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China and Inner Asia
Organized Panel Session
Over the past decade, a social movement calling for safe, fair, green food has been growing in China’s major cities. The movement supports novel food sourcing arrangements like community supported agriculture programs, community stores, and ‘organic’ farmers’ markets. Participants include ‘peasant’ and new farmers, urban consumers, academics, and entrepreneurs. Although the movement has been expanding rapidly in size and scope, fueled by deep consumer anxiety over food safety problems, it remains a relatively tiny pocket of China’s overall food system. Who is this rarified safe/fair/green food for? During ethnographic fieldwork at a farm-to-table restaurant in Hangzhou, and with food activists in Beijing, I found that the class politics of China’s still-small food movement are more complex than they might appear. Lively debates about cost, pricing, and inclusivity are ongoing within the movement among producers and consumers alike. At the same time, farmer livelihoods and farmer dignity are key topics of concern. I argue that the most interesting question to ask about China’s food movement is not about its potential capacity, or incapacity, to “feed China.” Instead, I explore the unexpected alliances the movement has produced - ‘side-’ effects of new food sourcing practices, but consequential ones.
Caroline Merrifield
Yale University