Tenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

Sugar is a major ingredient in industrial food systems. Companies like AB Sugar, the sugar producing arm of the multinational Associated British Foods (ABF), have businesses that span continents and operate in multiple languages. However, the physical limitations and time sensitive nature of sugar processing require factories to be located as close to the fields as possible. Tim Lang’s work with global value chains and short food supply chains provide a framework to help us interrogate the unexpected relationship between the transnational scale of the sugar value chain and the extreme localness of its commodity production. This paper draws on Doreen Massey’s understanding of a socially constructed place to examine how ABF’s international value chain creates local sugar producing communities in East Anglia in the United Kingdom. These geographically concentrated communities of stakeholders are constructed through necessarily localized efforts in plant breeding, in the integration of sugar beets into existing arable crop rotations (including crops such as wheat and barley), in the contracting of haulers and the building of specialized trucks for the transportation of sugar and in the hiring of seasonal workers during the annual campaign. This discussion raises complex questions about the relationship between short food supply chains, the construction of place, and the ways that we understand sustainability.