Wheat as food, wheat as industrial substance; comparative geographies of transformation and mobility

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.006

Geoforum

Volume 41, Issue 2, March 2010, Pages 236-246

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.006 Get rights and content

Abstract

Wheat is the world’s second largest crop, supplies 19% of human calories, and is the largest volume crop traded internationally. Its uniquely malleable physical properties make it a valued industrial substance, albeit often an invisible one, as well as a food. This combination of transformation, invisibility and mobility demands new ways of thinking about wheat geographies. In this paper we document and analyse several ‘moments’ in the life of Australian wheat; at the supermarket, in the lives of coeliac sufferers, in laboratories, industrial factories and on the farm. We illustrate diverse patterns of interaction with wheat. The major plane of differentiation is between wheat as food and wheat as industrial substance. The explicit connection of food to the human body tends to fix the identity of wheat, whether as healthy staple of the nation, or harmful poison to coeliacs who must negotiate its presence using the regulatory regime of food labelling. This is no small task given the ubiquity of wheat; our survey of 10,235 supermarket items found it in 29.5% of labelled food items. In contrast, when wheat is physically and chemically disassembled to become an industrial substance, its presence and identity become mutable, hidden and often invisible.

Introduction

A major challenge for contemporary agri-food geographies is to work across, and eventually dismantle, a set of binary oppositions that have marked the field: culture and nature; conventional and alternative agriculture; global and local processes; production and consumption; political economy and cultural approaches; foci on materiality and representation (Morgan et al., 2006). The complexity of food security and agricultural sustainability questions in both developed and developing parts of the world demands more integrative and cross-cutting thinking. In this paper we contribute to this process by working across a further dualism, that between food and industrial substance, using the example of wheat.

We aim to contribute to a more dynamic spatiality of this major crop, one attuned to the material qualities of the wheat itself. Wheat’s unique qualities enable it to be both food and non-food product in very particular ways. As the largest volume crop traded internationally, the mobility of wheat commands attention. However, the craftable qualities of wheat can render it invisible, defying attempts to ‘follow the thing’ (Cook, 2004) using ‘mobile methods’ (Larsen et al., 2006, p. 6). So the question ‘where is the wheat?’ cannot be answered without considering a further question; ‘what is wheat?’ Our study examples come from several ‘moments’ in the life of Australian wheat; at the supermarket, in the lives of coeliac sufferers, in laboratories, industrial factories and on the farm. The comparison here between wheat as food and wheat as industrial substance shows quite different patterns of fixing the identity of wheat. Food tends to fix the identity; non-food tends to hide, make invisible and disassemble the identity of wheat. We first site the study in the food geography and mobility literatures, then explain in more detail the significance of wheat geographies.

Section snippets

Agri-food geographies and mobilities

Because food is central to the interactions between human bodies and the nonhuman world, it is not surprising that heated discussions around the concepts and practice of cultures/natures have been central to food geographies over the last decade. Goodman (1999) argued that this field, where nature was ‘abstracted from the social domain’ (p. 17), was in fact rather late to examine its basis in modernist ontology. He advocated actor-network theory as a potential way forward, an argument

Why wheat?

Wheat is immensely significant in the global food supply, being the second largest crop produced and consumed by volume (Table 1), and supplying 19% of world calorific supply (Mitchelle and Milke, 2005). It is the crop with the largest production area and a lower global average yield than corn or rice, making its production more energy intensive. It is the largest volume crop traded on an international scale, the most significant crop for international food aid, and the most significant crop

What is wheat? The flexibility of wheat

Plant geographies are usually approached via different types of collectives or assemblages; forests, food, commodities, vegetation communities, habitat, biodiversity and, more recently, carbon storage devices. ‘Wheat’ is another such collective, one that defies our efforts at defining and describing its geography in several ways. First, its botanical taxonomy is enormously complicated, with all attempts at its systematic classification proving very difficult (Morrison, 2001). Wheat is an

Methods

In keeping with the complexity of the networks under discussion, a combination of methods has been appropriate. Our two main methods are a survey of supermarket products and their labels for the presence and absence of wheat, and interviews with people who negotiate the presence and absence of wheat in different ways.

The wheat in food – visible and invisible

The picture of wheat as a healthy staple food is in stark contrast with its categorisation by Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ, 2009a) as a substance requiring compulsory identification on all food products, and by others (Helfe, 2001) as a ‘hidden’ ingredient in food. Australian export statistics also allude to the ‘hidden’ wheat in published categories of grain by level of ‘transformation’ (Cwth, 2008). Product recall notices on the Food Standards Australia New Zealand website (

The wheat in non-food – much less visible

Wheat is more difficult to find in non-food items at the supermarket. We might not expect non-food items to be labelled with the same stringency as food, but these are also things that we put onto and into our bodies - most notably pharmaceuticals such as pain relief. Many non-food products simply have no ingredients listed. Only 4% of non-food items were identified as containing wheat. Wheat was most commonly identified in pet food, and also in hair care and hair colour products. These

Craftable wheat

The craftable qualities of wheat are further expounded by food scientists Dennis and Kevin, and starch scientist Jeff, whose roles are to create new products such as different types of bread, noodles and starch-based products. These researchers were interviewed in their offices. For them, the wheat ‘shows up in everything’, in Kevin’s words, but it can also be hidden. It is an exciting raw material, and the source of considerable professional pride for each scientist. While they understand

Wheat in food but not as food – energetic wheat

We don’t care… To us wheat is wheat. Wheat is energy for us. That’s what we buy it for. Allan, Stock Feed Mill Manager

Important components in the supermarket are pig meat and milk. In the US it takes an estimated 5.9 kg of grain to produce a kilo of pork and 0.5 kg to produce a litre of milk (Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). The production and regular supply of meat and milk in Australia is also dependent on grain but instead of corn, wheat is critical. In 2005–2006 Australia actually consumed

Conclusions – wheat as stable and unstable category

Our initial interest in following the wheat into the supermarket was to explore more dynamic aspects of its spatiality, particularly the hidden dimensions of wheat. The visibility of these processes, and thus of the wheat itself, is regulated and marked in both formal and informal ways. An outcome is that wheat has a much more fixed identity as a human food than as non-food products. This identity is fixed in markers that denote both presence and absence, facilitated by regulatory regimes

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge all of the participants in the wheat project who have most generously given us their time for an interview and allowed us into their homes and workplaces. We thank David Virtue, Paolo Abballe and the late Caroline Mitchell for their help surveying at the supermarket. This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (DP0665932).

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Wheat as food, wheat as industrial substance; comparative geographies of transformation and mobility

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Agri-food geographies and mobilities

Why wheat?

What is wheat? The flexibility of wheat

Methods

The wheat in food – visible and invisible

The wheat in non-food – much less visible

Craftable wheat

Wheat in food but not as food – energetic wheat

Conclusions – wheat as stable and unstable category

Acknowledgments

Consuming Geographies

Cultural geographies of migration: mobility, transnationality and diaspora

Progress in Human Geography

Follow the Thing: Papaya

Antipode

Geographies of food: following

Progress in Human Geography

Wheat Chemistry and Utilization

On the Move: Mobility in the Western world

The driver–car

Networks and agricultural development: the case of soybean production and consumption in Brazil

Rural Sociology

Microscopic structure of the wheat grain

Origin of cultivated wheat

Agro-food studies in the ‘age of ecology’: nature, corporeality, bio-politics

Sociologia Ruralis

Knowing food and growing food: beyond the production–consumption debate in the sociology of agriculture

Sociologia Ruralis