Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how individuals in the British organic subculture produce understandings of value in the horticultural supply chain, radically differ from dominant capitalist systems. Based on 1 year of fieldwork, it analyses practices which locate value in community, sociality, and environment.

Paper long abstract:

Since the advent of Brexit there has been elevated scrutiny on the ability of supranational supply chains to deliver horticultural produce to British shops. Added to this are widespread concerns that such hypercapitalised food production is one of the primary drivers of anthropogenic climate change and human ill health. In this milieu, there are increasing numbers of grassroots community organisations, charities, and cooperatives manifesting what they believe should be the future of food production, by “growing what they can, where they can” in market gardens and other small scale, localised growing projects.

Based on 12 months fieldwork in England with organic market gardeners and organic wholesaler labourers, this paper explores the assemblage of sociality and action through which a loose community of people experiment with new (and old) modes of horticultural production. It demonstrates how these people are engaged in reimagining what the future of food production may look like beyond capital imperatives and alienated horticultural produce. To do so, it analyses the market garden practices of land restoration, nutrient retention, and the conceptions of the labour of humans and nonhumans alike.

In this rubric, producing organic food which can be accessed by all, is seen as something that may never be profitable, nor perhaps, should it be. Instead, growers contend that the future of horticulture can only emerge from localised, small scale community efforts which care little for profitability. As anything less – the profit-maximising status quo – will necessarily undo itself by rendering horticulture untenable through ecocide.