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,