Abstract

In this article, we introduce and critically interrogate Specialized Agrarian Industrial Districts (SAIDs). SAIDs are bounded geographies that produce agricultural products in distinctive industries, with their own producer networks and regional inter-firm relations. We ask: What characteristics define a SAID, and what are the social and environmental opportunities and pitfalls of this spatial form? To answer this question, we examine how producer networks, industry associations, and nation-states support and enable SAIDs. Indeed, in the context of global agro-industrial consolidation, speculative commodification, and “cheap food,” we find that SAIDs offer a potential counter to global agricultural supply chains. Empirically, we examine two commodities that lend themselves to SAIDs’ construction: cheese and alcohol. These commodities often require centuries-old artisanal production and storage techniques; moreover, biophysically and culturally, long traditions and ecologies are associated with these commodities, which explain why SAIDs often produce them. Specifically, we examine cheese in the Franche-Comté, France and in Minas-Gerais, Brazil; and alcohol in South Africa’s Western Cape (wine) and Jalisco, Mexico (mezcal). We find three key characteristics that are associated with SAIDs: 1) regulations and “denominations of origin” that bound SAIDs and protect them from global (and regional) competition; 2) land and property systems with long histories of agrarian reform, collective ownership, natural protection, and cultural or touristic heritage; and 3) local physical geographies with distinctive climate, topography, and soil central to production, also known as terroir. Yet across these characteristics, concerns with SAIDs abound: bounding to create exclusionary divisions that privilege “insiders” over “outsiders”; exploited or informal labor; nation-states that promote SAIDs at the expense of less wealthy communities and social and environmental justice; and mass producers who deceive consumers by imitating SAIDs’ appeals. Nevertheless, SAIDs can offer regional-development opportunities, negotiated relationships between workers and producers, and quality food. Although they cannot be created, they can be fostered where nascent and protected from larger agro-industrial production processes. Indeed, when done right, SAIDs offer an alternative agro-industrial path to “cheap food” that is grounded instead in just and sustainable regional development.