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What is the relationship between technology and labour regimes in agrifood value chains? By deploying the concept of agrarian biopolitical articulations, Field of Glass formulates new perspectives that bridge the hitherto distinct worlds of value chain research, agrarian political economy, labour regime theory, and agrarian techno-science to explain the enduring insecurity of food systems in the United Kingdom. Using both historical and contemporary research, Adrian Smith explores how the precarity and exploitation of migrant labour intersects with ecology and techno-science/innovation, such as hydroponic and robotic technologies, to explain the development and changing nature of glasshouse agrifood value chains in the UK. Smith concludes by reflecting on how agrarian bio-politics have shaped the glasshouse agrifood sector and the emergence of contemporary 'high road' and 'low road' strategies, highlighting their contradictions and negative consequences for local development and food supply security.
List of contents
1. Food security and the 'total ecology' of glasshouse agrifood value chains; 2. Agrarian biopolitical articulations: towards an understanding of value chains, labour regimes and techno-science; 3. Fields of glass: glasshouse agrifood value chains in regional context; 4. The dynamics of the glasshouse agrifood value chain; 5. The post-war labour regime and the labour process; 6. Labour segmentation and contemporary seasonal migrant worker regimes; 7. The state, techno-science and agrifood value chains; 8. Hydroponics, the 'total ecology' and upgrading; 9. 'AgTech', automation and the restructuring of work; 10. Fields of glass and agrifood value chain futures; Bibliography.
About the author
Adrian Smith is Professor of Management in the Department of Management at the University of Sussex Business School where he teaches and undertakes research on work, sustainability and technology in global value chains. He has authored/co-authored four other books: Free Trade Agreements and Global Labour Governance: The European Union's Trade-Labour Linkage in a Value Chain World (2021), Articulations of Capital: Global Production Networks and Regional Transformations (2016), Domesticating Neo-Liberalism: Spaces of Economic Practice and Social Reproduction in Post-Socialist Cities (2010) and Reconstructing the Regional Economy: Industrial Transformation and Regional Development in Slovakia (1998). He has co-edited four other books including most recently Labour Regimes and Global Production (2022).
Summary
Advances a new explanation for why food insecurity has been such a pervasive feature of the UK food system. This book will appeal to those interested in food studies, global value chains and labour research.
Foreword
Explores the issue of the insecurity of food systems in the UK using global value chains, labour regimes and innovation.
