Abstract
Recent conversations concerning organic food systems have focused on the conventionalization hypothesis, which posits that the organic food sector has become increasingly bifurcated between “historical” players in the organic movement on one side, and on the other by distributors and industrial operators recently arrived in the sector, who practice a more conventionalized form of organic agriculture which is now on the ascendancy. The most prominent explanations for the growth and dominance of a conventionalized organic food system have been economic, based in the logics of input costs, especially land rent. We use the cases of the Belgian Blue commodity system and the Belgian organic beef commodity system to argue that conventionalization is also cognitive. To understand the role of cognition in the ascendance of the conventional organic food sector, we utilize concept of “référentiel”—or system of cognitive references—as developed by Muller and Jobert. We believe that comparing organic and conventional practices as two systems of cognitive references makes a deeper understanding of conventionalization possible in two ways: first because it makes it clear that the two systems coexist on a cognitive level, understood in a broad sense as tightly knit sets of knowledges, beliefs, standards, and images. Secondly, the concept of référentiel enables one to understand how the conventional system can become irreversible (lock-in effect) and thus incompatible with the development of the organic system.
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Notes
Muller called this structure of meaning a “référentiel” by analogy with the mathematical concept of a set of elements constituting a reference system and its use in the area of training (référentiel de métier or the trade’s set of references or manual). This notion differs from that of the set of technical references that is used in agricultural science to describe a set of reference data that has come out of experimentation conducted under specified conditions and aimed at production and which is actually a translation of the norms, images, and knowledge that surround practices. (de Bonneval, 1993).
The lean-and-tender norm that applies to Belgian beef is diametrically opposed to, for example, the marbling criterion that prevails in certain markets in English-speaking countries.
In addition to the dominant double-muscled Belgium Blue breed, which accounted for 90.5% of the meat breed in Belgium, there is a marginal Belgian Blue mixed breed with a normal mixed conformation, the purpose of which is to preserve the breed’s originally mixed (beef and dairy) production capacity. This marginal branch accounted for 14% of the Belgian Blue breed in 2002 and is decreasing (Service Public Fédéral Economie, P. M. E., Classes Moyennes et Energie, 2003).
Regulation (EEC) 1208/81 defined a EUROP carcass classification based on the quality of the carcass form, which in turn was based on the development of muscle mass profiles. The grades went from E (most compliant carcasses) to P (least compliant carcasses). Regulation 1026/91 added the S grade of carcasses for “super double-muscled Belgian Blue” carcasses. As a result, EUROP became SEUROP with carcasses in the (super) double-muscled Belgian Blue S grade at the top of the hierarchy.
European Union Organic Regulation has provoked in Belgium an important move to organic conversion among beef stock farmers from 1992 to 2000. They represent today 85% of the converted area to organic production in Belgium. Nevertheless, only a small part, about 15% of the organic stock farmers “finished” their cattle to market them on the organic market. The remaining 85% organic stock farmers sell their cattle on the conventional market that finish the cattle in traditional feed-lot. This is only possible because the EU provides subsidies for organic stock farming but does not require that these cattle remain on the organic market. Moreover, the organic beef market structure is oligopolistic: one of the main Belgium retailers has about 55% of the market share and his food chain is furnished by only 20 Belgium beef stock farmers. The analysis of the organic beef commodity system at national level food chain “référentiel” therefore rests on the data collected on the 20 farmers who sell to the organic market.
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Acknowledgments
We want to thank the Agrofood Studies Research Working Group at the University of California, Santa Cruz for a period of fruitful exchange in Fall 2007, and especially E. Melanie DuPuis and David Goodman who encouraged us to introduce the concept of referential and lock-in to the discussion about the broader societal meaning of organic agriculture. We also would like to thank the editor of this special issue Daniel Niles, for his continuous encouragements and the two anonymous referees. This research has been funded by the ANR—“National Agency for Research” in the “Agriculture and Sustainable Development Program,” project ANR 05 PADD-0602 called “Consumers Collective and Sustainable Consumption.” It continues work started in the project on organic agriculture in the “Program of Support for Sustainable Development” (Belgium Federal Service of Scientific Policy).
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Stassart, P.M., Jamar, D. Steak up to the horns!. GeoJournal 73, 31–44 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-008-9176-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-008-9176-2