Leann Tigges Rebecca Schewe University of Wisconsin - Madison
Over the past several decades, there has been a shift in development discourse and policy away from models of state-owned industries and high levels of government intervention in the market towards privatized, free-market ideals. Within this context of neoliberalism, market-based regulatory schemes and third-party certifications - many with an explicitly environmental focus - have become prominent. In particular, global agrofood markets are now policed by a variety of organic standards and certifiers, retailer-driven certifications, voluntary best-practice standards, and other non-governmental regulatory schemes. These standards are highly variable in their structures, levels of compliance, and market recognition, as well as their impacts on everyday environmental management of farms. Through an extended case study of the extremely neoliberal and globalized New Zealand dairy industry, this dissertation seeks to extend existing theories of roll-out neoliberalization, reregulation, and the corporate environmental food regime to address the variation of these private regulatory schemes. The co-PI will spend twelve months doing field work throughout New Zealand and conduct in-depth semi-structured interviews with a three-wave stratified sample of farmers as well as dairy processors and certification agents. This original qualitative data will be combined with an existing representative longitudinal survey of New Zealand dairy producers. These data will be used to answer four research questions: 1) how do producers and processors decide in which private regulatory schemes to participate? 2) how do producers and processors decide which environmental management practices to use? 3) how do producers and processors experience enforcement of private regulatory schemes? 4) what is the level of compliance with the preferred environmental management practices of private regulatory schemes? By asking producers and processors to articulate their lived experiences across several different private regulatory standards, this dissertation seeks to explain significant processes at both the producer and regulation level.
Recent public health scares such as spinach contaminated with E. Coli and milk powders contaminated with toxic Melamine have led to growing concern about the state of the global agrofood system and the role of government and private regulation. This massive public health crisis and failure of the agrofood system has led to justifiable calls for closer regulation and policing of the production and processing of milk products. Within the context of free-market ideology and neoliberalism now dominating the global political economy, the possibility of market-based standards and certifications has been at the center of much of the public discussion of the crisis. Beyond the agrofood system, private standards such as "fair trade" and "carbon-neutral" certifications are playing an increasing role in the marketplace. While retailers and consumers have largely embraced these non-government forms of regulation, relatively little is known about the social realities of private regulations. By analyzing the lived experience of a variety of private regulatory schemes as well as compliance with those certifications, this research can provide critical insights into this growing form of regulation. The research holds relevance for actors from a variety of different social positions including activists, businesses and producers, consumers, and government representatives.
