This chapter presents a review of literature structured around the scoping study findings developed in Chapter 2. The scoping study findings enabled a focusing of the literature and further contextualised the project and the problem setting. In accordance with the findings of the scoping study, the literature is grouped into four parts: (1) the cottage industry; (2) artisanal food production: associations with place, the culture industry and authenticity; (3) the social construction of quality food meanings and discursive
dominance; and (4) agrifood development: ‘the crisis’ and resistance/challenges/ alternatives.
Structured around the scoping study findings and supported by the literature, this review is intended to be read as an account of the artisanal food industry and associated matters. The increasing turn towards the demand for artisanal and cottage industry products as quality food items, the possibilities of using artisanality and quality as tools of agrifood development and the struggle to challenge and overcome the dominant industrial agrifood system are explored.
In an era where Tasmania’s quality agrifood products are in high demand and high profile, there has never been a more important time to research a quality food producing industry such as the cottage food industry in Tasmanian agriculture. This profile has, in part, been formed by Tasmania’s producers, who are producing new (to Tasmania and Australia) and distinctive products, such as “wakame seaweed, buckwheat for soba noodles, red fuji apples, kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), pyrethrum, daikon, wasabi, kyoho grapes, farmed abalone, rock lobster, coloured capsicums and essential oils” (Brand Tasmania, 2003a, website). This is parallelled by Tasmania’s processors, who also generate a range of distinctive products, such as goat and sheepmilk cheese, tayberry liqueur, greengage jam and crabapple jelly.
Tasmania’s developing tourism industry also relies upon the state’s distinctive agrifood sector. Tasmania’s point of “differentiation” is derived from “its mix of wine and food with the appeal of natural beauty and history” (Tourism Tasmania, 2002a, p.2).
Moreover, in a global marketplace which is increasingly centred around food safety and health, Tasmania’s agrifood products are valued, in part, due to the lesser use of
chemicals (due to, in part, the cooler climate and less pests/diseases), the moratorium on the use of genetically modified organisms in commercial crops, and the lack of growth hormones in cattle (Brand Tasmania, 2003a, website).
Tasmania’s agrifood industry is on the move and is positioned well to take advantage of consumer demand for high quality products. For this reason, research needs to progress with these trends and explore associated opportunities. It is increasingly being
acknowledged that Tasmania cannot base its entire agrifood industry on intensively produced raw agricultural produce, where competitors have access to cheaper labour and additional resources (Eslake, 2002). Instead, as Eslake (2002, p. 3) suggests:
Tasmania’s economic prospects depend on its capacity to produce and sell highly differentiated goods and services embodying a relatively high intellectual content and for which customers are willing to pay premium price.
The high intellectual content referred to by Eslake (2002, p. 3) aligns significantly with the notion of identity and the meanings that are embedded within the food product and embodied upon consumption. This has also been referred to as “symbolic density”, with the food product representing a range of meanings and characteristics (Brunori et al., 2000, p. 1). It is the preservation of identity, high intellectual content or symbolic density that is at the core of the project’s research problem.
As the following review demonstrates, the revaluing of artisanal food products is a worldwide phenomenon, with the bulk of the research surrounding these products undertaken in Europe. In Australia and specifically Tasmania, however, research pertaining to artisanal food production is lacking. This further highlights the need for research on the proposed topic.
This chapter is structured purposely around the scoping study findings from Chapter 2 (see Table 3.1). The first scoping study finding revealed that the cottage industry identity is an informal label that is attached to these enterprises. This finding will direct the exploration and development of a number of defining characteristics of what a cottage industry is. This will enable an investigation into the appropriateness of the cottage industry tag.
TABLE 3.1: THE SCOPING STUDY FINDINGS, THE LITERATURE REVIEWED AND THE RESEARCH QUESTIONS DEVELOPED
The Research Problem: The Paradox of Enterprise Expansion
Scoping Study Finding 1 The enterprises and other actors informally label the vignettes and other businesses as cottage industries.
Literature Reviewed Defining characteristics of a cottage industry
Research Sub-Question Developed
1.1 Is the artisanal, cottage food industry label meaningful as applied to the industry in Tasmanian agriculture?
Scoping Study Finding 2 Scoping Study Finding 3
These industries and other actors view their units and products as artisanal/hand made (i.e. informally labelled)
Larger enterprises which have evidently expanded, and their products, are also viewed as artisanal.
Literature Reviewed Definition and components of artisanality; ‘Artisanal
entrepreneur’; Concept of authenticity; “metonymic” signifiers and “diacritical traits” (Cohen); Conventionalisation thesis; Culture industries; Intangible cultural practice/ideology
Research Sub-Question Developed
1.4 How have the expanded enterprises preserved their authentic, artisanal identity upon expansion?
Scoping Study Finding 4 Scoping Study Finding 5
The industry’s products are viewed as quality food products. Food safety legislation as an aspect of food quality is a significant issue that a segment of the industry is encountering.
Literature Reviewed Historical contextual literature – shift/market trends towards quality food production and consumption and food safety; Characteristics of quality food; Conventions theory; Theory of Communicative Action; Communicative Rationality
Research Sub-Questions Developed
1.2 What contestations exist over the meanings of quality and how has it been reproduced over space and time?
1.3 How have the expanded enterprises managed to expand without losing quality meanings?
Scoping Study Finding 6 Scoping Study Finding 7
Scoping Study Finding 8
The vignettes and other businesses within the industry produce smaller/lower quantities of product.
The bulk of the business activities of these enterprises are geographically concentrated within the sub-regional area. (i) The enterprises often perform other types of business activities; (ii) A portion of enterprises produce all/part of the raw agricultural produce versus purchasing the raw product; (iii) Many of the businesses are on a Tasmanian tourist trail and sell farm gate/cellar door (i.e. direct/short food miles). Due to a significant growth in certain sub-sectors, there are issues related to increased competition within the local market (i.e. local product saturation).
Literature Reviewed Economies of size versus other business types – economies of
scope; diversification; Place and space; terroir; place-of-origin branding; Food supply chains (conventional versus ‘short food supply chain’; Direct selling; Concerns associated with agri- food development; Agrifood Development Models – exogenous versus endogenous agri-food development; neo- endogenous development; Agroecology
Research Sub-Question Developed
1.5 What regional development model is the more appropriate theoretical tool for examining cottage industry development in Tasmania?
The Overarching Research Question: How do cottage enterprises negotiate the competing pressures to increase in size without losing quality meanings and their authenticity as artisanal food production units?
The second scoping study finding which directed the literature review revealed that the artisanal/handmade descriptor is another informal identity attached to the industry under study. As such, the review examines the concept of artisanality and a number of components are developed. Associated with this finding is that larger enterprises within Tasmanian agriculture also use and are assigned the artisanal descriptor (i.e. Scoping Study Finding 3). By employing the developed components of artisanality, the notion of artisanal identity preservation upon expansion can be explored.
The fourth scoping study finding found that the industry’s products are also viewed as quality food products. This finding guides an examination of the literature surrounding the shift towards the production and consumption of quality food. A number of
characteristics of quality are developed in this review in order to examine the concept. Also related to food quality is the fifth scoping study finding, which found that food safety is a concern for the enterprises under study. Literature surrounding food safety as a dominant food quality meaning and the implications of this are examined.
Scoping Study Finding 6 revealed that the enterprises under study do, in reality, produce small quantities of product; that is, as opposed to economies of size operations that mass produce or units that misleadingly project a small-scale image. As such, literature surrounding structural types is examined. Also related to business activities is Scoping Study Finding 7, which revealed that, for the most part, the enterprises’ business activities are conducted within the sub-regional level. These findings are positioned within the literature surrounding agrifood development. The final scoping study finding revealed that local product saturation is occurring in specific sub-sectors of the cottage food industry in Tasmanian agriculture. This finding emphasises the need for research surrounding the development of the industry and trends that present related opportunities.
Firstly, however, it is necessary to locate the scoping study findings and review within a backdrop that will assist understanding. Granovetter’s (1985) embeddedness theory and the acknowledgment that food objects/commodities have ‘social lives’ present a basis for this understanding and an overarching framework in which the research is situated. Embeddedness theory posits that all economic behaviour is “embedded” in the social and, accordingly, “networks of interpersonal relations” (Granovetter, 1985, p.504). This specifically relates to the cottage food industry in Tasmanian agriculture as it
attained from this backdrop. Food processing, just like farming, “is a socio-cultural practice rather than just a technical activity” (Vanclay, 2004a, p.213).
The commodity (or in this case the food item) exists within a social and environmental context and is exchanged and valued through the coordination of actors. Thus, the commodity embodies meanings and qualities that surround it and which actors assign to it. A food product encompasses more than just the physical properties, such as taste and texture; rather, a food item takes on meanings and characteristics that surround its production and consumption. In saying this, the food consumer is at the same time an information consumer. This embeddedness is described by Bridge and Smith (2003, p. 257-259), who suggest:
with their identities less certain and more fluid, commodities are now described as having biographies and geographical lives, as things that – through exchange and consumption – become active constituents of social relations and co-participants in the unfolding of the world … the identity and meaning of these objects are not innate but arise out of the interaction of objects with social context … and that, as a result, the meanings of a commodity are not only plural and contested, but also mutable over time and space … Such ethnographic techniques are used to contextualise commodities within prevailing cultural practices and to understand the utility, meaning and symbolism of commodities from within the frame of reference of those who interact with the commodity.
The agrifood product as a commodity is also embedded within an ecological context. In a market that is increasingly placing value on regionally/locally embedded food
products, the recognition and incorporation of its ecological surrounds has never been more important. More specifically, the artisanal food product captures characteristics and meanings which can only be imparted or assigned by the specifics of the local surrounds.