Why Food Traceability?

The adoption and definition of emerging technology by actors in the food security and green blogs networks.

Introduction

Ethical criticisms of industrial farming practices have become a mainstream matter of concern (Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" [2006] and Kenner's "Food Inc." [2009]). The issue seems to be dealt with in both an establishment network that connects governmental and non-governmental actors, producer and consumer organizations, as well as in the growing area of ethical consumption, one encompassing developments such as the "locavore" movement as well as a revival of farmer's markets and urban farming. Often found in news media and blogs devoted to green lifestyles, this focus on ethical consumption is referred to in industry parlance as "lifestyles of health and sustainability" (LOHAS). LOHAS consumers want to know more about the provenance of their food. This has led the US food retailer, "Whole Foods", to present food with "backstories", and to hire "source-a-tarian" consultants, a practice which Pollan refers to as "supermarket pastoral". Additionally, Food Traceability technology has been compared to the radical design initiative of the Internet of Things (as proposed by Bruce Sterling and Julian Bleecker). This project seeks to understand the status of food traceability in these two spheres, and determine the qualities of the new technology according to the various actors. Why Food Traceability?

Team Members

Marc Tuters, Michael Stevenson

Research Question

What kinds of actors in the Food Security and Green Blogs networks discuss food traceability? What, according to the actors, is the technology for?

Method

Food Security Network

1. Map the food security network, using the Issuecrawler with starting points provided by the Community Food Security Coalition.
2. Query each actor URL for "food traceability" using the Google scraper
3. Categorize sources, as well as the contexts in which food traceability is mentioned (based on top three returns for each source). For the latter, use categories provided in Ethical Traceability and Communicating Food (Coff et al, 2008).

Green Blogs Network

1. Map the green blogs network, using the Issuecrawler with starting points provided by the National Geographic's Green Guide blog.
2. Query each actor URL for "food traceability" using the Google scraper.
3. Categorize the contexts in which food traceability is mentioned (based on top three returns for each source), using categories provided in Ethical Traceability and Communicating Food (Coff et al, 2008).

Findings

Literature

Data