Sustainability in Focus
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Promoting Fair Prices and Fair Profits through Agroecological Delivery Platform: Sustainable Direct-to-Consumer Systems in Costa Rica View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mary Little
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations endorsed agroecology as a pathway to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (SDGs; FAO 2020). As people learn about the environmental and health consequences of agrochemicals, many are consuming more agroecological produced food (Hansmann et al., 2020). Yet agroecological farmers face challenges connecting directly with these clients. Multinational corporations and middlemen often act as brokers and eat into farmers’ profits while driving up the price of organic food. This case study presents the direct-to-consumer delivery network created to address the challenges faced by agroecological farmers in Costa Rica. It is guided by a question that the farmers themselves raised: how can we connect sustainable producers with consumers to promote fair prices and fair profits? I track how San Luis Organic Farm created the Enraizadas platform that has 1) addressed challenges of market entry faced by small-scale agroecological farmers, 2) taken steps to create an online agroecological food delivery platform, and 3) present the economic and social benefits of this technological adaptation. By examining the development of this delivery network, I found that conveying the ecological benefits to consumers was key to success, fair profit sharing has led to more farmer participation, and appreciation for ecological diversity has informed economically diverse practices. Embracing challenges as opportunities to expand their business model by offering varied products by multiple participants replicates ecological resilience attained through diversity.
Labor Regimes in US Meatpacking: Corporate Immigration Strategies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ivy Ken, Kenneth Sebastian Leon
This study analyzes why multinational meatpacking companies are increasingly opening facilities in remote, rural areas of the US where there are few workers. The authors explore how companies in this industry subordinate racialized “outsiders” and use immigration law to support both wage and worker subordination, thereby incorporating harm and human degradation into the production of food. Conceptually, the project integrates socio-legal understandings of corporate personhood within a framework of settler colonialism to understand the harms to sustainable food production that occur when multinational meatpacking companies use rural US land to accomplish their economic goals. The politics of place in this framework are key for identifying how labor strategy and immigration policy are related to industry-wide pressures involving land use, wealth extraction, and the social stratification of workers. Methodologically, the project bridges ethnographic work with meatpacking workers in rural communities, participatory research with immigration rights organizations, and interviews and ethnography in corporate meatpacking spaces where executives articulate the industry's goals. Two specific places—southeast North Carolina and southwest Minnesota—constitute the research sites due to their similarities (high meatpacking job density) and their distinctiveness (region, racial and ethnic population, and typical land use). Conducting research in these two regions allows for the comparison of industry strategies and the experiences of those whose livelihoods are shaped by those strategies. The project includes an evidence-based and conceptually innovative assessment of the human costs of a major food supply, and considers the implications for the integrity and sustainability of animal protein production.
