Paper short abstract:

Two families' stories of food production from Soviet times to the present demonstrate how the articulation of the political economy, bureaucratic controls on production, and moral ideals of consumption result in different positioning of foods as ethical at various historical moments.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I examine one family's history of artisanal bread-baking in Latvia from Soviet times to the present, and a recent scandal surrounding the sale of seeds of tomato varieties not in the European Common Catalog. I demonstrate how the articulation of the political economy of food systems, bureaucratic controls on production, and the moral ideals of consumption result in a different positioning of foods as ethical at various historical moments. This shows that the confluence of anxiety, austerity, and morality is not particular to modern capitalism, though the sources of anxiety and the locations of austerity have shifted.

Under both systems, informally obtained food products bear the mark of authenticity, and bypassing the system becomes equated with an ethical stance. The Soviet planned economy mandated austerity at the level of raw materials that led to a scarcity of final products, yet innovative ways of producing and procuring them. I will explore how these historical precedents have shaped farmers and consumers' reactions to the most recent forms of anxiety, austerity, and bureaucracy in the current economic crisis. The current EU system, through quality standards and hygiene regulations in the processing phase, also results in a scarcity of legally produced home-made final products. In both periods, however, producers and consumers have cultivated and created new social networks to obtain necessary goods and inputs that challenge official marketing channels and their relations to structures of power.