From Critical to Reflexive Approaches in Agricultural and Food Policy

Engagement of critical policy studies with issues in food and agricultural policy has been relatively limited. This is surprising since food and food-related practices are an essential element of cultural identity, of social inclusion and exclusion. In recent years, food lifestyles have also become an essential feature of individualist and community-oriented identity constructions. Similarly, current controversies about the ecological implications of agricultural production and about animal welfare point to deep-seated differences about social and individual identities, e.g. what it means to be a good farmer or a responsible consumer. Both, producer and consumer identities, are enabled and constrained by a plethora of standards, regulations and labels, which constitute a complex system of hybrid, i.e. mixed public and private, regulation. Guided by principles of transparency and traceability, information generation, disclosure and processing are at the center of contemporary food regimes. While there is ample research about these developments from a regulatory perspective, critical policy scholars have rarely asked how the construction of “truths” around food are related to broader issues of social construction of reality, power and control. Similarly, a solid body of work has reconstructed ideational and paradigm shifts in agricultural policy, mostly following approaches rooted in historical and discursive institutionalism. Several publications in rural sociology have demonstrated how agricultural policy paradigms are linked to specific constructions of farmer identities. However, critical policy scholars have rarely engaged with this line of inquiry, missing an opportunity to extend the field to a broader range of policy areas. This paper argues that this is an interesting moment for critical policy analysts to engage with issues in agricultural and food policy. Under the impression of climate change, a growing world population and geo-political tensions that might affect transnational patterns of trade in food and other agricultural commodities, competing visions of the future of agriculture and food – from small-farmer empowerment and agro-ecology to high-tech sustainable intensification of agricultural production and food production in urban labs – are emerging and struggling for dominance. These visions include very different constructions of consumer and producer identities as well as diverging theories of social control. They also refer to very different concepts of “evidence” and “truth”. Critical policy analysts could play an important role in understanding the underlying assumptions and implications of these competing ideas. However, critical reconstruction will not be enough. The final part of the paper will argue that critical policy scholars also need to engage in a constructive mode with current debates about contemporary food and agricultural systems as sites of both power and providers of necessary goods and services. The paper will outline a research agenda that inserts critical policy thinking into reflexive approaches to the co-design of food systems of the future. Building on examples from ongoing research projects, the paper will reflect on the opportunities, challenges and limitations of critical policy analysis as an element of reflexive, participatory and inter-disciplinary research approaches into the governance of critical social systems such as food and agriculture.