THEODORE C. BESTORDepartment of AnthropologyHarvard Univer.docx

THEODORE C. BESTOR
Department of Anthropology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA 02138
Supply-Side Sushi: Commodity, Market, and the Global City
Urban anthropology has been simultaneously challenged and
transformed as forces of globalization—variously defined in
economic, political, social, and cultural terms—have been
theorized as "de-territorializing" many social processes and
trends formerly regarded as characteristic of urban places.
Against a seemingly dis-placed cityscape of global flows of
capital, commerce, commodity, and culture, this paper examines
the reconfiguration of spatially and temporally dispersed
relationships among labor, commodities, and cultural influence
within an international seafood trade that centers on To-
kyo's Tsukiji seafood market, and the local specificity of both
market and place within a globalized urban setting. [Tokyo,
markets, food culture, globalization]
Historically, of course, market and place are tightly inter-
woven. At its origins, a market was both a literal place and a
symbolic threshold, a "socially constructed space" and "a cul-
turally inscribed limit" that nonetheless involved a crossing of
boundaries by long-distance trade and socially marginal trad-
ers. But markets were also inextricably bound up with local
communities. In feudal times and beyond, local markets occu-
pied a specific place and time... . The denseness of interac-
tions and the goods that were exchanged offered local
communities the material and cultural means for their social
reproduction—that is, their survival as communities.. . .

[T]he social institutions of markets and places supported each
other.
—Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power (1991:9)
Market and Place
The past tense in Sharon Zukin's paraphrase of Karl Po-
lanyi is no doubt deliberate. Markets and places no longer
support each other, we think. IfWall Street and the globali-
zation literature are both to be believed, markets are now
literally Utopian—nowhere in particular and everywhere
all at once.
Globalization is a much-discussed but as yet poorly de-
fined concept. The presumed conditions of globalization
include, to my way of thinking, the increasing velocity of
capital (both economic and cultural) and the corresponding
acceleration of transportation and telecommunications, all
stitching together ever larger, ever more fluid, ever more
encapsulating markets and other arenas for exchanges
across multiple dimensions. Facilitating the velocity and
frequency of such exchanges are the dispersal (and relative
density) of people living outside the cultures or societies of
their origins and the increased potential that exists for
bi-, cross-, or multi-societal/cultural agents and brokers to
effect linkages. Accompanying these changes (perhaps an-
other way of saying the same thing) is the rapid cross-fer-
tilization and "arbitrage" of cultural capital (in Bourdieu's
[1984] terms) across many seemingly disparate domains of
media, belief, political action, economic organization, and
so forth, often in unintended or unanticipated ways. These
phenomena increasingly occur within arenas that are
global or transnational rather than international, precisely
because these trends together diminish the nation-state as

the sole or primary or uncontested organizing principle,
mediator, arbiter, conduit, or framing institution for trans- *
actions and interactions across societal or cultural boundaries.
A critical question for anthropologists concerned with
urban studies, therefore, is the extent to which forces of
globalization have altered or will alter the role of cities as
central nodes in the organization of regional, national, and
inter- or transnational flows of people, material, ideas,
power, and the like (cf. Waters 1995; Hannerz 1996; Han-
sen and Roeber 1999). The idea of globalization is inti-
mately linked to markets, as are cities. What, then, is (or
will be) the relationship among cities, markets, and glo-
balization?
Throughout history, cities and markets have sustained
each other, the former providing location, demand, and so-
cial context for the latter; the latter providing sustenance,
profit, and cultural verve to the former. Many anthropo-
logical studies of markets have focused primarily on deci-
sion making within them (Peterson 1973; Plattner 1985,
1989) or on institutional structures of their organization
(Acheson 1985), although some market ethnographies re-
late the operations of a specific market to its urban locale
and wider social-cultural milieu (e.g., Clark 1994; Geertz
American Anthropologist 103(l):76-95. Copyright © 2001,
American Anthropological Association
BESTOR / SUPPLY-SIDE SUSHI 77
1979). On a more abstract level, the interrelationships be-
tween markets and urban life along both economic and cul-
tural dimensions have attracted much attention. Robert

Redfield and Milton Singer (1954) analyzed "the cultural
role of cities" and defined the marketplace as the sine qua
non of what they called the "heterogenetic city," the type of
city that links itself (and the society of which it is a center)
to a wider world and, in the process, transforms the city,
the rural hinterlands that supply it, as well as its society
more generally. In analyses that are much more explicitly
economic and geographic, central place theory—as devel-
oped in anthropology by G. William Skinner's studies of
Chinese society (1964-65,1974)—has focused on spatial,
political, economic, demographic, and cultural hierarchies
among towns and cities, specifically in terms of the rela-
tionships established among those places as marketplaces.
More recently, transnational economic, political, and so-
cial forces seem to be eroding the distinctions among cul-
tures and societies that are implied by the Redfield-Singer
perspective on cities as engines of change in the midst of
distinctive and separate societies/cultures. Examining the
contemporary ebbs and flows of global culture, Arjun Ap-
padurai conceptualizes transnational flows of culture as
"ethnoscapes," "technoscapes," "finanscapes," "media-
scapes," and "ideoscapes" (Appadurai 1990). Very
roughly, these refer to the complicated tides and undertows
of people(s), of technology, of capital, of media repre-
sentations, and of political ideologies that concurrently link
and divide regions of the globe. Appadurai's vision of
global integration (or disintegration) implies a deterritori-
alized world in which place matters little, but in which
there are loosely coupled domains—"scapes"—across
which a varied repertoire of influences may travel quickly,
in many directions almost simultaneously. Appadurai's
perspective does not give priority to one "scape" over an-
other—economics need not trump media, nor need cuisine
be subordinate to ethnic identity—and he recognizes that
in the welter of global interactions, what may be the center

or disseminator of influence in one "scape" may be simul-
taneously the periphery or recipient of influence across an-
other "scape."
Ulf Hannerz ([1993]1996) makes similar points about
globalization and transnationalism, but he refocuses them
as processes mediated through world cities and the ways in
which these trends of change, integration, and diversifica-
tion, including the very significant impacts of trade and
business, are the vehicles for massive cultural diffusion
and creativity that are articulated through urban centers.
Appadurai's work points me toward the question of how
globalized markets and trade channels intersect simultane-
ously along complexly interrelated dimensions or scapes
of commerce, culture, and people. And Hannerz, in turn,
prompts me to ask how these institutions reformulate the
kinds of linkages among urban centers, or between nodes
and scattered hinterlands, that generate new forms of urban
culture, globalized but intimately rooted in local activities.
Technicians of Globalization
I examine these shifting relationships among globaliza-
tion, markets, and cities through a study of the transna-
tional tuna trade and the commodity chains that constitute
it.1 This trade centers on Japanese markets, especially To-
kyo's Tsukiji wholesale market, the world's largest market
for fresh and frozen seafood, and I focus in particular on
the trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna.
My research focuses on middlemen (and they are almost
all men, in my experience) in this trade, on the Japanese,
Korean, American, Canadian, and Spanish buyers, dealers,
agents, and other intermediaries who articulate the connec-
tions between producers and markets (and through mar-

kets, eventually to distant consumers). Viewed from a per-
spective that keeps these traders in the foreground, one can
observe an enormous amount of institutional structure in
constant play, swept along by flows of capital, both finan-
cial and symbolic, in multiple directions. I should under-
line the point that this is not a study of consumption or pro-
duction per se. It is about distribution—what Hannerz
refers to as "provisioning relationships" (1980)—enabled
by the guys in the middle who make the system what it is,
not as producers of the system but as technicians of glo-
balization.
Through these traders, the commodities they trade, and
the connections they make, I focus on the articulation of
markets and urban places in a globalized environment. On
one level, I am interested in how transnational networks of
trade form as institutions or social structures that complex-
ly link previously unarticulated segments of local econo-
mies, societies, and polities. On another level, I am particu-
larly interested in the ways in which such networks or
commodity chains—and the markets they flow through—
are inherently cultural in their processes and effects.
In many distribution channels or commodity chains that
anthropologists have examined, the particular cultural idi-
oms and linkages have been within an ethnic group that
recognizes itself as possessing common identity. Robert
Alvarez, for example, demonstrates the deployment of cul-
tural identities and patterns of relationship as a means of
integrating long-distance trade in chiles across the Mexi-
can-U.S. border (1994, 1999, 2001), just as Abner Cohen
illustrated the salience of ethnicity among Hausa producers
and traders in agricultural trade in Nigeria (1969). Both of
these examples involve commodity chains that are built
around or sustain cultural affinities or similarities, but the
Atlantic bluefin tuna trade relies on cultural flows that

cross national, societal, and cultural borders. That is, in this
instance of globalization, the commodity chain itself
shapes the framework for cultural interaction and influence
78 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 103, No. 1 •
MARCH 2001
against a broader background of cultural dissimilarity and
the imaginative possibilities that creates.
I argue that market and place are not disconnected
through the globalization of economic activity, but that
they are re-connected in different ways. The process cre-
ates spatially discontinuous urban hierarchies in which
Halifax, Boston, Pusan, and Cartagena are close neighbors
in the hinterland of Tokyo, distant—on this scape—from
Toronto or New York or Seoul or Madrid.
At the same time, however, these re-connections and
juxtapositions create continuous economic and informa-
tional flows, as well as cultural images and orientations.
The cultural processes involved include the imagination of
commodities in trade, as items of exchange and consump-
tion, as well as the imagination of the trade partner and the
social contexts through which relationships are created,
modified, or abandoned. Markets and urban places con-
tinue as the central nodes in the coordination of complex
multiple flows of commodities, culture, capital, and peo-
ple.
Examining these flows requires a form of transnational
ethnography that resembles what George Marcus (1998)
refers to as "multi-sited ethnography." Fundamentally, the
challenge of such research is to do justice to the complex

global phenomena at hand but also preserve the ethno-
graphic richness of in-depth understandings of the diverse
local systems that necessarily make up a global system.
The risk is that such research may become little more than
"drive-by ethnography," but the potential pay-off is to
grapple productively with the local in the global and the
global in the local.
My own fieldwork has taken me to the auction floors of
the Tsukiji market, on docks in New England, into hearing
rooms in Washington, D.C., to trade shows in Boston, into
markets in Seoul, aboard supply boats in the Straits of Gi-
braltar, and inside refrigerated warehouses at Narita's air-
freight terminals, among many other places. This is a
multi-sited ethnography organized around the global flow
of a specific commodity, and it is the commodity that inte-
grates the ethnographic perspectives I employ.
The Political Economy of Bluefin Tuna
To start, I must explain something about Atlantic bluefin
tuna themselves.
Atlantic bluefin tuna ("ABT" in the trade notation;
Thunnus thynnus in biological terms) are a pelagic species
that ranges from roughly the equator to Newfoundland,
from Turkey to the Gulf of Mexico. Atlantic bluefin tuna
yield a firm red meat, lightly marbled with veins of fat,
highly prized (and priced) in Japanese food culture. Atlan-
tic bluefin tuna are almost identical to the bluefin tuna
(honmaguro or kuromaguro in Japanese) that migrate
through the waters around Japan. Both Atlantic and North-
ern Pacific bluefin are genetically very similar to another
species found in the Pacific, known as Southern bluefin
(Thunnus maccoyi; minami maguro or indo maguro),

which are common in waters around Japan, as ,well as near
Australia, New Zealand, and many other parts of the Pa-
cific, Indian, and Southern Atlantic Oceans. I should note
that all these bluefin tuna are quite distinct from albacore
tuna (Thunnus albacares)—often found in little cans—in
terms of size, taste, methods of fishing, customary fishing
grounds, affinities for dolphins, environmental regulations,
and markets.2
Regardless of subspecies, bluefin tuna are huge fish; the
record for an Atlantic bluefin is around 1,200 pounds
(roughly 540 kilograms). In more normal ranges, 600-
pound tuna eight to ten feet in length are not extraordinaiy,
and a 250- to 300-pound fish five or six feet in length is the
commercial standard.
Bluefin tuna are classified as a "highly migratory spe-
cies." That is, these are fish that swim across multiple na-
tional boundaries, which therefore requires states to enter
into elaborate international agreements to regulate the fish-
ery.
In New England, the tuna season runs from roughly July
to September, corresponding to the bluefin's southward
migration from waters near Newfoundland, where they
have fattened up for the winter in southern waters. Fishers
off the Canadian Maritimes, in the Gulf of Maine, and off
Cape Cod intercept bluefin at their peak of fatness, and
thus what Japanese buyers call "Boston bluefin" command
the highest prices. Because of the enormous Japanese de-
mand for this species (a demand that persists despite Ja-
pan's economic downturns of the past decade) and the con-
centration of this demand—through Canadian and New
England fishers operating in a narrow ecological and tem-
poral window to harvest from a small (probably diminish-
ing) population of bluefin in the Northwest Atlan-

tic—many environmentalists argue that bluefin tuna
populations have been vastly over-exploited and that the
species may not survive much longer as a commercial one
(e.g., Kemf etal. 1996; Safina 1993,1995).
The Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery has been almost exclu-
sively focused on Japanese consumption, and indeed, until
the 1970s when Japanese markets were accessible to North
American producers, there was no commercial fishery for
Atlantic bluefin in North American waters; bluefin were
trophy fish or by-catches (Figure 1). The advent of the
jumbo jet, capable of flying non-stop from the North
American Atlantic coast to Japan carrying heavy cargo,
created the possibility of shipping fresh fish from one
ocean to another. Today, Japan is the world's primary mar-
ket for fresh tuna for sushi and sashimi; demand in other
countries is largely a byproduct of Japanese influence and
the creation of new markets by domestic producers looking
to expand their sales at home.
In addition to jet cargo service, several other factors
prompted the globalization of tuna supply. In Japan during
BESTOR / SUPPLY-SIDK SUSHI 79
Figure 1. Trophy for Sale: Selling a 600-pound bluefm on a
Massa-
chusetts dock.
the 1960s, the development of highly efficient commercial
refrigeration and the expansion of high-speed trucking
throughout Japan brought almost the entire country within
one days driving time from Tokyo, which enabled major
urban markets like Tsukiji to command the best-quality

domestic seafood. The impact on consumer tastes was pro-
found. Old-fashioned specialties of pre-refrigeration days,
such as tuna pickled in soy sauce or heavily salted, gave
way to preferences for simple, unadorned, but absolutely
fresh fish. The massive pollution and overfishing of Japa-
nese waters during the high-speed growth decades of the
1950s and 1960s had depleted local production, and just as
demand for fresh fish began to rise, jumbo jets brought
New England tuna into reach.
Also, in the 1970s the expansion of 200-mile fishing
limits around the world excluded foreign fleets from the
coastal fishing grounds of many nations. Japanese distant
water fleets, including many that pursued tuna, were forced
out of prime fishing waters. International environmental
campaigns brought fishing to the forefront of global atten-
tion, and the fishing industries in many countries, Japan
among them, began to scale back their distant water fleets,
seeing reliance on local fishing industries as a perhaps
lower-profile, less economically risky means of harvesting
seafood. With Japanese fishing operations beginning to be
downsized and the country's yen for sushi still growing,
the Japanese seafood industry turned more and more to for-
eign suppliers in the 1970s and 1980s.
During the 1980s, Japan's consumer economy—a
byproduct of the now disparaged "bubble" years—went
into hyperdrive. The tuna business boomed. Japanese imports
of fresh bluefin tuna worldwide increased from 957 metric
tons (531 from the United States) in 1984 to 5,235 metric
tons (857 from the United States) in 1993 (Sonu 1994).
The average wholesale price peaked in 1990 at 4,900 yen
per kilogram, bones and all, which trimmed out to approxi-
mately US$34 wholesale per edible pound. (Roughly 50%
of the gross weight of a tuna is lost during trimming, so the

effective wholesale price per edible kilogram is approxi-
mately twice the auction price. By the time tuna reaches a
restaurant's menu or a consumer's kitchen, the various
margins and mark-ups generally double this price again.)
Not surprisingly, this Japanese demand for prime blue-
fin tuna created a gold-rush mentality on fishing grounds
across the globe wherever bluefin tuna could be found.
Rising yen prices were magnified by fluctuating exchange
rates that created added bonanzas for foreign producers.
For example, between 1975 and the peak in 1990, the
wholesale price in yen rose 327%, but with foreign ex-
change rate shifts, the price in dollars rose a staggering
671%, and even though the yen price plunged by 43% be-
tween 1990 and 1995, the dollar price declined only 8% '
In the 1990s, as the U.S. bluefin industry was taking off
and was riding a favorable combination of prices and ex-
change rates, the Japanese economy went into a stall, then
a slump, then a dive. U.S. producers were vulnerable as
their sole market collapsed. Fortunately for them, alternate
domestic markets were growing, fueled by, and in turn fur-
ther fueling, the North American sushi craze. An industry
built around Japanese tastes survived with American cus-
tomers when Japanese buyers retreated in economic disar-
ray.
Visible Hands
A 40-minute drive from Bath, down a winding two-lane
highway, the last mile on dirt road, the ramshackle wooden
fish pier at West Point stands beside an empty parking lot.
At 6:00 p.m. on a clear August day, nothing much is hap-
pening. In a huge tub of ice on the loading dock, three blue-
fin tuna caught earlier in the day also wait. Between 6:45
and 7:00, the parking lot suddenly fills up with cars and

trucks with license plates from New Jersey, New York,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. Twenty tuna
buyers clamber out—half of them Japanese. The three
bluefin tuna—ranging from 270 to 610 pounds—are
winched out of the tub, and the buyers swarm around them,
extracting tiny core samples to examine the color, finger-
ing the flesh to assess the fat content, sizing up the curve of
the body to guess what the inside of each fish would look
like when cut open, and checking carefully the condition of
the bodies for damage from harpoons or careless handling.
They pay little attention to the fishing crews, except to ask
a few pointed questions about where, when, and how each
fish was caught and handled.
Dozens of onlookers—many of them "summer folk"—
watch the whole scene, some of them with video cameras.
80 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 103, No. 1 •
MARCH 2001
After about 20 minutes of contemplative milling, many
of the buyers return to their trucks to call Tokyo by cellular
telephone to get the morning's prices—the Tsukiji market
has just concluded its tuna auctions for the day. The buyers
look over the tuna one last time and give written bids to the
dock manager, who then passes the top bid on to the crews
of the three boats that landed them. Each bid is anxiously
examined by a cluster of young men, some with a father or
uncle looking on to give advice, others with a young
woman and a couple of toddlers trying to see Daddy's fish.
Fragments of concern float above the parking lot: "That's
all?" "We'd do better if we shipped it ourselves!" "Yeah,
but my pickup needs a new transmission now!"

No one knows what prices are offered because the auc-
tion bids are secret; only the dock manager knows the
spread. After a few minutes, the crews all come to terms
with the deals offered them. Someone poses a crew mem-
ber for one last snapshot next to the fish that made the
mortgage payments. The buyers shake hands. The fish are
quickly loaded onto the backs of trucks in crates of crushed
ice, known in the trade as "tuna coffins." As rapidly as they
arrived, the flotilla of buyers sails out of the parking
lot—three bound for JFK where the tuna will be air-
freighted to Tokyo for sale the next day, the others looking
for another tuna to buy—leaving behind three Maine fish-
ing crews maybe $14,000 richer.
Scapes and Chains
Appadurai's emphasis is on the fluid nature of motion
along each dimension in his global flows of conjuncture,
focusing on the visual imagery of "-scapes." His terminol-
ogy reminds us—just as a landscape embodies a particu-
larly situated point of view—that people experience global
processes in particular locations, from which they derive
their understanding and definition of the (global-yet-seem-
ingly-local) processes themselves. People perceive their
positions in global processes from partial and inherently
local—inherently cultural—points of view. As often as
not, interactions with global forces are plotted against con-
stellations of local circumstance, fragmentary to an outside
observer but forming a coherent, fixed view—a "scape"—
to a local.
Appadurai's approach is abstract, but concrete examples
of the kinds of global linkages he looks toward are easy to
find (perhaps, in this context, as "tradescapes" and "culi-
nascapes"). From a structural perspective, the global trade
in seafood products can be seen as a complex network of

"commodity chains" (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994).
Their analysis (directly drawing on the "world systems"
approach of Immanuel Wallerstein) often focuses on the
production of manufactured goods through the coordinated
activities of far-flung components of the so-called "global
factory." It examines the international division of labor
into specialized realms that are integrated or coupled in
multiply contingent ways, rather than by executive fiat or
managerial omniscience. The structure of a commodity
chain—the links, stages, phases, and hands through which
a product passes as it is transformed, combined, fabricated,
and distributed between ultimate producers and ultimate
consumers—is a highly fragmentary and idiosyncratic so-
cial formation, itself the product of the often minutely cali-
brated linkages, the provisioning relationships, that exist
between every pair of hands along the way.
Commodity chains are often discussed in terms of
widely dispersed industrial production characteristic of
contemporary transnational trade. But the concept is
equally useful for understanding the fluidity of other kinds
of global production and distribution, including the social
roles of small-scale entrepreneurship (Dannhaeuser 1989)
and the global distribution of agricultural commodities
(Alvarez 1994, 1999, 2001; Goldfrank 1994). And al-
though commodity chains are often examined in economic
and trade terms—Dannhaeuser, for example, writes about
"channel domination" as the power held by key actors or
institutions to define the basic terms of trade (1989)—one
can also see domination of commodity chains in terms of
the exploitation, deployment, or negotiation of cultural
meanings and influences connected to commodity flows.
In the cases that Alvarez examines, the cultural power is
held by producers, whose influence thus extends through-
out the commodity chains to distant urban markets. In the

case of Atlantic bluefin tuna, the dominant cultural power
extends outward from a uniform market core to diverse
production peripheries, but the accommodations of core
and local systems of economic and cultural production are
locally specific.
Tuna Ranchers of Trafalgar
Two miles off the beach at Barbate, a huge maze of nets
snakes several miles out into Spanish waters on the Atlan-
tic approaches to the Straits of Gibraltar. A high-speed
workboat (imported from Japan) heads out to the nets. On
board are five Spanish hands, a Japanese supervisor, 2500
kilograms of frozen herring and mackerel from Norway
and Holland, and two American researchers. The head-
lands of Morocco are a hazy purple in the distance, and just
off Barbate's white cliffs to the northwest the light at the
Cape of Trafalgar blinks on and off. For twenty minutes,
the men toss herring and mackerel over the gunwales of the
workboat while tuna the size (and speed) of motorcycles
dash under the boat, barely visible until with a flash of sil-
ver and blue they wheel around to snatch a drifting morsel.
The nets, lines, and buoys are part of an almadraba, a
huge fish trap or weir. The almadraba consists of miles of
set nets anchored to the channel floor and suspended from
thousands of buoys, all laid out to cut across the migration
routes of bluefin tuna into and out of the Straits. This al-
madraba is put in place for about six weeks in June and
BESTOR / SUPPLY-SIDE SUSHI 81
July to intercept tuna leaving the Mediterranean, after the
spawning season is over. Those tuna who lose themselves

in the maze end up in a huge pen, with a surface area
roughly the size of a football field. By the end of the tuna
run through the Straits, about 200 tuna are in the pen. For
the next six months, they are fed twice a day, their nets
tended by teams of scuba divers and watched over by
guard boats sent out by the owner of the almadraba, the
venerable patron of Barbate harbor, who has entered into a
joint venture with a small Japanese fishing company. In
November and December—after the season in New Eng-
land and Canada is well over—the tuna are harvested and
shipped by air to Tokyo in time for the end-of-the-year
spike in seafood consumption.
Two hundred fish may not sound like a lot, but if the fish
survive, if the fish hit their target weights, if the fish hit the
market at the target price, these two hundred tuna are worth
$1.6 million dollars. Cold, wet cash. Liquid assets.
The pens—feed-lots for tuna—are relatively new, but
almadraba are not, and these waters have been transna-
tional since time immemorial, since before there was na-
tion. A couple of miles down the coast from Barbate is the
evocatively named settlement of Zahara de la Atunes—Za-
hara of the Tuna—where Cervantes lived for two years in
the late sixteenth century. The centerpiece of the village is
a huge stone compound that housed the men and nets of
Zahara's almadraba in Cervantes' day, when the port was
only a seasonally occupied tuna outpost. Today, the crum-
bling remains enclose a parking lot, an outdoor cinema,
and several ramshackle cafes that cater to Zahara's con-
temporary seasonal visitors: Euro-kids in dreadlocks who
come to Zahara for the windsurfing and the …
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Slow food and the politics of pork fat: Italian food and
European identity
Alison Leitch a
a Sydney, Australia.
Online Publication Date: 01 December 2003
To cite this Article: Leitch, Alison (2003) 'Slow food and the
politics of pork fat: Italian
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4 3 7Slow Food and the Politics of Pork Fat
ethnos, vol. 68: 4, decem ber 2003 (pp. 437–462)
Slow Food and the Politics of Pork Fat:

Italian Food and European Identity
Alison Leitch
Sydney, Australia
abstract This paper explores the emergence of the Slow Food
Movement, an in-
ternational consumer movement dedicated to the protection of
‘endangered foods.’
The history of one of these ‘endangered foods’, lardo di
Colonnata, provides the
ethnographic window through which I examine Slow Food’s
cultural politics. The
paper seeks to understand the politics of ‘slowness’ within
current debates over European
identity, critiques of neo-liberal models of rationality, and the
significant ideological
shift towards market-driven politics in advanced capitalist
societies.
keywords Slow Food, Italy, consumption, European identity,
social movements
I n April 1998 I returned to Carrara in central Italy where, a
decade earlier,I had conducted ethnographic research on the
subject of craft identityamong marble quarry workers and the
history of local labour politics (Leitch
1993). I hoped to renew my associations with local families and
update my
previous research by revisiting the quarries, reinterviewing
marble workers I
knew, and tracking any other significant transformations to the
local marble
industry.
Pulling out my notebook as I arrived in Milan’s Malpensa

airport, I began
to scribble some initial impressions. Perhaps because I had been
away for so
long, I was struck by the overtly transnational space of the
airport itself. With
public announcements made in four languages, it was an
explicitly modern
European frontier. It became more so during the rush hour bus
ride towards
the city, surrounded by wildly gesticulating drivers all
conversing on mobile
phones. However, when I noticed the advertisement for
McDonald’s printed
on the back of the bus ticket — ‘Buy one: get one Free’ — I
was slightly taken
aback. I could not recall much fondness amongst Italians for
such a marked
category of American fast food culture, yet soon enough we
passed a ‘McDrive.’
© Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis Ltd, on behalf of the
National Museum of Ethnography
issn 0014-1844 print/issn 1469-588x online. doi:
10.1080/0014184032000160514
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4 3 8
ethnos, vol. 68: 4, dece m ber 2003 (pp. 437–462)
alison le itc h
Adding to my initial disorientation were the visual
manifestations of other
recent changes in Italian national politics, with fading posters
promoting Umberto
Bossi’s Northern League and its call for the formation of a
separate regional
entity called Padania, as well as those for Silvio Berlusconi’s
Forza Italia party.
My sense that the cultural and political landscape had indeed
changed in ten
years was later confirmed in conversations with Milanese
friends, who admit-
ted to me that they themselves were confused. The old
categories of ‘left’
and ‘right’ in their imagination had somehow merged or become
indistinct
and, among other things, they mentioned the growing popularity
of New
Age philosophies amongst their friends.
I arrived in Carrara to find the marble industry in crisis, with
the price of
high-quality stone at its lowest point and unemployment figures
at their high-
est in ten years. However, much to my surprise, I found that a
much humbler,
and decidedly more proletarian local product had become newly
controversial:

pork fat, locally known as lardo di Colonnata, had apparently
been nominated
as the key example of a nationally ‘endangered food’ by an
organization called
Slow Food.
At the time of my original fieldwork, neither lardo nor Slow
Food had par-
ticularly high media profiles. Indeed, my own interest in the
subject of pork
fat stemmed from local reverence towards such an obviously,
elsewhere, de-
spised food, one often associated, for example, with the notion
of fat as ‘poison’
in modern American diets (Rozin 1998; Klein1996).1 Every
summer since
the mid-1970s a festival dedicated to this specialty had been
held in Colonnata,
a tiny village located at the end of a narrow, winding mountain
road travers-
ing one of the three marble valleys of Carrara. And during the
years I spent
in Carrara, lardo-tasting visits to Colonnata became one of the
ways I entertained
foreign visitors who, more often than not, registered the
appropriate signs of
disgust at the mere mention of feasting on pork fat. However by
the late 1990s,
Colonnata had become a major destination for international
culinary tourism.
Venanzio, a restaurant named eponymously after its owner, a
local gourmet
and lardo purveyor, was one attraction, but Colonnata’s pork fat
was also being
promoted with great acclaim by Pecks, Milan’s epicurean
mecca. Moreover,

it had even been nominated as a delicious, albeit exotic,
delicacy by writers
as far afield as the food columns of The New York Times (La
Nazione 18/2/
1997) and Bon Appétit (Spender 2000).
Similarly, the organization now called Slow Food had limited
public visibility
in the mid-1980s. Founded by Carlo Petrini, a well-known food
and wine
writer associated with specific elite intellectual circles of the
1960s Italian
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left, it was known then as a loose coalition opposed to the
introduction in
Italy of American-style fast-food chains. This relatively small
group achieved
some initial national notoriety in the context of a spirited media
campaign

waged in 1986 against the installation of a new McDonalds
franchise near
the Spanish Steps in Rome. And in 1987, taking a snail as its
logo, Slow Food
emerged with its first public manifesto signed by leading
cultural figures of
the Italian left outlining its dedication to the politics and
pleasures of ‘slow-
ness’ and its opposition to the ‘fast life.’
Colonnata and the quarries. Photo by Joel Leivick.
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alison le itc h
In the late 1980s, Slow Food began to intervene within the
growing circuits
of a vigorous national debate concerning the widening
application of new
uniform European Union food and safety legislation.

Theoretically designed
as a measure of standardization for the European food industry,
this legislation
threatened the production of artisanal foods linked to particular
localities
and cultural traditions. Thus, whereas elsewhere in the world,
anxiety about
the homogenizing practices of post-industrial capitalism had
taken the form
of movements around endangered species, environments and
people, in Europe
there was a growing concern for ‘endangered foods.’ In 1989
Petrini launched
the International Slow Food Movement at the Opéra Comique in
Paris, and
during the 1990s, Slow Food gradually developed into a large
international
organization, now in 83 countries.
From its inception Slow Food mixed business and politics. In
Italy, for ex-
ample, it developed an extremely successful commercial wing
publishing books
and travel guides on cultural tourism, food and wine. It has also
initiated taste
education programmes in primary schools and has recently
proposed a univers-
ity of gastronomy. An explicit organizational strategy has been
the cultivation
of an international network of journalists and writers. To this
end Slow Food
sponsors a star-studded annual food award — a food Oscar —
that recognizes
outstanding contributions to international food diversity.
Although its
headquarters remain in Bra, a small Piedmont town of about

70,000 people
where Petrini grew up, an indication of Slow Food’s
institutional and econ-
omic weight may be glimpsed in its rapid expansion, with
additional offices
opening in Switzerland, Germany, New York and most recently
in Brussels,
where it lobbies the European Union on agriculture and trade
policy.
What accounts for this current explosion of public interest in
European
food politics? There is, of course, a rich body of literature on
the potency of
food as a political symbol particularly in periods of great
economic and social
change. Indeed one need only recall the unfortunate
consequences of Marie
Antoinette’s remark about eating cake in the context of a
ferocious battle
over the production of bread in Paris. Similarly, in the late 19th
century, when
socialism vied with republicanism as feudalism finally gave way
to industrial
capitalism, attempts to raise the bread tax in Italy provided the
impetus for
wide-scale revolts against the monarchy. Social historians
researching in this
arena have been influenced in particular by E. P. Thompson’s
(1971) path-
breaking study of English food rioters in pre-industrial England;
he argued
that peasants protesting the rising price of bread were
responding not just to
increased economic hardship but to the abandonment of a ‘just
price’ system

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which guaranteed prices on certain basic commodities for the
poor in the feu-
dal economy. A common thread in many subsequent historical
studies is that
food protests, disturbances, and other forms of collective action
around food
are often motivated by ideas of social justice within moral
economies, rather
than more pragmatic concerns such as hunger or scarcity
(Hobsbawm 1959;
Gailus 1994; Gilje 1996; C. Tilly 1975; L. Tilly 1983; Taylor
1996; Orlove 1997).
Food and other items of consumption have also been central as
cultural
symbols in colonial and post-colonial nationalist struggles. In
colonial America
tea took on a radical symbolic function uniting colonists of

different classes
and regions, to eventually become a catalyst for boycotts, riots
and even revo-
lution (Breen 1988; Bentley 2001). Under British rule, Ghanian
elites increas-
ingly turned from European to African foods as an expression of
nationalist
sentiment (Goody 1982). In Mexico, corn, a product which was
associated
with the peasantry and denigrated by colonial elites as
nutritionally inferior
to wheat, later became central to the development of a national
cuisine (Pilcher
1998). Similarly in Algeria, French bread is imbued with
complex meanings
reflecting post-colonial ambivalence (Jansen 2001). Equally
numerous are
examples of the political appropriation of food as a symbol of
collective or
contested national identity. Familiar recent cases include the
wide-scale Indo-
nesian protests in 1998 over imf demands to remove subsidies
on basic food
items such as oil and rice; the 1990s protests by the French over
American
tariffs on foie gras; and, of course, McDonalds as a focal protest
symbol for
anti-globalization activists.
My assumption in this paper is that deepening concerns in
Europe over
food policy are linked to questions of European identity, indeed
with moral
economies and with the imagination of Europe’s future as well
as its past.
Nadia Seremetakis, for example, has discussed how the

disappearance of speci-
fic tastes and local material cultures of production
accompanying widening
European Union regimes of standardization constitutes a
massive ‘reorganiza-
tion of public memory’ (1994:3), a rationalizing project which
potentially limits
the capacity of marginalized rural communities to reproduce
themselves as
active subjects of history. The Slow Food movement, with its
emphasis on
the protection of threatened foods and the diversity of cultural
landscapes is,
perhaps, one response.
In the context of transformations to the global economy, these
debates
are inevitably also caught up in what has been called the
politics of risk discourse
(Beck 1986). Issues such as the introduction of genetically
modified foods
and crops, the widespread use of antibiotics and growth
hormones in animal
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4 4 2
alison le itc h
fodder, the spread of diseases such as Bovine Spongiform
Encephalopathy
(bse, colloquially known as mad cow’s disease), the 1999
Belgium chicken
dioxin scandal or the more recent foot and mouth scare in
Britain, are now
central topics of conversation in most European nations. I
would suggest that
public anxiety over these risks, both real and imagined, is
symptomatic of
other widespread fears concerning the rapidity of social and
economic change
since the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. In sum, food and identity
are becoming
like the ‘Euro,’ a single common discursive currency through
which to debate
Europeaness and the implications of economic globalization at
the begin-
ning of the twenty-first century.
Two other sets of questions also frame this inquiry. One
concerns the genesis
of the Slow Food movement within the broader context of
transformations
to Italian political life over the past two decades. This is a
period associated
with a significant decline in the cultural influence of political
parties, labour
unions and the Catholic Church, institutions that until recently

have been
the recognized political voice for collective interests in Italian
society. It is
also a period marked by tremendous economic growth, the
expansion of
commercially organized leisure and the passage of cultural
power into the
hands of the economic elite. Coinciding with these trends has
been the rapid
emergence of an influential independent non-profit sector of the
economy
and the development of new civil spaces fostering alternate
forms of civic
associationism. The appearance of the Slow Food movement at
this specific
historical conjuncture must, therefore, be tracked in relation to
these more
general transformations to Italian institutional politics and
cultural life.
Finally my analysis is positioned alongside recent attempts to
understand
consumption as a relatively new ethnographic arena for the
analysis of the
capitalisms of late modernity. If we understand the global
economy of the
early twenty-first century to be an ‘economy of signs’ (Lash &
Urry 1994;
Baudrillard 1981), where the symbolic and aesthetic content of
commodities
has become increasingly important, then potentially new
relationships may
be created between consumption and the market. There is
already ample
ethnographic evidence demonstrating the influence of global
cultural shifts

in consumer taste on the organization of production (Blim
2000b; Mintz 1985;
Roseberry 1996; Heyman 1997; Hernandez & Nigh 1998;
Schneider 1994).
More polemically, Daniel Miller (1995; 1997) has suggested
that consumption
has displaced production as the new ‘vanguard’ of the late-
capitalist motor
and that understanding the practices of consumption cross-
culturally may
reveal new roles for consumers as international political actors.
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Theorists of new social movements also argue for the priority of
culture
and ‘symbolically defined action spaces’ (Eder 1993:9) as the
basis for under-
standing new forms of collective action in post-industrial
societies. In a some-
what problematic, though intriguing analysis of new forms of

middle-class
consciousness, Klaus Eder has argued that middle-class
collective action often
manifests itself in struggles for an ‘identitarian’ form of social
existence, in-
volving the idea of an authentic life-form where people interact
as equals
(1993:181). These kinds of struggles for identity and expressive
social relations
can, of course, also occur within the market.2 The growth of
consumerist
forms of identity-production in liberal democratic societies thus
coincides
with the development of new possibilities for consumer politics
in which cul-
ture has become a favoured idiom of political mobilization.3
Leaving aside for the moment these larger questions, let me now
return to
the local ethnographic context. The first section of this essay is
grounded in
what might be termed a phenomenology of pork fat.4 In other
words, I am
interested in exploring the meanings of pork fat for local people
and how
these meanings may have changed in relation to its later
appropriation as a
key symbol of an ‘endangered food’ for the Slow Food
movement. I focus on
this example since it fortuitously coincides with my previous
research and
also because it provides an ethnographic window onto the
promotional politics
and origins of the Slow Food movement outlined in the second
section.

Eating Lardo
At the time of my original research pork fat was not commonly
eaten in
any of the households I regularly visited for meals. Lardo was,
however, al-
most always nominated in the oral histories I collected detailing
the condi-
tions of work over past generations. Many households
maintained small vege-
table gardens, which kept them going during periods of
unemployment, and
some households, with access to land, kept pigs or cows. One of
the by-products
of these pigs, lardo or cured pork fat, thus constituted a kind of
food safe for
families in the region and was an essential daily source of
calorific energy in
the quarry worker’s diet. Like sugar and coffee, lardo was a
‘proletarian hunger
killer’ (Mintz 1979). Eaten with a tomato and a piece of onion
on dry bread,
it was a taken-for-granted element in the worker’s lunch. Lardo
was thought
to quell thirst as well as hunger and was appreciated for its
coolness on hot
summer days. Given its dietary importance, it is perhaps not
surprising that
it was also adopted as a cure for any number of health ailments
from an upset
stomach to a bad back.
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Apart from its nutritional or curative value, lardo can easily be
seen as the
perfect culinary analog of a block of marble (Leivick 1999).
Firstly, both mate-
rials convey parallel ideas of metamorphosis. Elsewhere I have
written about
the ways in which quarry workers utilize organic metaphors to
talk about
the transformative properties of the stone (Leitch 1993, 1996,
1999). Lardo
embodies similar ideas of metamorphosis. It is transformed
from its natural
state as pig fat through the curing process, and this process is
also narrated as
one that encapsulates ideas of craft and individual skill.
Secondly, although
recipes for lardo vary in their finer details, marble, preferably
quarried from
near Colonnata at Canalone, is always cited as an essential
production in-
gredient. Its qualities of porosity and coolness are vital,

especially because
lardo makers do not use any kind of preservative apart from
salt. Apparently
the crystalline structure of Canalone marble allows the pork fat
to ‘breathe,’
while at the same time containing the curing brine. If at any
stage the lardo
goes bad, it is simply thrown out. Just like marble workers who
have often
suggested to me that marble dust is actually beneficial to the
body because it
is ‘pure calcium,’ lardo makers say that the chemical
composition of marble,
calcium carbonate, is a purificatory medium which extracts
harmful substan-
ces from pork fat, including cholesterol.
The curing process begins with the raw fat, cut from the back of
select
pigs. It is then layered in rectangular, marble troughs
resembling small sarco-
phagi, called conche. The conche are placed in the cellar,
always the coolest
part of the house. The majority of these cellars are quite dank
and mouldy.
Lard making with the conche. Photo by Luigi Biagini
([email protected]) in the book ‘Il Lardo
di Colonnata’. Federico Motta Editore, Milano (forthcoming).
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Some still contain underground cisterns, which in the past
supplied water to
households without plumbing. Once placed in the troughs, the
pork fat is
covered with layers of rock salt and a variety of herbs,
including pink-jacketed
garlic, pepper, rosemary and juniper berries. Finally, a small
slab of bacon is
placed on top to start the pickling process, and six to nine
months later it is
ready to eat. Translucent, white, veined with pink, cool and soft
to touch, the
end product mimics the exact aesthetic qualities prized in high
quality marble.
But lardo is of course more than just marble’s visual culinary
analog. For
local people lardo is deeply reminiscent of a shared past
characterized by pov-
erty and food scarcity. In diets distinguished by protein
scarcity, lardo was an
essential calorific food for men who, in the past, laboured up to
fifteen hours
a day cutting and hauling huge blocks of marble. To eat lardo,
especially in

the carnevalesque space of an annual festival, where hundreds
of kilos of pork
fat are consumed over four hot days in late August, is to
remember and celebrate
this past as collective history and corporeal memory. This is a
performance
of sensuous display and consumption where the skin, fat, and
flesh of lardo is
counterpoised to that of its consumers. The juxtaposition of two
kinds of
beautiful bodies and flesh, lardo and human, rephrases, or
resculpts, two kinds
of smooth, sensuous, luxuriousness: lardo and marble. And so
just as lardo
tastes of marble, it also mimics it. Through the curing process,
lardo and marble
metaphorically become one and the same. Through its physical
incorporation,
memories of place and self are actually ingested.
The Politics of Pork Fat
The events that led to Slow Food’s declaration of lardo di
Colonnata as an
‘endangered food’ began two years before my return to Carrara.
In March of
1996 the local police force had descended on the Venanzio
Restaurant in
Colonnata, ‘the temple of lardo’ (La Nazione 1/4/1996).
Protected by the con-
stabulary, local health authority personnel proceeded to remove
several sam-
ples of Venanzio’s lardo and subsequently placed all of his
conche under quaran-
tine. Later, samples were also taken from several other small
lardo makers in

the village, but Venanzio and one other wholesaler, Fausto
Guadagni, were
singled out for special attention.
This action led to a barrage of media commentary that soon
reached the
national dailies. At the local level, the main preoccupation was
the possible
threat to the 1996 lardo festival. Nationally, the quarantine and
subsequent
application of new European hygiene legislation led to debates
over the power
of the European Union to regulate Italian food production and
determine
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Italian eating habits. The lardo quarantine controversy also
provided the per-

fect media opportunity for the political aspirations of the Slow
Food Movement.
According to Carlo Petrini, coinage of the term ‘endangered
food’ dated to
the mid-1990s, just before the lardo controversy erupted. Up
until then, Slow
had been perceived by the public as an association of gourmets
mostly concerned
with the protection of national cuisines. But by the mid-1990s
— a period
which coincided with a number of high-profile food scares in
Europe and
public loss of trust in national food regulatory authorities —
Slow began to
imagine itself as an international organization concerned with
the global pro-
tection of food tastes.
For Slow, lardo di Colonnata became the example par
excellence in a long
list of ‘endangered foods’ which included, for example, red
onions from Tropea
in Calabria, an ancient legume from the region of Le Marche
called la cicerchia,
and a plum and apricot hybrid called il biricoccolo. Several
‘endangered foods’
were imagined as under threat, from trends towards farming
monocultures,
from the disintegration of traditional rural foodways, from
pollution of water-
ways, or from the dearth of alternate distribution networks. In
the case of
lardo, salamis and cheese, the threat was standardization and the
imposition
of new hygiene legislation, which would considerably diminish
the economic

viability of many of these artisanal producers.
Pork fat was singled out for a number of other reasons apart
from timing.
Firstly, due to the success of the lardo festival over twenty
years and the
promotional efforts of people like Venanzio, it had already
acquired a certain
exotic caché, especially among a group of celebrity chefs to
whom Venanzio
himself was connected. More importantly, however, lardo
presented an un-
ambiguous test case for new European Union hygiene rules,
which insisted
on the utilization of non-porous materials in food production.
Although there
are certainly good techniques for sterilizing the conche, marble
is porous and
its porosity is clearly essential to the curing process as well as
to lardo’s claims
to authenticity. Local lardo makers involved in this dispute thus
had a vested
interest in lobbying for exceptions to the generic rules designed
for large food
manufacturers. Their interests coincided perfectly with Slow
Food’s own poli-
tical agenda, in particular its campaign to widen the debate over
food rules
to include cultural issues.
Slow Food’s appropriation of lardo di Colonnata as a key
symbol of its
‘endangered foods’ campaign also had great rhetorical value. In
the numerous
publicity materials that subsequently appeared in the press,
Petrini often likened

the protection of pork fat made by local people in dank and
mouldy cellars
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to other objects of significant national heritage, including major
works of art
or buildings of national architectural note. In valorizing the
traditional tech-
niques of lardo producers, Petrini was rhetorically distancing
his organization
from accusations of gourmet elitism, while simultaneously
challenging norm-
alizing hierarchies of expert scientific knowledge, including
those of the Euro-
pean health authorities. In this kind of strategic symbolic
reversal, the food
artisan is envisaged not as a backward-thinking conservative
standing in the
way of progress, but rather, as a quintessential modern subject,
a holder par

excellence of national heritage.
Ironically, the publicity surrounding these events subsequently
amplified
into yet another threat: copying. Much to the dismay of local
lardo whole-
salers, big butcheries from all over Italy began manufacturing a
product, which
they …
FOOD INSECURITY
IN SANTA CRUZ COUNTY
David Amaral
Heather Bullock
Tracking the Meal Gap in Santa Cruz County: An Index of Food
Insecurity, 2014-18
NOVEMBER 2019
Food insecurity is a major public health issue in the United
States, with an estimated 11.1%
(14.3 million) U.S. households experiencing food insecurity in
2018 (U.S. Department of
Agriculture, n.d.). Food insecurity refers to limited or uncertain
access to nutritious, safe food
necessary to lead a healthy, active life (Coleman-Jensen,
Rabbitt, Gregory, & Singh, 2018).
Common indicators of food insecurity include the inability to
access sufficient food for
balanced, nutritious meals, fear of running out of food due to

financial constraints, and
skipping meals, cutting down on portions, or hunger
experienced as a result of insufficient
access to food (Coleman-Jensen et al., 2018). Experiences of
food insecurity may be
temporary or persist over long periods of time, and have been
found to negatively impact
health and well-being, child development, and academic
performance (Gundersen, 2013;
Jyoti, Frongillo, & Jones, 2005).
To gain a deeper understanding of these issues in our
community, the Blum Center on
Poverty, Social Enterprise, and Participatory Governance and
Second Harvest Food Bank
Santa Cruz County partnered to calculate an estimate or index
of food insecurity in Santa
Cruz County. Utilizing published data from the U.S. Census
Bureau, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics, and administrative records from California food
assistance programs, the index
provides a metric for estimating the extent of food insecurity
experienced by county
residents, for measuring food assistance provided by
governmental and nonprofit sources,
and for tracking both over time.
This report describes the methodology we used to calculate the
index, presents findings
related to food insecurity in Santa Cruz County for fiscal year
2017-18, and tracks trends in
missed meals and food assistance provisions from 2014 through
2018. These findings,
which deepen and expand our understanding of food insecurity

in Santa Cruz County,
provide a new resource for informing local nutritional
assistance initiatives and assessing
our county’s progress toward reducing food insecurity.
Methodology
The Need for An Index of Food Insecurity in Santa Cruz County
Calculating Key Components of the Index
The index is based on a methodology that was developed by a
research team at Santa Clara
University (visit
https://www.scu.edu/business/cfie/research/food-insecurity/).
We adapted
their methodology for Santa Cruz County. Four key components
are used to calculate the
index:
(1) total meals required by the population at risk for food
insecurity;
(2) number of meals purchased by this population;
(3) amount of food assistance provided by state agencies, the
county food bank, and its
community partners; and
(4) missing meals or the gap between the total meals required
and the number of meals
acquired (either through purchase or food assistance provision)
by the population at risk.
1

We describe in greater detail how each of these components was
constructed.
Total Meals Required and Purchased. Total meals required is
calculated by multiplying
the number of individuals at risk for food insecurity multiplied
by three meals a day for
each day of the year. To estimate the total population at risk, we
draw on estimates from
the American Community Survey of the number of households
in Santa Cruz County
earning less than $50,000 annually, and multiply that number by
the average household
size in the county for a given year. Although income is only one
of the characteristics
associated with the likelihood of experiencing food insecurity
(Coleman-Jensen et al.,
2018), we believe that focusing on households in this income
range provides a useful and
conservative indicator of the population at risk of food
insecurity, especially given high
housing and living costs in Santa Cruz County.
Focusing on income groups to construct our population at risk
also allows us to draw on
data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer
Expenditure Survey (BLS CEX) to
calculate the average amount spent on food by households in
our focal income range (i.e.,
under $50,000 annually). By dividing the average food
expenditure (in dollars) by the price
of a low-cost meal, we arrive at the total meals purchased by the
population at risk.

Food Assistance Provided. Food assistance provided is
calculated by drawing on data
published by state food assistance programs from the following
programs: CalFresh;
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants,
and Children (WIC); School
Nutrition Program (SNP); Child and Adult Care Food Program
(CACFP); and Summer Meals.
Data was also provided by the Second Harvest Food Bank of
Santa Cruz County and its
major community partners (i.e., Grey Bears, Community
Bridges, and Valley Churches
United Missions).
To make our calculations and comparison possible, all food
assistance is converted into a
common unit of analysis - meals. To do so, total expenditures
by state assistance
programs are divided by the estimated price of a low-cost meal.
For Second Harvest Food
Bank and its community partners, total meals provided is
calculated by dividing the total
poundage distributed by 1.2, the number of pounds in an
average meal according to the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
1
2
3
______________________
Research indicates that a non-negligible portion of households
reporting food insecurity fall into middle- or upper-

income brackets (Nord & Brent, 2002).
For the most part, our analysis relies on BLS CEX estimates for
expenditures by residents of the western region of
the U.S. Western residents tend to spend more on food annually
than the U.S. population as a whole. Estimates
based on U.S. average expenditures are only used when the
USDA’s average cost of a meal is used to calculate low-
end range estimates, presented in figures A1-A4 in the
Appendix.
For assistance provided through School Nutrition Programs
(SNP), meal types (breakfast, lunch, supper, and snack)
are multiplied by state reimbursement rates to first calculate
total program expenditures on food assistance.
3
2
1
2
Missing Meals. The total missing meals is the difference
between the total meals required
and the sum of meals received through either purchase or food
assistance provision.
Understanding and Interpreting the Food Insecurity Index

The food insecurity index rating calculates the ratio of missing
meals to the number of meals
needed to bridge the gap between meals purchased and total
meals required:
Food Insecurity Index =
Total Meals Required - Meals Purchased
Missing Meals
_____________________________________________________
________________________________
The index rating for a particular year can be understood as the
percentage of food
assistance needed that goes unmet. For example, an index rating
of 0.5 indicates that food
assistance programs covered 50% of the meals the population at
risk needed but could not
afford to purchase. An index rating of 0 would indicate that
food assistance programs
completely filled the gap between the meals that could be
purchased and the meals needed
for a nutritious, healthy diet, while an index rating of 1 would
indicate that no assistance was
provided and 100% of this gap remained.
California state agencies report expenditures on food assistance
by fiscal year. To align with
this approach, we also base the index on fiscal year estimates,
spanning July through June
for any given year. Census numbers and other data calculated by
calendar year are drawn
from the year in which the fiscal year begins. A complete list of
data sources can be found in
the Appendix.

Calculating the Cost of a Meal (and Why it Matters)
The assumed “cost of a meal” plays a pivotal role in calculating
this food insecurity index.
Even a small change in estimated meal cost can substantially
impact estimates of the
number of meals that low-income households can purchase with
their own funds or with
assistance from CalFresh or WIC. Further, governmental
assistance (e.g., CalFresh benefits) is
calculated by converting dollars into meals, whereas assistance
from nongovernmental
sources (e.g., food banks) is calculated by converting pounds
into meals. This means that
shifts in the assumed cost of a meal influences our
estimates of the proportion of food
assistance provided by each source. For these reasons, choosing
an appropriate meal cost
is important to the accuracy of the index.
In constructing the index, we considered several different
options. Using the cost of a meal
designated by one of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
(USDA) food plans is one option.
For example, the USDA’s “low-cost meal plan” for a family of
four with two children,
estimated the price of a meal in June 2017 at $2.32. The major
problem with using USDA
meal plan costs is that these estimates are based on the national
averages and do not take
into account the substantial regional variation in food costs
(Leibtag & Kumcu, 2011; Todd,
Mancino, Leibtag, & Tripodo, 2010).

4
The USDA’s four plans - thrifty, low cost, moderate cost, and
liberal - vary by meal cost.4
______________________
3
Other estimates of average meal costs take regional variability
in food prices into
account. Map the Meal Gap, calculated by Feeding America in
collaboration with the data
analytics firm Nielsen, is one such example. Using national
sales data derived from price
scans of a basket of food items linked to Universal Product
Codes (UPCs), Feeding
American and Nielsen calculated multipliers at both the state-
and county-levels to
assess regional variation in the average cost of a meal. For 2017
(the most recent year
for which data is available), the national average meal cost was
estimated at $3.02, while
average meal cost in California was $3.16. For Santa Cruz
County, the estimated average
meal cost was $3.89, or 1.28 times the national average.
According to Feeding America’s
estimates, Santa Cruz County ranks among the most expensive
counties in the nation,
with average meal costs that were more expensive that 98% of
all U.S. counties in 2017
(Gundersen, Dewey, Kato, Crumbaugh, & Strayer, 2019).

Drawing on both the USDA and Feeding America estimates, we
adopted a moderate
approach that we believe affords an accurate but likely
conservative estimate of meal
costs in Santa Cruz County. For each year included in the
analysis, we begin with the
price of a meal for one member of a family of four following
the USDA’s “low-cost meal
plan.” We then multiply this amount by the multiplier for Santa
Cruz County derived from
Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap analysis (the average cost
of a meal in Santa Cruz
County divided by the national average meal cost) for the
respective year.
Estimated meal cost = USDA low cost meal × Santa Cruz
County multiplier
Since the meal cost used in index calculations exerts
considerable influence over the index’s
major components, it is informative to consider the range of
estimates possible based on
minimum and maximum meal costs. Based on alternate meal
costs, Figures A1 through A4
in the Appendix present the range of estimates for (1) meals
purchased; (2) food assistance
provided; (3) missing meals; and (4) the resulting index ratings
for each year. For these
figures, the price of a meal according to the USDA’s low-cost
meal plan for a family of four
(national average) serves as the low-end meal cost, while
Feeding America’s estimate for
average meal cost in Santa Cruz County serves as the upper-end
meal cost. The range of
potential estimates is included within the shaded zones in the

charts.
Findings
Food Insecurity In Santa Cruz County, 2017-18
In the most recent year analyzed (the fiscal year spanning 2017-
18), approximately 83,000
Santa Cruz County residents lived in households earning under
$50,000 per year. This group
– considered the population at risk of food insecurity for our
analysis – represented
approximately 30% of the county’s population. Based on
spending trends reported by the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for residents of the western
region of the United States,
these households purchased an estimated 45% of the meals they
required for a low-cost
nutritious diet. An additional 31% of required meals were
provided through food assistance
programs.
4
Figure 1. Average Annual Food Expenditures by Household
Income Groups (Western region),
2017
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure
Survey, Table 3133

Figure 2. Total Meals Required by Population at Risk in 2017-
18: 91,341,133
5
CalFresh (California’s implementation of the federal
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program or SNAP) and Second Harvest Food Bank were the
largest individual sources of
food assistance provided to Santa Cruz County residents.
CalFresh provided nearly half of all
food assistance in the county, with funds from the program
allowing residents to purchase
over 13 million meals. Second Harvest Food Bank was
responsible for providing roughly 20%
of all county food assistance, distributing the equivalent of an
additional 5.8 million meals to
county residents. Collectively, government programs provided
about 72% of food assistance,
while the food bank and community partners provided the
remaining 28% of food
assistance.
Figure 3. Food Assistance Provided in 2017-18
*See Figure A5 in the Appendix for details regarding food
assistance provided by nongovernmental organizations.
Despite over 28 million meals being distributed through food
assistance efforts, we estimate
that there remained over 21 million “missing meals” during
2017-18. If these missed meals
were distributed equally among the population at risk of food
insecurity, this would mean

that each person missed approximately five meals per week, and
was likely forced to seek
less expensive, less nutritious options.
The food insecurity index for 2017-18 measured 0.43, indicating
that 43% of the meal gap –
the difference between the number of meals that could be
purchased and the number of
meals required for a low-cost nutritious diet – remained even
after accounting for all food
assistance provided in the county. Food assistance provisions
would need to nearly double in
order to meet current needs in the county.
6
Within Santa Cruz County, there is considerable regional
variation in the concentrations of
residents at risk for food insecurity and participation in food
assistance programs such as
CalFresh. Figure 4 displays the varying densities of households
with annual incomes under
$50,000, while Figure 5 displays regional variation of CalFresh
(SNAP) participation. Figure 6
depicts regional distribution of the “SNAP-gap,” the difference
between the percent of the
population qualifying for SNAP and the percent reporting
participation in the program.
Neighborhoods characterized by high “SNAP-gap” rates may be
priority areas for advocacy
efforts aimed at increasing CalFresh enrollment.
Figure 4. Percent of Households with Annual Income Under
$50,000

5
6
All data are drawn from the 2017 American Community Survey
(5-year) estimates at the block group level.
More detailed maps of “SNAP-gap” block groups are available
upon request from the Blum Center. Contact: [email protected]
5
6
_______________________
7
Figure 5. Percent of Households Reporting Participation in
SNAP
8
Figure 6. “SNAP-Gap:” Difference between Percent of
Population Eligible for SNAP and
Percent Reporting Program Participation
Santa Cruz County Food Insecurity Trends, 2014-2018
To identify food insecurity trends in the county, we calculated
index estimates for the three
years prior to the most recent year for which data is available.

Over these years, the index
rating declined from a high of 0.53 (or 53%) in 2015-16 to its
lowest level of 0.43 (or 43%) in
2017-2018, the most recent year analyzed. This indicates that a
larger percentage of the gap
between the meals residents purchase and the meals they need is
being filled by food
assistance programs. Before reaching this conclusion, it is
important to take a a closer look at
the individual components used to calculate the index.
Most notably, during this time period, the total meals required
by the population at risk for
food insecurity decreased substantially from over 115 million
meals in 2014-15 to 91 million
meals in 2017-18 (a 20% drop in meals required). This decline
appears to be primarily due to
changing demographics in the county. In 2014, an estimated
38,985 households in Santa
Cruz County earned under $50,000 per year; by 2017, that
number dropped to 30,444
households.
9
Because the index defines the population at risk of food
insecurity purely in terms of
household income, when the number of households in this
income bracket declines, so too
does the population at risk and the number of meals required.
Figure 7. Food Insecurity Trends, 2014-2018
Over the four years analyzed, the number of meals purchased by

this population declined
just as quickly, dropping by 22% over the four years analyzed.
Those at risk of food
insecurity in 2018 were able to purchase no larger a share of the
meals required to sustain a
nutritious diet than they were four years earlier.
Total food assistance provided, however, has remained
relatively stable despite the
decreasing population at risk. Importantly, food assistance
provided by government
programs and by the food bank and its community partners is
covering an increasingly
larger portion of the total meals required by the population at
risk, providing nearly 31% of
total meals required in 2017-18, up from 26% in 2014-15. While
the sum total of assistance
in the county has declined by approximately 7% over the years
analyzed, this change is
markedly slower than the reduction in households earning under
$50,000. As the
population at risk of food insecurity has dropped, relatively
stable food assistance has met a
greater portion of the county’s need. The proportions of food
assistance provided by various
sources has remained stable over the years analyzed, with
CalFresh consistently providing
roughly half of all food assistance, while Second Harvest Food
Bank provided approximately
20% of all assistance in each of the four years analyzed.
10
Explaining the underlying causes of such significant and rapid

demographic shifts in the
county is beyond the scope of this report. Still, it is illuminating
to consider these trends in
greater detail. The number of households residing in Santa Cruz
County has remained fairly
stable over the years included in the analysis. However, during
this time period, the
proportion of households earning under $50,000 dropped from
over 40% to about 32%.
Interestingly, the number of households earning under $15,000
has not declined (in fact, it
has increased slightly). The number of county households
earning $15,000 to $50,000, on
the other hand, has decreased rapidly over the years analyzed.
In 2014, over 29,000
households, roughly 30% of all households in the county, were
in this income range. By
2017, there were approximately 19,000 households with
incomes in this range, amounting
to only 20% of households in the county. During these same
years, the proportion of
households earning over $100,000 rose from 33% to nearly
42%, and the median income
rose from about $93,000 to over $110,000. Rising income has
been accompanied by rising
housing costs: the average monthly rent in the city of Santa
Cruz increased from an
estimated $1,910 in December 2014 to $2,405 in December
2017 (Rent Jungle, n.d.). In
October 2019, the average monthly rent in Santa Cruz was
$3,130 (Rent Jungle, n.d.). This
represents an increase of 64% in average rent over the last five
years, from $22,920 to
$37,560 annually. For families with annual earnings of $50,000

who are paying the average
rental cost and have no housing or other assistance, rental costs
would shift from spending
46% of their income on rent to 75%. An increase of this
magnitude ($14,640) would
profoundly strain renters in our community.
Figure 8. Population at Risk of Food Insecurity, 2014-2017
Source: American Community Survey (1-year estimates), Table
B19001
11
While it is possible that those earning under $50,000 in 2014
have moved into higher
household income brackets, it is more likely that these
households have moved out of the
county due to rising housing costs. For this reason, we caution
against interpreting the
change in the indices from 2014-15 to 2017-2018 as reflecting
reduced food insecurity in
Santa Cruz County. Rather, demographic changes raise the
possibility that food insecurity is
not being alleviated, but is instead being redistributed to other
counties by the relocation of
low-income residents.
Summary and Recommendations
We calculated this food insecurity index to estimate need in
Santa Cruz County and to track

trends in both insecurity and efforts to alleviate it. By
considering amounts and sources of
food assistance provided in the county, our approach offers a
more fine-grained portrait of
food insecurity in Santa Cruz County than nation-wide models
based only on county-level
demographics. Our analysis indicates that low-income
households in the county currently
miss fewer meals than they did several years ago due to the
relative stability of food
assistance provided by state programs, the county food bank,
and other nutrition resources.
Nevertheless, approximately 20% of county residents remained
at risk of food insecurity in
fiscal year 2017-18.
It is clear that substantial need for supplemental nutrition
assistance remains. Increasing
enrollment in the CalFresh program is an important strategy for
expanding access to
nutritious food in our county. California’s SNAP enrollment is
among the lowest in the United
States, prompting recent legislative efforts to increase
enrollment levels (Botts, 2019).
According to the California Food Policy Advocates (2019), if
all eligible residents of Santa
Cruz County were enrolled in CalFresh, an additional $14.9
million in federal nutritional
assistance would be distributed in the county. According to our
estimates, this would help
county residents access an additional five million meals,
reducing missing meals by about a
fifth.
Outreach efforts that raise awareness of food assistance
programs and assist with the

application process have been found to increase participation
among eligible individuals and
families (Finkelstein & Notowidigdo, 2019). Reducing the
stigma associated with food
assistance programs is also crucial (Schanzenbach, 2009).
Missed meals in Santa Cruz
County could be reduced by initiatives that educate residents
about available programs,
assist with the application process, and de-stigmatize nutrition
assistance. Focusing on
increasing CalFresh enrollment in high “SNAP-gap”
neighborhoods should be a priority.
7
8
9
Research by UC Berkeley’s Urban Displacement Project
(www.urbandisplacement.org) finds numerous census tracts in
Santa Cruz,
Capitola, and Watsonville that are at risk of or are experiencing
ongoing gentrification. This trend is also the focus of extensive
media coverage. As Levin (2016) observes, “Santa Cruz has
increasingly become unaffordable and inhospitable to many
longtime
low-income workers and middle-class families, and experts say
the tech boom and housing crunch in nearby Silicon Valley is
exacerbating the displacement.”
Additionally, Hanson’s (2010) analysis indicates that federal
food assistance programs benefit local economies, with each
SNAP
dollar translating into $1.79 of economic activity.

Research by Gundersen and Oliveira (2001, p. 884) finds that
“households associating stigma with the receipt of food stamps
are
less likely to participate [in the program] than households not
associating stigma with food stamp receipt.”
7
8
9
___________________________
12
elnish
Typewritten Text
In the years analyzed, Second Harvest Food Bank and its
network of nonprofit and
community partners distributed over a quarter of all food
assistance provided in the county.
These providers play an invaluable role in alleviating food
insecurity in Santa Cruz County
and must be fully supported. Additionally, receiving assistance
from food pantries may
encourage participation in other nutrition assistance programs
such as SNAP (Bhattarai,
Duffy, & Raymond, 2005). Importantly, government and
community-based assistance
programs should be viewed as complementary partners in

reducing food insecurity.
We plan to update the index annually and continue tracking the
factors that contribute to
food insecurity in Santa Cruz County. Our intent is to provide
useful, actionable information
that will inform, strengthen, and mobilize initiatives to reduce
food insecurity in Santa Cruz
County.
13
Appendix
Estimate Ranges Based on Different Meal Costs
The following four charts depict our index estimates for Meals
Purchased, Food Assistance
Provided, Missing Meals, and the resulting Food Insecurity
Indices based on the range of
possible meal costs. In each figure, the low-end meal cost is
drawn from the USDA’s low-cost
meal plan for a family of four, while the high-end meal cost
adopts Feeding America’s
estimate for the average cost of a meal in Santa Cruz County.
Figure A1. Estimated range of Meals Purchased
14
Figure A2. Estimated Range of Food Assistance Provided

Figure A3. Estimated Range of Missing Meals
15
Figure A4. Estimated Range of Food Insecurity Index Ratings
16
Detail of Nongovernmental Food Assistance Provided
Figure A5. Percent of Nongovernmental Food Assistance
Provided, by Organization, 2017-18
17
Data Sources
American Community Survey (1-year and 5-year estimates),
U.S. Census Bureau. Tables
B01003, S1101, B19001.
Consumer Expenditure Survey, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Tables 1202 (U.S. average)
and 3133 (Western region).
Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four
Levels, U.S. Average, June 2014,
2015, 2016, 2017, United States Department of Agriculture.

Map the Meal Gap, Feeding America.
https://map.feedingamerica.org
California Women, Infants and Children (WIC) Program
Redemption by County, CA
Department of Public Health.
Food Stamp Program Participation and Benefit Issuance Reports
(DFA 256), CA Department
of Social Services.
Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) County Profiles,
California Department of
Education.
Child Nutrition Program Reimbursement Rates, California
Department of Education.
School Nutrition Program County Profiles, California
Department of Education.
Summer Meal Programs County Profile, California Department
of Education.
For Food Assistance Provided by county nonprofit
organizations, provision estimates
provided directly by Second Harvest Food Bank, Grey Bears,
Community Bridges, and Valley
Churches United Missions.
18
References

Bhattarai, G. R., Duffy, P. A., & Raymond, J. (2005). Use of
food pantries and food stamps in
low-income households in the United States. Journal of
Consumer Affairs, 39(2), 276–298.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6606.2005.00015.x
Botts, J. (2019, July 18). California could get $1.8 billion in
food stamp funding. It just needs
people to sign up. The Sacramento Bee. Retrieved from
https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article232785452.html
California Food Policy Advocates. (2019). Lost dollars, empty
plates: What CalFresh means for
individuals & the economy. Retrieved from https://cfpa.net/lost-
dollars-empty-plates-2019/
Coleman-Jensen, A., Rabbitt, M. P., Gregory, C. A., & Singh,
A. (2018). Household food security
in the United States in 2017 (No. ERR-256). U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Economic
Research Service. Retrieved from
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?
pubid=90022
Finkelstein, A., & Notowidigdo, M. J. (2019). Take-up and
targeting: Experimental evidence
from SNAP. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 134(3), 1505–
1556.
https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjz013
Gundersen, C., Dewey, A., Kato, M., Crumbaugh, A., & Strayer,
M. (2019). Map the meal gap
2019: A report on county and congressional district food
insecurity and county food cost in the
United States in 2017. Feeding America. Retrieved from

https://www.feedingamerica.org/sites/default/files/2019-
04/2017-map-the-meal-gap-
technical-brief.pdf
Gundersen, C., (2013). Food insecurity is an ongoing national
concern. Advances in Nutrition,
4(1), 36–41. https://doi.org/10.3945/an.112.003244
Gundersen, C., & Oliveira, V. (2001). The food stamp program
and food insufficiency.
American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 83(4), 875–887.
https://doi.org/10.1111/0002-
9092.00216
Hanson, K. (2010). The food assistance national input-output
multiplier (FANIOM) model and
stimulus effects of SNAP (No. 262247). U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Economic Research
Service. Retrieved from
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44748/7996_err
103_1_.pdf
Jyoti, D. F., Frongillo, E. A., & Jones, S. J. (2005). Food
insecurity affects school children’s
academic performance, weight gain, and social skills. Journal of
Nutrition, 135(12), 2831–
2839. https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.12.2831
19
Leibtag, E., …

The Disappearance of Hunger in America
Author(s): patricia allen
Source: Gastronomica , Vol. 7, No. 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 19-23
Published by: University of California Press
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The timing of the announcement could not have
been worse. Last fall, a few days before the American

feast of Thanksgiving, the United States Department of
Agriculture (usda) announced that it was eliminating the
word hunger from its official assessment of food security in
America and replacing it with the term very low food secu-
rity. Not surprisingly, antihunger advocates condemned
this decision, as did the press. An article in the Sarasota
Herald-Tribune called it “a shallow attempt to sugarcoat a
serious national health problem,”1 while an editorial in the
Winston-Salem Journal suggested it was “an effort to satisfy
either some silly bureaucratic or sinister political motive.”2
An Augusta Chronicle columnist accused the usda of using
“semantics to sweep a dirty problem under the rug.”3
The media portrayed the substitution of food insecurity
for hunger as a political maneuver to deflect attention
from the persistence of hunger in the face of plenty. In
fact, the story is both more complicated and subtle than
that. It’s not that the United States has become less inter-
ested in food and politics. The popularity of books such as
Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s The
Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Greg Critser’s Fat Land, and
films such as Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me, demon-
strates that Americans are increasingly interested in, and
conversant with, food issues.4 If sales figures are any indica-
tion, we are ready to pay attention to the character of our
food system and find ways to improve it. Although much
recent food writing is celebratory, many titles also point to
problems in the food system, such as food safety, nutrition,
and environmental degradation. Yet very little is said about
social justice issues, including the most obvious of all,
which is hunger in America.5
Nevertheless, the hiding of hunger is not a government
conspiracy. By eliminating the term hunger, the usda was
simply announcing an “innocent” statistical realignment.

Specifically, usda guidelines state that food insecurity is a
social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate
food, whereas hunger is an individual physiological condition.6
In any case, since measuring hunger as an individual con-
dition requires the collection of different data from that
provided in the Current Population Survey, the usda decided
to eliminate the term rather than collect different data.
On the face of it, and as the editorials claim, this move
does look like a political decision to hide the shame of
hunger in the United States. However, it is more likely a
methodological decision, albeit one based on an arbitrary
distinction that appears to have no logical, etymological, or
historical basis. Ironically, the lack of conspiracy actually
makes the usda’s redefinition even more damaging, insidi-
ous, and difficult to combat, because it stalls, and perhaps
reverses, the progress that has been made over the past sev-
eral decades in the conceptualization of hunger and food
security. The new terminology defuses the outrage that the
term hunger elicits while disrupting the social progress that
has been made over the last few decades as the term food
security was developed and put into use.
The statistical elimination of the term hunger does
violence to hungry people and to the efforts to end hunger
in America. At the same time, the term food security should
not be dismissed. It is real and important, and it needs
to remain as a conceptual category when we talk about
inequalities surrounding food.
A Brief History of the Discourse
on Food Security
There has always been hunger. In some cases, hunger has been
the result of food shortages due to crop failures. More often

it is the result of poverty and the inability of people to pay for
the food they need. This fact is what makes the issue of food
justice so highly charged. Not only is food a basic require-
ment for life but there is no reason for people to go without
it. This belief put the problem of hunger on the international
agenda in 1933 and led to the development of food assis-
tance programs in the United States during the Depression,
when agricultural surpluses and hunger coexisted.7
The Disappearance
of Hunger in America
semantics | patricia allen
gastronomica: the journal o f fo o d a n d culture , vo l.7, n o
.2 , p p.19–2 3, is s n 152 9-32 62. © 2007 by t h e regent s of
t h e univ ersit y of cal if ornia. al l righ t s reserv ed. pl ease
direct al l request s f or permission to
photocopy or reproduce art icle co n te n t thro ug h the un ive
rs ity o f ca lifo rn ia p ress’ s righ t s and perm issions web sit
e, h t t p://www.ucpressjournal s.com /reprint inf o.asp. doi:
10.15 25 /gf c.2007 .7 .3.19.
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Although food security issues in one form or another
have been around since the beginning of time, contempo-

rary approaches to food security emerged during the world
food crisis of the early 1970s when the price of staple foods
skyrocketed. The term food security was introduced in 1974
at the United Nations World Food Conference, though the
change in discourse was not intended to diminish hunger
as a problem—quite the opposite. Food security became
a clear and central policy goal of most developing coun-
tries as the World Food Conference proclaimed people’s
inalienable right to freedom from hunger and resolved to
eliminate hunger and malnutrition completely.8 As poverty
increased in the United States during the 1980s,9 the us
government also adopted the term food security, defining it
as “a condition in which all people have access at all times
to nutritionally adequate food through normal channels.”10
However, the United States did not adopt a statement about
the inalienable human right to food.
In the 1990s, changes in economic and ideological con-
ditions spurred new efforts to conceptualize food security.
At the international level, this led to attempts to expand and
deepen the concept of food security. The 1996 World Food
Summit paid increased attention to the right to food. It also
broadened the scope of the analytical unit used to measure
food insecurity and for the first time considered not only the
quantity but also the quality of food.11 But it became clear
that defining food security on a national or global scale
resulted in aggregate measures that missed instances of food
insecurity within households, communities, and regions.
New approaches were needed to address these problems.
The combination of deteriorating food security con-
ditions, the insufficiency of private and public efforts to
combat hunger, and the conceptual innovations at the inter-
national level led in the United States to the development of
the concept of community food security. Within this context,
the food-system vulnerabilities revealed in Los Angeles fol-

lowing the Rodney King verdict in 1992 prompted a group
of environmental justice students from the University of
California at Los Angeles, led by Robert Gottlieb, to assess
the core issues facing the South Central Los Angeles com-
munity.14 What they discovered was that people’s greatest
concerns centered on food access, quality, and price. Of
course, many people had been working for decades to
improve local food security, but the group’s study, Seeds of
Change: Strategies for Food Security for the Inner City, pro-
vided a catalyst for taking food security work to a new level.15
In 1994 thirty organizations and individuals hoping to
influence upcoming farm bill legislation (which authorizes
funding for food and agriculture programs in the United
States) met to discuss new approaches to food security.
This group developed the 1995 Community Food Security
Empowerment Act, which proposed community food secu-
rity as the conceptual basis for solving food-system problems.
Endorsed by more than 125 organizations, the act defined
community food security as “all persons obtaining at all
times a culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet
through local non-emergency sources.”16
A new social movement was born. The national
Community Food Security Coalition was established in
1996, and it continues to grow (the number of participants at
its annual conference has increased from a couple hundred
to more than one thousand in 2006). Part of what makes
community food security so compelling is that it is an inte-
grated approach that focuses not only on meeting people’s
food security needs in the present but also on a broad range
of food-system issues, including farmland loss, agriculture-
based pollution, urban and rural community development,
and transportation. The goal is to work toward the systematic
and long-term elimination of food insecurity.

THEODORE C. BESTORDepartment of AnthropologyHarvard Univer.docx

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