Analyze

California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Source

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley. In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. "Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Narrowed critique just to be of sincerity of CSR claims, not ideology of CSR. Consensus enforcing (above) silences any kind of dissent.

Enforcing consensus: Credibility and viability to compete for funding of your NGO is gone if you protest or dissent → performed consensus by silencing “stone throwing” NGOs or irrational opposition because you’re “actually trying to do something”, so the new unethical is the NGO who is just being stubborn or petty; 

Creating ads to educate consumers or communities on how to live responsibly [responsibilization]: flow of ethical expertise, from business/govt thru media to community/consumer 

Awards for CSR accomplishment is like moral capital; it also is ritualized like gift giving, reciprocal gratitude; circuit of exclusive events generates and legitimates this discourse, celebrity speakers, positive vibes

Confession of past sins plus highly visible partnerships with well-known NGOs, a very branded activity

To the extent that corporations genuinely believe that market access is going to end poverty... They seem to genuinely believe that the “third world” governments are corrupt and incompetent, in the way like in Orientalism colonialists seemed to genuinely believe that they were saving the nonwhite people from themselves. And they genuinely believe their resources are better and greater and their distribution networks etc. are better. 

NGOs have their back against the wall - they have to silently accept the language of the corporations and do it their way because they depend on the corporations for funding. So they may not see it as helpful but have to participate anyway

Redefined: New unethical is the NGO who doesn’t support CSR - they are bitter, unprogressive. Legitimate action - ethical - “partnership with business for the common cause”; Illegitimate action - unethical - “misguided, anti corporate campaigning” p17

Proof of the ethical is in rigorously calculated indices of corporate responsibility and awards presented by orgs that supposedly represent civil society

Money funneled thru well-known NGOs who have to do what they say

blame/displacement of scrutiny onto “Southern” i.e. previously colonized governments; pretty blatant language of colonialism (needing to save people from their own corrupt and incompetent governments) cast as “good governance” that corporations can do to lift people out of poverty with market access/inclusion

“Market comes to stand for social system as a whole” -p12

Business-led development becomes development orthodoxy

Reconfigured to appear as a double market competition - corporations competing for awards/ moral capital with their CSR actions, and NGOs as enterprises competing for corporate money to execute social good programs (but of course here the power is with corps to drive what is a social good program)

Public-private partnerships, defining development as market access, making it about scrutiny of “3rd world” government incompetence instead of corporate irresponsibility

The poor monority children are more with exporation dates. Neighborhoods with highly concentrated poverty have higher crime rates, higher rates of chronic illness. This extremely troubling because theses children are not riskes at birth. This extremely troubling when these children are already brought into the world with a birth defect rate higher than the national average  in almost all catagories