Re-naturalizing sugar: narratives of place, production and ...

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60 Gail M. Hollander ported agriculture and quality labelling. One common thread that both identify is a trend in the ‘North’ toward freshness and more healthful diets (Arce 1997; Arce and Marsden 1993; Cone and Myhre 2000; Cook 1994; Friedland 1994; Morris and Young 2000; Murdoch, Marsden and Banks 2000). What has been less remarked on is the persistence of unhealthful consumption within the USA, specifically with regard to the per capita consumption of sugars. That, on average, North Americans consume 760 calories per day of added sugars suggests that the ‘shift from diets based on durable foods and meats’ (Friedland 1994: 210) has been prematurely heralded and incomplete. Between 1970 and 1997, coinciding with a 24 per cent increase in consumption of fruits and vegetables was a 26 per cent increase in caloric sweetener consumption (Putnam and Allshouse 1998). 1 Concomitant with this consumption shift are increasing rates of obesity, diabetes and corporate investment in insulin manufacture (Brody 1998; Critser 2000; Kolata 2000; Nestle 2002). Accompanying changes in the food system are changes in advertising and marketing strategies, captured by the term, ‘supermarket narratives’, which are ‘stories about the “means of production”’ that attempt to lend transparency in a ‘troubled and opaque … food system’ (Pollan 2001: 11). Supermarket narratives—the stories regarding place and production that appear on product packaging—are a particular form of ‘liberation marketing’, the selling of commodities ‘as an expression of the consumer’s sense of social justice, environmental consciousness, or moral virtue’ (Pollan 2001: 11). Commenting on this, Arce and Marsden note, ‘information about the production and content of green commodities in supermarkets has created a new cultural landscape’ (1993: 303). Supermarket narratives can be seen as a response to the globalization of production systems and consumption relations. Globalization has given currency to the question of ‘what space hides’, that is, ‘the mysteries of things unknown because done by others or misunderstood because known only by others’ (Sayer and Walker 1992: 5). The dilemma is that ‘if we consider it right and proper to show moral concern for those who help put dinner on the table, then this implies an extension of moral responsibility through the whole intricate geography and sociality of intersecting markets’ (Harvey 1990: 423). However, invoking issues of morality while space continues to hide production from consumers creates a premium for putatively ethically produced goods that is otherwise unrelated to production costs. Marketing strategies that purport to reveal the social, moral and ecological relations of production in hidden spaces speak to and profit from consumers’ imagined geographies, in a process Cook and Crang call “‘double” commodity fetishism’: that on the one hand limits consumers’ knowledge about the spatially distanciated systems of provision through which food commodities come to us; but, on the other, and at the same time, also puts an increased emphasis on geographical knowledges about those widely sourced food commodities. These geographical knowledges—based in the cultural meanings of places and spaces—are then deployed in order to ‘re-enchant’ (food) commodities and to differentiate them from the devalued functionality and homogeneity of standardized products, tastes and places. (1996: 132) The examples of marketing strategies that deploy geographical knowledges while emphasizing freshness, environmental ‘friendliness’ and social justice are numerous and seemingly increasing. Sugar, as this paper explores, is no exception to this trend.
Not only does the case of sugar provide a contemporary example of double commodity fetishism, but it also illustrates that the process has historical antecedents. The marketing of sugar has been founded for centuries on moralistic narratives and geographic knowledges. Sugar was the first mass-consumed commodity produced at a distance from consumers and has long raised moral questions for consumers, first with regard to slavery. An early example of liberation marketing was sugar bowls distributed in the 1820s by the East India Company inscribed: ‘East India Sugar Not Made by Slaves’ (Deerr 1950: Plate XXII). Similarly, in the 1830s, consumption of beet sugar—a European product cultivated by serfs—was promoted as ‘the product of white and free labor’ (Williams 1984 (1970): 388). Sugar, then, raises questions both about the ‘newness’ of market narratives and the need to provide some historical depth to the idea of double commodity fetishism. In addition to its importance for understanding the historical context of supermarket narratives, sugar is also important for understanding the contemporary food system. The US food system is structured around durable, value-added foods of which caloric sweeteners are a central, often unrecognized, component. Much as space hides the social relations of production, processed food conceals both the individual components of which it is comprised and, for a time, biophysical impacts on consumers’ bodies. A US Department of Agriculture (USDA) publication warns: Sugar is ubiquitous and often hidden. In a sense, sugar is the number one food additive. It turns up in some unlikely places, such as pizza, bread, hot dogs, boxed mixed rice, soup, crackers, spaghetti sauce, lunch meat, canned vegetables, fruit drinks, flavored yogurt, ketchup, salad dressing, mayonnaise, and peanut butter. (Putnam 1999: 12) Re-naturalizing sugar 61 This ‘hidden’ aspect of sugars reflects the change in the destination of processed sugars that accompanied the development of the durable food system. Whereas in 1909, most sugar was used in home consumption, by 1999 less than a quarter was. Sugar sourcing has shifted dramatically as well, with the establishment of commercial high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) production in the USA in 1967. In 1970, sucrose (cane and beet sugar) and corn sweeteners (corn syrup and HFCS) accounted, respectively, for 83 per cent and 16 per cent of total caloric sweetener use. The corresponding figures for 1997 were 43 per cent and 56 per cent (Putnam and Allshouse 1998). The impact on sucrose producers was mitigated because this shift occurred in an expanding sweetener market, enlarged not only by population growth but also through an increase in annual per capita consumption from 120 pounds in 1970 to 158 pounds in 1999. The US sweetener industry today is based on multiple sources and regions, including domestic cane from Florida, Hawaii, Texas and Louisiana, overseas cane suppliers, beets from over a dozen US states, and corn sweeteners from the Midwest. Producers compete for market share while simultaneously finding collective interest in maintaining and increasing overall sweetener consumption. As this paper illustrates, competition is often based in the geography of global production, with the various regional production complexes vying for position. Supermarket narratives reflect not only consumer preferences, but are also one expression of the intense competition among sweetener producers. Underlying the supermarket narrative depicting sugar as fresh, natural and healthful is a complex system of production with vested interests in specific places and production practices. Interpreting the narratives deployed to market sugar requires that we examine the geography
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