the year in riverine pithouse villages of
30 to 300 people, subsisting on fish, roots, berries, and game. On occasion, they were able to
106 manage that production to increase the distribution or yield of key foods (Marshall 1977), but the timing and potential habitat of even managed resources were largely constrained by environment (Chatters 1998). Productivity was cyclical in both time and space, different food, material and medicinal resources becoming available at different seasons in distinct parts of the landscape. Physiography, soil characteristics, and climate constrained the hydrology and vegetation, thus affecting the distribution of land and water species. Climatic variation also affected resources in the long term. As temperatures cooled, productive seasons became more seasonally restricted, with the opposite occurring when temperatures increased. These constraints surely challenged a cultural system that values not only the sustenance benefits of hunting and fishing but also where, when, and how they were carried out. The Columbia
Basin can be thought of as an ever-changing mosaic of habitats for human beings and the resources upon which they depended for food, shelter, clothing, implements, medicine and ceremony (Chatters 1998).
Subsistence activities formed the backdrop for much of the political and social organization and spiritual beliefs. Political organization was highly variable among the
Plateau people (Ray 1936), but generally was centered on village autonomy. Intermarriage and sharing of hunting, berrying, and root digging grounds might bind several villages together, but there was no overt political structure organizing these intervillage relationships.
Almost all villages were located on waterways, with boundaries between groups most strongly demarcated where streams or rivers were crossed. Boundaries were more poorly defined farther from population centers, so that far out in hunting territory or out in the root digging grounds, boundaries sometimes completely faded out (Ray 1936). Where the village is the political unit, boundaries are exact so far as the settlements themselves are concerned,
107 but intervening and riverine territory was typically used in common (Ray 1939:15). Village boundaries, however, are also based on productivity of nearby fishing grounds, while the villages themselves are located with respect to topography, fuel supply, and winter temperature and microclimates.
On the whole, tribal life involved wintertime occupancy in river villages, and summertime camping at fishing, berrying, and root-digging grounds in dispersed locations.
Villages consisted of clusters of mat lodges and semi-subterranean residential structures with accompanying ceremonial and storage facilities. Usually, winters were spent in the villages where people made and repaired tools and clothing, and engaged in ceremonial activities. In spring, the inhabitants of a village would disperse into smaller groups to gather plant resources and to fish the spring runs of salmon and steelhead (Curtis 1911; Smith 1982; Spier
1936; Teit 1928). Hunting was fundamental and continuous, but subsistence patterns and seasonal range most notably aligned with fishing, particularly the seasonality of salmon runs.
In fact, local differences in fishing productivity, such as the presence of narrows, rapids, low falls, marshy places, or other favorable fish-catching areas (Hewes 1998), largely depicted a group‘s seasonal range.
As discussed in the previous chapter, protohistoric impacts, Euroamerican settlement, and the subsequent introduction of the reservation system and commercial world economy drastically transformed ancient patterns of aboriginal travel and subsistence. Nevertheless, tribal food culture in the Columbia Basin proved satisfactory and resilient in this environment, maintaining Plateau groups for thousands of years. Chapter 5 further examines the key aspects of this durable food culture that made it sustainable: mutual resource sharing, seasonal-
108 oriented ecological knowledge, and mobility requirements that discouraged population growth.
Industrial Food Culture: The Commercialization of the U.S. Food System
Whereas tribal food culture aims to satisfy human nutritional needs on a sustained basis, the scale and dynamics of commercial food cultures have historically made it easy to co-opt sustainable and humane goals for the growth-oriented purpose of producing a financial return for investors. Before Euroamerican settlement of the Columbia Basin, economic activities were shared and goods distributed on the basis of reciprocity and a realistic assumption of fairness rooted in long-term balancing of costs, benefits, and everyone‘s needs (Bodley 2003).
Vengeance, raiding and intergroup violence were problematic in the tribal world, but trade was free and realistic, and group members were entitled to what Radin (1971) called the
―irreducible minimum,‖ the natural human right to make a living, marry, form a household, and raise children (Bodley 2003:15). The commercial world of Euroamericans, on the other hand, was rooted in large urban populations, enormous social inequality, and the logic of
―generalized interchangeability‖—that which makes products and services from all of over the planet commensurable in terms of the single metric of money (Hornborg 2007). This logic supports illusions that opportunities for commercial expansion are endless and accentuates the danger of commerce becoming the dominant cultural process. Commercial world elites can easily subvert commerce for imperial purposes, especially when they acquire disproportionately high amounts of social power and decide that the success of commerce is more important than the well-being of people (Bodley 2003). An assortment of scholarly work supports such corporately-driven changes throughout the history of the American food
109 system (Berry 1977; Domhoff 1996; Goldschmidt 1978; McConnell 1953; Odum 1971;
Steinhart and Steinhart 1974).
Though missionaries brought livestock and planted crops in the 1830s, settlement and farming remained relatively small-scale until the railroads arrived. Euroamerican colonization proceeded slowly in the Columbia Basin for a variety of reasons: Indian resistance, the wetter climate of the Willamette Valley was more appealing to settlers, rails did not arrive until the
1880s, and new settlers did not understand the soils and climate. Land in the eastern Great
Plains was more accessible to settlers. The climate and soil was also more familiar. The
Columbia Basin‘s seasons and productive potential were little understood. Nevertheless, like elsewhere in the U.S., once settlements in the Columbia Basin grew, the large-scale agricultural development goals of America‘s political and commercial elite prevailed.
For much of the nineteenth century the railroads were the principal companies traded on the stock market, and owners and directors of railroads constituted the most powerful economic elite nationally (Roy 1997). These wealthy few directed a commercial revolution, from 1850 to 1890, that transformed the way food was produced, processed, and distributed in the U.S. (Bodley 2003). It entailed a swift series of changes in transportation, communication, production, distribution, and the organization of business enterprise itself that collectively increased the speed and scale of commercial transactions (Chandler 1977). These changes, and indeed the entire westward expansion movement, were financed and directed by relatively few commercial elites centered in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia (Soltow 1975).
Together, they leveraged politicians to make credit more readily available in order to further expand the scale and scope of commerce, eventually concentrating so much intangible wealth, or financial power, to overpower the U.S. political system (Bodley 2003; Roy 1997). John D.
110 Rockefeller was perhaps the most important of a handful of people who created the giant oil companies and developed a global market for petroleum products, effectively bringing on the fossil fuel revolution. The crucial point is that the decline and near disappearance of small farms in America was neither a natural nor inevitable process, but a result of political struggle in which ―a few centrally-located politically and economically powerful commercial leaders were pitted against a great mass of small farmers scattered across rural America‖ (Bodley
2001:142).
By the 1930s, governmental institutional structures were marginalizing small-scale farmers and consequently reducing the quality of life in rural America. The land grant colleges, extension services, and the Department of Agriculture were serving the interests of large-scale commercial farmers (McConnell 1953). Agribusiness elites created the American
Farm Bureau Federation—a very potent lobby that further built partnerships between large- scale farmers and government bureaucrats, politicians, and expert advisers (Domhoff 1996).
Analyzing the social impact of farm size in the early 1940s, Walter Goldschmidt (1978) selected two communities in the Central Valley of California, Dinuba and Arvin, and found that not only did smaller farms maximize income for more people than did large farms, but smaller farms also supported more prosperous farm towns. Seeing giant agribusiness corporations invading agricultural production, Goldschmidt attributed the concentration of
American farm ownership to public policies that for decades systematically favored large owners over small.
Commercially driven food systems are not only far more costly in per capita demand for energy and resources, but ultimately less sustainable than small-scale, noncommercial systems and much less responsive to basic human needs. It is possible only to make a very
111 rough estimate of the total energy costs of the American food system. Steinhart and Steinhart
(1974) calculated that in 1970 between 8 and 12 calories were expended in the production, distribution, and consumption of a single calorie of food. This figure includes energy costs such as the manufacturing and operation of farm machinery, irrigation, fertilizers, packaging, transportation, manufacturing of trucks, food processing, and both industrial and domestic cooking and refrigeration. Between 1940 and 1970 the per capita energy costs of American food doubled. Commercial factory food systems involve an enormous concentration of political and economic power that produces vast profits for global elites, who are insensitive to the needs of local human communities and ecosystems. The present strategy for promoting economic development and reducing world hunger problems promotes large commercial systems at the expense of locally controlled food systems.
In the 1960s, the Rockefeller Foundation and Nobel-Prize-winning plant scientist
Norman Borlaug began testing their strategy of intensifying production, with its global outcome dubiously labeled the ―green revolution.‖ The green revolution refers to the use of institutionalized agricultural research, large-scale capital resources, and energy-intensive technology to increase per-acre food productivity in the developing world; however, the obvious political economic strategy involved simply exporting the fossil fuel-subsidized factory farm systems of the highly industrialized nations to the rest of the world (Bodley
2008). As a result, in the 1970s, global food production of major crops (rice, wheat, corn, soy) became dependent on technological advances of the Green Revolution, among which was the use of hybridized seeds, which are bred and now genetically modified for high productivity and the management of disease resistance and pest control, but which also require extensive
112 irrigation, optimum climate conditions, and heavy use of fertilizer, making them highly dependent on fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas.
These global developments shifted enormous capital resources around the world to take advantage of cheaper labor costs. As a result, the material standards of Asia have risen dramatically over the last decade, along with the use of agricultural products for animal feed, the consumption of animal protein and the depletion of world oil resources. Additionally, scientific evidence over the last few decades suggest that irreversible global climate changes are being induced by carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the consumption of fossil fuels, changing weather patterns in ways that erratically influence agricultural productivity at all geographic scales. Since the 1970s, international proposals for dealing with the food problem have consistently promoted export-driven economic growth, market liberalization and biotechnology as the solution for developing countries, and disregarding any policy proposing to strengthen regional and national food self-sufficiency. Lost in this top-down, growth-oriented ideology was the notion that food deserves a privileged place among marketed commodities because it is life-giving. Food and agricultural systems represent successful bio-cultural human adaptations to unique local environments and play important roles in context-specific social processes.
Throughout rural America, continued promotion of large-scale monocropping has increasingly generated regional crop specializations and company, or crop towns focused on one or few crops. In the Columbia Basin, these processes are observed within three of its top crop industries. Apples, potatoes and wheat are produced throughout the Columbia Basin, but they are mass-produced in particular parts of Washington State: Yakima County is known for apples, Grant County for potatoes, and Whitman County for wheat. Yakima and Grant
113 Counties border the Columbia River and thus are situated in the rainshadow of the Cascade
Mountains. Due to the early construction of relatively large irrigation systems in the Yakima
River Valley, global-oriented, agricultural production began as early as the late 1800s, as
Yakima apples were shipped to Hong Kong and Honolulu in 1898 (Luce 1972). It now leads the nation in apple production. In contrast, Grant County‘s agricultural abundance did not begin until 2,676 square miles of grasslands and scablands were transformed by the Columbia
Basin Project in the 1950s (Selfa and Qazi 2005). It now leads the nation in potato production.
High production and processing capacity in both counties are geared toward export markets.
Meanwhile, the expansion of the scale and scope of labor intensive agricultural crops in both of these counties has given rise to high Hispanic populations (over 30 percent) that date back further in Yakima than Grant County. On the other hand, Whitman County lies in the middle of the ‗Palouse,‘ an expanse of rolling hills in southeastern Washington and northern Idaho that is widely recognized for its deep loess soils. Beginning in the 1930s, Palouse farmers shifted to fossil-fuel based industrial technology to reduce their labor requirements and increase the size of their farms, their productivity, and their profits (Bodley 1999). Whitman
County is now one of the world‘s richest soft-wheat-producing regions.
Civic Food Culture: Food System Localization in a Global Economy
Early settlers selected lands along flats of creeks and rivers, avoiding the bunchgrass covered hills, which they used primarily to graze their livestock. Some areas were too dry for cropping, prompting limited experiments with irrigation as early as 1870. Early farmers grew wheat, oats, potatoes, and fruit, but crops were secondary to livestock. Cattle, sheep, and horses ranged on the open grassland regions during the first decades of settlement, as in much
114 of the West. Livestock was initially sold and consumed locally and in regional camps, but as herds grew in size by the 1870s, animals were driven east along the Oregon Trail to Laramie and Cheyenne or northeast along the Mullan Road to Fort Benton on the Missouri where they were sold to ranchers or shipped to the Midwest by train. In 1880, 200,000 cattle, 50,000 sheep, and 2,000 horses were trailed east. Soon after, the arrival of thousands of immigrant farmers in the 1880s closed the open range and shifted production to crops, which coincided with the industrialization of the U.S. food system.
Not until the 1970s did growing concerns of environmental degradation, labor exploitation, urban sprawl, the loss of family farmers, the infusion of molecular genetics and agriculture, and the breakdown of rural communities cause more people to ask where food comes from, how it is grown and prepared, and what implications this has for our health and environment. Today, throughout the U.S., there has been a slow but steady increase in food and farming enterprise that deliberately embrace sustainable practices and that relocalizes food systems by decreasing the distance between people and their food supply. Farmers‘ markets, community kitchens, school gardens, community supported agriculture (CSA), specialty producers, farmer co-ops, and local processors are a few of the creative alternatives that have come to exist alongside of (and often in open competition with) the dominant, corporately controlled, and increasingly consolidated, agro-food system (Heffernan 2000;
Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002; Kloppenberg et al. 1996; Stull and Broadway 2004). While these alternatives have been individually championed and studied for decades, scholars have recently bundled them together into the concept of ―civic agriculture‖ (CivAg), which refers to the embedding of local agricultural and food production in the community (Lyson 2000,
2004, 2005). However, because CivAg is not monitored by federal or state agencies, their
115 unique ecological relationships and social patterns of interaction remain poorly understood.
Furthermore, many debate whether local food systems can continue to expand and flourish in a globalizing environment.
This recent emergence of alternative food systems suggests possibilities for living in
―foodsheds,‖ geographically-defined food systems characterized by proximity, locality and regionality (Kloppenburg et al. 1996). Foodsheds are founded on respect for the integrity of particular socio-geographic places that address the needs of local growers, consumers, rural economies and communities of place through the creation of farmers‘ markets, community supported agriculture (CSA), Co-ops, and community gardens (Feenstra 1997; Kloppenburg et al. 1996; Lyson 2000). Some related work critically examines the underlying social relations of many alternative food initiatives like CSAs, farmers‘ markets, and community gardens, citing the lack of attention to class, gender, and equity concerns in many of those initiatives (DeLind 2002; Hinrichs 2000). Too often these ―alternative‖ initiatives have been shown to cater to wealthy consumers and to put a heavy burden on producers and lower income groups to build community, and as such represent a limited alternative to atomistic, commodified relationships typical of conventional agricultural marketing (DeLind 2002). For local food movements to flourish and to provide a real alternative, agro-food networks must build and rely upon social relations that are embedded in a particular place (Jarosz 2000).
The popularity of farmers‘ markets and community supported agriculture continue to increase with their number doubling in the past decade. There are over 150 farmers‘ markets in Washington State alone. To recognize their growing importance to consumers, farmers, and the economy, Governor Chris Gregoire, the Washington State Department of Agriculture
(WSDA) and the Washington State Farmers Market Association (WSFMA) are celebrating
116 Farmers Market Week in Washington August 1-7. Figure 4.4 shows the current locations of farmers‘ markets and CSA locations throughout the Columbia Basin. Chapters 7 and 8 will further explore this movement.
Figure 4.4: Farmers’ Markets and CSA Locations throughout the Columbia Basin
117 Conclusion
This chapter differentiated the concepts of food system and food culture, and presented a framework to examine regional subsistence histories that draws on Bodley‘s cultural worlds. It also examines the tribal, industrial, and civic food culture, both their development and characteristics in the Columbia Basin. Table 4.2 summarizes these characteristics. The next four chapters draw on case studies to further describe these three food cultures in the Columbia Basin.
Table 4.2 Food Culture and Subsistence in the Columbia Basin
Tribal Global-Commercial Local-Commercial
Survival Centralization Decentralization widespread fewer and larger farms more small farms participation concentrated resources dispersed resources seasonal resources national and global local and regional local planning marketing marketing
Holism Specialization Holism subsistence as sacred farming reduced to farming as a system system individual components diversification adapting ecological standardized production knowledge
Band Individualism Community cooperation self interest cooperation group work reduced labor retained labor subsistence as way of farming as a business farming as a way of life life external costs ignored local to global costs relative local costs material success considered considered non-material values non-material values
118 CHAPTER FIVE
PLATEAU PEOPLES AND TRIBAL FOODSCAPES
The Plateau People descend from one or more of the various ethnic groups comprising what historians and social scientists identify as the ―Plateau‖ – a culture area that closely aligns with the boundaries of the Columbia Drainage Basin (see Figure 5.1). The Plateau is defined by how the river system has, for thousands of years, united distant tribal groups and ecological territories into a single social and economic system reliant on salmon and other aquatic resources (Anastasio 1955; Griswold 1954; Hewes 1947; Ray 1939; Walker 1967). As shown in the previous chapter, Euroamerican penetration of the Plateau distorted these ancient subsistence patterns, destroying both natural places (fisheries, camas prairies) and cultural spaces (Celilo and Kettle Falls). In view of the drastic alteration and destruction of the Basin environment since the 1850s, it is amazing that this aboriginal relationship—between Plateau
Peoples, fish, and water—continues today (Marshall 2006). It is equally remarkable to consider how aboriginal peoples lived here for 10,000 years without degrading natural systems (see Hunn 1999 [1982]).
This chapter draws on ethnographic studies within the Plateau to examine socio-spatial and environmental dynamics of tribal food culture. It begins by reviewing the general patterns of Plateau subsistence cycles and intergroup relations. This sets the scene to describe the subsistence cycles of the 1) Wanapum; 2) Chelan; and 3) Nez Perce.
119
Figure 5.1 Plateau Culture Area and Tribal Groups within Columbia Basin. The Columbia Basin is marked by the thick line and contemporary political boundaries are marked by the faint dotted line. (redrafted after Walker et al. 1998:Figure #)
Plateau Food Culture: Mobility, Group Size, and Exchange
Although Plateau groups realigned their territories over the last 10,000 years, they appear not to have moved much in recent centuries, as evidenced by both place names and highly
120 localized creation epics (Walker 1998). They made a living on harvesting anadromous fish and several species of roots, and supplemented this with resident fish, other food plants, and game (Hunn 1998). Seasonal fluctuations in salmon runs (e.g., time of arrival, abundance) and broad dispersal of plant and animal foods stimulated wide travel patterns and gave rise to a mobile Plateau food culture upheld by cultural patterns of movement and exchange throughout the entire region. The geographical variation of other valued materials, such as furs, various lithic materials, and sea shells, also encouraged travel and trade, but ancient
Plateau patterns of extensive mobility stemmed primarily from regional reliance on anadromous fish (Walker 1967). Such a pattern of mobility has been interpreted as unsteady and erratic (Wissler 1938), but most scholars agree that Plateau patterns of shifting residences—from a winter village to a series of spring-summer-fall camps—were socio- ecologically adaptive (Hewes 1947; Hunn; Marshall 1977; Walker 1967). Beyond enhancing food security, the mobility requirements of Plateau subsistence economy shaped how tribal peoples regulated their group sizes, conserved their environment, and developed cultural patterns that facilitated trade and exchange.
Resource Abundance and Group Size
Salmon is typically considered the significant limiting resource of the fishing and gathering
Plateau populations (Hewes 1973; Schalk 1986). Boyd (1998) demonstrated a close correlation between salmon abundance and local population size by comparing the salmon resource availability of particular groups to the 1805-1806 population estimates of Lewis and
Clark. Likewise, Schwede (1966) shows how all but one of the winter villages were located at access points to large numbers of salmon because people necessarily lived in proximity to
121 sources of large numbers of fish, especially salmon, and sources of water. The spatial distribution, density, and size of settlements and population reflected the distribution, density, and size of fish runs (Walker 1967).
Salmon abundance was clearly important, however other socio-ecological factors influenced group size, population density, and seasonal ranging distances, such as type of salmon run and distance inland of the catch—salmon become leaner as they travel inland, thus favoring downstream populations (Hunn 1990; also Boyd 1998). Many upriver peoples lacked salmon runs in their home territories and thus traveled to fisheries at Kettle Falls, Priest
Rapids, and Celilo Falls. For other groups, starch roots, culms, and bulbs contributed more calories than salmon to the diet (Hunn 1990). Like salmon, both the plenitude and dispersal of vegetal foods, particularly camas and various lomatiums, influenced group sizes. Extensive root grounds, such as Camas Prairie, Idaho, tended to be located relatively far from winter villages but were frequently used by numerous tribal groups.
People need to collect sufficient quantities of food during the warm half of the year in order to keep them going until early spring. Despite social and ecological challenges, their methods of preparing and storing food usually ensured an optimal supply of winter food
(Ames and Marshall 1980). Unforeseen social and environmental outcomes, such as shifting salmon cycles, huge volcanic ashfalls (Hunn and Norton 1984), droughts, and small-scale warfare would occasionally lead to shortages of food during the ―lean season‖ from late winter and early spring. During the lean season, nutritional deficiencies, perhaps even starvation, might increase morbidity rates. Starvation plays a widespread role in Plateau mythology (Boyd 1998). Of course, it is likely that the lean season disproportionately affected the very young, contributing to higher infant mortality. Like on the Northwest Coast, Liebig‘s
122 Law of the minimum may have operated during the lean season and set an upper limit on human population levels (Hayden 1975; cited in Boyd 1998: 468).
Though there is evidence of subsistence intensification over this long time period, the same basic subsistence economy had persisted in the Columbia Basin since time immemorial
(Hunn 1990). Innovations in fishing technology, salmon storage (Schalk 1984), and root processing (Thoms 1989) increased the efficiency of resource exploitation and may have increased the potential for population expansion (Boyd 1998; Nelson 1973). However, it was not until the 1700s when the local adoption of the horse sharply heightened mobility patterns.
The effects of the horse may have been more social than economic (Ray 1939), but such enhanced mobility clearly expanded the spatial scale of forage and trade, thus broadening the resource base and introducing a potential for population increase (Boyd 1985; Hunn 1990).
However, because the arrival of the horse coincided with new diseases, Euroamerican trade goods, and the effects of early missionization, whether or not Plateau populations and resource use would have increased dramatically with the horse remains debatable.
Advantages of Band Mobility
The mobility requirements of making a living in the aboriginal Columbia Basin also prevented Plateau peoples from degrading their environment. In a seminal paper, Hunn (1982) uses his ethnographic and ethnobotanical research with Sahaptin speaking people of the John
Day and Umatilla areas to examine why Plateau resources were spared. Was it due to direct efforts of resource management or was it incidental to regional subsistence strategies? If it were direct, it would involve either territoriality—―any restriction on access to a resource based on group membership,‖ or conservation—―a culturally sanctioned pattern of restricted
123 resource use imposed upon the members of the resource-controlling group‖ (Hunn 1982:166).
Territoriality would typically refer to ―ownership‖ of land or resources with enforceable rights to restrict access by non-owners. In the case of the Plateau, evidence suggests that groups did not prevent outsiders from using resources within their home territories. Each group
―stewarded‖ a home territory, but also regularly exploited the majority of the Columbia
Basin—other groups‘ home territories. According to Walker (1967):
. . . it was customary for visitors to request a pro forma approval before exploiting resources in their host‘s territory, but this does not imply exclusiveness of ownership. Clearly, the evidence lends little if any support to the exclusiveness of ownership so characteristic of Euro-American culture and increasingly so of contemporary Indian cultures of the area. [Walker 1967:14]
Conservation, on the other hand, is less easily documented and argued. According to Hunn, conservation may be exhibited in an assortment of ways, ―by an ideology that mandates supernatural sanctions against waste, such as leaving a portion of tuber for regeneration; by selective hunting practices designed to spare reproductive females; and so on‖ (Hunn:166).
Ultimately, Hunn dismisses the adaptive utility of both types of direct resource use— territoriality and conservation—and concludes that ―Columbia Plateau resources were spared primarily as an epiphenomenon of the highly mobile subsistence strategy that characterized the region‖ (Hunn:167). His argument draws on sharp contrasts between Plateau and
Northwest Coast culture areas in terms of resource-use restrictions and conservation practices.
While Plateau people tended to treat resources as communal, coast people developed well- defined property rights. On the coast, rights of families and local groups to control and harvest specific resources from specific sites were highly developed, often heritable (Richardson
1982), and frequently fought over (Suttles 1951). He suggests that coastal people tended to be more sedentary and to exhibit a greater tendency toward subsistence specialization because
124 ―the shorewise concentration of a variety of key resources favored exploiting closely spaced rather than widely separated habitat patches‖—a strategy consistent with a seasonal round independent of variations in elevation (Hunn 1999:165). Alternatively, Plateau peoples achieved a balanced and varied diet through extensive seasonal upslope movement. Hunn describes this:
The major caloric resources, bitterroot and the lomatiums, apparently defined this basic seasonal rhythm by virtue of their annual growth characteristics. Their restricted temporal availability combined with their widespread but patchy spatial distribution to protect them from overexploitation by requiring their human predators to be highly mobile. Perhaps the plateau people were incapable of depleting bitterroot and lomatium populations during their brief annual availability. In such cases, direct resource management through territoriality or conservation does not pay because it is superfluous. Furthermore, to get the most for the key plateau energy sources, Sahaptin households had to adopt a strategy of movement that incidentally limited their impact on more concentrated and less temporally restricted staples such as camas and salmon. In short, time rather than any specific resource may have been the factor limiting the intensity of resource exploitation in the plateau— the time required to move from one widely separated resource concentration to the next. [Hunn 1999:165]
Here, Hunn suggests a need to account for not just the intrinsic characteristics of particular resource species, such as their concentrations and predictability, but also for the interaction of the subsistence strategy with those resource characteristics.
In his discussion of the balance between Plateau peoples and their environment, Hunn only briefly touches on the regulation of group size and the social advantages of band mobility. He does this by calling attention to how technological limitation is a poor explanation for why preindustrial people indirectly spared resources. He states his argument:
125 . . . the sparing of resources is not an epiphenomenon of technological limitation, because the existing technology may always be employed by more people, thus circumventing the so-called limitation. The human use of technology is an integral part of a culturally defined strategy for making a living, which includes a more or less explicit ―population policy.‖ [Hunn 1999:167]
The crucial point is that the mobility requirements of making a living in the Plateau cannot be separated from the ability of Plateau peoples to maintain a small-scale social system for some
10,000 years.
Several kinds of aggregations occurred throughout the Plateau, ranging in size from a small family unit to large aggregations of 2000. The largest Plateau groups were associated with the most productive locales (see Marshall 1977). Most people lived within closely overlapping networks of about 150 people, and aggregations rarely exceeded 2000 people
(Anastasio 1985), a population threshold that typically requires a more formal political hierarchy to maintain social integration (Naroll 1956; Carneiro 1987b). By not growing in size, groups chose mobility and subsistence security over dramatic population growth, which would have threatened their food security and the environment on which they depended. Band mobility provides social advantage for tribal people for numerous reasons (Bodley 2003:68-
69):
Frequent movement means people accumulate little moveable property,
and portable wealth will be an unlikely source of rivalrous display and
competitive emulation.
Mobility allows people to solve interpersonal conflicts and
incompatibilities by separating and joining other bands.
Nature does the work of reproducing and maintaining the food supply.
126 Everyone is a decision-maker and, most importantly, women were
empowered to make family planning decisions. At the same time, the
mobile culture provided natural incentives for a woman to limit family
size, and made the task less difficult.
Provided men with no incentive to increase the size of the band in order
to gain power. Social power was derived primarily from the spiritual
knowledge that an individual could accumulate, as well as their kinship
and marriage connections.
The village and band were the basic socio-political units in the Plateau. Tribal development occurred after Euroamerican contact, and the appointment of tribal head chiefs was due to influence from missionaries and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Anastasio 1972).
On Mutual Exploitation and Exchange
Intensive studies of traditional systems of trade and exchange in the Plateau have been undertaken by Anastasio (1955), Brunton (1968), Smith (1964), Stern (1993), and Walker
(1967). In the Plateau, people trekked great distances, harvesting resources freely along the way. They shared the abundance of camas fields, bitterroot lomatium zones, exceptional hunting and berrying areas, or fishing stations during opportune moments of a salmon run
(Walker 1967). In fact, among many Plateau groups, the regular, seasonal subsistence cycle entailed the band, or a portion of it, traveling down and back up the Columbia and its tributaries to both intercept the runs early and to exploit various fisheries along the way. This was particularly important during fall runs to obtain winter stores. Numerous accounts also
127 indicate that local groups cross-utilized each others‘ territories for game and especially roots, but fishing was the main reason for this regular movement across the Plateau.
Walker (1967, 1997) draws at least five conclusions concerning trade and exchange in the region. First, cross-utilization of resources among tribal groups in the aboriginal Plateau was the rule, not the exception; such resources included game, fish, roots, berries, furs, skins, stone, and other materials not distributed evenly throughout the area. Second, Chinook
Jargon, the trade language of the Chinookan tribes employed by the Yakima, continued to be important in intertribal trade and exchange until at least the end of the nineteenth century.
Although widely used, its vocabulary was limited to a few hundred words, and suitable primarily for trade and exchange. Like other tribal languages, it was not anyone‘s primary language. Third, the tribal groups of the region traditionally lacked fully developed and centralized tribal organization in the political sense; such tribalization came later when treaties established reservations, head chiefs, tribal police, etc. Instead, families, villages, and occasionally bands may be said to have possessed stewardship over certain resources such as fishing sites. Rights to membership in such groups were usually determined by birth and marriage. Cross-utilization of resources between different families, villages, bands, or other groups was mediated primarily through trading partnerships, kinship ties, and social relationships that knitted together the peoples of the Plateau into a single economic system.
Fourth, annual as well as geographic variation in the quality and quantity of subsistence resources in the Plateau was substantial in the aboriginal period. Subsistence activities thus required regular, extensive travel throughout the Plateau and in the neighboring Plains, Great
Basin, and Northwest Coast. The Yakama joined with eastern groups such as the Nez Perce,
Kootenay, Pend d‘Oreille, and Flathead to journey into the Plains to hunt bison, to trade, and
128 to raid. This exploitation of the Bison in the Plains was similar to exploitation of the salmon and other resources of the Columbia and its tributaries in the central and western Plateau.
Southern Plateau groups also exploited resources of the northern Great Basin in a similar manner. Fifth, by the time of contact with Euroamericans, the Yakama had adopted the horse and been influenced by Plains cultural patterns which greatly intensified and expanded the scope of their system of trade and exchange. The impact of the fur trade accelerated the system even more.
The diverse ethnic groups in the Columbia Basin created formal trade partnerships, intermarried, shared fishing sites, and congregated peacefully at large root harvests. Together, these cultural patterns shaped, and indeed were shaped by, the mobility requirements of making a living in the Plateau. The necessity of wide-ranging subsistence cycles gave rise to
Plateau patterns of local stewardship and mutual exploitation, and further discouraged the potential of population increases within groups. The cultural mechanisms created in support of this regional food culture made group subsistence cycles more efficient and flexible in any given year.
Local Subsistence Cycles: A Case Study Approach
The following case studies draw extensively on ethnographic studies that were based primarily on participant observation and interviews with the dwindling group of elderly, native informants who still were knowledgeable regarding former foodscapes and food cultures, particularly the work of Walker (1967), Marshall (1977, 2006), and Ray (1936).
129 The Wanapum
The Wanapam used permanent and semi-permanent villages in the Columbia River valley.
These sites tended to be located along stream courses or at the confluence of streams and rivers. They were located from the foot of Priest Rapids Dam north to Vantage and in many cases their northern villages overlapped with the Salishan-speaking Columbia, or Sinkayuse, to the north. Obviously, the sites were considered desirable, especially during winter months, primarily because of more moderate weather conditions and the availability of fresh water and fuel. During spring and summer months, many groups moved into the interior for the purpose of hunting and digging roots, only to return in the fall to the lower valleys along the main course of the Columbia where the salmon supply was near (Smith 1982).
Based on ethnographic data concerning village sites and Columbia River territorial limits, most notably the observations of Mooney(1896), Curtis (1911), Teit (1928), Spier
(1936) and Ray (1936, 1938, 1974), the Priests Rapids area is indeed the home of the
Wanapums (see also Relander 1956; Smith 1982). While Wanapum frequently resided in villages north to present day Vantage and south to K‘sis (present day Pasco), P‘na was the primary winter village for the Wanapum. P‘na was located on the west side of the Columbia at the foot of Priest Rapids. The early explorer, David Thompson, found nearly 400 Indians there in 1811. Within an 80 mile stretch encompassing an area from Sentinel Gap to the confluence of the Snake and Columbia Rivers, P‘na and K‘sis were primary winter villages that included around 70 lodges (Sharkey 1984). Regarding socio-political organization,
Sharkey states that:
These villages had no one main chief but relied on specialized leaders to handle civilian matters and peace-keeping efforts. Shamans possessing ―strong medicine‖ led feasts and burial dances as well as attending to the sick.
130 The head of a large and powerful family, or a wealthy man, might have influence over a group, but if it was not accepted, the other villagers often moved to another site. One gained respect by sharing, and elderly men were venerated for their wisdom and given preferential treatment by the people. However, no one person or group among the Wanapum wielded control, relying as they did upon tradition to dictate their social structure (Sharkey 1984:13-14).
Celilo Falls was the greatest fishery on the Columbia River, with the Cascades, Priest
Rapids, and Kettle Falls also very productive (Hunn 1990). The fishery at Priest Rapids was likely the largest and most important of all stations in the mid-Columbia region. As throughout the Plateau, the salmon season to the Wanapum was a family affair that lasted up to eight months a year. During the summer, they would frequently construct mat lodges on island fisheries and families lived there throughout the fish run. The men would catch large quantities of fish, while the women cleaned them, split them into four strips, and hung them on scaffolds or racks erected along the river bank. The first salmon to come upstream in the spring were the bluebacks (sockeye, Chinooks) followed by silver (coho), chum (dog salmon) and pink (humpback). Salmon was followed by the steelhead and trout. Besides salmon, the sucker also enjoys a special place in the myth-ritual paradigm of many Columbia River groups. There is a popular myth that recounts how Sucker—shattered by a fall from the sky— was revived and rehabilitated with bones contributed by many other animals so that people might catch them and enjoy them. The sucker‘s skull is such that the bone structure is never completely fused, so as soon as the sucker is cooked, the oddly shaped bones come apart, providing the Indian storyteller all the opportunity to recount the mythical source and identity of each bone (Hunn 1990). Eels also were used for eating fresh and for storage. Pacific lamprey were considered a delicacy by many local groups.
131 Root digging commenced in spring and required leaving the river villages for the prairies and upland country. Ray (1939) noted how root digging, like hunting and berrying, disregarded village or band territories, ―during these activiites village affiliation is more or less forgotten and all mingle freely‖ (1939:10). The most sought after root sources consisted of Bitteroot, Lomatium, and Camas (Hunn 1990). Root crops were dug with a digging stick made of hardwood with a fire-hardenned digging end and a crossbar handle usually made of deer or elk antler. Today, they are frequently made of iron. The roots are taken when the plants are young and tender: they are either eaten raw or boiled.
Wanapum groups used the ―deer jump‖ at Towtomchana Wetosoh, an area upstream from Priest Rapids (Relander 1956). Although the Wanapum may have journey east across the Rockies to hunt buffalo, most of their game was take from within the Plateau region. The
Wanapum hunted deer along a twenty-mile strip of land running north from present day
Vantage in the Colockam Mountains, making fresh deer meat available at Priest Rapids camp throughout the winter. Hunters also frequented areas around Soap Lake and Badger Mountain
(Sharkey 1984). Upon acquiring the horse, Wanapum hunting parties journeyed into Yakama country in the fall of every year, and joined the Palus traveling into Columbia Land (north) to collect skolkol (a root delicacy) in the Badger Mountain region near Waterville and at Ephrata and Soap Lake.
The Wanapum participated in intertribal rendezvous held throughout Plateau country.
One gathering place was the village of Palus, near the confluence of the Snake and Palouse rivers. Activities included horse racing, salmon feasts, gambling, and dancing. They also frequented the Snake-Columbia River area where they mingled with Palus, Chamnpam, Walla
Walla, and Wallula.
132
The Chelan
Due to frequent interaction and intermarriage along the middle Columbia River in present-day northwestern Washington, the Chelan are typically grouped into the Middle Columbia River
Salishans, along with the Sinkayuse, Wenatchee, Entiat, Methow, Southern Okanogan,
Nespelem, and Sanpoil. The subsistence patterns of the Chelan were similar to the other
Middle Columbia River people, although the Chelan people utilized a smaller seasonal range centered on Lake Chelan (Smith 1982). In the spring, hunters traveled from lakeside villages to favored hunting areas where snow melted early; in the hills around Lake Chelan and
Navarre Coulee, roots and spring shoots were gathered (Ray 1974). Families also traveled west into the heads of basins on the east slope of the Cascade Range or east onto the more arid basalt tableland to collect camas. Serviceberries were collected at lower elevations; later in the season, wild currents, blackberries, chokecherries, and Oregon grape were also harvested.
In the late summer and fall some groups moved to higher elevations to gather huckleberries and to hunt deer and elk. Others remained along the river for the summer and fall salmon runs.
Access to the Cascade Mountains made mountain goat hunting an important specialty for Chelan, Wenatchee, and Entiat (Miller 1998). The wool, along with dried goat meat, was traded as pelts or woven into blankets (Teit 1928). They lured the goats with strips of white fur, and the slain goat was treated with great respect (Miller 1998). The head was sprinkled with bird down and roasted (Ray 1942). For the Chelan, hunting, particularly for deer and mountain goat, may have been more important than fishing. Lake Chelan had a small land- locked coho salmon (Miller 1998), but at least three villages on the lake, and one on the
133 Columbia River, were located so that they provided good access for hunting and were important goat hunting bases (Ray 1936, 1974). Teit (1928) notes that marmot robes, woven goat's wool robes, and woven rabbit-skin robes were popular with the Wenatchi and the
Chelan.
A number of important trails, primarily over the Cascade Range, went through the
Lake Chelan area; one trail led from the mouth of the Chelan River north along the west side of the Columbia River to the Methow Valley and south to the Entiat and Wenatchi (Smith
1988). Trading parties of Wenatchi also went toward the coast over the Cascade Range and traded with the Snoqualmie, Snohomish, Nisqually, Puyallup, and Cowlitz. Prior to the introduction of the horse, the trade across the mountains was limited to light-weight and valuable goods such as pipes, tobacco, ornaments, Indian-hemp, dressed skins, bows, etc. which were traded mostly for shell supplied by the coast Indians. The introduction of the horse greatly enhanced this preexisting trade relationship and soon horses were used to transport heavy, bulky goods such as root-cakes, dried berries, and buffalo robes.
The Nez Perce
The Nez Perce territory centered on the middle Snake and Clearwater Rivers and the northern portion of the Salmon River Basin in central Idaho and adjacent Oregon and Washington. In
1800 there were over 70 permanent villages ranging from 30 to 200 individuals, depending on the season and type of social grouping (Walker 1998). Their territory was marked by a diverse flora and fauna, as well as by temperature and precipitation patterns reflecting sharp variations in elevation. The deep canyons cut by the Clearwater, Salmon, and Snake rivers
134 encouraged seasonal subsistence migrations, a pattern typical of other Plateau tribes (Marshall
1977; Walker 1987).
Marshall (1977, 2006:8-9) describes the Nez Perce subsistence cycle as alternating between production and consumption groups, each group having a ―different energetic relationship with the natural world‖ (2006:8). During the warm season, from late spring through early fall, all but the infirm lived in highly mobile production groups that gathered, hunted, and fished to obtain enough food for the ensuing winter and early spring. When the first snows came in the mountains, somewhere between September and October, people reconvened with their consumption groups in winter villages to live mainly on stored foods.
Whereas production groups typically consisted of family, consumption groups were larger, consisting of multiple families and friends, some of which would come and go throughout the cold season.
Nez Perce production groups tended to move upwards in elevation, exploiting the spring and summer seasons of differing elevations. At the beginning of the warm season,
―people were still living hand-to-mouth‖ (Marshall 2006:8). They consumed a wide variety of scattered plants and berries (wild hayacinth, spring beauty, and canyon serviceberries) and fish (trout, suckers, northern pikeminnow, chiselmouths), and tended to avoid game—it was
―poor food during spring and early summer and reportedly caused digestive problems‖
(Marshall 2006:8). As the season progressed, families advanced from one strategically placed campsite to the next, ―retracing well-known, well-traveled, circular routes, that ‗belonged‘ to the family‖ (Marshall 2006:8). According to Marshall:
135 While no one owned the land, and so could not forbid its use, persons and groups owned the product of their labor or efforts. Without this capital already in place, and the intimate knowledge of the natural feature, ―family‖ had great difficulty in surviving. [Marshall 2006:n42]
The subsistence patterns of production groups were typically only delayed or altered by camas bulb gatherings (for up to several weeks) and the annual fish run (Marshall 2006:8). At camas bulb gatherings, women gathered, processed and preserved large amounts of bulbs, which then had to be transported to the winter villages. At the time of annual fish runs, men immediately rushed to their fishing locations regardless of their whereabouts or current activities. It was an anxious time mostly due to the uncertainty of both the run and, if it comes, its abundance.
Nez Perce men knew from long personal and family experience how and where to catch fish during their upstream migration. Regarding this fishing knowledge, Marshall states:
Men also knew the underwater trails that they followed. So the men build structures which made their efforts and tools much more efficient. All day and all night, just as at Celilo Falls in living memory, men dip netted or speared fish with leisters or harpoons from wooden platforms built on steep banks over deep holding water. [2006:8]
As the fish were caught, women processed gutted, filleted, smoked, dried, pulverized, and packed them in large open structures erected for this purpose. Most of these sites were at or near winter villages. There was little resting; everyone knew that this was the main chance for a winter without hunger.
As the run moved upriver, other structures and devices were added to the technological mix. Wherever possible weirs or fish dams blocked entire rivers, both major and minor, such as the North Fork of the Clearwater at Ahsahka, Idaho, and the Middle Fork of the Clearwater at Maggie Creek near Kooskie, Idaho. As the run ascended even further, the
136 smaller streams were filled with traps. Set lines with hooks and/or set nets were placed in the rivers as the runs tapered off. In some areas, such as Hell‘s Canyon, men knew which rocks salmon rested behind as they ran up the rapids; there they used throwing nets to ensnare the fish. Still further up the streams, fish were taken with spears, gaff hooks, and sometimes by hand or clubs. Even at the headwaters of streams, ―spawned-out salmon‖ were picked up for immediate consumption, thereby leaving stored fish for the winter season. By late August,
September and October, many people were in the mountains. Women continued to gather, process, and store camas bulbs. As men turned their attention to hunting, fishing for trout and other resident fish, and bringing back salmon for consumption, women also processed and stored the game.
Upon the first snows of late fall, the families returned to their winter villages, banding together with relatives and friends upon whom they could depend in lean times.
During that time, people told stories and called on their guardian spirit powers, who had given them the power to succeed, to honor the spirits and show them to others at guardian spirit dances. All who wanted to come were welcome. Guests were fed until they could eat no more, and they were given places to sleep and clothing, if necessary. In this way, individuals, their family, and their village demonstrated, through wealth, the strength and favor of their spirit as well as the bounty of the Creator. [Marshall 2006:6]
This assemblage—the consumption group—lasted through winter until early spring when they repeated the cycle beginning with the root feast, ―which was to celebrate the people‘s – especially the elders‘ and childrens‘—survival through another winter. It occurred after the first fresh plant foods had been gathered‖ (Marshall 2006:8).
137 Conclusion
This chapter has described aspects of Plateau food culture, particularly noting the importance of group size and mobility, and intergroup cultural development at the regional (basin-wide) scale, in sustaining Plateau people, their culture and environment for thousands of years.
Throughout most of human prehistory in the Columbia Basin, population growth up to sustainable limits produced village segmentation rather than social hierarchies and complexity
(Carneiro 1987a, 1987b). By keeping their communities small, indigenous peoples could thereby stabilize their use of energy and materials, satisfy human needs, and keep decision- making widely distributed. Furthermore, by placing the bulk of their capital in nature, in non- material culture, and in society itself, and by keeping critical resources accessible to everyone, they could minimize both poverty and conflict (Bodley 2005b). In contrast, Europeans maximized growth in social complexity, material culture, and consumption, recognizing no thresholds, thereby making sustainability more difficult. Emphasizing that remaining below critical scale thresholds was a key to the success of indigenous societies is not to speak of
―noble‖ peoples living in a romanticized past. Native peoples certainly modified their environments, and may not have been self-conscious conservationists. However, a recent exhaustive survey found no archaeological evidence of extensive fish or game depletion in either the Northwest Coast or Plateau culture areas over thousands of years (Butler and
Campbell 2004).
138 CHAPTER SIX
INDUSTRIAL FOOD SCALES: THE CASE OF WASHINGTON STATE’S GLOBAL
APPLE
As cultural mechanisms designed to meet a group‘s basic human nutritional needs, food systems necessarily vary to ―fit‖ the societal characteristics in which they operate. Of course, there are endless possibilities of how food cultures and systems can be made to fit, or to not fit, any society. The latter has frequently resulted from, or been the consequence of, two co- occurring phenomena: dramatic societal growth (population, resource use) and consolidation of social power. Whereas Plateau peoples successfully restricted group size to fit their subsistence strategies and evident ecological thresholds, commercial cultures like the U.S. viewed growth to be beneficial for all humans, as promoted by elites concerned primarily with short-term financial benefits despite dramatic increases in resource use, population, and technological expense (Bodley 2003:137-164). Fish, game, roots, water and earth were the material and symbolic foundations sustaining the Plateau way of life when Euroamericans arrived. Since then, Columbia Basin foodways have been marked by the material and symbolic foundations of American subsistence: fossil fuels.
The American obsession with harnessing fuel despite social and ecological costs has been thoroughly documented (Bodley 2003; Meyer and Kent 2001; Odum 1971). The rise of factory farming ultimately replaced self-maintaining, biological processes fueled by solar energy with urban-based cultural processes that require vast non-renewable fossil fuels
(Odum 1971). The primary objective of a commercial food system is to produce a financial return for investors, and in a cultural system where food production relies on oil, food takes a
139 backstage to oil in the American way of life; in a sense, food is oil. Most emblematic of this indirect relationship between humans and their food in American culture are those food commodities traded in bulk around the world, such as corn, canola, wheat, and soy. But even more spectacular is the global transport of fresh fruits—both heavy in water and easy to bruise or otherwise damage. Such cases provide not only a stark contrast to tribal food culture but they also offer important insights into the primary drivers of commercial food cultures. In the
Columbia Basin, Washington State‘s fruit industry, particularly their ―global apples,‖ best exemplifies the region‘s participation in the global-oriented, industrial food culture.
More Fruit, Less Food
Conceptualizing today‘s global fruit and vegetable system can be tricky. First, while distribution is clearly global in scale, as suggested by the export of Washington‘s apple crop to more than 50 nations (Figure 6.1), production and packaging remain locally situated, tied to a distinctive landscape and local or regional community. This is unlike most globally traded commodities that consist of diverse parts, many of which were produced on opposite ends of the Earth and transported to a common ground for assembly (only to be transported again for consumption). Washington apples are all grown in Washington State. Second, it can also be difficult to understand the relationship between the fresh and processed parts of each specific food commodity industry. The processing of apples—through drying, freezing, and making juice, etc.—represents an important set of activities that interrelate to the fresh apple segment.
Although not a primary aim for Washington growers, processed apple niches are developing on the global level. For instance, Cliffstar, which is based in New York, is the nation's largest independent private-label juice processor, producing juice for major retailers including
140 Walmart. In 2002, they opened their ninth U.S.-based processing plant in Walla Walla,
Washington and have since been purchasing and importing a majority of their apples (for juice concentrate) from China.
Figure 6.1: Washington Apple Destinations in 2004/5. The green dots represent major destination cities within a total of 53 counties
Whether calculated in an environmental or social currency, researchers increasingly identify the great costs associated with our globalized food system. Among other things, these include: run-off of farm chemicals that has degraded soils and polluted waterways (Gliessman
1998; Pimental et al. 1995), health dangers to farm laborers (Pimental et al. 1992), loss of farmland and family farms, and reduced vitality of rural communities (Goldschmidt 1978;
Heffernan 2000). International trade is responsible for a growing part of the world‘s fossil fuel consumption, which contributes substantially to global energy-related emissions, such as
141 carbon dioxide. International food trade is increasing more rapidly than increases in population or food production. Between 1980 and 2004, population increased by 44 percent, while fruit and vegetable trade increased by 70 percent (FAO 2007). Figure 6.2 points out how Washington State apple exports have skyrocketed over the last 30 years. Strangely enough, it also shows how the U.S. continues to import more apples each year.
800,000
600,000
MetricTons 400,000
200,000
0 1970-71 1980-81 1990-91 2000-01
US Import US Export WA Export
Figure 6.2. U.S. Apple Import, Export and Washington State Export (Washington Apple Commission)
The general aim of this chapter is to examine how scale increases, or growth, throughout the evolution of Washington State‘s apple industry has impacted society, culture, and the environment. To reiterate, scale not only refers to the size of individual farms, but the
142 absolute scale at which ownership of land, production, and distribution is organized. It involves size and spatial constructs of the food system (or food industry) and its constituent social units, along with volumes of material and energy flows and accumulations, which are derived ultimately from ecosystems. In the case of the American food system, this includes varying degrees of vertical integration, monetary (governmental) and nonmonetary
(environmental/economic) subsidies, and all structural changes associated with the industrialization of agriculture (mechanization, chemical farming, food manufacturing, etc).
This chapter has two specific goals. The first is to identify and analyze the historical context of particular scale transformations—points in the apple industry‘s history where quantitative increases (in production totals, distribution distances, etc.) have induced major socio-cultural and ecological transformations (organizational size, warehouses, landscape alteration etc.). This is accomplished through the use of ethnographic data, interviews, and participant observation at packing warehouses, large and small retailers, and seasonal harvests near the towns of Brewster, Wapato, and Cashmere. Scaling up from small to large is not a simple process of aggregation: quantitative boosts give rise to qualitative adjustments in food system organization, like when farmers begin to focus their expertise, land, and labor on a narrower range of commodities, or when a corporation gets so large that it can wield the power to externalize costs that should properly be part of the price of the product it sells.
The second goal is to relate these scale changes to popular perceptions of food system sustainability. This draws on 26 semi-structured and unstructured interviews between 2006 and 2008, as well as through analysis of current literature on sustainability. I call attention to social and ecological costs of monocropping fruit along the Columbia River, and how
143 increasing fruit production decreases the potential of local and regional food economies and essentially decreases regional sustainability.
Overall, the chapter uses the story of Washington‘s apple industry, as a regional and commodity-specific example, to examine periods of growth—both the causal factors involved in the industry‘s growth and how the associated costs and benefits have been distributed.
After that, the socio-cultural and ecological costs of the apple industry‘s growth are analyzed in more detail. Special attention is paid to the social, ecological, and human health-related consequences of global-scale transport, the concentration of economic power within the distributive segment of the industry, and the networks and ideologies involved in promoting
Washington‘s global apples. The chapter concludes with theoretical and applied considerations for the study of food systems and global problems of sustainability.
The Evolution of Washington’s Apple Industry
Washington apple country consists of approximately 170,000 acres located in three main apple producing regions in the Columbia River Basin: the Yakima District, the Columbia
Basin District, and the Wenatchee-Okanogan District (Figure 6.3 and Table 6.1). The Yakima extends from the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains, eastward 150 km into the central lowlands of Washington. It is the center of tree fruit production in the Pacific Northwest, producing almost half of the apples, pears and sweet cherries grown in Washington. The
Columbia Basin covers a region about 200 by 100 km, within which about 260,000 ha are irrigated. The major tree fruits produced in this region are apples, with planting and production increasing rapidly over the past 20 years. Most orchards are young, relatively large, and produce apples very efficiently. The Wenatchee District includes the Columbia
144 River and Okanogan River Valleys of North Central Washington. Most fruit produced in this relatively mountainous region is grown in the narrow river valleys, including a number of lesser river valleys extending from the Columbia or Okanogan Rivers, westward into the
Cascade Mountains. This region includes diverse growing conditions induced by the varied topography and elevation range.
Figure 6.3: Washington Apple Country: Three Major Production Districts
145 Table 6.1. Number or Apple Orchards and Acres of Orchard in Washington State by Selected Counties. Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Census of Agriculture, 1982, 1992, 2002.
1982 1992 2002 No. Acres Avg No. Acres Avg No. Acres Avg Wenatchee-Okanogan District Chelan County 980 17,643 18.0 826 17,825 21.6 558 14,195 24.4 Douglas County 454 14,211 31.3 411 14,126 34.4 284 12,490 44.0 Okanogan County 819 25,011 30.5 631 25,395 40.3 448 17,752 39.6 (Sub-Total) 2,253 56,865 25.2 1,868 57,356 30.7 1290 44437 34.4 Yakima District Benton County 197 7,593 38.5 211 10,746 50.9 214 13,118 61.3 Kittitas County 22 292 13.3 42 1,095 26.1 34 495 14.6 Yakima County 1,781 58,841 33.0 1,454 61,910 42.6 1,100 54,036 49.1 (Sub-Total) 2,000 66,726 33.4 1,707 73,751 43.2 1348 67649 50.2 Columbia Basin Adams County 25 1,237 49.5 28 2,247 80.2 42 3,524 83.9 Franklin County 77 3,032 39.4 121 5,347 44.2 151 9,093 60.2 Grant County 201 12,448 61.9 243 24,154 99.4 287 36,480 127.1 (Sub-Total) 303 16,717 55.2 392 31,748 81.0 480 49,097 102.3
Washington’s 5406 145,630 26.9 4,596 169,107 36.8 3,870 172,810 44.7 Total
Settlers and Cider
After the opening of the Oregon Trail in 1840, the region was flooded with Euroamerican immigrants, who began to occupy Indian lands. In 1846, the United States took control of the
Oregon Country from the British and immediately began to arrange treaties with the various
146 groups intending to ―civilize‖ them, removing them from the path of white settlement, and putting them on reservations (Sutton 2007). For instance, before being forced to sign the 1855
Isaac Stevens Treaty and resettle on a reservation in south-central Washington, the peoples of the Yakama Indian Nation were scattered throughout the Columbia Basin forming at least 14 distinct bands. They were hunter-gatherer-fishers with limited farming experience. The treaty changed their lives dramatically and also ceded much of the land that would become
Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. After that, the historical sequence is typical of settlement and exploitation of land and water resources in the American West: first, small-scale irrigation by individuals near waterways; next, projects by private consortiums; and then, in the 1890s, projects by the Railroad.
Even with the enticement of free land, Euroamerican settlement hesitated until the arrival of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1883. Early settlers, envisioning an agricultural economy, were disappointed by the sagebrush-covered landscape and the desert-like climate.
However, in order to spur development, the federal government granted millions of acres to the Northern Pacific Railroad. The Railroad was eager to sell this land to settlers who would then need to construct irrigation canals and eventually transport their crops to distant markets.
At the turn of the century, settlers from diverse origins were surging in at a rate never again to be equaled (Kerr 1980). These Euroamerican settlers brought with them what Pollan
(2004:42) refers to as a ―portable ecosystem that allowed them to re-create their accustomed way of life—the grasses their livestock needed to survive, herbs to keep themselves healthy,
Old World fruits and flowers to make life comfortable.‖
Among these comforts were apples. In fact, just about every homesteader planted a few apple trees, if not an orchard, upon arrival. Whether they intended to plant orchards for
147 household subsistence, local sales, and/or cider, these Euroamerican settlers were making their new home more comfortable: for these settlers, apples symbolized, and contributed to, a settled and more productive landscape (Pollan 2001:20). At this time apple cider had a moderate alcoholic content and a tad of sweetness. It was a drink for all, including children.
Supposedly, President John Adams downed a tankard every morning as part of breakfast
(Duke 2007). In a day when water supplies might not be safe, cider was an acceptable alternative. Indeed, some said that cider flowed more freely than water.
Due to its heterozygosity, apple seed planting is always experimental; although it contains the same genetic makeup, the new tree is never like its parent and typically produces inedible fruit (yet that is sometimes good enough for cider). This perhaps lends to the legend of John Chapman, or Johnny Appleseed, the pioneer that planted nameless apple cider seeds throughout the Midwest during the early 1800s. Pollan (2004:42) argues that these random plantings gave the apple the opportunity to discover by trial and error the precise combination of traits required to survive in the New World. From these plantings came some of the great
American cultivars of the nineteenth century. Since this time, the overwhelming majority of
American orchards have included only grafted trees.
Emergence of an Apple Industry
To comprehend fully how scale changes have impacted Washington State‘s apple industry, the landscape and environment, and what the associated transformations have been within the structure of the industry and its labor relations, it is necessary to unfold the sequence of events that have given rise to today‘s industry. The word ―industry‖ is most appropriate in this case because, unlike other apple growing regions in the United States, apple production in
148 Washington was perceived primarily as a commercial venture from its inception (Sonnenfeld et al. 1998). Whereas the history of commercial production of Washington apples has been viewed as a ―stereotypical case of the settlement and exploitation of land and water resources in the western United States‖ (Sonnenfeld et al. 1998), it may better be characterized as elite manipulation of growth ideologies and scalar phenomena, after all, ―ideologies are unified schemes or configurations developed to underwrite or manifest power‖ (Wolf 1999:4). Both ideologies and elite-manuevering are driven by individuals with the power to, in the Weberian sense, impose their will (their ego) onto others even when those others may object. In this capacity, the case of Washington‘s apple industry allows us to examine how people have used their social power to promote development that transforms a society‘s food system along with the entire socio-cultural system. This involves paying special attention to growth limits, scale optimums, and the role of forces—individual, market, legal, and public policy—that have not only shaped the industry, but the human relationships within it. In fact, the first 20 years of commercial apple production in Washington represents the first of two major scale transformations.
The north central Washington region was one of the last to be settled in the history of the state. There was a quick flush of mining enthusiasm in the 1880s, but this quickly collapsed. The homesteaders followed. These were settlers drawn to the area by the promise of free land. Under the Act of 1862, any male citizen over 21, or younger if the head of a family, and any female head of a family, could file claim to 160 acres, pay a modest fee, make specified improvements, live on the land for a certain minimum of time, and in five years acquire title (Kerr 1980). The year 1900 saw settlers from diverse origins surging in at a rate never again to be equaled. Steele‘s (1940) history of North Washington contains more than
149 300 biographical sketches of the men that lived in North Central Washington at the turn of the century (Table 6.2). Clearly, this sampling is skewed toward those able and willing to pay a subscription fee to be included; however it provides us with a general idea of the profession and origin of these settlers. ―Origin‖ and ―profession‖ are based on what each settler considered his/her profession and where each settler called home.
Table 6.2: Stated Origin and Profession of North Central Settlers (Steele 1940; Kerr 1980).
No. of No. of Stated Origin Stated Profession Settlers Settlers Central Midwest: mostly IA, OH 101 Farmers 150 Central Canadian Border States: Postmasters or elected public 32 18 MI, MN, WI, ND officials Eastern Middle Seaboard 39 Merchants 27 New England 26 Livery Stables 5 Southerners 18 Hotel keepers 15 Washington 6 Newspaper publishers 3 California 5 Stage operator 1 Oregon 7 Real estate 2 Colorado 2 Druggist 1 Montana 1 Miners 31 Canada 23 Physician 8 England 6 Dentist 1 Ireland 1 Builders 3 Scotland 5 Lawyers 4 Germany 11 Surveyors 2 Denmark 4 Blacksmith 1 Sweden 4 Utilities 1 Norway 2 Steamship employee 4 Switzerland 1 Railroad man 1 Portugal 1 Gibralter 1
In the late nineteenth century, many Columbian Basin settlers were experimenting with apple seed plantings along with sharing ideas of small orchards. It was quickly discovered that, with water, Eastern Washington‘s soil and climate provided a favorable
150 environment for fruit-growing. As more settlers came, more fruit trees were planted, especially apple trees, but prior to the mid 1890s, fruit production and distribution stayed relatively small-scale for a variety of reasons: there was no incentive to raise commercial crops with markets so far away and hard to access, only a couple of irrigation ditches had yet been dug so most growers did not have access to a dependable water supply, and individuals up to this point did not have a regional ―growth model‖ to follow that guaranteed their fortunes in a fruit industry.
This is not to say that settlers were not yet recognizing the possibilities obtainable if only they could secure water for their parched lands. With word of a nearing railroad, settlers began establishing small orchards in the sagebrush, generally five to ten acres in size. With commercial sales in mind (Bright 1988), orchardists were building small irrigation networks, transporting their produce by wagon to nearby markets of miners, loggers and other settlers
(Sonnenfeld et al.1998), and all the time discussing plans for larger networks. In 1888, a
$50,000 corporation was formed by a group of men—Mathew Bird, William J. Gray, Edward
A. Haley, Lyman S. Burrell and Charles J. Nolop—who owned homesteads where Wenatchee now stands (Gellatly 1963:41). Their proposed ditch never came to fruition due to the lack of transportation and irrigation, but it is important to note that early settlers were seeking fortunes in Washington‘s fruit industry before fortunes were begotten. Around the turn of the century, transportation and irrigation problems began to be overcome. The Great Northern
Railroad solved the transportation problem by completing the link between Wenatchee and the Puget Sound region in 1893. Meanwhile, increasingly larger irrigation systems were addressing the water problem.
151 As it turned out, a small handful of individuals were involved in the decision-making process of both the irrigation and transportation problems. The creation of the Shotwell ditch, the first to irrigate more than a single farm, conveys how partnerships were forged and fortunes made in the apple industry‘s early days. It supplied water for Shotwell‘s 160 acres and Steven‘s ranch further down the valley (Mitchell 1992). The next year, Arthur Gunn arrived in Wenatchee to open and manage the city‘s first bank—Columbia Valley Bank. In a short time, he resigned from the bank and opened a real estate office—Wenatchee
Development Company. In 1896, Gunn and Shotwell incorporated the Wenatchee Water
Power Company for $10,000. The partners planned to enlarge the Shotwell ditch to ultimately irrigate a total of 2,575 acres. After problems financing the project quickly surfaced, Gunn went to James J. Hill, president of Great Northern Railroad, who advanced him $15,000 in exchange for a quarter interest in their Wenatchee Development Company. Judge Thomas
Burke, head of Great Northern‘s western legal staff, was Wenatchee Development‘s largest stockholder. Everything was interconnected and a few individuals were both making the most important decisions and reaping the majority of the benefits. As the valley increased in population and agricultural productivity, Great Northern‘s profits would increase.
Simultaneously, the lands and town lots owned by Wenatchee Development Company would increase in value. Everything was dependent upon an adequate supply of water, which was radically solved in 1905 when the Secretary of Interior, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, decided to allocate funds for the expansion of the irrigation systems under authority of the Reclamation
Project Act of 1902 (Mabbott 1940).
Clearly, the development of irrigation systems and the laying of railway lines permitted the industry‘s growth, but more pioneers were needed. During the ―apple craze,‖
152 between 1905 and 1915, prospective orchardists were wooed to the region, often through publicity actions on the part of the Great Northern Railroad that persuaded them to purchase land and establish apple orchards (Luce 1972; Sonnenfeld et al. 1998). Rufus Woods helped this cause by expanding communication lines with North Central Washington‘s first daily newspaper—The Wenatchee World—in 1905. Touted as low maintenance, high-income earners (Schwantes et al. 1988), the idea of owning a 10-acre apple orchard on the western frontier was appealing. This apple craze reverberated in town as well, with bank deposits at
Wenatchee‘s first bank—Columbia Valley Bank—increasing more than five-fold from
December of 1898 to December of 1902 (Gellatly 1963). In 1904, there were a minimum of
426,000 apple trees planted in the Wenatchee Valley (Mabbott 1940) and this number continued to rise until the 1910-12 period, which is considered to have been the peak period for plantings in the valley (Sonnenfeld et al. 1998).
The economic success of these early farm households quickly became dependent on shipping apples out of the region to national and international destinations. By 1906,
Washington apples were being shipped via the port of Seattle to Australia, Japan, New
Zealand, the UK, South Africa, Egypt, and Latin America. Apple production in the state increased from 42 million pounds in 1895 to over one billion pounds in 1919. These production increases were accompanied by distribution increases, with over 12,000 carloads leaving Wenatchee in 1919 (1 carload = 1,000 boxes; each box contains roughly 42 lbs. of apples). This exemplifies the early commercial success of Washington‘s apple industry.
153 Industry Development and a Second Scalar Leap
From 1920 to 1970 apple production in Washington mostly hovered between 1 and 1.5 billion pounds. Washington‘s apple industry in the late 1920s and 1930s has been described as an
―era of stability‖ (Sonnenfeld et al. 1998). The depression years brought a decrease in apple acreages despite various federal programs aimed to help growers cope with weakening prices.
For example, apple acreage in the Wenatchee-Okanogan district decreased from 33,000 to
27,000 acres between 1933 and 1939. Regardless, one quarter of the U.S. apple crop in the
1930s was being produced in Washington, with over half being sold in 66 major U.S. cities
(Office of the Secretary of State 1938; in Sonnenfeld et al. 1998:160). This era of stability continued into the 1960s, with total U.S. apple production staying between 4.5 and 5.5 billion pounds a year, and Washington producing between 1 and 1.5 billion pounds of the country‘s annual totals. This is not to say that technological developments stalled. On the contrary, they were needed to continue increasing yields per acres while combating a growing population of pests and environmental subsidies associated with overproduction, such as storage, spraying, pricing, grading, and transportation.
Two major organizational changes characterize Washington‘s apple industry at this time (Sonnenfeld 1998:157). First, was the creation of marketing cooperatives that, in addition to maintaining warehouses, provided greater outlets for fruit grown and more efficiently organized the costs of transportation, distribution, and production (Bright
1988:108). Another important institutional change was the development of grading standards.
Standards limit confusion in the marketplace, especially when buyers and sellers are not directly able to communicate. In 1913, Washington State legislature mandated the creation of the Horticultural Inspection Service (Luce 1972) that called for the State Commissioner of
154 Agriculture to hold annual hearings in order to debate and decide upon grading standards for
Washington apples (Maynard 1923). These standards were established nearly a decade before any relevant Federal standards (Bright 1988) and continue to be more stringent than Federal standards. Numerous technological developments also took place at this time: improvement of cold storage capacity to maintain apple quality and extend the marketing season into spring months (Mabbott 1940), improved spraying technologies (Luce 1972), washing of apples before packing (Bright 1988), and insect control (Bright 1988). Of these, the most important development was the commercial introduction of warehouse Controlled Atmosphere (CA) storage technology in 1959, enabling the year-round storage and sale of apples.
The second major scale transformation in Washington‘s apple industry began around
1970 and was due to several factors. First, CA storage technology gave rise to the possibility of larger scale distribution as trucks and railroad cars were soon equipped with this new technology. Second, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation designed and proceeded with the
Columbia Basin Irrigation Project in the 1950s, which delivered water from behind the Grand
Coulee Dam to the central region of the state. Up to this point, the newer visions of growth in scale of agricultural production and distribution in Central Washington were again inhibited by its arid conditions. Other factors that contributed to this expansion of the Washington apple industry were the decline of the sugar beet industry due to political-economic changes in the sugar industry, and changes in income tax policy that allowed people to shift income from other sources into agriculture without paying taxes on that income, which gave rise to increased investments in apple orchards (Sonnenfeld et al. 1998:162).
Again, the promise of increased transport gave rise to a surge in tree plantings in
Washington beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Gradually, Washington State began
155 producing more apples than the rest of the country combined (Figure 6.4). Orchard sizes increased as the number of apple orchards decreased (see Table 6.1). Meanwhile large-scale orchards were being planted in new regions. Much of this expansion took place in the
Columbia Basin District (not to be confused with the Columbia Basin Drainage—see Table
6.1) where the federal government made water and land available to investors at relatively low prices, permitting the development of large-scale orchards. Furthermore, cheap labor was needed to harvest and pack this rapidly expanding crop in Washington. Since the 1990s, an estimated 35,000-45,000 pickers, many of whom are migrants, are employed in the state during peak harvest.
4000
3000
2000 Metric Tons Apples of Tons Metric
1000
0 1970-71 1980-81 1990-91 2000-01
TOTAL WA Rest of U.S.
Figure 6.4: Washington Apple Production versus Rest of U.S. (Washington Apple Commission)
156 Exports boomed in the 1980s (Figure 6.5) with the help of export promotion funds
(Sonnenfeld et al. 1998). In 1980 the Washington Apple Commission collected per-box industry surcharges to fund over $45,000 of promotions, and by 1985, this figure rose to
$333,000. The USDA‘s Market Access Program (MAP) gradually increased funds from nearly $1 million in 1986 (Figure 6.6). Subsequently, the 1990s witnessed a steady expansion in Washington State apple exports to historic highs. Continued and improved access to foreign markets is now essential, and this requires competing against other producing nations.
Figure 6.5: Washington Total Fresh and Fresh Export, 1970-2005 (Washington Apple Commission)
157
Figure 6.6: Washington Apple Export Promotion Source: USDA; WAC; Modified from Sonnenfeld et al. 1998
The rapid growth in both production and distribution in the 1980s marks a scale threshold that produced a quick concentration of economic power in the distributive segment of Washington‘s apple industry. This gave rise to the dominance of progressively fewer family-owned and grower cooperative warehouses. Warehouses (also referred to as packing houses) do not typically buy the fruit, but merely supply a set of services, namely storage, packing, sales, and grower advisors (Figure 6.7). Packing includes grading, sizing, and placing fruit in cartons. When fruit is sold, most often to giant retailers, the grower gets paid.
158
Figure 6.7: Flow Chart of Apple System (Schotzko and Granatstein 2005:Figure #)
Warehouse numbers have sharply declined from 1985 to 2002 (see Table 6.2). Hidden behind these numbers is the fact that a disproportionate number of cooperatives have disappeared. For example, in 1980, there were at least 11 warehouses between Brewster
(Okanogan County) and the Canadian border, six of which were cooperatives (Schotzko and
Granatstein 2005). In 2002, there were 5 warehouses remaining, two of which were cooperatives. With the decline in warehouse numbers there has been a commensurate growth in the average size of operation. However, it appears that the largest warehouses grew during
159 the 1990s. That trend continues as the total shipments of the top ten warehouses increased from 40 percent in 2000 to nearly 50 percent in 2004 (WAC 2006).
Table 6.3: Washington Apple Warehouses Source: Yakima Valley Growers-Shippers Association; Wenatchee Valley Traffic Association
Yakima Wenatchee Total 1985 70 84 154 1995 60 39 99 2002 51 31 82
Industry consolidation has also changed the composition of the workforce. Like other states, Washington has seen a large increase in its Hispanic population since the early 1980s.
The Hispanic population grew by 70 percent between 1980 and 1990, compared to statewide population growth rate of 15 percent. This partly resulted from employment opportunities in agriculture and the passage of the Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA) in 1986
(Jarosz and Qazi 2000). The majority of employees in packing houses are Hispanic and most of the packers and sorters are women. In 1996, they made between $4.90 to $8.00 per hour
(Snyder 2001). Most of them are considered seasonal employees. Packing houses generally close for a few weeks in late summer for cleaning and renovation before the new harvest in
September. At the packing houses that offer health insurance, employees must work a minimum number of hours in order to qualify for the coverage. They then pay a portion of the premium, which gets taken out of their paycheck. Employees also have to work a minimum number of hours to qualify for family insurance, vacation, pension, and other benefits if they are offered by the company (Snyder 2001).
160 Scale Subsidies and the Sustainability Problem
As reviewed in chapter two, scale theory implies that during times of growth, the most well- connected individuals stand to make the greatest gains. On the flipside, the costs of growth, or scale subsidies, are socialized—diffused throughout society. The high-tech, energy- and capital-intensive food production system is sustained by scale subsidies—they are social supports in the form of taxes, higher prices, or negative costs for activities that promote larger scale food systems. For example, pollution and environmental deterioration are unintended by-products of industrial farming because the exotic nutrients and pesticides do not fit into natural ecosystem cycles but instead amass in areas and block these cycles (Bodley 2001a). In
2001, scale subsidies in agriculture, energy systems, roads, water, fisheries, and forestry that could be considered ―adverse to society‘s overall and long-term interests‖ were estimated at some US$2 trillion annually (Myers and Kent 2001).
Although particular places and regions arrive at different social-ecological burdens and benefits, the global extent of industrial food culture moves the assessment of food system sustainability beyond any particular region. In the Columbia Basin, a century of commercial growth has degraded ecosystems, threatened the great Columbia River salmon fishery
(Augerot and Foley 2005), and reduced the economic prospects for many forest-based, farming, and ranching communities (U.S., Forest Ecosystem Management Assessment Team
1993). This is within the global context of dramatic increases in global energy consumption throughout the twentieth century (Bodley 2005:344-345). During the twentieth century alone some 200 million people died in catastrophic wars and political violence (Rummel 1997), and by 2001, more than 800 million people (nearly 17 percent of global population) did not have enough food to meet their daily energy needs (United Nations 2005). Remarkably, since 2000,
161 over 85 percent of global energy consumption has annually been in the form of nonrenewable fossil fuels, the majority of which has consistently been petroleum (U.S. Department of
Energy 2008). Ninety-seven percent of vertebrate biomass is now in the form of humans and their domesticated animals (Smil 2002:183-197). These very high rates of human energy consumption reduce sustainability in three ways: 1) they reduce biodiversity and degrade ecosystems, because the number of species in an ecosystem is a function of total available energy; 2) they require a subsidy in the form of non-renewable fossil fuels; and 3) they may depend on poverty-generating unequal market exchanges, which exacerbate social competition and conflicts (Bodley 2006).
Growing and Production
On a factory farm in Washington State, apples can be grown as a successful monocrop only with the help of vast energy inputs to maintain correct soil conditions, moisture, and nutrients and to control weeds, epidemic diseases, and insect infestations. Because most of these grafted orchards contain only a handful of genetic clones that have been coevolving with the local pests for less than a century, pests continually develop new ways to attack them (Pollan
2001). The long-term addition of fertilizers and agrochemicals (herbicides, fungicides, pesticides) have made these clones less dependent on the environment and more dependent on chemicals tested by land grant colleges. Not only does this replace tightly calibrated nutrient cycles of the natural ecosystem (Bodley 2001; Odum 1971), but these chemical fertilizers are also manufactured at great costs (with the use of natural gas) and transported long distances to farms. Even though applying heavier loads of fertilizer and spraying insect populations allows farmers to increase their output, this process of intensification builds on itself as the costs of
162 production tend to rise at a quicker rate than the prices received in exchange for their apples.
Recognizing this as the ―cost-price squeeze,‖ growers maintain their incomes by using purchased inputs to increase the output from each acre of land, meanwhile, increasing total output ultimately brings the market prices down.
Some of the larger orchards cover as many as 3,000 acres and employ 300 or more workers year-round. Most growers now use dwarf trees in high-density plantings. These small trees come into production sooner and are easier for workers to reach without climbing tall ladders. Apple orchards are very labor intensive. Even with the newer dwarf strains, all of the work of pruning, thinning, and picking is done by hand. The labor depends on farm labor contractors who hire and manage teams of migrant workers who work in the orchards, thinning, pruning, and harvesting apples (Krissman 1999; Nielson 1998).
The evolution of the grower‘s approach to pollination exemplifies the intensification of agricultural production. The best method of pollination is with bees. But bees do not work in rain, wind, or below 55ºF. In the 1930s, large-scale growers began to lose faith in the natural process of bees foraging among the blossoms for nectar and pollen. This was partly because, despite being a self-sterile tree, Red Delicious became popular in the 1920s, and replaced some less marketable varieties. This created further structural growing problems that gave rise to controlled pollination techniques in the mid 1930s, including beehive inserts, number 4 brush applications, tractor spayers, airplane pollination, pollen bombs and more.
Many larger orchards began grafting a branch of good pollinizing trees into every other tree
(Bright 1988). As large-scale orchard pollination became evermore necessary, so did the need for pollen companies specializing in gathering, curing and selling pollen along with pollen application ideas and supplies.
163 The intensification of production brought about other consequences as well. For instance, most of Washington‘s apples are covered with wax to maintain appearance (color) and quality (crunch). They are washed in warehouses to remove chemical residues and dust.
Then, ―natural, non-petroleum-based coatings,‖ usually carnuaba or shellac, are applied to the apples. Apple warehouse workers reportedly complain about respiratory and skin problems that are attributed to the waxes and post-harvest chemicals embedded in the waxes.
Additionally, industrialized agriculture is an extremely inefficient use of energy (Marquet
2000; Steinhart and Steinhart 1974). It involves orchard trucks, tractors, sprayers, CA storage
(reduces O2 to slow ripening); railroad refrigerator cars; semi-trucks with refrigerated beds, shipping, transportation of bees, chemicals, pesticides, marketing, and much more. The CA storage rooms are large cement rooms where the oxygen and temperature levels are carefully controlled to reduce the rate of ripening. The rooms vary in capacity from 10,000 to 100,000 boxes and apples are usually stored by the type of apple and date of harvest. Washington State has the largest capacity for CA storage of any growing area in the world (Washington Apple
Commission 2000). In 1997, 453 million cubic feet of storage space were available for apple storage, and apple storage included 121 million boxes in CA storage and an additional 60 million boxes in regular storage (Washington Agricultural Statistics Service 1999).
Distribution: Processing, Packaging, Storage, and Transport
Fossil fuels are perhaps the most obvious and costly scale subsidy and have had the side effect of consumers becoming increasingly further removed from the source of their food and less likely to notice the impact of their consumption patterns. Hoping to make consumers more aware of the costs of large-scale distribution systems, food system researchers have been
164 examining weighted average source distances (WASD), or ―food miles,‖ to illustrate the increasing distances food travels from farm to table (Carlsson-Kanyama 1997; Hora and Tick
2001; Pirog and Van Pelt 2002). Although the majority of this research examines distances traveled by various produce items arriving at one particular market, the same general strategy can be used for distances from a producing region to export destinations (Figure 6.8).
WASD = Sum of (Amount multiplied by Distance) Sum of Amount
WASD for Consumption Origin WASD from Productive Region to Export Destination
Detroit Washington State
Figure 6.8: WASD Formula and Spatial Diagrams
Table 6.4 combines transport data for 6 harvest years from 1989 to 2005 with the air distance (in kilometers) from Seattle to a major city in each destination country. The world map in Figure 1 connects Washington State and major cities of countries importing these global apples. Even though trucks and ships do not simply travel in a straight line from point
A to point B, air distances, or ―as the crow flies,‖ from Seattle to one of the major cities in each destination country can be multiplied by the quantity of fruit shipped to each country. As seen in Table 6.4, this produced data on the billions of metric tons of apples that are produced along the Columbia River and exported internationally each year. Estimates can then be made, such as in 2000, over 32 percent of Washington‘s apples were exported and their average
165 distance (in air miles) between farm and apple consumption was 7,370 kilometers. Regardless of this being a gross underestimate of the transport involved, the crucial point is to realize that transportation is an especially vulnerable sector of the food system. Not only is it almost exclusively dependent upon liquid fuels derived from oil, but also international supply disruptions and price fluctuations can have a more marked and immediate impact on this sector.
Table 6.4: Exporting Washington Apples: Destinations (country and region), Quantities (m- tons), and Distances (air kilometers from Seattle to each country‘s major city)
Major City: 1989-90 1992-93 1995-96 1998-99 2001-02 2004-05 Kms from Seattle
Canada 47,951 47,132 51,976 74,482 77,619 101,505 Toronto: 3,356 Mexico 13,381 109,276 72,157 84,180 126,357 157,224 Mexico City: 3,774 Mexico and 61,332 156,408 124,132 158,662 203,977 258,729 Canada Totals Argentina 0 0 0 498 59 0 Buenos Aires: 11,126 Brazil 0 22 7,542 4,623 4 46 Rio de Janeiro: 11,087 Chile 0 0 0 136 0 57 Santiago: 10,377 Colombia 2,264 3,196 5,766 5,910 1,674 6,845 Bogota: 6,647 Costa Rica 2,599 2,506 2,742 6,575 3,568 2,102 San Jose: 5,504 Dominican 1,510 1,170 2,342 5,494 4,734 2,555 Santo Domingo: 5,740 Republic Ecuador 92 558 1,788 1,010 199 368 Quito: 6,911 El Salvador 0 0 0 6,823 3,565 2,757 San Salvador: 4,857 Guatemala 0 0 2,666 5,275 2,874 3,381 Guatemala City: 4,728 Honduras 442 186 722 1,990 1,535 1,135 Tegucigalpa: 4,935 Netherland 1,180 6 79 57 1 41 Willemstad: 6,344 Antilles Nicaragua 0 0 0 0 220 350 Managua: 5,187 Panama 566 72 368 1,877 948 2,291 Panama City: 5,887 Peru 0 0 0 294 62 274 Lima: 7,991 Trinidad- 213 37 208 974 1,626 0 Port of Spain: 6,984 Tobago Venezuela 683 7,874 3,636 18,215 11,215 6,565 Caracas: 6,597 Other S. and 2,355 2,470 4,124 2,421 817 1,012 region average: 6,931 Cent. Amer. S. and Cent. 25,286 18,097 31,983 62,173 33,101 29,779 America Totals Bahrain 170 19 20 1,504 413 1,117 Al Manamah: 11,818
166 United Arab 3,183 1,384 9,910 31,057 13,923 32,830 Dubai: 11,925 Emirates Egypt 0 0 0 10,275 4,158 4,006 Port Said: 10,903 India 0 0 0 0 7,463 14,959 Mumbai: 12,484 Israel 0 0 0 8,065 658 1,321 Jerusalem: 10,963 Kuwait 1,208 856 2,029 3,481 2,440 4,183 Kuwait: 11,443 Saudi Arabia 24,284 12,793 17,948 40,851 12,658 18,445 Riyadh: 11,955 Other Middle 38 162 4,947 2,362 663 1,524 region average: 11,642 E. and Africa Middle East & 28,884 15,215 34,854 97,594 42,376 78,385 Africa Totals Bangladesh 0 0 0 0 768 521 Dhaka: 1,1440 China 0 0 89 0 938 11,194 Shanghai: 9,194 Hong Kong 40,568 47,574 39,727 39,061 36,432 34,006 Hong Kong: 10,436 (China) Indonesia 1,308 12,465 48,351 25,442 36,185 32,223 Jakarta: 13,511 Japan 0 0 1,050 0 13 3 Tokyo: 7,710 Malaysia 5,420 7,911 17,988 13,210 7,433 8,319 Kuala Lumpur: 12,905 New Zealand 3,004 609 100 94 58 382 Wellington: 11,678 Philippines 23,009 6,525 15,967 19,674 6,041 2,190 Manila: 10,710 Russia 0 0 8,198 2,183 2,945 9,117 Moscow: 8,421 Singapore 13,067 9,965 9,622 9,513 2,846 4,164 Singapore: 13,000 Sri Lanka 0 0 0 0 316 758 Colombo: 13,644 Taiwan 68,317 64,939 56,233 88,023 62,085 37,709 Taipei: 9,755 Thailand 14,640 19,137 23,917 12,389 9,246 8,685 Bangkok: 12,037 Vietnam 0 0 2,025 832 1,968 1,933 Hanoi: 11,029 Other Asia and 633 995 2,034 4,374 443 802 region average: 11,105 South Pacific Asia and S. 169,967 170,120 225,302 214,796 167,716 152,004 Pacific Totals Belgium 0 230 397 274 0 10 Brussels: 7,988 Finland 6,309 2,168 3,363 2,217 716 1,583 Helsinki: 7,700 France 0 174 0 850 0 42 Paris: 8,089 Germany 0 0 159 256 39 0 Munich: 8,425 Greece 0 0 1,167 3,837 1,387 0 Athens: 9,975 Iceland 0 703 1,687 1,381 1,050 664 Reykjavik: 5,822 Ireland 0 0 0 255 8 52 Dublin: 7,314 Netherlands 5,474 650 728 1,595 1,138 1,698 Amsterdam: 7,845 Norway 4,778 1,540 536 1,619 842 1,012 Oslo: 7,403 Portugal 0 0 0 805 0 80 Lisbon: 8,367 Spain 0 230 326 6,175 422 1,132 Madrid: 8,559 Sweden 9,704 2,634 2,359 3,387 370 1,733 Stockholm: 7,633 U. Kingdom 20,700 4,906 11,482 18,609 15,327 22,988 London: 7,710 Other Europe 3,758 331 380 3,218 80 379 region average: 7,910
Europe Totals 3,758 13,565 22,584 44,478 21,380 31,373
TOTAL 322,809 373,404 438,854 577,703 468,550 550,270 EXPORT
167 Another consequence of increased apple transport is the specialization of apple varieties. The varieties that have survived the years have tough skins and do not bruise easily.
A carload of apples shipped from Wenatchee in the fall of 1901 included 13 varieties:
Spitzenburgs, Baldwins, Winesaps, White Winter Pearmains, Blue Pearmains, Rhode Island
Greenings, Rambos, Gloria Mundis, Pippins, Belleflowers, and Grimes Goldens; only one of which, the Winesap survived as a commercial favorite (Bright 1988). Today‘s orchards are more likely to be varieties such as Fuji, Gala, Granny Smith, Braeburn, Cameo, Pinklady, or any apple variety that promises reasonable economic returns to the grower. It does not matter if the newer variety is more sensitive to diseases such as powdery mildew and fire blight than the varieties they replaced. These new orchards are usually planted more intensively, on dwarfing rootstock, supported by a trellis, and planted with 600 to 1000 or more trees per acre.
Another scale subsidy is the increase in apple processing, which often results in the addition of chemicals, loss of nutritional value, increase of packaging plastics, and increasing dependence on contract farming. Although not a primary aim for Washington growers, the amount of crop processed has increased from roughly 7,000 tons in the early 1970s to between 30,000 and 40,000 over the last decade. In 2004, McDonald‘s began offering Apple
Dippers, a 2.4 ounce pack of apple slices served with caramel. A year later, Missa Bay supplied over one-quarter of McDonald‘s almost 14,000 U.S. restaurants (Warner 2005).
They have six apple slicing facilities, one in Swedesboro, New Jersey, where each day around
50,000 Gala apples are mechanically washed, cored, peeled, seeded, sliced, chilled, dunked in a solution of calcium ascorbate and deposited in little green bags featuring a jogging Ronald
McDonald. In 2005, McDonalds bought more than 50 million pounds of apples, up from zero
168 in 2003. At the annual U.S. Apple Association Conference, Mitch Smith, the McDonalds director of quality systems in the U.S., told a crowd that if they wanted to work with
McDonalds, they should grow more Cameo and Pink Lady apples (Warner 2005). Their purchasing power comes from having over 30,000 restaurants in over 100 countries.
Large scale, global food systems also give rise to an increased risk of system failure.
As Washington‘s tree fruit industry has grown, more people depend on it. In addition to orchard-specific employment, the industry supports professional advertisers, computer programmers, accountants, and graphic designers. Jensen (2005), a professor of Business and
Economics, recently published a report on how Washington‘s tree fruit industry contributes more to the state‘s economy than either Boeing or Microsoft. In Yakima Valley, he estimated the economic impact of the tree fruit industry to be more than $2 billion, and in the greater
Wenatchee area, $1.5 billion. He argues that the industry is a $5.6 billion engine that provides
142,000 jobs in the state. Despite the credibility of this claim, it serves as a reminder that this industry has grown up with Washington State, and so is entangled in many private and public spheres on which individuals depend. That said, the consequences associated with down- scaling the industry are also scale subsidies. In effect, global society as a whole eventually pays the negative costs for the unsustainable form of agricultural intensification chosen by the leaders of giant agribusiness.
Consumption, Marketing, and Misperceptions
There are four features of consumption that relate to scale subsidies in Washington‘s apple industry. First, world apple consumption has been expanding, especially in more industrialized countries. During the 1990s world apple production increased more than 60
169 percent (USDA 2005). This is largely due to China‘s production almost tripling over the decade, producing almost 20 million metric tons in 2000. This growth is linked to a trend that began in the 1970s toward the consumption of more fresh—as opposed to canned and frozen—fruits and vegetables. Second, people have become accustomed to having year-round access to their favorite fruits and vegetables, losing a sense of seasonality. Counter-seasonal production in the middle latitudes and in the Southern hemisphere created a niche market for countries like Chile, Argentina, Kenya and Zimbabwe, which now ship melons, table grapes, apples, and other agricultural commodities to northern markets that either did not have such commodities available during winter months (Friedland 2004), or preferred to export surpluses before the winter. Third, apples are not dietary staples; rather, they make the diet healthier or more interesting. They are destined for upscale consumers, who emphasize quality more than bulk. Thus consumers simply will not buy them if they do not meet their standards. This is why apple warehouses invest in the development of technologies to measure color, shape, and firmness to enhance the apple eating experience as well as eye appeal. Finally, because apples require highly specific agro-ecological conditions, they are frequently traded across longer distances than most commodities (Collins 2000). With intense irrigation, Washington has very favorable conditions for apple producing. The dry warm summer environment with cool winters minimizes pest and disease pressures. This means less energy is needed to control pest and disease problems. Of course, the very mention of energy in production requires the reminder of the perverse subsidies associated with commercial apple production, such as the intensive of fossil fuels, hydroelectric power, and fresh water in maintaining production to meet global distribution goals set by industry leaders that stand to benefit.
170 While growth ideologies and consumer demand, in general, support industrial expansion and trade around the world, trained experts specialize in advertising each distinct commodity. Large-scale, agro-ecological advertising often sells the productive landscape— like Florida oranges and New Zealand kiwis—to foreign regions. For Washington apples, promotional imagery places them in symmetrical orchards along a crystal clear, meandering river with the rising sun coming up over the Cascade Mountains (Jarosz and Qazi 2000). In marketing, Washington apples are pure and nutritious, like the Pacific Northwest from which they come—a pristine natural landscape. As if the region‘s arid landscape was not recently transformed by the construction of railroads and a complex irrigation network reliant on damming the Columbia River. As if sagebrush and grasses had never populated the region. In this way, marketing obscures the fact that the environment of the Pacific Northwest has been
―built‖ (Jarosz and Qazi 2000).
Other advertising schemes try to convince us that we will feel better and be happier if we eat 3 apples a day, or perhaps just one to keep the doctor away. These marketing schemes crosscut with growth and commercial ideologies that share a common idea: the economy is supreme and all things are commodities to be regulated by the free market. This idea not only makes commerce the centerpiece of cultural development, but also encourages perpetual growth because commercial expansion is seemingly endless. The problem is: free market principles are currently not working in agriculture. In the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Pollan explains why;
The economics of the family farm are very different than the firm‘s: When prices fall, the firm can lay off people, idle factories, and make fewer widgets. Eventually the market finds a new balance between supply and demand. But the demand for food isn‘t elastic; people don‘t eat more just because food is cheap. And laying off farmers doesn‘t help to reduce supply. You can fire me,
171 but you can‘t fire my land, because some other farmer who needs more cash flow or thinks he‘s more efficient that I am will come in and farm it. [Pollan 2006:54]
Another important question is how does the quality and quantity demanded by giant retailers shape the ways that apples are produced and shipped, and ultimately configure the social relationships entailed in the organization of production and distribution? Giant retailers, such as Walmart, control settings within which shippers compete for access and consumers judge and select from what is available. In this sense, they control some of the ways that humans think about commodities. ―Should we eat a red, yellow, or green apple?‖
Their economic power is evident in revenue, geographical distribution, and number of employees at various locations, but also in the way that distributors desire to establish relationships with them—understanding that supermarket chains aim to reduce their transaction costs. In a sense, decision-making power is most concentrated in these giant retailers. They rely on, as well as make large demands on, the shrinking number of warehouses, that have gained more power in Washington‘s apple industry since the scale of the global apple trade began increasing.
Conclusions
The overall objective of scale and power theory is to better understand how people can transform malfunctioning socio-cultural systems to construct more just, equitable, and sustainable societies in response to present crises of poverty, conflict, resource depletion, and environmental degradation. The goal is ―Sustainable Development,‖ which the United
Nations defines as ―development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs‖ (WCED 1987:43). Seeking to
172 understand who makes development decisions, how they are made, and why people consent to ineffective socio-cultural systems and maladaptive distributions of social power, it remains important to identify gaps between physical realities and the culturally-shaped perceptions that may influence both decision-making and consent. Among other things, this case study indicates that ideologies of growth, the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest orchards, and the inevitability of technological advance, intersect in ways that obscure the fact that they are misperceptions. Growth does not make everyone wealthier, Washington‘s apple orchards were ‗built‘ at great ecological costs, and chasing higher yields with more inputs will lead to diminishing returns.
The anthropological record shows that the smallest scale food systems appear to be the most sustainable. There may be aspects of small-scale food systems that can be adapted to the needs of contemporary societies. Previous research has shown dramatic differences in the form and distribution of wealth between smaller and larger scale social systems (Bodley
2005). Smaller societies maintain most of their capital in nature and in the cultural information stored in people‘s memories. This suggests that two cultural conditions could help larger scale food systems: 1) A shift from costly energy and material inputs (fertilizers, machinery, agrochemicals) to information intensive service production based on sustainable goals and ethics; and 2) Shortening of production and distribution chains. Both of these approaches could be facilitated by intentional reductions in social scale and by design of more responsive democratic institutions that matched specific sustainability issues to their appropriate social and natural hierarchical ranks.
In this chapter, I have attempted to demonstrate that scale and power theory can offer valuable insight into the future of our food systems. The sustainability problem in with
173 Industrial food culture, in general, and Washington‘s apple industry, specifically, is related to
1) perception—intersecting ideologies about Washington apples, 2) social organization and decision-making power—from railroad beginnings to the economic concentration in a few of today‘s warehouses, and 3) distribution—the growing costs of transport are the most vulnerable part of the industry. Although many historical documents perceive technological innovation as causing transformations, a power and scale approach recognizes that the social consequences of new technologies are not inevitable. Machines and chemicals have not caused agricultural scale increases and urbanization, but rather well-positioned individuals promote growth-oriented laws and policies for personal benefit. According to this analysis, it may be assumed that sustainability is a problem of social organization, perception, decision- making, and distribution. The costs associated with food production and technological advance contribute to sustainability problems of industrial food culture, but only secondarily.
174 CHAPTER SEVEN
ALONGSIDE THE GRAIN: GROWING A LOCAL FOOD NETWORK IN THE
AGRO-INDUSTRIAL PALOUSE
Uncertainty concerning spatial scale and the attributes of ―local‖ persist throughout the literature on food relocalization. Over the last two decades, there has been mounting interest in the emergence and re-emergence of local agri-food communities and their potential to offer sustainable solutions to problems associated with the globalized industrial food system (Allen et al. 2003; Dupuis and Block 2008; Feenstra 1997; Hendrickson and Heffernan 2002;
Hinrichs 2000, 2003; Kloppenburg et al. 1996). This literature explores the possibilities for: living within ―foodsheds‖ characterized by proximity, locality and regionality (Kloppenburg et al. 1996, 2000; Kloppenburg and Hassanein 2006); fostering a more ―civic agriculture‖ through community engagement with localized food and farming systems (DeLind 2002;
DeLind and Bingen 2005; Lyson 2004,2005); empowering local producers and consumers, often through the economic and spatial shortening of commodity chains (Kneen 1989;
Renting et al. 2003); and creating sustainable economies through a ―sustainable scale‖ of agriculture (Freefogle2001; Winter 2003). While supportive of these approaches, this chapter draws on recent work describing the importance of scale in social-ecological systems (Bodley
1999, 2003; Brenner 2001; Delaney and Leitner 1997; Swyngedouw 1997, 2004) to question how local-scale food system configurations are socially produced, defined, and contested.
Following calls to more carefully examine ―the local‖—both its spatial content and its promises of sustainability, equality, and local empowerment (Allen et al. 2003; Guthman
2004; DuPuis and Goodman 2005; Hinrichs 2003; Winter 2003), consideration is given to the
175 scalar construction of a local food system in the Palouse region of the northwestern United
States to explore how it exists both within (geographically) and together with (commercially) an agro-industrial landscape shaped by global processes.
This chapter focuses on the development of civic food culture in the Palouse. I begin by describing the long-term historical context of large-scale grain farming in the Palouse region. This provides a background for the examination of the recent development of a local food network alongside the ubiquitous regional grain industry. While not claiming to represent or to explain all localist politics and relevant spatial and temporal scalar outcomes in the Palouse, I illustrate how a local food system is constituted and transformed in relation to supralocal networks.
This work draws specifically on semistructured and unstructured interviews with farmers‘ market vendors, coordinators and consumers; WSU‘s organic farm managers, student farmworkers, CSA shareholders, and faculty; and with personnel at participating institutions. I also rely on considerable archival work at Moscow‘s City Hall, two years of participant observation within this local food network, and a CSA shareholder survey conducted in 2007 and 2008. Less directly, this study makes use of two years of interviewing and interacting with a wide range of informants concerning the Palouse local food network, tracing both its internal and external connections. Throughout this developing local market/foodshed, people discuss its boundaries in public and in private, determining who/what can participate in the market and who/what cannot, who/what is ―local,‖ and who should have the power to define it (if even it should be defined formally). These social constructions encode cultural meanings and shape social action, but occur within an agro- industrial setting marked by federal, state and private commercial interests.
176
The Palouse: A Historical Context of Agriculture and Food
Situated north of the Snake River and between Washington‘s Channeled Scablands and
Idaho‘s Rocky Mountain foothills, the Palouse is a sparsely populated area of rolling, dune- like hills covered by seemingly endless fields of wheat (Figure 7.1). A remarkable geological history explains how this immensely fertile countryside of deep, loess soils came to contain little or no exposed bedrock (Duffin 2007:17-21). After the last glacial recession (roughly
12,000 years ago), a climate and topography emerged that supported a mosaic of bunchgrass prairie interspersed with wetlands and forested ridges (Black et al. 1998; Daubenmire 1942;
Orr and Orr 2002). For over 10,000 years, this ecosystem sustained very disperse indigenous populations (precontact Indian estimates range from a few hundred to 2,300) whose known mobility was connected to seasonal food procurement strategies centered on fish, roots, berries, and game (Hunn 1999). But around 1870, after the earliest European explorers described the region as unfit for civilization, settlers learned that the climate and soil conditions were ideal for the dryland farming of small grains. A steady stream of people came and rapidly transformed and commodified the landscape. Monocropping of wheat became common by the turn of the century, and throughout the twentieth century the Palouse became synonymous with wheat (Duffin 2007). Today, despite the appearance of an immensely fertile agricultural countryside, the Palouse is ―a critically endangered ecosystem‖ (Noss et al. 1995), where native vegetation hardly exists, stream water is so dirty that it is often unfit for livestock, over two-thirds of the farms have been absorbed by larger farms, and half or more of the region has lost somewhere between 25 to 75 percent of its topsoil (Black 1998; Duffin
2007).
177
Figure 7.1: Map of the Palouse
178 Grain farming in this area was perceived primarily as a commercial venture from its inception. Not long after filing homestead claims, Palouse farmers abandoned subsistence farming, anxious for new transportation links and prospects for national and global markets.
In the 1880s, a frenzy of regional railroad-building, made possible by substantial government land grants, cemented the ties between Palouse farmers and distant markets. Wheat flowed out by rail to the growing hubs of Spokane, Portland, and Seattle, and was soon shipped around the world. Money and financing poured in and Palouse farmers ranked among the most prosperous and successful in the nation. Historian Andrew Duffin calls these farmers
―agrarian liberals‖ who simultaneously represented older notions of agrarianism and nineteenth century classical liberalism, which meant that ―they utilized new and preexisting government-sponsored research, advice, and infrastructure to systematize and expand their operations‖ (2007:54). At the same time, farmers in the Palouse (and around the nation) resisted land-use regulations and fiercely defended a perceived right to government assistance.
The founding of two major land-grant colleges in the Palouse—University of Idaho
(UI) in Moscow in 1889 and Washington State College in Pullman in 1891(becoming
Washington State University (WSU) in the 1960s) —advanced the technological and structural transformations in Palouse agriculture. Their objective was to use higher education as a means of making agricultural communities prosper. Both schools offered farmers some of the first truly reliable data on climate, soil types, and fertilizers, and developed hybrid varieties of wheat that were specifically suited for the Palouse. Along with providing an infrastructure to bind large-scale industrial farmers with new technologies, much research went into improving the infrastructure of grain distribution consisting of rail, road, and river
179 transportation—to bring Palouse grain into port and off to worldwide destinations at ever- quicker rates because it ―increases the competitiveness of commodities‖ (Monson et al. 2005).
The land-grant system provided structure for the commodification of the region: the Palouse provided grains and the markets determined the quantities and values of the grains using the logic of ―generalized interchangeability‖ or ―general-purpose money‖— which successfully made invisible the labor and land embodied in the grain (see Hornborg 2007). This logic accommodated elite interests in the region while also accelerating processes of resource extraction and consumption by rewarding the continued transformation of natural resources into commodities. In the Palouse, this translated into mining the soil for grains and profits, the latter of which grew increasingly concentrated into fewer and larger cooperatives and firms
(Monson et al 2005). Between 1910 and 1940, approximately 30 bushels were produced per acre, but by 1987, yields averaged 69 bushels and sometimes reached 100 (Bodley 2008).
These increases were due to using/testing the new chemicals and ―miracle grains‖ of the green revolution. For the twentieth century, the Palouse reliably produced some of the highest non- irrigated yields of wheat and legumes in the world (Scheuerman 2003), and as the region became synonymous with wheat, the social and ecological landscape was irrevocably altered.
The most ominous ecological change was soil erosion, resulting from a steady dose of plowing steep slopes with heavy machinery combined with summer fallow. First recognized as a serious problem in the 1920, scientists cautioned against the ―maximize production at all costs‖ philosophy when they began noticing severe erosion and diminished amounts of humus
(organic matter) in the soil (Duffin 2007). Although interest in conservation grew and soil loss slowed, it continued at an unsustainable rate. Farmer‘s resisted permanently taking acres out of production because it brought short-term financial returns. Instead, they sought
180 technological fixes that offered only partial and short-term solutions to the erosion and water pollution problem, thus complicating matters and making permanent solutions more difficult.
Today, Palouse agriculture continues to operate under this twentieth century lack of accountability for abuse of the land, but with far more power, machinery, and—ironically— government assistance. Nearly all of Washington's wheat — 85 to 90 percent — ends up in foreign countries, mostly in Asia. The state produces most of its confectionary wheat, the kind used in pastries, cakes, cookies and crackers. Most of Palouse wheat ships to China, becoming noodles and crackers. Thus, the working logic in the Palouse is: the more wheat farmers can produce for export today, the more resources (such as fuel, agricultural research, soil) they will be able to dissipate tomorrow.
The structural transformation of Palouse agriculture has contributed to current demographic and social-ecological challenges facing the region. By 1910, Whitman and Latah counties totaled 42,000 residents, there were some 3,000 farms averaging 383 acres, over 70 percent of the cash value in farm production was in grain, and nearly 38,000 locally grown horses and mules worked the fields. When Palouse farmers shifted to fossil-fuel-based industrial technology to reduce their labor requirements and increase their productivity and profits, many villages declined as displaced farmers moved to bigger towns and cities. Today, there are two cities with populations over 20,000— Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman,
Washington, connected by an eight-mile long, four-lane highway—one city with 3,000 people, 10 villages/towns with between 200 and 1,000 people, and more than a dozen other smaller communities. Furthermore, as the number of farms steeply declined, the ones that remained tripled in size. Of roughly 80,000 residents, there are fewer than 100 grain producers, and each of them commonly farms between 1,000 and 3,000 acres. Of course,
181 farmers do not necessarily own all the land that they farm. Nevertheless, this concentration of land management among grain farmers exacerbates contemporary conservation challenges because most of the Palouse is privately owned and landowner support is essential to the successful implementation of conservation policies and sustainable agricultural development
(Russell and Harshbarger 2003). Conservation challenges extend beyond soil erosion to managing prairie remnants, noxious weeds, and water quality, as well as the preservation of open space threatened by increasing residential development (Donovan et al. 2009).
Such issues of agricultural restructuring and demographic change are common to other areas, but particular dilemmas in the Palouse and the greater Columbia Basin influence food system localization efforts. Like elsewhere, fossil-fuel based technology, government assistance, and farmer receptivity to technological advances facilitated exploitation, growth, and factory farming in the Palouse. But the grain-oriented commodification of this region gave rise to progressively fewer farmers that intensely viewed government intrusion as a threat to the very fabric of farming, even as they benefited from government assistance. While this mentality is partly responsible for the severe erosion problems, the public land-grant system played, and still plays, a major role in institutionalizing agricultural growth ideologies, which often equate to ―get big or get out.‖ Whereas land-grant universities are publicly- funded, they now increasingly rely on private funds, an effect that helped bring about what
Buttel (2005) calls the ―molecularization/geneticization‖ of agricultural biology in the 1980s and 1990s. This molecularization trend, discussed in further detail in chapter eight, has led to a dramatic de-emphasis on applied research staffing, and it continues to play a role in the demise of family farmers, local agribusiness, and rural communities via patented knowledge licensed to multinational firms (Buttel 2005). This trend has resulted in corrupted
182 institutionalized links between agricultural science and regional farmers. Prioritizing scientific research that supports large-scale, corporate agribusiness interests tends to disregard the long- term effects of new agricultural technologies.
As is apparent in other regions, scholars, activists and concerned citizens have sided with the few and modest grassroots efforts to confront industrial agriculture in the Palouse.
The Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute (PCEI), a non-profit environmental group that began in 1986, supports a variety of projects designed to improve the Palouse ecology, such as wetlands restoration and riparian tree-planting. Other concerned groups include the
Palouse Conservation District, the Palouse Land Trust and the Palouse Prairie Foundation, all of which aim to preserve sections of native vegetation and to attain conservation easements.
These efforts share common goals with sustainable and local agriculture movements, among which are to provide farmers with a sense of stewardship and promote democratic ideas of participation and community empowerment. Altogether, regional grassroots efforts share their successes and failures as they all fit under the broader anti-globalization movement.
Growing A Local Food Network
Despite the challenges involved in revitalizing local agro-food communities in rural agro- industrial regions (Selfa and Qazi 2005), the number and variety of local food initiatives in the Palouse have increased rapidly since the 1990s. These endeavors are mostly based in or around Moscow and Pullman home to the region‘s two land-grant universities, Washington
State University (WSU) and the University of Idaho (UI). Whereas this context lends itself to more scholarly and student activism than other locales, the local food movement remains grounded in exchanges at a few direct-marketing venues and a growing network of small-
183 scale (and often part-time) farmers and community members/consumers. As these individuals actively work to build and empower this local food network, their formulations of ―local‖ vary according to individual and collective goals. From early efforts of a food co-op and farmers‘ market at local direct-marketing and ―bringing natural food to the Palouse,‖ food system organization and activism in the Palouse has expanded to include diverse participants, many of which share key personnel and were envisioned and created through the participation of existing members of the Palouse CivAg social network.
Like elsewhere in the U.S., this small movement has, over the years, incorporated a number of anti-globalization and anti-industrial-food themes, ranging from ―back-to-the- land,‖ ―natural,‖ and ―sustainable,‖ to ―organic,‖ ―local,‖ and ―civic agriculture,‖ all the while remaining primarily supportive of healthy eating and encouraging face-to-face interactions between producers and consumers. However, in the Palouse, the construction of a ―local‖ food network is not only challenged by the global-oriented grain infrastructure and century- old depictions of how to best use this hilly landscape, but also by jurisdictional complexity reflective of a state borderland region, the mismatch of scope among supporting organizations
(Table 7.1), and the uneasy participation of two locally-based land-grant universities.
Table 7.1: Conflicting Localism Among Key Organizations to Palouse Civic Agriculture (Sources: Organizational websites; Interviews with members/employees)
Enterprise or Start Principle activities; Scope Organization Consumer-owned natural food cooperative; promotes community, sustainability, and local and organic food through retail, newsletter, Moscow Food Co-op 1974 and partnerships; Moscow-Pullman and rural towns within 25 miles; participates with regional Co-ops for bulk ordering benefits Social arena of marketing and direct exchange for many of the Moscow Farmers‘ region‘s small scale agricultural vendors; Producers within 5-250 1977 Market miles; Consumers mostly from Moscow-Pullman, and within 50 miles.
184 Palouse-Clearwater Nonprofit organization that increases citizen involvement in Environmental 1986 decisions that affect regional communities and environment; Institute (PCEI) Palouse and Clearwater watersheds WSU organization that leads efforts in sustainable agriculture, food, CSANR—Center for and natural resource systems; Program areas: BioAg, Climate Sustaining Agriculture 1991 Friendly Farming, Organic Agriculture, Small Farms; Washington and Natural Resources State; legislatively established in RCW15.92 A non-profit organization that works on regional, sustainable Western Sustainable agriculture and food systems, and inform the agriculture policy Agriculture Working debate. One of 5 independent SAWGs that connected to work on 1993 Group (Western national sustainable agriculture issues via the National Campaign for SAWG) Sustainable Agriculture and the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition; Western U.S. and Canada excluding California Pullman Community Volunteer-run, non-profit organization that rents garden plots and Garden at Koppel 1994 focuses on organic gardening and community spirit; Pullman and Farm Palouse Non-profit organization that conserves Palouse habitat through Palouse Land Trust 1995 conservation easements; Palouse Region Non-profit that supports sustainable and organic agriculture and Rural Roots 1997 local food networks in Idaho and the Inland Northwest; Idaho and the Inland Northwest; Works with WSU, UI, and PCEI The primary focus of PCEI‘s Sustainable Growing Program. Rents Moscow Community farm plots and encourages the production of nutritious food, 2000 Garden reducing family food budgets, and sustainable gardening practices; Moscow and surrounding area A collaborative team from the UI, WSU, and Rural Roots that offer Cultivating Success 2000 community-based education programs in Sustainable Small Acreage Farming and Ranching; Regional (WA and ID) Teaching farm designed for Organic Agriculture students, academic research, and community partnership through a CSA with over 100 WSU: Organic Farm 2004 shareholders (weekly share May- October); Moscow-Pullman, Washington State Student-run organization whose members created and continue to UI: Soil Stewards 2005 run an organic farm within the UI Plant Science Research Farm; Moscow, Idaho State Pullman Alliance for Citizen group dedicated to preserving and improving the best Responsible 2004 qualities of regional community; Pullman and surrounding area Development Coalition of community groups working on hunger issues in Palouse Food Project 2005 Whitman County; Whitman County Nonprofit organization that removes food from the waste stream and 2006 Backyard Harvest distributes it to food banks and senior meal programs; Moscow-
Pullman, one of four chapters around U.S. Soggy Bottom Farm Partnered with Backyard Harvest to operate a low-income CSA; 2010 CSA Moscow-Pullman and surrounding area
185 Despite gaining momentum over the last decade, the local food movement in the
Palouse remains reliant on two keystone institutions, both of which began in the mid 1970s:
Moscow‘s Food Co-op and Moscow‘s Saturday farmers‘ market. The Moscow Food Co-op grew from the collaborative experience of UI students organizing and managing the ―Good
Food Store‖ in downtown Moscow. Their goal was to bring natural, unsprayed food to the
Palouse at the lowest cost possible, so low that much of their labor was volunteered. In 1974, they incorporated the store under the name of ―Moscow Food Co-op,‖ essentially handing the store over (without compensation) to roughly 12 members. Two years later the Food Co-op joined with the Spokane, Colville and Pullman Co-ops (of which only the Colville Co-op survives) to form Equinox Food Exchange, a cooperative wholesale distributor for buyers and producers of natural foods throughout the Columbia Basin. Whereas early sales relied on bulk purchases of a full complement of grains and legumes, honey, herbs, cheese, peanut butter, and a few other items, today‘s store resembles a smaller version of today‘s large food retailers, yet emphasizing organic and/or local foods throughout. Where unable to establish ties with local producers and regional distributors of organic foods (that may be produced in distant regions), they order through the Co-op Advantage Program, enabling member co-ops in multi-state regions to jointly order organic products and reduce transaction costs. With a mission to ―be a catalyst to building a diversified community concerned with sustainability,‖ the Food Co-op builds civic partnerships, encourages and facilitates community discussions through their increasingly popular newsletter, and promotes sustainable business practices, or
―graceful growth,‖ which includes ―maximizing the amount of organic locally-produced products on our shelves,‖ even when they can purchase more distantly produced foods at cheaper prices.
186 In 2004, the Co-op relocated to a larger building through member loans that financed over $450,000 of relocating costs. In a recent newsletter, the general manager wrote:
To me this really is the local economy at work: our owners decided to keep their money on the Palouse by investing in their local food Co-op. We put the money to work by investing the funds into our facility and local workers; turning this place into a community center and grocery store. Now we‘re ready to return the investment back to the owners so it can go to work elsewhere, hopefully still here in the Palouse. So, a very loud ‗thank you‘ to all our owner loaners, for without folks like you we would have had a tough time borrowing all we needed to make this move from a bank.
The Co-op‘s keystone role in the local foods movement has been to re-establish a community- oriented ideology that begins and ends with healthy living, food production, and local-level cooperation.
In the summer of 1976 the Co-op organized the Farmers Market, initially held weekly in the city parking lot behind the current City Hall. The goal was not only to offer an alternative to purchasing conventionally retailed foods, but also to provide local farmers an opportunity to direct-sell their produce. The hallmark and appeal of direct marketing is face- to-face contact between producer and consumer, in marked contrast to the experience of purchasing conventionally retailed foods (Hinrichs 2000). Roughly eight farmers sold their produce for a few summer months. Having moved locations and grown considerably, that same Farmers Market thrives today under the auspices of Moscow City Hall‘s Arts
Commission and is a weekly event from May to October. It typically has some 60 vendors offering crafts, prepared food, and produce, and saves one side of half of a block for community-oriented nonprofit organizations interested in exchanging information, among which are: Palouse-Clearwater Environmental Institute—offering garden plots and educational classes about organic gardening at the Moscow Community Garden; Rural
187 Roots—they work to connect small growers with local consumers; and Backyard Harvest— they collect ripe fruits and vegetables grown in local gardens and transport them to foodbanks within the Palouse.
While university connections often go unnoticed at Moscow‘s farmers‘ market, Figure
7.2 demonstrates how WSU and UI played key roles in the development of the locally based non-profit and community organizations that promote civic and sustainable agriculture in the
Palouse. Although Figure 7.2 does not include other obvious stakeholders, such as the public
(consumers, home gardeners, food bank clients, etc.), food producers and processors, CSAs,
U-pick operations, etc., many personal and group relationships have been forged through these organizational interconnections. Yet all of these organizations suggest they operate at the local level despite their configuring of diverse sets of spatial scales (as seen in Table 7.1).
Since the early 1980s, initiative and organizational support for local food in the
Palouse has come in diverse forms, each of which has played roles in reshaping the spatial content of the developing local food network. It became apparent through interviews and observation that the common use of new information technology helps the local food network thrives in the Palouse. Unlike hierarchical nesting of long-established political boundaries— where city government is nested in county government, which is nested in state, which is nested in federal regulation—the spatial scope of participating organizations varies without hierarchical nesting apparent. Some organizations, such as Western SAWG, cooperate with other regional branches at the national level, but participation does not require membership.
Nevertheless, the fact the Palouse‘s major urban area straddles the Washington and Idaho
Stateline further complicates boundary creation. Nevertheless, regardless of jurisdictional complexity, a growing number of food system organizers and activists in the Palouse are
188 increasingly focused on changing the patterns of institutional food procurement, which typically rely on standardized streams of nationally sourced foods.
Figure 7.2: An Interlocked Support Network for Palouse CivAg Keystones (Modified from Koenig 2007).
The Scalar Construction of Moscow’s Farmers’ Market
Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market is the largest in the region. Consumers routinely travel between
20 and 50 miles from all directions in order to shop here. Lev et al. (2003) conducted a rapid market assessment on July 19, 2003, and estimated that of the more than 3,200 consumers that
189 showed up, 51 percent lived in Moscow, 23 percent in and around Pullman (10 miles away), and the rest came from outside of the Palouse watershed, some driving more than 60 miles.
The market is held each Saturday, May through October, from 8:00 a.m. to noon, and local musicians perform from 9:30 - 11:30 a.m. each week. One current agricultural vendor recalls that the market ―actually began in downtown Moscow in the 1960s.‖ She and her husband began selling their produce at this location ―before the city took control of it in
1977.‖ At that time, it moved a few blocks to its current location. At first, a single Arts
Commission Member was charged with its organization, but as the market grew, the City‘s
Director of Arts was given management responsibility. In 2006, the City Council voted to pay another part-time employee, who organizes the vendors every Saturday beginning at 6 A.M., counts the ―no shows‖ that did not previously call-in, and charges and situates the ―walk- ons‖—those vendors that did not buy a year-long stall but arrive early with produce or crafts ready for sale.
Today, the farmers‘ market typically has around 60 vendors offering crafts, prepared food, and produce. In 2009 there were 21 seasonal agricultural vendors, half of whom have brought food to market for over ten years. The Director says: ―I occasionally have to turn down vendors, but I can‘t remember the last time I‘ve turned down an ‗ag vendor‘—they‘re the most important part of the market.‖ The City encouraged the vendors to form an advisory board of eight vendors who periodically meet throughout the year. A three-member subcommittee of the Arts Commission also attends these advisory board meetings and helps in the development of the market, such as the recent decision to accept food stamps.
190 Table 7.2: Characteristics of Ag Vendors at Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market
Market Driving Interviewee Farmer Farm Type (Farm Size in Additional Marketing Tenure distance Code Household Acres) Strategies (years) (miles) Natural; rasp, cherries, apples, flower bouquets, jams, jellies, a FT plums, pears, veggies in 32 4 plants at Famers‘ market season, plants Not a Farmer; reseller of fruit b PT none 17 175 and vegetables Organic; grass fed cattle; Sells through local food stores c FT hormones/ antibiotic-free 2 24 and restaurants (100+) Natural; honey products, comb Sells through local stores; d FT honey, beeswax candles (5 rents bees to orchardists 7 31 Palouse locales) Natural; produce: tomatoes, peppers, squash, cantaloupe, Sell bedding plants at farmers‘ e PT 6 28 watermelon, eggplant, bedding markets plants, cucumbers Conventional; vegetables and f PT Sell through local food stores 27 38 orchard; pumpkins (20+) Agro-tourism guesthouse; sell Conventional; sheep and goats g FT through local food stores; 2 97 for cheese (32) cheese-making classes Gardening/nursery shop; h FT Natural; vegetables in season 10 19 handmade garden crafts Organic; free range chickens Bake goods at Farmers‘ i PT 4 11 (22) market Organic; vegetables (1) Sells through local food j FT 7 2 stores; CSA venture Sells flowers and bedding k FT Natural; vegetables (1) 10 53 plants at farmers‘ market l FT Natural; vegetables 17 50 Sells at 6+ farmers markets Conventional and Organic; ranging from Seattle to m FT fruit and vegetables, flowers, 23 143 Portland to Moscow; farm eggs, herbs (in 6 markets) shop Sells soaps through local stores; flowers (cut and dried), n PT Natural; vegetables, eggs (1) 6 2 goat kids, goat milk soap, and culinary and medicinal herbs. Imported Chinese goods at Farmers‘ market; sells produce o PT Natural; vegetables, herbs (1) 16 17 to local stores; operate a nonprofit Daoist Hermitage Sell cut flowers, decorative gourds at farmers‘ market; p PT Natural; vegetables (2) 9 54 contracts for weddings, and special occasions Home-grown; sheep yarns, q FT skins, and rugs; free range Website sales 11 9 eggs; garden produce (8)
191 I conducted interviews and farm tours with 17 agricultural vendors. Table 7.2 outlines main characteristics of each interviewee‘s farming strategy and operation. All interviewees defined themselves as ―local‖ food producers, and they all have sold food at the Moscow farmers‘ market, whether as a ―walk-on‖ or ―seasonal‖ vendor. Over 70 percent of the interviewed households reported that 50 percent or more of their annual income comes from direct sales at farmers‘ markets. The market is most important to seasonal agricultural vendors: six full-time farming households reported that market sales total 75 percent or more of their annual income. In most cases, part-time farming households relied heavily on the non- farming spouse‘s income and benefits.
Among vendors, perspectives of what constitutes ―local‖ and the factors that contribute to its construction vary. Nevertheless, actual distances, in mileage were frequently mentioned. This part of the interviews quickly grew complex, as it coincided with rumors of the Moscow Farmers‘ Market attempting to create a 100-mile radius restriction on food vendors, thus declining vendors that grow food outside this radius. On grower called it ―the unsolvable dilemma of local. Who decides? And how?‖
Though vendors rarely touched on historical geography as reasoning for varying transport distances, it was often apparent. For instance, of 10 full-time farming households selling at the Moscow Farmers‘ Market, six primarily farm vegetables. Five of these vegetable farmers make the majority of their sales here, traveling two, four, 19, 50, and 53 miles, the latter two coming from higher elevations northeast of Moscow. The other full-time vegetable farmer travels 143 miles from the west, traversing the same arid terrain as the market‘s only reseller, who brings fruits and vegetables grown in the Columbia River irrigation districts. It was not surprising to learn that those coming from the west are traveling longer distances—
192 conditions are increasingly arid as one moves west from the Palouse, thus irrigation becomes more necessary and the Columbia River irrigation districts are over 100 miles away from
Moscow (Figure 7.3). Furthermore, farmers‘ markets in Central Washington do not attract nearly as many customers as do those in the Seattle area and on the eastern side of the Basin.
Such social and ecological conditions create a notion of local that stretches further west of the
Palouse than east of it. Add to this the fact that the Central Washington venders have tenures at this market of 17 and 23 years and the farmer (not the reseller) is a top seller each week.
Such cases quickly complicate distant-dependant notions of local (e.g., everything within a
100 miles), and signify the importance of other factors in defining local, such as market tenure and market earnings relative to ―more local‖ vendors selling the same foods.
The Central Washington farmer also sends loaded trucks to Seattle farmers‘ markets.
He said, ―it‘s not like we want to travel so far, it‘s just that it‘s our only way of supporting the
‗local food‘ movement, heck, the middle of [Washington] State‘s a desert without the dams, nobody would live here without them.‖ In both cases, family and friends work the vendor booths when the farmers‘ are on the other side of the state. Other walk-ons travel over 200 miles over the Columbia Plateau to bring in-season fruits and vegetables from the Yakima and
Methow valleys. The market coordinator welcomes this because ―we can‘t get these specialty products from our more local vendors.‖ Of course, ―specialty‖ in this case refers to crops either not grown or not easily grown in the Palouse.
193
Figure 7.3: Agricultural Vendors at Moscow Farmers’ Market. The Palouse is outlined in red and the contour line interval is 25 miles.
194 On the other hand, some vendors disagreed with market coordination, and spoke in support of imposing a limit on farm-to-market distance, simply because, as one vendor said,
―some of these farms aren‘t very local.‖ Some employed west/Washington versus. east/Idaho dichotomies, while others focused on the concept of ―real locals.‖ One farmer said:
Real locals, like us that shop and live here, give back to the community, those guys that travel three hours to get here, they need to help their own local farmers markets if any local foods movement is going to compete with the big food industry. It wouldn‘t be a big deal but when they out-sell the local farmers trying to make a living a few miles outside of town, I think it‘s a problem.
While many farmers and vendors cooperated with each other, whether supplying inputs, helping with setup, trading goods, etc., added competition was noted among vendors selling the same or similar products. In which case, differentiation on the grounds of ―whose more local?‖ came into play, whether expressed in food miles of inputs, transport distances to market, and/or degree of participation within the community. Of course, the concept of ―the community‖ also ranged from Pullman-Moscow, the Palouse, and the Pacific Northwest, to the entire U.S. While obvious patterns do not exist, farmer perspectives on the determinants of both local food and a local food community were strongly associated with their particular geographic location (in relation to the Pullman-Moscow urban area) and particular farming activities.
Farming activities of the other four full-time farming households include: livestock, honey bees, cheese, and sheep (for yarns, skins, and rugs). One family raises ―naturally- grown‖ beef fed on pastures in both Washington and Idaho. They sell beef to local restaurants, three local retailers, directly to the consumer, and began selling at the farmers‘ market in 2008. The household cultivating bees not only specializes in honey production in multiple locales around the study area, but also trucks hives throughout the Columbia Basin to
195 pollinate orchards. Finally, a small dairy and goat cheese farmstead in southeastern
Washington recently began bringing cheese to market. On a 32-acre farm, they produce over
10 varieties of cheese, sell to local restaurants, and offer lodging, tours, and student internships. Of these four farmer households, the self-described ―sheepskinners‖ are the only household that does not rely on extended family labor to meet seasonal work demands. Two reported hiring laborers for up to two months each year. Another important market vendor was an eight-time walk-on; he is commonly referred to as the ―egg guy‖ and says he ―began with eggs solely as a marketing technique; eggs don‘t make any money, but they get people interested in our organic ‗meaters‘ (poultry chickens),‖ which he is certified to sell off his farm 25 miles east of Moscow.
Most of the farmers directly and indirectly called attention to ―a greater respect for our skills.‖ For instance, three farmers gauged the growing consumer interest in local food through their increased need to answer consumer questions on how to grow varieties in their home gardens, signifying not only that consumers are becoming more aware of seed-to-table phenomena, but also they also see the farmers as experts. One farmer said:
When I began all this [roughly eight years ago] I felt that I shouldn‘t share my secrets, kinda like mom or grandma‘s secret recipe ya know [chuckle] . . . But now, I find that sharing some of my tricks seems to keep customers . . . Then the problem is holding these conversations while measuring, doing math in my head, and all that. But that really only happens when we‘re busy in the early part of the market.
This perspective of farmer-as-expert leads to higher frequencies of farmer-consumer interactions. Furthermore, it is in stark contrast to the general belief among the public that agricultural economists‘ knowledge supersedes that of large-scale, global-oriented farmers.
196 In Palouse CivAg, the Moscow Food Co-op is just as much of a keystone to local food system development as is the Farmers‘ Market. It sits just one block from where the Farmers‘
Market is held and serves a large influx of customers from about 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on market
Saturdays. Consumers file in, often with friends they encountered at the market, to finish their shopping. Though most small-scale farmers prefer to sell at Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market
(because their returns are greater), the Co-op‘s produce manager says ―local farmers call to make sales anywhere from a week before to a day after harvesting a bigger than average crop.‖ Whereas the produce department buys mostly organic food, they abide by the Co-op‘s mission of supporting local growers and food citizenship. The produce manager says:
Not only do we take a [financial] loss and we have no way of anticipating what they have and when, we buy their tomatoes, garlic, napa cabbage, whatever . . . I notice more and more consumers not caring that some of it is not certified organic. It‘s as if local is becoming more important to some. That wasn‘t the case 5 or 6 years ago.
The Co-op produce manager orders mostly from Charlie‘s Produce based in Seattle, the
Northwest's leading organic produce supplier. As the importance of organic food has become large-scale and international, the produce manager says he has noticed more ―food miles in the organic industry.‖ This further motivates him to buy locally. He has recently encouraged growers to consider cooperative storage and a little more pre-planting communication, but to little avail as local farmers mostly plan crops for the farmers‘ market (and not for sale to the
Co-op).
Conclusion
Lyson (2005:94) broadly sees civic agriculture—CivAg—as being ―characterized by networks of producers who are bound together by place.‖ In order to better perceive the recent
197 development of CivAg in the Palouse region, this chapter cast the ethnographic present into a place-based environmental history. It demonstrates the common socio-cultural challenge presented by the unique Palouse ecosystem combined with the arid conditions of the
Columbia Plateau Province. Initial settlers avoided the most arid parts of the Basin, choosing instead the hillier and wetter eastern portions of the Palouse. Railroads and fossil fuels gave rise to large-scale and mechanized dryland farming; farm size increased as the number of farmers decreased. Today‘s emphasis on relocalizing the food and farming system recasts light on a regional problem that faded when inexpensive fossil fuels became available: When do the costs of traversing this arid landscape outweigh the benefits? Currently, some farmers‘ market vendors travel between 100 and 200 miles to market, and the apparent ―worth‖ of this travel is reflected in how they think of ―local.‖ Of course, as energy costs rise, their notion of local may be forced to change.
Ultimately, ―local‖ in the Palouse‘s civic food culture is closer to ―regional.‖ It is not fundamentally different than in the tribal world of Plateau Indians, whose subsistence strategies focused on local, seasonal rounds but also included travel to Montana for bison and
Celilo Falls for salmon. In fact, the roughly 100 miles driven is now probably par or less for seasonal round movement in the ethnographic period presented in chapter five and extending into the prehistoric past for some time. Subsistence strategies differ, however a sustainable model of regional food production and distribution in the Columbia Basin is likely to include food transport from the arid and less-populated central Basin.
It is important to position the development of a local food network within local, regional, and larger-scale movements (such as localism [in general] and civic agriculture) and to pay special attention to how relevant organizations adapt to the sociocultural and ecological
198 pressures coming from such movements. By organization, I refer to government agencies, non-profit organizations, and business enterprises, all of which maintain different and perpetually changing amounts of social power and work from different sociospatial scales.
The next chapter continues this goal by exploring the relations between food localism and the local land-grant university.
199 CHAPTER EIGHT
ORGANICS FOR THE LAND-GRANT, SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE COMMUNITY
Over the last few decades, the great costs associated with our global-scale, industrial food system have grown increasingly visible. Growing public concerns over environmental degradation, labor exploitation, urban sprawl, the loss of family farmers, the unrelenting infusion of molecular genetics and high energy-input agriculture, and the breakdown of rural communities rouse food insecurities in most human populations. Consequently, more people are asking where food comes from, how it is grown and prepared, and what implications it has for our health and environment.
Food draws together many urgent, complicated problems facing society, and figures ever more prominently in struggles for power and negotiations regarding policy (Hinrichs
2007). As a result, concerns of food security are taking center stage in discussions of today‘s converging crises: the increasing costs of oil and natural gas production and distribution, climate change and variability, social inequality, population growth, degraded natural resources and genetic loss, diminished water quality and quantity, global competition, economic concentration, accumulating wastes and hypoxia zones, etc. These discussions proliferate at our land-grant universities (LGUs), arenas in which food concerns are expected to thrive. But many feel that our LGUs have not done, and are not doing, enough to address pressing concerns of food security at the national- and global-level, and much less at the community and regional level.
A growing body of work, beginning around the 1940s, suggested that land-grant research and public policy systematically favored large, nonfamily corporate farmers over
200 smallholders (Goldschmidt 1978; Hightower 1972; McConnell 1953; van den Bosch 1978). In the 1970s, Hightower and Van den Bosch explicitly scrutinized the close relationships between the LGUs and agribusiness firms, arguing that this relationship contributed substantially to a loss of public trust in industrial agriculture and in LGUs. Though this distrust continues, by 1990, academics and activists alike shifted attention from public- focused, or ―Hightowerian,‖ criticisms to contesting private agribusiness activities, such as
GM crops and corporate consolidation (Buttel 2005). At the same time, it became less likely for new inventions to be transferred to agriculture via extension work; they were more likely to be patented and sold to private industry (Warner 2007).
Buttel (2005) points to the ―molecularization/geneticization‖ of agricultural biology in the 1980s and 1990s as the time when the Hightowerian movement bifurcated into two quite distinct movements—1) the agricultural sustainability/local food system movement and 2) the anti-genetically modified (GM) food/crop and anti-globalization movement, both of which have progressively backed away from contesting public research priorities. While the localism/sustainable agriculture movement increasingly aims to build an alternative locally based food system involving more direct linkages between farmers and consumers, it‘s scholars and activists decreasingly see activism against LGUs as a high priority. On the other hand, anti-biotechnology activism only indirectly focuses on LGUs through the core belief that LGU priorities and policies, such as their ties to biotechnology firms, the molecularization of their faculties, and their pursuit of patents (and royalties), have encouraged the development of GM crop varieties. Though neither movement is pleased with the direction of public agricultural research, the molecularization trend has led to a dramatic de-emphasis on applied research staffing; it continues to play a role in the demise of family
201 farmers, local agribusiness, and rural communities via patented knowledge licensed to multinational firms.
Nevertheless, because LGUs are publicly funded, the public could demand that they
―provide the kind of science to support the agro-environmental leadership that society needs‖ such as applied and participatory agroecological research (Warner 2007:48). However, if
LGUs are to engage localized food systems, they will need to launch new conversations about: 1) eliminating the assumptions inherent in conventional agricultural research, such as researcher/expert knowledge being superior to farmer knowledge and the eternal need for short-range maximization of production ( DeLind and Bingen 2005b); 2) contextualizing research and recognizing the particularities of place in production and distribution (DeLind and Bingen 2005b); 3) developing ways to encourage cooperative, civic work on publicly- deemed important tasks rather than mandate it via job requirements—citizen initiatives need to engage people personally (Chung and Baldwin 2005); and 4) re-emphasize applied research and partnerships within local agricultural communities. Although LGU administrators began creating programs for sustainable agriculture in the mid-1980s (e.g., at the same time as nation-wide extension program cuts at LGUs), all 11 programs are very small and marginal, averaging fewer than 6 employees and less than $1 million in annual budget (Warner
2007:53-54).
DeLind and Bingen (2005a) form two sets of important questions relating to LGUs and current efforts promoting civic agriculture—which refers to the embedding of local agricultural and food production in the community (Lyson 2004, 2005). First, they ask ―will the creation of chairs, and programs of sustainable agriculture be sufficient or will they simply become marginalized by the overwhelming influence of corporate agriculture and science?‖
202 Second, ―can we expect today‘s land-grant researchers to play a leadership role in developing research programs that support more localized food systems?‖ This chapter submits these questions to fieldwork on and around Washington State University‘s (WSU) small-scale, organic farm, analyzing its development alongside that of curricula, research programs, and civic responsibility that together underwrite emergent orientations of sustainable agriculture.
Sustainable Collegiate Farms
Many think that the recent development of small-scale, organic farms in LGUs and other colleges and universities is symbolic of their trying to promote local food and farming and civic agriculture. Mounting interest in sustainable farming has given rise to a wide range of operations at these farms, such as community supported agriculture (CSA), farmstands, dining hall contracts, food donations, and farmers‘ market participation. Whereas they all assert their smallness, organic standards, and sustainablity goals, they range from student club operations to older collegiate farms where labor-for-credit is fully integrated into various academic curricula. From 2004 to 2008, the number of small, university-based, organic farms in the
U.S. doubled from 40 to 80. Over two-thirds of them proclaim to be ―student-run‖ and the balance are ―teaching‖ and/or ―research‖ farms. Furthermore, less than a third of these farms are at LGUs, which? is less than the number found at small private colleges. While it may seem unreasonable to group these farms as a farm type, they share wide-ranging characteristics and are, in all cases, flanked by the simultaneous birth and growth of new degrees and programs at universities and colleges. These farms offer ―real world‖ opportunities that often translate into ―experiential‖ credit within one of these innovative academic degrees/programs. There are currently some 250 University departments, often
203 many within the same university, that offer education and training opportunities in
―sustainable agriculture‖ (Thompson 2008).
Not just to avoid conflicting definitions of ―college‖ and ―university,‖ I refer to these farms as sustainable collegiate farms. On the one hand, ―sustainability‖ is not just a stated goal of these farms, but also the banner word used to recruit students, sell the farm‘s produce, and promote local food systems. In addition, sustainability indirectly comprises the attributes of small-scale and organic –both of which characterize these farms. This claim finds support in a long history of theoretical and empirical work showing how growth in farm size, production, and capital tends to reduce socio-cultural and ecological sustainability, and how the reliance of non-organic farming on industrial chemicals leads to more pests and pest resistances, the need for more chemicals, and the build-up of toxic substances in soil and water (Barlett 1976; Bodley 2008; Goldschmidt 1978; Netting 1993:136, 143-156).
On the other hand, the word ―collegiate‖ calls attention to the ―unworldliness‖ of these farms—they are not operating as for-profit commercial enterprises. Their activities are buffered by the higher learning institution, whereas ―real‖ farmers operate in a capitalist system, with specific kinds of socio-economic relationships linked to private property-labor relations. Sustainable collegiate farms rely on student farmworkers and involve experimentation and idealistic practices that would be viewed as non-economic by smallholders and part-time farmers alike. This has given rise to new conflicts. For example, a unique quality of the typical CSA approach is that consumers, or shareholders, make a payment in advance of the growing season, thus minimizing the farm‘s production and marketing risks (Goland 2002; Ostrom 2007). However, these risks are not as apparent at a
204 CSA venture operating within the contexts and constraints of a collegiate farm, which spends money in ways a strictly commercial enterprise would not.
Falk et al. (2005) explored the conflict between teaching and demonstrating profitability at an organic farm with a CSA venture on New Mexico State University‘s main campus. In their analysis of this project, which was supported by a 3-year USDA grant, they cast light on multiple conflicts surfacing between the goals of sustainable CSA management and educational objectives: the electricity to run the cooler room is provided by the university; the seed costs to trial multiple varieties for educational and research purposes exceed what a commercial farm would withstand; labor hours surpass what is likely in a commercial venture because students working for class credit do not typically maximize their productive output; and with minimal land in production, the salary and benefits of a full-time farm manager can never be covered. Furthermore, the university uses drip irrigation in a county where most farmers use furrowing techniques to irrigate, thus demonstrating an out-of-context technology. It is likely that similar inconsistencies occur at the growing number of collegiate farms that have been launched in the U.S. by student clubs and/or faculty members over the last decade.
This discussion goes beyond pedagogical contradiction in hopes to better understand these tensions. It also hopes to support the development of sustainable collegiate farms in their planning stages. Even while priorities shift to documenting and analyzing the emergence of local food systems (Hinrichs 2007), it remains important to keep an eye on the surfacing of
LGU agricultural programs, their projects, and the manner in which they construct and institutionalize their versions of sustainable food systems. Many agree that there are now really ―two organics at work—one is small and civic, the other large and commercial‖
205 (DeLind and Bingen 2005b). Are LGU‘s going to modify their definition of sustainable agriculture to fit within the bounds of large-scale? If they do, will their participation in local food systems help or hinder the development of civic agriculture? Through a case study at
WSU, this chapter relates an organic farm‘s development to the simultaneous ―unfolding‖ of university and community relations that link back to the farm. For example, WSU‘s estimated
$12.4 million Palouse Ridge Golf Course and Club, which opened in August 2008, not only drains an alarming amount of water from the increasingly depleted Grand Rhonde aquifer, but also diminishes the organic farm‘s water pressure at unpredictable times.
WSU’s Organic Farm: A Case Study
Since 2004, WSU has had a three-acre certified organic farm that operates as a teaching farm for students in the Organic Agriculture Systems major and as a CSA enterprise. In a practicum course, Soils 480, students are taught how to grow organic fruits and vegetables and operate a CSA enterprise and small organic farm. The farm also provides space and technical assistance for graduate student research projects and though it has the goal of offering education to regional small-scale organic growers, this is not actively pursued. The organic farm, the CSA, and Soils 480 are all part of the Organic Agriculture Systems major, and students in the major are required to work on the farm by taking six credits of Soils 480.
One person, Brad Jaeckel, is charged with managing the organic farm, running the CSA, and teaching Soils 480, all under the supervision of John Reganold. According to Reganold: ―If students, faculty, growers, and community members want to learn about organic agriculture at
WSU, then they have to go through Brad.‖ Reganold, who has an international reputation for his research work in organic agriculture, with scientific papers appearing in Nature, Science,
206 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, and Scientific American, has spear- headed the development of the organic major and the teaching farm.
This case study is organized into two parts, based on the work done by my primary informant—Jaeckel, the farm manager. He constantly balances and tends to two domains that impact the farm‘s soil and his strategies to keep it fertile and healthy—the University and
Community. Within the parameters of the University, he teaches/trains the students, manages the farm budget within departmental constraints, and directly communicates with a departmental supervisor. His supervisor, in turn, communicates with the college dean, fundraising committees, WSU extension scientists, State Organic Regulation officers, etc.
Dealing with LGUs means dealing with public policy and the state, which plays a substantial role in influencing research and policies concerning the basic conditions within which rural residents live (Thu 2001). Primary data were collected through participant observations in
Jaeckel‘s Soils 480 class, analysis of production and budget/receipt notebooks, and formal and informal interviews with Jaeckel and his students. Most important to this part‘s analysis were interviews with Jaeckel, Dr. Reganold, and other faculty regarding the historical development of the farm and organic agriculture degree.
Linking to the community, Jaeckel and Jewelee Sullivan (the assistant farm manager) routinely communicate with shareholders, along with various individuals/organizations involved in supporting Palouse CAg, such as organic farmers, WSU compost facilities, nonprofits, etc. This section presents data collected from participant observation at the pickup sites, on class fieldtrips, and with related ventures and organizations. Near the end of the 2007 season, the 100 shareholders were mailed a questionnaire that I created in collaboration with both Jaeckel and Jewelee. The response rate was 49 percent. Some of the data collected from
207 these consumers focused on household characteristics, food preferences and consumption, awareness of CSA goals, and CSA membership satisfaction.
Information presented in this case study also draws on two years of participant observation on the farm and at the CSA pickup sites. Additional anecdotes are drawn from over three years of research with farmers and local food organizations within the Palouse watershed and the greater Columbia Basin.
Developing a Collegiate Farm/CSA within an Organic Major
Early in 2001, Reganold proposed to the Soils faculty the need for an introductory course in organic gardening and farming, in order to bring more students into the Soil Science major and into agriculture in general. In Fall 2001 he discussed this with Kathy Peck (who at that time was new to Pullman and later to become his graduate student) and they decided, with approvals by the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences and WSU administrators, that they would co-teach this course (Soils 101) in the Spring 2002 semester. The course is now listed as a permanent course in the WSU Catalogue.
At this time, Reganold thought ―why not start a B.S. degree in Organic Agriculture.‖
This made sense because 1) it might bring in students to the depleted field of agriculture, and
2) there were a number of prospective students in and outside the Pacific Northwest who were interested in such a program. In Fall 2001, he spoke about this with department chair, Tom
Lumpkin, and they began promoting the idea to the WSU administration and people around
Washington State.
At the 2002 International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM) meetings in Victoria, B.C., Reganold met with Gene Kahn and Alec McErlich of Small Planet
208 Foods and they mentioned they might be willing to donate funds for such a program. He spoke then of the program needing a summer field course, where the students could gain valuable first-hand knowledge in organic farming and gardening on a certified organic farm at
WSU. In December 2002, Kahn and McErlich each donated $6,250 for a subtotal of $12,500 to be matched by General Mills (owners of Small Planet Foods since 2000) for a total gift of
$25,000 to help get the Organic Agriculture degree off the ground. The funding was used to pay for Peck's salary as a graduate student to develop a new organic agriculture field course
(Soils 480), which would be the showcase course for the Organic Agriculture degree. In addition, to helping cover the cost of course development, including site assessment and preparation, organic certification, irrigation supplies, hand tools, nursery stock, and organic certification, Peck and Reganold received $15,500 from the WSU-Kellogg 2020 Fund.
Peck taught Soils 480 for the first time in the summer of 2004 on a new three-acre certified organic farm at Tukey Orchard on the Pullman Campus. Having worked for several years as a teacher of organic gardening and farming, Peck came to this endeavor with extensive in-field teaching experience at the University of California at Santa Cruz
Agroecology Apprenticeship Farm and the Urban Youth Farm in San Francisco. Introductory courses in organic farming and/or gardening such as Soils 480 are offered around the country by such institutions and organizations as University Extension, Master Gardeners, state certifiers, and community gardening organizations, but few are offered as part of an overall science-based curriculum in an academic setting and none, until now, had been offered as part of a degree program specifically in organic agriculture.
The three-acre farm site was designed as a hands-on laboratory and a training ground for applied principles in organic growing techniques and intensive, sustainable food
209 production. Students learn how to build, manage, and apply compost; till, cultivate, and prepare beds; plant, transplant, prune, irrigate, and harvest; and handle post-harvest, market produce, and keep books and records. Although the majority of the course focuses on hands- on training with a mix of 20 to 30 vegetables, fruits, flowers, and culinary herbs, the lectures and instructional materials cover market development and the science behind the practices, and provide a detailed introduction to social and environmental issues in agriculture. Students also participate in demonstrations, skills-building exercises, group projects, weekly discussions, and fieldtrips. Since 2007, students have visited a one-acre farm cultivated for the
Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market, UI‘s Soil Stewards (a student-run organic farm), the WSU composting facility, the WSU organic/perennial wheat breeding farm, and a farm tour co- organized by Tilth Producers of Washington and the Small Farms program of the Center for
Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources (CSANR) at WSU.
With Peck developing the field course, Reganold began working on the Organic
Agriculture B.S. degree in March 2003. To come up with the curriculum for such a degree, he met with faculty, staff, and students from the different agricultural departments in the College who would be involved in the degree program. He also had informal discussions with industry folks in the organic agriculture area. He especially needed faculty input to guarantee that any existing courses in their department that would be requirements in the Organic Agriculture curriculum would have between 10 and 15 percent of the course material dealing with organic agriculture. From these meetings, the curriculum for the organic agriculture degree began to take shape. However, in the summer 2003, Reganold was informed that the number of degrees in the College would likely be reduced for financial reasons. This meant that there would likely be a new Agriculture and Food Systems B.S. degree, under which the following majors
210 would fit: General Agriculture, Agricultural Technology and Mechanization, and Viticulture and Enology. Informed that Organic Agriculture would be a good fit in this degree program,
Reganold agreed under the following condition that the actual B.S. diploma and student transcript would read "B.S. in Agricultural Systems with a Major in Organic Agriculture."
Whereas the Organic Agriculture Systems major, the first of its kind in the U.S., has been open for enrollment since Fall Semester 2006, the organic farm has been operational since 2004. For the next three years, the Organic Farm‘s budget was met partially from the sales of produce grown on the Farm (mostly via the CSA venture). The remainder came from salary accruals in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, small gift grants from Small
Planet Foods and General Mills, and funding from CSANR. For example, in 2007, CSANR gave $5,000 for farm equipment and materials and another $12,000 for the salary of the Farm
Manager/Instructor. The Organic Farm is currently a BIOAg Learning Site and it is in the process of being expanded from three to four acres allow time in the crop rotation to build soil in larger areas.
The ―direct farm fund,‖ which is the monies that the farm actually brings in, has been gradually increasing since 2005. The first CSA marketing efforts resulted in 86 shares in 2005 with a small waiting list. The shareholder list grew to 96 in 2006 with a waiting list of nearly
50 people. With 65 half shares and 31 full shares, the CSA memberships brought $33,000 to the farm fund. With $1,112 of produce sold at Moscow‘s Farmer‘s Market and $340 to the
Food Co-op, the 2006 tally was $34,452. This total increased to $43,307 in 2007, mostly due to the additional shares and increased sales to the Moscow Food Co-op. Despite these revenue increases, the collegiate farm has relied on an average of more than $20,000 from non-farm
211 funds each year. The 2008 and 2009 years remained similar to 2007, both in the number of shareholders and farm fund management.
I held informal interviews with most of these students while weeding, transplanting, etc., on the farm. It was often reported that many of their professors offered negative opinions of organic agriculture. As one student said, ―a lot of professors and students not studying organics think that we‘re just over here playing in the dirt,‖ and then added sarcastically, ―I guess I need to go to the lab more often if I want to be a real soil scientist.‖ Some felt that the negative perspective on organics was due to WSU being in an agro-industrial region, or because the faculty supported large, private agribusiness for funding/grant possibilities.‖
Notably, all of the students thought the organic agriculture degree would become more popular over time. While a growing number of WSU faculty are connecting with CSANR, others grew up on large grain, cattle, or dairy farms or have spent their professional careers analyzing single commodities. Consequently, it is difficult for them to consider a more local, small-scale, and organic perspective.
Connecting University Soil and Student Labor within Palouse Civic Agriculture
After participating on the farm, in classes, and at the Moscow pick-up site for the duration of the 2008 season, I made a deal with Jaeckel in 2009. I gave him four hours of work each week in return for a half share. The nature of our agreement was typical in the context of CSA where consumers form direct connections with the farmer(s) to obtain their food (Andreatta
2000; Goland 2002). But my arrangement is relatively rare within WSU‘s CSA venture. The student-farmworkers swap money, labor, and academic effort for university credits and some
―real world,‖ experiential insight into organics, small-scale farming, and CSA management.
212 Their labor inputs combine with skilled management and mentoring to produce and prepare weekly boxes of food for more than 100 shareholders.
Because only a couple of us trade labor for food, the majority of shareholders either pay $325 for a half share or $525 for a full share. A full share or a ‗box‘ contains enough vegetables for 4–6 people per week, and a half-share is designed for 2–3 people. Along with more food, the full share contains a little more variety each week. In fact, some members have arranged to split full shares to take advantage of the greater variety. Each week, the shareholders also receive a newsletter that provides an update of what is happening on the farm as well as recipes for produce they receive that week. Eighty-six percent of the 2008 shareholder respondents said that they used these recipes, averaging over six uses each throughout the season.
Half of the CSA membership picks up their weekly share at the farm and are thus required to visit the site and interact with WSU students and farm staff. The other half picks up their produce at the new Pullman Farm Fresh Market at a pickup/farmstand. At both sites, shareholders have the option of trading one of the week‘s featured items for one item of equal value on the exchange table (consisting of harvest extras). Eighty-eight percent of survey respondents reported to have used the farmstand as an exchange table at least once, and of these shareholders, they averaged 11 trades over the course of the 24-week season. This appeases shareholders that get overwhelmed by the weekly variety and often hold up an item and ask ―What do I do with this?‖
Weekly portions of produce are sold to the Moscow Co-op and donated to local food banks as well as to other non-profits in need of additional food. Jaeckel is very clear with the
213 Co-op‘s produce manager that he does not want to compete for sales with local farmers; he only wants to sell produce that other farmers do not have available.
Of the survey respondents, the average household size was 2.9. They averaged 0.8 children in the household, and lived an average of 4.5 miles from their pickup site. The demographic data in Table 8.1 paints the average shareholder as in their mid 40s with a household income of $80,000 a year. Being that high income is often associated with sustainable food systems, a crucial question becomes – can the sustainability ethic be developed in lower income people, or do we really need to achieve a better distribution of wealth and income for social and ecological sustainability?
Table 8.1: Demographic Information for Survey Respondents
Household Income Percent Responding <$25,000 14 $25-49,999 14 $50-74,999 24 $75-99,999 38 $100-124,999 12 >$125,000 0
Age of Respondent 0-18 0 19-29 10 30-39 31 40-49 31 50-59 26 60 and up 19
Sample size = 49/102
The majority of respondents (65 percent) reported that between 75 and 99 percent of their fresh produce needs were obtained from their CSA membership. Members were asked to
214 rate, from 1 being ―not important‖ to 4 being ―very important,‖ a list of 14 possible reasons for joining. There was a tie for the highest ranking between ―desire for fresh produce‖ and
―desire for locally grown produce.‖ These were followed, in order, by ―desire to support a local farmer or farm,‖ ―desire for organic produce,‖ ―knowing where/how your food was grown,‖ and ―general concern for the environment.‖ Additionally, through informal interviews, it became obvious that consumer expectations (Table 8.2) were high because many new recruits joined after connecting first with Jaeckel‘s personal network.
Table 8.2: Expectations of Survey Respondents
Percent Responding Degree to which expectations were met: Exceeded expectations. 39 Matched expectations. 53 Fell short of expectations. 2 Had no expectations. 4
Expectations were influenced by: A previous CSA experience 37 What I learned from the CSA farmer 37 Information I read/received from other venues 24 What a friend told me 14 What other shareholders told me 12 I had no expectations 12
From whom or where did you learn of CSA From the CSA farmer 29 From a shareholder/CSA member 20 From a WSU webpage of web bulletin 18 From a friend or a neigher 14 Newspaper/radio/TV 10 From a bulletin or poster at a store or public place 10 From a family member 2 From other CSA workers, volunteers, students, etc. 2
Sample size = 49/102
215 Jaeckel has a farm outside of Moscow, and he and his wife sell goods at the Saturday farmer‘s market, including food surpluses from their farm. He began a CSA in 2003, before being hired as Peck‘s assistant. When becoming the farm manager in 2005, he brought his
CSA clientele and civic-minded reputation with him. In brief, Jaeckel‘s widespread involvement in Palouse CivAg, both previously and currently, notably allows for greater trust in WSU‘s participation within the local food system.
The literature indicates that the challenge of dealing with food and meal preparation in new ways is responsible for much of the high turnover rate experienced by CSAs (DeLind and
Harman-Fackler 1999; Goland 2002). In this case, only half of the 16 percent of shareholders that did not plan to buy a share next season said it was because they disliked having to learn how to use new foods. Other reasons for leaving the CSA included the expense, a planned move, and a desire to try-out the local, non-university CSA. Still, this sample showed a high retention rate (77 percent). In his almost daily farm tours, Jaeckel comments on there
―seeming to be less turnover each year,‖ which indeed has been the case, with the retention rate increasing from 60 percent in 2006, 67 percent in 2007 to 77 percent in 2008.
A unique feature of the CSA approach is the opportunity to educate consumers about what it takes to grow fresh produce and to build support for local food systems (Andreatta
2000). Over the last few years, Jaeckel has documented production data so that he knows what planting dates will tend to produce the necessary harvest quantities on Wednesday and
Friday harvest days throughout the season. He also needs to consider share variety and what he has learned about shareholder preferences. For instance, he could grow more arugula, but it tends to be either loved or hated by his shareholders. So he spaces it as a monthly treat for the arugula-lovers and prepares the exchange table for the arugula-haters.
216 Aside from teaching students and shareholders, Jaeckel must continuously think of his student labor hours and the health of the farm‘s soil. Because harvest days—Tuesday and
Friday—require the most work, he plans on having between six and eight student farmworkers at the farm on those days. The biggest obstacle to a successful harvest is meeting necessary labor requirements. For this reason, students need to find a substitute when they are going to miss a harvest day. Additionally, he devises crop rotation strategies, fertilizing schedules, seeding rates and methods, and pest management practices. He makes his seed and input purchases from a variety of companies: Peaceful Valley Farms Supply, Cascade Seed
Company, Seeds of Change, Ronnigers Seeds (potatoes), Johnny‘s, and Irish Eyes Garden
Seeds. Organic Fish emulsion fertilizer comes from the Seattle area and compost arrives in one to two massive loads from the WSU composting facility. A part-time, subsistence farmer on the side, Jaeckel enjoys interpreting, working, and talking about the Palouse soils, and how certain vegetables grow better or worse here. During his almost daily farm tours for community members, student parents, shareholders, etc., he emphasizes the silty-loam features of Palouse soils and the need to constantly care for it by means of cover-cropping, amending, and carefully planning crop rotations. He says ―If they leave here with anything, I hope that is it.‖ Ironically, most political and economic institutions, including LGUs, are simply not set up to pay attention to soil.
Culturally-shaped interest in the benefits of CSAs—fresh, seasonal produce and supporting local food systems—seem to translate to university-run CSAs despite the fact that it is not directly supporting a local farmer. This raises an important question: Can what
DeLind and Bingen (2005b:134) refer to as the ―organic conscience‖ be grown in the land- grant universities? This conscience prefers community and diversity, and values place,
217 democracy and ―principles that describe and support a living system that breathes from the soil on up‖ (DeLind and Bingen 2005b:134). But organic agriculture also means submission to state and federal standards for certification, tax codes affecting farm income, and the eligibility of growers for farm subsidies and emergency relief based on politically determined criteria (Andreatta 2000). Historically, land-grant universities make plans and structure the landscape according to ―business as usual‖ strategies. WSU‘s CSA shareholders represent a wealthy constituency and WSU‘s civic engagement relies heavily on the farm manager‘s pre- existing connection to Palouse CivAg. Furthermore, these findings suggest that there is a need to foster small-scale, organic research goals that will pertain to realities experienced by locally-oriented farmers. If the collegiate farm, CSA, and organic major are to develop within an organic conscience, it must radically depart from typical tenets of conventional research practice and economic development. If not, it runs the risk of allowing researchers to flip from organic to molecular—from ecology to biotechnology—without bothersome internal contradiction (DeLind and Bingen 2005b).
Launching the Pullman Farm Fresh Market
Until 2009, the WSU Organic Farm CSA venture delivered half of its weekly shares at the
Moscow Co-op‘s Tuesday afternoon growers‘ market. About mid-growing season 2008,
Jaeckel began considering the possibility of starting a farmers‘ market in Pullman. At the end of the 2008 season an unofficial committee was formed, meetings were held, and potential sites were examined. It was then discovered that the Pullman Chamber of Commerce was also actively pursuing the idea of a farmers‘ market, and therefore a partnership was formed and
218 Jaeckel began planning to distribute half of his shares at the new Pullman Farm Fresh Market in 2009.
At first, a WSU parking lot was to be the new market site. However, due to the high cost of renting the parking lot for the market season, the committee selected the parking lot next to the Old Post Office in downtown Pullman. The Old Post Office is now a Wine Bar owned by the president of the Pullman Chamber of Commerce; the parking lot was given to the farmers‘ market free of charge.
Prior to the opening of the market, the county health department became a sponsor, donating approximately $500 for advertising and other costs associated with the market. The
WSU farm and the Chamber decided that Jaeckel should be the market manager for the market‘s first year, and first year only. The position will be filled by the Chamber in 2010.
Pre-market planning was carried out by the WSU organic Farm manager- Jaeckel- and the Pullman chamber of commerce--Tammy Lewis. They made rules and outlines for operation, applications, and securing vendor stalls (Table 8.3). In April, Jaeckel created a paid position for an onsite market manager (paid by the WSU Organic Farm). The Chamber handled most of the advertising (print, radio and sandwich board notices) and scheduled musicians for many of the market dates. Vendor applications were submitted to the WSU organic farm, the Chamber, or onsite the day of the market. Vendors were placed at the market by the market manager, but were not necessarily assigned a permanent space. Market sales sheets were handed out and collected by the market manager, and then entered into a spreadsheet that tracked attendance and sales by vendor, by week. I acquired the information in Table 8.4 from the market managers as it was collected, and again at the end of the season.
219 Table 8.3: Basic Rules for Pullman‘s Farm Fresh Market, 2009
Mission – To provide local food growers and producers an effective direct market sales site and to provide consumers with a source for local fresh produce and products. Sponsorship – Pullman Chamber of Commerce and Whitman County Dept. of Health Anchor tenant – WSU Organic Farm Location – Old Post Office, 245 SE Paradise, Pullman, WA 99163 Time – Wednesday afternoons, 4:30-6:30 p.m. May 20th through October 28th Market management – WSU Organic Farm staff or intern Marketing and Insurance coverage – Pullman Chamber of Commerce Products sold at the Market are limited to four categories, listed below as A though D. All vendors must be Washington State or neighboring county farms and businesses. Each vendor’s application for a permit to sell shall state what is grown/ produced/made by the vendor, and what products the vendor intends to sell at the Market.
A. Fresh Farm products: Includes fresh fruit and vegetables, herbs, nuts, honey, dairy products, eggs, poultry, mushrooms, meats and fish. Also included in this category are fresh grown flowers, nursery stock and plants. All fresh farm products must be grown or produced by the seller.
B. Value added Farm Products: Includes preserves, jams and jellies, cider, wine, beer, distilled spirits, syrups, salsas, smoked or canned meats or fish, dried fruit, flours, salad dressings and limited on-site processed farm food such as roasted peppers and roasted peanuts, nursery stock and plants. All value added farm foods must be made from raw products/ingredients, a majority of which are grown and produced by the seller. Nursery stock and plants must have value added from original state.
C. Dried flowers, Crafted Farm Products: Allowed are bouquets, wreaths, roping, arrangements and displays of fresh and dried flowers, vines and gourds. These items must be grown, foraged and produced by vendor on vendor‘s land. These items are intended as a supplement to fresh produce or other fresh farm or value added products.
D. Processed Foods: Includes juices, wines, preserved foods, salad dressings, jams, beer, pastries, pasta, granola, cookies, muffins, breads, pies and related take home desserts, not prepared on site. Vendor must be an active owner/operator of the business and may not be operating under a franchise agreement. Processed foods must be produced by the vendor from raw ingredients. Vendors in this category are those who have cooked, baked or otherwise treated the product they sell. No commercially prepared dough mixes, crusts, shells or fillings are allowed. All processed foods must have the proper permits and must carry product liability insurances. Copies of proof of insurance must be provided to market manager.
220 Table 8.4: Pullman Farm Fresh Market 2009: Sales, Vendors
Total Market Sales for Season $19,924 Average Market Sales $905/week High day $1833 on July 1 Low day $216 on October 14 Farm fresh product $10,134 Value-added product 0 Crafted farm product $515 Processed foods $9,275 Total number of vendors 25 Sellers with over $2,500 in sales 5
Most of the vendors had participated in either the Moscow Farmers‘ Market on
Saturday or the Moscow Co-op Growers‘ Market on Tuesdays. Sixteen of the 25 vendors routinely participated in the Moscow Farmer‘s market, and only three vendors had not participated in either market. Of these three, two brought fruit from Central Washington, disappointing the ―more local‖ fruit vendors with their low pricing. In both cases, the vendors heard of the market through their children, who were attending WSU. One vendor travelled over 200 miles and worked the stall with his daughter. He said ―I came and saw the prices and thought, ‗I could bring produce and make a killing, . . . and see my daughter for the weekend.‖ The other stall was operated by two WSU students—siblings within an orchard household. In return for driving some 360 miles each week, home and back, they earned all they sold ―for spending cash.‖ Excluding these two Central Washington cases, the vendors at the Pullman Farm Fresh Market, like the Co-op Growers‘ market, did not travel as far to sell their product as was typical of vendors at the much larger Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market.
Despite lower customer turnouts than the other markets, local vendor feedback was positive. The vendors understand that a farmers‘ market needs time, often years, to grow.
Overall, the market space provided them visibility and a venue to network and communicate
221 with other food producers and customers. Likewise, customer and community feedback was supportive of the market. At least 4 different entry-level courses included the market in their class projects that included such activities as customer surveys, farmer surveys, and requests of daily sales. At the end of the season, a ―Food With Thought‖ event, sponsored by both the market and the WSU Organic Farm, brought growers, customers, vendors, community members and business owners together to celebrate the market success, share information about moving the market forward and networking the resources that exist in the community to work toward collaborative goals around food systems in Pullman.
Each farmers‘ market is unique based on place, history, customers, and vendors. This market is currently under the direction of WSU. While this is due to Jaeckel‘s pioneering efforts and remains convenient, civic ownership will likely require separation from the
University. Of course, this would require more CivAg organizational investment. Throughout the year, major food localism-supporting organizations, such as Rural Roots, Backyard
Harvest, and the Palouse Clearwater seemed resistant to link up with this new market. Rural
Roots is suffering financial difficulties and Backyard Harvest personnel, while expanding local operations, are working at full capacity. For the new market to establish itself as another keystone of the Palouse CivAg, it will likely need to establish more partnerships and, if unable to garner the efforts of key individuals in the Palouse CivAg community, hope for a local resident to follow-up on the enthusiasm that Jaeckel initially gave to this venture.
Pollan and WSU, CivAg and the Palouse
In May 2009 the Palouse region in the Pacific Northwest gained national attention when
Washington State University (WSU) decided to drop Pollan‘s The Omnivore’s Dilemma as its
222 ―common reading‖ selection for all incoming freshman. This outraged individuals and organizations at a variety of scales, from local faculty and students to alumni and sustainable food supporters throughout the country. Although University officials explained the slash as part of a general plan to endure the $54 million cut in the institution‘s biennial state appropriation, many perceived the prominent agricultural university as yielding to agribusiness interests. One account suggested pressure came from a member of the board of regents who owns and operates a 5,500-acre farm near Walla Walla, is a founding stockholder in the Bank of the West in Walla Walla and is a member of the Washington Association of
Wheat Growers (Spokesman Review, 21 May). Another put forward that committee members were told the cancellation was ―in large part because of political pressure arising from this year's book choice‖ [Chronicle for Higher Education, 21 May]. Caught up in myriad tensions resulting from this (such as support for sustainable agriculture versus economic priorities and intellectual freedom versus academic capitalism), WSU quickly reinstated the book.
While this quieted nation-wide criticism, WSU‘s reinstatement of The Omnivore’s
Dilemma strengthened the controversy at the local level, at least for a while. In and out of the classroom, land grant University decision-making was frequently questioned by students, staff, faculty, and farmers‘ market consumers in conjunction with the issues raised by Pollan, such as the social-ecological implications of eating a petroleum-based corn diet and the prospects for constructing more localized and regional food systems. This discourse contributed to a surge of interest in the Palouse‘s local food and farming network, one that grows within and alongside one of the world‘s largest grain-producing regions. Long lines began to form at the WSU organic farm‘s on-campus farm stand and residents routinely attended Pullman‘s new Wednesday evening farmers‘ market. Students, farmers and
223 community members discussed Pollan‘s book and LGU decision-making in connection with their local food network, taking notice of shared and competing interests of various parties working at a confounding assortment of scales. Then autumn progressed, WSU‘s farmstand sales fell to half of the previous year‘s, vendor numbers shrunk at the farmers‘ market responding to the dwindling number of food shoppers, and news of an early freeze killing crops quickly passed through the university community. These events suggest that while the transformation of our food system is politically contested at all spatial scales, the content of particular scales, such as that of the Palouse local food system, goes on changing in terms of extent, content, and relative importance to other scales, such as state, region, nation, global.
The controversy, as much as the contents of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, illustrates how food embodies and expresses both social and biophysical processes, whose drivers operate at a variety of interlocked and nested spatial scales. First and foremost, the controversy raises questions about the political powers of public university presidents and regents, and how their social and moral responsibilities may collide with personal interest relating to the current agricultural landscape. Regents, much like directors that sit on corporate boards, play important roles in structuring the shape and use of communities, locales in which they typically do not reside. Like all of us, their decision-making is restricted by ―bounded rationality‖—they filter information, forget mistakes, make choices that often do not produce intended results, and tend to focus on short term personal goals (Henrich et al. 2001; March
1994). In fact today‘s growing sustainability problems (at all scales) may directly relate to these tendencies: as social groups grow in scale and complexity, higher level human decision- makers become decreasingly sensitive to social and ecological problems at lower levels
(Bodley 2003; Rappaport 1977). Pollan, however, does not point at elite decision-making or
224 the scale of human organization as culprits in contemporary food concerns. Instead, he blames federal policies and every American‘s meal choices for promoting a petroleum-based corn diet. Through linking the agricultural industry to obesity, food poisoning, and environmental damage, Pollan‘s focus is to raise questions of the social, political, moral and environmental implications of the food people eat. He provides rich and alert ethnographic anecdotes that are reminiscent of Hornborg‘s ―contextualist‖ stance—one that ―recognize[es] local and implicit meanings as the essential components of sustainable livelihood‖ and ―denies the capacity of abstract, totalizing systems such as science or the market to solve the basic problems of human survival‖(2001:176). Pollan notably attempts to complicate simplistic impressions of agriculture, such as big is bad, local is good, and industrial is evil, and takes aim at collective values, suggesting that Americans need to change the way they think about food. In this way,
WSU‘s ubiquitous reading assignment—The Omnivore’s Dilemma—and the controversy of its selection come together to highlight linked circumstances that both impact and are effected by processes operating at a variety of spatial scales: 1) the distribution of decision-making power in commanding food system processes and 2) the spatial distribution of contemporary food practices (production, distribution, consumption, regulation, surveillance, administration, etc.) and their associated consequences, such as environmental degradation, obesity, labor exploitation, the loss of family farmers, and the breakdown of rural communities, etc.
225 CHAPTER NINE
CONCLUSION: SUSTAINABLE SCALES AND MAKING SHIFTS
Although food and agriculture comprise only a small fraction of the United State‘s total gross domestic product, it is often in relation to food that people appreciate localism. It is perhaps most important to note that civic food culture as seen through the food localism movement has considerable internal variation and diversity, including class divisions. The linkages between Palouse farms and consumers via Moscow‘s Farmer‘s Market and Food Co-op are based on small farmers and middle class consumers. Alternatively, some non-profit food organizations (such as Backyard Harvest) and CSAs (such as Soggy Bottom Farms) focus on the needs of rural working class and poor people. Furthermore, people who live in different regions experience different opportunities and burdens. Therefore, inquiries regarding the link between food systems and scale must be, first and foremost, grounded in a particular place, and the incorporation of history, political economy, ecological conditions, and epistemology should also be situated in that place. The question is: what combination of food system(s) will sustain a given regional population?
Food system processes and cultural scale have served throughout this dissertation as organizing devices to help identify connections among variables related to contemporary food system problems. From this viewpoint the problem becomes how to design a global system that will permit small-scale, community-based cultures maximum autonomy to thrive within large-scale states interconnected by a global, capitalist market system that is itself sustainable.
Scale theory offers a liberating approach to contemporary problems because it identifies scale itself as the principle problem. Scale problems are produced by growth in the size of societies,
226 polities, and economies. Because growth in scale concentrates social power, proportionately fewer people make more important decisions for growing numbers of people.
We know that the global food system as presently constructed is unsustainable, but that does not mean that local food systems are just and sustainable. To recapitulate, sustainability refers to the ability of the members of any human society to acquire the energy and materials needed for successful cross-generational maintenance and reproduction of individual households, society, and culture. To address sustainability, we need to think about the carrying capacity of the planet and the growth logic of human societies. Because the growth logic of today‘s dominant, commercially-organized human societies is driven in part by a financial system that rewards short-term growth in revenue and profitability, the long-run solution to the underlying problem of sustainability will require developing alternative ways of organizing the global economy (Bodley 2001, 2003; Hess 2007, 2009).
The Significance of a Place-Based, Food Culture Approach
A recent collection of articles was organized around civic agriculture and the theme of ―re- making the food system‖ characterized much of the scholarship in agro-food studies (Hinrichs and Lyson 2007). Some of this work calls attention to an irony of recent popular enthusiasm for food localization efforts: the presumption that once certain institutions and practices are in place, food system localization proceeds in a fairly predictable way (Hinrichs 2007; see also
Norberg et al. 2000). The irony resides in unsuspectingly repeating popular yet false assumptions about the development of the large-scale, industrial food system. So it goes: if globalization is seen as one master, unilinear process of industrialization, standardization and environmental decline, then localization becomes its reverse, ―a process that will neatly and
227 predictably turn the bad to good‖ (Hinrichs 2007:10). Thus starting a farmers‘ market or a
CSA venture will result in desired outcomes, such as economically viable farms, better availability of fresh produce, and a healthier, less degraded environment. In reality, both processes—globalization and localization—are far more complicated. Even though global industrial agriculture has succeeded, in part, by creating a systemic illusion of ―placelessness‖
(Dupuis 2002, 2005; Goodman and Watts 1997), the particulars of globalization, like localization, are likely to vary for reasons associated with the significance of particular places
(Hinrichs 2007). Furthermore, as this dissertation has argued, understanding both social and ecological elements of particular places is essential to building local food systems.
Constructionist perspectives of scale call attention to the significance of place, insisting that understanding and solving contemporary human problems must take into account historical change in socionature as well as in the way people perceive it. For this reason, this dissertation—historical and cross-cultural examination of food system scale in the
Columbia Basin—has entailed constant attention to how both the Basin and Columbia Basin peoples have changed together through time, from very mobile, small-scale Plateau tribal groups cross-utilizing resource zones within a basin-wide fishery, to large urban populations reliant on trading regional industrial products, such as hydroelectricity, Palouse grains, and
Yakima fruits. Dramatic increases in the speed and volume of both regional exploitation and distribution is symbolic of the Columbia Basin‘s participation in a global food system designed by progressively fewer individuals disproportionately benefiting from their own direction of a handful of multinational corporations. This globally-oriented industrial food culture is neither socially nor ecologically sustainable: it involves enormous concentrations of political and economic power that produces immense profits for global elites, and is
228 inherently insensitive to the needs of local communities and ecosystems (Bodley 2001;
Heffernan 2000). Of course, we cannot go back to the tribal world, but underlying principles of Plateau food culture, in particular those of social scale, cross-utilization of resources, and notions of local/regional subsistence patterns, can help us construct more feasible food systems.
As introduced in chapter two, it is delusional to ignore local and regional geographic contexts because it reinforces what Hornborg calls a ―global we‖ perspective that ignores the unequal power relations and associated environmental burdens at multiple socio-ecological scales that range from planetary to household levels (2007:1). The case of Washington State‘s apple industry demonstrates how a few well-positioned individuals kick-started irrigation projects, large-scale plantings, and long-distance transport based on the prospects for an apple market in Europe. Despite industry downturns during WWII, Columbia Basin apple growing regions maintained these early institutionalized goals. The large growers formed marketing cooperatives, created special Washington State apple grading standards, and lobbied for state and national support that came via the Columbia Basin Irrigation Project (in the 1950s), controlled atmosphere storage technology (1959), and the USDA‘s Market Access Program.
As Columbia Basin peoples built more cities, dammed more rivers, and replaced sagebrush landscapes with orchards, state and national advertising campaigns marketed Washington apples as pure and nutritious, like the Pacific Northwest, obscuring the fact that the environment of the Pacific Northwest had so recently been ―built‖ (Jarosz and Qazi 2000).
Furthermore, because the primary objective of industrial food culture is financial return for investors, the often devastating socio-cultural and ecological conditions (involving community well-being, citizenship, farmworker health, chemical pollution, fossil fuel
229 reliance, monocropping, etc.) shaped by such goals are virtually irrelevant. The crucial point is that today, in central Washington, much of the social and ecological landscape is marked by a century of large-scale, industrial fruit production and its long-distance transport. Any attempt to propose and develop sustainable food systems in this local and regional environment requires major changes in social-ecological relations, land tenure laws, ownership, and economic decentralization.
Moran (2006) suggests that humans, as a species, tend to think and act primarily within the constraints of local territories, and thus struggle to understand their cumulative, global impact. This evolutionary tendency is consistent with Kosse‘s (1990, 1996) indication that human‘s are cognitively limited to remembering specific social knowledge of no more than five hundred individuals. These human constraints worked in the tribal Columbia Basin, where small-scale Plateau groups, and families within groups, moved through their well- traveled, seasonal rounds, but also participated in a regional food system shaped by the ecology of the regional salmon empire as well as the mobility and exchange requirements to subsist upon it. Groups participated in sub-regional councils, but no governing body regulated the regional system. Each group had sufficient autonomy and control over their territorial bases to maintain their societies and cultures. They also had substantial access to each others‘ territories. In the commercial Columbia Basin, few (and often distant) people structure the socionatural landscape, as demonstrated by warehouse consolidation in the apple industry, fewer farmers and bigger farms in the Palouse, and evidence of land grant university research being directed by government policies and multinational corporations. History, political economy, ecological conditions, ideology, and identity all enter into the complex calculus through which orchardists, migrant farmworkers, Palouse farmers, and university professors
230 devise their short- and long-term strategies, but these individuals, like many, are required to think and act beyond their local community and territorial needs. Activities like forecasting global wheat prices, planning travel up the western migrant stream to find next month‘s apple- picking jobs, or selecting globally-oriented and fundable research topics, notably leads people to more globally-focused guessing and prospecting and less thinking and acting within their local community and home territory, the places that they are most able to positively impact.
Commercially-driven food systems not only allow distant elites to consequentially structure the material and symbolic contexts within which Columbia Basin individuals act, but also cut more and more people out of the food system through producing greater social inequality.
Understanding place-based, socio-spatial scale thresholds is crucial for creating sustainable futures.
Situating Food Localism and Food System Scale
Whereas localization is not merely the reverse process of globalization, many researchers recognize that the globalization of societies is what has given rise to the reemergence of the local (Hess 2007). Hess (2009:2-8) reviews many ―types‖ of localization in the United States, including high-tech manufacturing clusters positioned in global cities, the devolution of federal responsibilities to state and local governments, the hyperlocalism of large retail and information corporations, and grassroots movements to relocalize society to adjust to a resource-constrained and post-carbon world. While this latter type relates to food system relocalization, today‘s local food movement is more all-encompassing; it is part of a more general localism movement. Today‘s localism is a reform movement built on the sense that place-based communities have lost political and economic sovereignty to multinational
231 corporations; ―localists are concerned with achieving greater local ownership and more democratic steering of regional economies‖ (Hess 2009:241).
Localists oppose huge government subsidies, tax breaks, and any other incentives that go to large corporations, and, in short they oppose, ―the loss of democracy to corporatocracy‖
(Hess 2009:11). The general inability of weakened democratic institutions to resolve contemporary problems of sustainability and justice has, at least in part, spurred the proliferation of alternative economic institutions that grow alongside movements for reform of the global economy. Farmers‘ markets, CSAs, and community gardens are a part of this movement, but so are locally-owned small businesses, employee-owned firms, local government agencies, community-oriented nonprofit organizations, local public-private partnerships, fair-trade cooperatives, and credit unions. These civic-minded partnerships and enterprises are all elements of an alternative global economy that refuse to assume that infinite growth is possible and that the maximization of profits should out-rank even the most perverse social-ecological costs (Hess 2009). Hess describes this movement:
To the extent that localists engage in the work of building an alternative global economy, the localist movement can be viewed as a sibling of the anti- globalization movements. Of course, with a class address in the small-business sector rather than in the working class, the peasantry, or the green middle class, localists tend to adopt a reformist, market-oriented , and policy-oriented repertoire of action instead of street protest. With those limitations in mind, I suggest that localism has a place to play alongside other anti-globalization movements for the transformation of the world‘s economy. [2009:242]
Localism is not easily classified within traditional right-left political polarities.
Accordingly its critiques range from its being too protectionist to being a failure on environmental and justice grounds (Hess 2009). An example of the latter is when cities enact zoning restrictions that limit the number of franchise stores or the size of retail stores. Critics
232 of localism suggest that such policies create marketplace inefficiencies and subtract from the advantages provided by free-trade. For instance, Moscow, Idaho welcomed Walmart into its community in 1993, but refused the store‘s request to build a supercenter in 2005. This began a four-year battle in Pullman where local residents organized as the Pullman Alliance for
Responsible Development (PARD) to fight Walmart‘s well-documented strategy of building
―down the road,‖ which in this case meant moving eight miles from Moscow to Pullman.
PARD eventually lost an appeal at the Whitman County Superior Court and construction in
Pullman began in 2009. When Moscow‘s Walmart closes, the city will lose around $84,000 in annual property taxes, roughly $16,000 in personal property taxes, and current employees may lose their jobs. Even though the city council generally views that sum to be minor considering that local-oriented businesses will now be more attracted to the city, they also fret the well-documented social and economic turbulence that follows the loss of a Walmart. Of course, this is a large-scale corporate pattern at which Walmart excels; since 1995 Walmart has abandoned over 1,000 stores just to construct larger stores down the road. Such an environmentally wasteful building policy is representative of the global-scale, commercial cultural world.
Alternatively, some critics of localism argue that the small-business sector of the economy has done little to address fundamental problems of social and ecological sustainability (Hess 2009; O‘Connor 1998). This argument is well-developed in food localism studies, where rural sociologists, geographers and interdisciplinary food studies scholars have grown skeptical of food activist discourse that links food system localization to environmental sustainability and social justice. Hinrichs and Kremer (2002) demonstrate that members of food localism movements tend to be white, middle-class consumers and that the movement
233 threatens to be socially homogenized and exclusionary. While it is true that many visitors/consumers at Moscow‘s Farmers‘ Market and Food Co-op view the occasion as a fashionable Saturday morning meet-and-greet, the group proportionately reflected regional ethnicity. Furthermore, market management and a few non-profits are successfully working toward inclusionary goals, as represented by their representation at regional food banks. It remains important to distinguish whether localist organizations show signs of a self-conscious understanding of the social-ecological context of localized communities within the global economy as well as concern for issues of sustainability and justice. In these cases, localist organizations may develop a deeper, more ―reflexive localism,‖ that acknowledges 1) that localist politics are also prone to inequality and hegemonic domination, and 2) that a one-size- fits-all localism is not only false but vulnerable to corporate cooptation (Dupuis and Goodman
2005).
The local food movement in the Palouse may also be seen as a diversion. Some suggest that, especially in a community accommodating two land grant universities, food localism campaigns deflect attention of consumers away from distributive justice concerns.
There are certainly some small farmers and CSA members that adamantly agreed with a popular radical perspective of the food localism movement: that it dangerously diverts the political energy of the community away from protest-based social movements directed at multinational corporations and international governmental organizations. Palouse CivAg participants that committed their time to battling Walmart‘s new supercenter in Pullman were often of this mindset. These individuals were more interested in pointing out what was wrong with industrial agriculture—chemical pollution, migrant farmworker mistreatment, corporate consolidation—rather than how these negative impacts can be mediated and veiled through
234 civic engagement and public-private partnerships. These critiques correspond with Welsh‘s
(2008) important ―update‖ of the Goldschmidt Hypothesis—that rural community welfare is negatively associated with the scale of the farms surrounding them. Welsh notes how state- level policies have been designed to limit negative effects of agricultural industrialization.
Some of my informants suggested that the goals of these policies were to ―hide‖ rather than limit these negative effects.
The literature on food localism also calls attention to the potential reactionary politics of defensive localism—where local elites further historical inequities and social exclusions under the banners of ―local‖ and ―community‖ (Allen et al. 2003; Hinrichs 2003), the potential of localist solutions to further the globalist agenda (Jessop 1998), and the unreflexive utopian nature of food-localism movements, based on a romantic and unquestioned communitarian version of social justice (Dupuis and Goodman 2005; Dupuis et al. 2006). In common with this body of work, my call for a cross-cultural, place-based and scale-focused analysis of local and regional food system processes suggests that locales exhibit a wide array of cultural, political, socio-spatial contexts along with obvious ecological uniqueness. While we need to avoid an ―unreflexive‖ localism based on normative, pre-set standards and a perfectionist utopian vision (Dupuis and Goodman 2005), we cannot ignore the qualitative attributes of different scales and suggest, as did Born and Purcell (2006), that food system outcomes are contextual regardless of the scale at which the food system operates. We can draw on a long history of theoretical work that functionally relates socio- spatial and quantitative scale to elite power and distributive justice (Amaral et al. 1998;
Bentley and Maschner 2003; Bodley 1999, 2001, 2003; Mayhew 1973; Mayhew and
235 Schollaert 1980a, 1980b; Mosca 1939; Pareto 1907; Plerou et al. 1999) to better understand how scale relates to social and ecological sustainability.
Local- and regional-scale food systems may be unjust, unsustainable and insecure.
However, the potential for them to be just, sustainable, and secure is far greater than any larger scale food systems. The crucial question is: How may we down-scale the current global food system and simultaneously design and implement local and regional food systems to satisfactorily feed entire local and regional populations?
Envisioning Alternative Food Economies
There are significant challenges that the localist movement faces if it is to become a part of broader social change efforts to build an alternative global economy. One of the biggest challenges of localism is accumulating capital required to build such an economy. Even if consumers and small businesses were to shift a significant portion of their purchases to locally-owned and regionally-based independent enterprises, they would still face the problem that much of their investments are locked up in the world of publicly traded corporations. As a result, even the majority of localists end up financing well-capitalized chain stores from ongoing investment through stock purchases, mutual funds, and retirement accounts. This immense problem, like other pressing global problems of energy consumption, pollution, climate change, resource depletion, and social inequality requires creativity, like that seen in the growing body of work on ―transition theory.‖ This approach adopts long time frames rather than a few years, considers multiple social scales of change with mutually reinforcing processes of reform, and assumes continuous adjustment as stakeholders interact with each other and learn from their policy interventions (Cohen 2006; Geels 2007; van der Brugge
236 2005; see also Hess 2009:213-240). It is a useful way of thinking about overwhelming and interlocking global problems, even when societal collapse seems more likely than transition.
One possibility for developing investment capital for locally owned independent businesses is through using community currencies. In the U.S. there are a few experiments with printed local currencies, such as BerkShares and Burlington Bread. Although many of these new currency experiments have collapsed or faded out, the BerkShares model of local currency has so far achieved some important new innovations, such as the ability to trade the currency for American dollars at local banks. If successful, the community currency will have created a new pool of investment capital for locally owned independent businesses (Hess
2009). The following two sections look more closely at the potential benefits of devising alternative currencies and how the fate of food localism may play out.
Hornborg’s Bicentric Economy: Lessons from the Tiv
Many anthropologists have called attention to the destructiveness and cultural arbitrariness of neoliberal economic theory, which itself is a reflection of the logic of general-purpose money.
Hornborg argues that it is ―this idea of generalized interchangeability that generates the polarization between economic and technological growth, on the one hand, and economic and ecological impoverishment, on the other hand‖ (2007:65). Drawing on Bohannon‘s (1955) description of the ―multicentric‖ economy of the Tiv, Hornborg argues:
If our fundamental problem is the very conjunction of the idea of general- purpose money and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, we need to take seriously the fact that only one of these conditions can be transformed through political decisions. We cannot change the Law of Entropy, but is entirely possible to transform the idea and institution of money. I am not suggesting, of course, that we should try to reinstate the specific spheres of exchange recognized 50 years ago by the Tiv, but that we could draw inspiration from the very notion of recognizing a moral hierarchy of incommensurable values.
237 If the politically-forced introduction of general purpose money in Nigerial a mere 50 years ago was able to so completely reorganize the conditions for sustainable subsistence, it is obvious that similarly profound changes—in another direction—could be triggered by other kinds of politically enforced transformations of the money system. I am convinced that sooner or later, there will be a renaissance for the ―multicentric‖ economy. [2007:65]
The fundamental principle of a multicentric economy is the acknowledgement of the possible existence of two or more distinct and incommensurable spheres of value. Hornborg goes on to construct a bicentric economy where local people have recourse to a local currency issued and distributed by the state, and that can only be used to purchase organic products of the land such as food, firewood, compost, animal fodder, and (untaxed) local labor. In Hornborg‘s constructive imaginings, the goal is to protect local land and labor against the ravages of global capital, and it requires distinguishing—in cultural, moral, legal, and practical terms— between 1) essential goods and services that are basic to survival, and that can generally be locally produced and distributed; and 2) those essential contributions of modernity (such as computer software and pharmaceuticals) that require a global division of labor.
The major justification for such a reform would be to replace current agricultural policies with an economic framework that makes it rational for individual humans to practice sustainable production and consumption. Hornborg admits to plenty of potential problems with the scheme he devises, but the goal would entail a conscious encouragement of increasingly localized flows of energy, materials, and nutrients, thus reducing long-distance transports and making extensive recycling more feasible than at present.
Scale and The Fate of Food Localism
Even though there is evidence for dramatic growth in a wide range of localist organizations and projects, when placed against the broader backdrop of market share, localist ventures
238 remain relatively small and economically insignificant in the United States. For instance, farmers‘ markets grew from 300 in the United States in 1970 to more than 4,000 in 2006, when they surpassed $2 billion in sales (Brown 2001). Yet, the absolute market share is practically irrelevant compared to the $1 trillion that Americans spend on food each year.
Similarly, CSA has undergone dramatic growth since its importation to the United States in the 1980s. In 20 years, the number of CSA farms went from zero to nearly 2,000. However, a study of the average revenue of CSA farms in 2002 indicated that it was only about $10,000, so the overall revenue from CSA farms was again miniscule relative to total farm revenue
(Stevenson et al. 2004). These numbers beg the crucial, scale-related question: how can locally owned businesses and other organizations grow to become the dominant part of industries for which the trend is toward corporate consolidation and franchises?
Hess (2009:248-255) proposes three main factors that will determine the eventual historical significance of today‘s localism movement. First, the fate of localism will depend on innovations in financial products and markets and regulatory reforms that support locally owned independent businesses. Unfortunately ―buy local‖ campaigns will be ineffective unless they are accompanied by ―bank local‖ and ―invest local.‖ Otherwise, investment will continue to flow into global corporations. In chapter seven, I highlighted a recent local investment opportunity in the Palouse: the Co-op recently relocated to a larger building through member loans that financed over $450,000 of relocating costs. The Co-op offered members staggered interest rates depending on the size of their loan/investment and the terms increased with the risk. For instance, for loans of less than $10,000, the Co-op offered a 4 percent interest rate and a promise to re-pay the principle in 4 years, and for loans over
$20,000, a 6 percent interest for 6 years. Although most members (29) loaned the Co-op sums
239 less than $10,000, nine owners loaned more than $10,000 and eight owners loaned amounts larger than $20,000. In 2009, the Moscow Co-op re-paid the smaller loans: $81,457 plus
$19,888 interest.
Food Co-ops are important organizations for food localism movements, but not necessarily because of their co-operative form of organization. Not only has the field of cooperative economics produced a variety of Cooperative types, but they also come in all sizes. For instance, in 2008, one of the largest consumer co-operatives in the world—The Co- operative Group—had 82,000 staff, 310,000 democratically active members, 2.5 million active members receiving dividends, 22 million customers, and 2,500 food suppliers. The group has seven regional boards, seven values and principles committees, 45 member delegates, and 45 area committees. Co-operative Food, by far the Group‘s largest business area, has a local sourcing team that meets and works alongside small local suppliers and food agencies to source local produce. In 2008, it sourced goods for resale from around 2,500 suppliers. By constrast, in 2009, the Moscow Food Co-op had 5442 members and net sales of
$6.6 million.
In addition to favorable government policies and innovation in financial products, a second factor that will affect the relative success of localism is the capacity of the movement to provide leadership in the transformation of the private sector toward triple bottom line practices without being co-opted by large corporations. Once small businesses take the step from self definition as locally-owned independent enterprises to socially and ecologically responsible enterprises, they are able to project a coherent message that their form of business responsibility is structurally superior to that of publicly traded corporations. Large corporations frequently assert their embrace of social and environmental responsibility goals,
240 but they are rarely able or willing to fulfill such promises because they are legally bound to anonymous shareholders who primarily demand ongoing growth of profitability and revenue
(Hess 2009). For instance, upon winning their court cases and appeals to relocate down the road in Pullman, Walmart decided to shrink the new Pullman store by roughly 30 percent and call it a ―sustainable‖ store design. Of course, Walmart‘s commitment to sustainability is impossible to realistically fulfill because they depend on fossil fuel intensive global production and distribution systems. Large-scale retailers have begun to feature and test local food products much in the same way they tested organic foods and brought them into conventional commodity chains. Table 9.1 describes four main ways that corporate retailers attempt to co-opt ―the local‖ just as they have the ―organic‖.
Table 9.1. Corporate Strategies for Co-opting Food Localism (Hess 2007, 2009; Sonino and Marsden 2006)
Co-optation Strategy Explanation Maintaining Subsidiary When small, sustainably-focused food enterprises are purchased by multinational Identity corporations, the name of the corporate parent is rarely advertised in marketing campaigns. For instance, Larabar, an energy bar containing only a few whole food ingredients (fruits, nuts and spices) was bought by General Mills in 2008. Like other subsidiaries of General Mills‘ Small Planet Foods Division (Cascadian Farm and Muir Glen) production and marketing focuses on subsidiary brand names.
Proliferation of Place- Like Washington apples and Wisconsin cheese, the use of ―local‖ here does not Based ―Local‖ necessarily link to social and ecological sustainability goals and companies that Designations produce these ―local‖ foods are often not locally owned or privately held. The recent proliferation of place-based, or terrior, brands may result in label fatigue among consumers.
Claiming Franchise Local franchises, such as fast food restaurants, increasingly market their ―local Independence ownership‖ and ―independence.‖ Franchises are not independent in that they must follow strict non-local purchasing guidelines, many of which prevent import substitution.
Selling locally grown Non-local, publicly-traded retailers are beginning programs to buy and sell locally- products grown foods. However, the fact remains that they are not locally- or regionally-owned independent retailers with a civic commitment to their surrounding foodshed.
241 The third factor that will affect the fate of localism is the ability to reposition it as part of the broader project of building an alternative global economy of ―global localism.‖ In order for localism to work in a global economy, there must be a way of connecting consumers in one location with nonlocal products made by distant, independent, small businesses that share social and ecological sustainability values (Hess 2009).
Conclusion
In addition to food localism offering a countervailing force to the corporate-led, global food system, the localism movement as a whole may also play a role in making local and regional societies more resilient—more flexible and adaptable when confronted with dramatic changes. It seems probable that climate change and other social-ecological changes will increase the frequency and magnitude of disaster, as will conflict over increasingly valued and strained natural resources. In this context, continued growth of the global, industrial food system to satisfy short-term goals of increased revenue and profitability is likely to worsen the sustainability problems of poverty, social disorder, and environmental deterioration. In contrast, if nation-states and international governmental organizations make decisions to enable local and regional communities to have greater control over their political economic futures, human societies will better be able to create structures—such as local and regional food distribution networks, public sewerage, water control systems, and networks of trust and self-improvement—that are required to build societal resilience. The construction of such long-run solutions to the sustainability problem will require reforms up and down the geographical scale, and will involve shortening food production and distribution chains, and shifting away from costly energy and material inputs.
242 Predicting when the Columbia River Valley and the Palouse will no longer support fruit production and grain farming, respectively, is far more difficult than asserting that sustainability problems exist. Over the last century, regional and global elites have used agricultural science to make the Columbia Basin landscape incredibly productive and valuable, and many orchardists, grain farmers, and agricultural scientists believe that technology will continue to preserve their livelihood. But modern technology is an expression of the asymmetric structures of exchange, and power-concentrating trends associated with increasing the scale of global commerce suggest that technology is not the primary solution to our sustainability problems. It is entirely possible that the Columbia Basin agro-industrial landscape has seen its largest harvests, and that declining yields, more expensive inputs, and declining profits will ensue. At some point, input costs may surpass tolerable thresholds, forcing farmers to consider other cropping systems, ranching, or the outright abandonment of their land. Whatever the outcome, the world will need to draw on local and regional histories to develop place-based models of sustainable futures.
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