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Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006

From feeding the locals to selling the locale: Adapting localsustainable food projects in Niagara to neocommunitarianism

and neoliberalism

Emily Eaton

University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Room 5047, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3

Received 27 October 2006; received in revised form 8 October 2007

Abstract

This paper traces attempts to foster local, sustainable food projects in Niagara, Canada as part of community economic development(CED) projects during two distinct periods of provincial governance. In the first period (1990–1995), social democratic government sup-port for local sustainable food projects through CED can be understood as neocommunitarian in nature. During this time there was aconcerted attempt to link local people with access to local food and also to support a relationship between local food projects and agri-tourism. I argue that this neocommunitarian policy was an accommodation to a wider and more global neoliberal hegemony and wasunderlain by a romanticism of petty commodity production and a tenuous link to social and ecological sustainability. In the second per-iod of governance (beginning in 1995) the progressive conservative government led by Mike Harris pursued particularly virulent,revanchist forms of neoliberal governance. With many of their state supports slashed, Niagara NGOs and activists turned, and werepushed, to more market-led, elitist forms of local food projects and agri-tourism. In these latter food projects, the practices of ecologicaland social sustainability were significantly hollowed out and their local and light green nature was harnessed as accumulation strategies.The paper is based on interviews conducted in the year 2003 with people involved in various urban and rural food projects (includingcommunity gardening, community supported agriculture, local/seasonal cuisine, organic/ecological farming and food box programs).� 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Neocommunitarianism; Neoliberalism; Community economic development; Nature; Agri-tourism; Local food; Niagara Canada

1. Introduction

In July, 1994 a non-governmental organization (NGO)whose sole mandate had been to develop and manage co-op housing units in the regional municipality of Niagara,Ontario, Canada initiated a Good Food Box (GFB) pro-gram that packed and delivered locally produced food toits co-op residents. Spurred on by the enthusiasm of afew people from a newly elected provincial governmentfor local and green community economic development, thismarked the beginning of the NGO’s shift away from man-aging and developing co-op housing toward the instigationof various food projects. Working with low-income popu-

0016-7185/$ - see front matter � 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2007.10.017

E-mail address: Emily.eaton@utoronto.ca

lations that inhabited their co-ops, the leaders of theNGO were well aware of high unemployment rates andinsecure access to food among their residents. The provin-cial government’s focus on further developing the food sec-tor in Niagara through community initiatives afforded theNGO the chance to link these two insecurities and worktoward their amelioration. Food boxes were prepaid atthe beginning of the month and distributed near the endof the month when families typically had less disposableincome. The boxes provided seasonal produce from localproducers at affordable prices.

The GFB program was only in its infancy when a newprovincial government came to power and drastically cutspending and support for community economic develop-ment and for housing cooperatives. Trying to keep theGFB afloat and to absorb the staff who had been working

E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006 995

on the co-op housing, the NGO decided to subsidize theGFB by selling a high-end gift basket, filled with local foodproducts, to wealthy consumers and tourists. Soon itbecame clear that the GFB would not again become eco-nomically sustainable, even though the NGO had some ini-tial success with the gift baskets. Still committed to localfood projects, the NGO set out to find a new venture thatwould be less susceptible to changing government funding.The NGO decided to set up a for-profit incubator kitchenand show-room where products made in the kitchen couldbe sold to tourists under a label developed by the organiza-tion. Women were invited to rent the kitchen and havetheir products marketed and distributed by the business.The NGO also created a charity that focused on trainingwomen to be employed and start businesses in the foodsector.

From the story of this Niagara NGO, changing provin-cial government commitments to economic development,the environment, and agriculture can be identified. In thiscase, the effects of changing policy contexts led the organi-zation from an initial commitment to ‘‘feeding the locals”

to a later strategy of selling local food products to elitetourists, or ‘‘selling the locale”. I highlight this storybecause it best exemplifies the terrain negotiated by a num-ber of other Niagara food projects involved in this researchand underlines their methods of coping with this unstableground. More specifically, this paper examines howattempts to foster new and more environmentally andsocially sustainable production networks in the Niagarafood sector have been enlisted in and created through strat-egies of agri-tourism during two distinct periods of provin-cial governance. In the first period (under the socialdemocratic government of Bob Rae, 1990–1995), earlyattempts to reconfigure social relations and environmentalpractices around food included, but were not subordinateto, agri-tourist initiatives. In the second period, (beginningwith the conservative government of Mike Harris in 1995)many Niagara food projects became closely tied to a morebroadly defined agri-tourism which included light greenagriculture and localism as accumulation strategies. I arguethat the transition between the two periods parallels, andwas enabled by, a shift in local state policies from a formof neocommunitarianism that sought to accommodatethe wider neoliberal consensus, while still maintaining anemphasis on the reworking of social and ecological rela-tions through local community economic development, toa highly revanchist form of rollback neoliberalism.1

This paper begins by setting the context in which thisresearch was conducted with a discussion of the researchmethodology and the place of Niagara. Next, I introduceneocommunitarianism as a strategy to respond to the glo-

1 Canada has inherited the parliamentary political system from Britain,which allows for more drastic changes in policy direction than in manyother countries. Governing political parties face fewer checks and balancesand, relative to other systems, do not have to build long-term coalitions(Steinmo, 1993).

bal shift towards neoliberal governance, suggesting thatneocommunitarianism is the product of some of the samemacro-economic shifts as neoliberalism and shares somesimilar characteristics. This literature is made morerelevant to my empirical research by acknowledging thatneoliberalizations and neocommunitarianizations are pro-cesses that produce distinct social and biophysical natures.The paper then proceeds to outline the shift I have just dis-cussed, from the development of local food projects as wellas attention to social and ecological sustainability to amore narrow focus on agri-tourism aiming to capitalizeon local and green as accumulation strategies (Katz,1998) reliant on elite consumption. In the conclusion Ihighlight the importance of making distinctions about thepolitics that underlie the celebration of locality and nature,and suggest that neither period of governance was success-fully able to produce a progressive politics of locality andnature (although the neocommunitarian approach didcome closer).

2. Research context

Niagara is a regional municipality that covers 1896 km2

and consists of 12 local municipalities. Niagara is locatedin South Western Ontario between two great lakes – Erieand Ontario – and is a short drive from both Toronto(around 100 km) and Buffalo, New York (around 40 km).As I describe in more detail later, Niagara’s economy hasdepended on tourism (the Niagara Falls being the biggestattraction), agriculture (especially tender fruits and morerecently vineyards), and an auto parts manufacturingindustry (which has declined substantially in the past 20years). St. Catharines is the regional municipality’s biggestcity, and is inhabited by just less than 132,000 people. Itsrural, agricultural landscape along with features such asthe Niagara Falls, kilometres of parks and beaches, andthe Niagara Escarpment (designated as a biospherereserve) make this region ideal for the kind of policiesand development strategies outlined in this paper.

996 E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006

The research for this paper is based on 19 interviews

with 10 people involved in Niagara food projects includingpesticide-free/organic/community supported agriculture

2 Academics concerned with the question of nature have also begun toattend to the ways in which neoliberalizations are not only productive ofsocial relations, but also of particular natures and relations with nature.See for example McCarthy and Prudham (2004) and the entire issue (34.3)of Geoforum in that year.

3 For Jessop the essential policy characteristics of the SWPR are (1)emphasis on innovation and competitiveness through supply-side policiesin the context of open economies – i.e. a switch away from a focus on fullemployment and state planning under Keynesianism, (2) a shift fromwelfare under Keynesianism to workfare which generates more flexiblelabour markets, and a falling social wage. This process involves fosteringenterprising subjects rather than dependency. (3) The importance andcapacity of the national state and national policy (in social, economic,political and environmental issue areas) is reduced in favour of local,regional and supranational levels. This process has been described bySwyngedouw (1997a) as glocalisation. (4) There is a change in theconfiguration of policy development and implementation with an empha-sis on self-organization that includes bringing in new actors throughpartnerships, networks, consultation and negotiation.

producers, winery restaurant chefs, an organic wine maker,those involved with a good food box, a value-added busi-ness, and community gardening. These interviews wereconducted in the summer of 2003 with the intention of sur-veying a diversity of alternative food projects that existedin Niagara. These ten participants were selected for theirpublic prominence and long-term commitment – i.e. theywere featured on a website meant to link local chefs withproducers or had publicized their projects through newspa-pers etc.; they had a relatively long history of employingalternative practices around food production, sourcing,marketing, etc.; and had participated regularly in alterna-tive practices with the bulk of their production enteringalternative channels. With the proliferation of such projectsin the last few years, many potential participants wereexcluded because they lacked long-term experience or, rel-ative to the others, were only dabbling in efforts to reworksocial and ecological relationships.

The research design was inspired in part by groundedtheory (see for example Strauss and Corbin, 1998a andStrauss and Corbin, 1998b) and involved very open-endedinterviews that probed at a wide array of themes associatedwith the practices, actions and interactions of my respon-dents. Indeed, I had not anticipated the information thatled to the theme for this article and had not initially askedabout how provincial policy affected what they had done.In a second round of interviews I verified with my partici-pants that there had been a shift in policy and practice andhad them talk in more detail about this process.

Analysis of various government documents (at both theprovincial and Niagara regional levels) supplemented andcontextualized what I have learned from the interviews. Atthe regional level I looked at strategic plans for the agricultureand wine sectors and reports and studies on agriculture andtourism. Exhaustive attempts at tracking down the govern-ment documents associated with the Community EconomicDevelopment secretariat (which features prominently in thisstory)were unsuccessful – neither the ministry nor the provin-cial archives could produce such documents. I have, thus,relied on the transcriptions from the Ontario LegislativeAssembly and the Standing Committee on General Govern-ment, where these policy shifts were debated and shaped, toget a sense of how policy was intended to work in relationto other policies and broader contexts. The annual reportsfor the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and RuralAffairs were also important sources.

3. From neocommunitarianism to neoliberalism: strategies to

respond and adjust to global neoliberalism in Niagara

agriculture

More than two decades into the global (although not all-encompassing) turn to neoliberalism, it is not surprisingthat there is continued and prolific analysis and criticism

among academics of the policies and ideological effects ofthis turn on many aspects of social (and natural)2 life. Aslong as neoliberalization processes (Peck and Tickell,2002) in all their various manifestations remain dominantpolitical and ideological practices of governance (Sparke,2006), much academic writing should be expected to con-centrate itself on a critique of the effects of these processesand practices. On the other hand, with prolific work on thetopic by scholars in a variety of fields, there is the dangerthat everything comes to be understood as an effect or con-sequence of neoliberalism and that the concept begins tolose its analytical salience. For this, and other, reason(s)some have called for greater attention to the specificitiesof particular neoliberal projects in particular places withdiverse historical geographies (Peck, 2004; Larner, 2005).Thus, attention needs to be given not just to the abstractlevel, and not just to the similarities of experiences acrossspace, but also to the ways in which neoliberalizations havebeen differently constituted in particular places due to thecomplexities of local histories, politics and cultures. It ismy hope that this paper contributes to understanding thediversity of neoliberal governance by focusing on particu-lar and changing ways in which processes of neoliberaliza-tion have been implemented in Niagara food projects.

Bob Jessop’s (2002) essay ‘‘Liberalism, Neoliberalism,and Urban Governance” is useful for distinguishingamongst various versions and forms of neoliberalism, andvarious strategies for adapting to the global shift towardneoliberalism. Most useful for my attempt to trace theshifts in policies and discourses around food projects andagri-tourism in Niagara is his argument that the globalneoliberal turn should not be conflated with ‘‘the broaderset of recent changes in economic, political, and social life”

which he describes as the Schumpeterian workfare postna-tional regime (SWPR) (p. 459).3 For Jessop, neoliberalismis one of at least four state strategies in making the transi-tion from a Keynesian welfare national state to a SWPR.While the other three strategies, (including neostatism, neo-corporatism, and neocommunitarianism) are not forms of

E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006 997

neoliberalism per se, they are strategies of adjusting to orpromoting the more global shift away from Keynesianismtoward SWPRs. Importantly, these three strategies maylead the way to more typical processes of neoliberalization,i.e. the suite of policies and discourses that are now welldescribed by academics and include commodification, de-regulation, privatization, criminalization of poverty etc.For example, once policies and practices have been rear-ranged around neocommunitarian values it may becomeeasier for discourses of neoliberalism to enter into politicaldebates and policy-making.

It is precisely this trajectory that can be traced in thecase of those working to develop more socially and envi-ronmentally responsible food projects in Niagara. Indeed,an early and concerted attempt at pushing for such projectsin Niagara agriculture was undertaken with a commitmentto what can be described as neocommunitarian ideals andstrategies. According to Jessop, neocommunitarianism isan approach to building a SWPR and adjusting state policyto global processes of neoliberalization. In this sense, whileneocommunitarian governance may include similar ‘‘roll-back” (Peck and Tickell, 2002) measures as neoliberal gov-ernance (for example the downloading of certain socialwelfare administrative practices from national to municipalstates and community groups) it is also a ‘‘roll-out” projectthat re-regulates and builds and enlists new forms of sub-jectivity. Following Peck and Tickell’s (2002) call to under-stand neoliberalism as a process, neocommunitarianism isalso best understood as a process, or rather, contingentprocesses – neocommunitarianizations.

As an ideal type, neocommunitarianism can be charac-terized as emphasizing the ‘‘social economy” and ‘‘thirdsector”,4 promoting ‘‘grass-roots” approaches to andengaging community organizations in economic develop-ment, investing in local economies and self-sufficiency,and prioritizing marginal communities and spaces. Neo-communitarian policies are notably different from the moreprolifically analysed policies of neoliberalism, in that theyput significant importance on economic redistributionand securing use-values as well as exchange values (Jessop,2002, p. 463). Interestingly, few authors have paid specificattention to understanding neocommunitarianism and itsrelationship with neoliberalism, although there is an abun-dant literature on the third sector and the social economythat includes both boosterism (for example, Putnam,1995; Etzioni, 1995) and critical evaluation (for example,DuPuis et al., 2006; Joseph, 2002). Fyfe (2005), is fairlyunique in his empirical examination of how a combination

4 The concepts of the social economy and third sector refer to socio-economic activities that are understood as operating between the marketand the state often with a social goal. Cooperatives or NGOs, for example,do not operate as other free market or state enterprises because they arenot organized to extract a profit from their workers or consumers, areoften associated with a social project and are not directly subsumed by thegovernment. For a more comprehensive definition and discussion seeSmith, 2005 and Moulaert and Ailenei, 2005.

of neoliberal and neo-communitarian strategies have rec-onfigured governance in the UK, arguing that voluntaryorganizations themselves have undergone reconfigurationwith specific consequences for the people they employand the work they carry out.

While neo-communitarianizations include more thanjust a turn to the local, Mark Purcell and his colleagues’concept of the ‘local trap’(see for example Brown and Pur-cell, 2004; Born and Purcell, 2006) usefully calls attentionto the mistaken assumption that many academics, policy-makers, activists etc. have made when they celebrate localprojects like those at the centre of this research. The ‘localtrap’ occurs when analysts assume there are essential qual-ities associated with the local, for example, ecological sus-tainability and empowerment. As Born and Purcellhighlight, this trap has been particularly pernicious in thestudy of, and activism around, food. In fact, local foodorganisations, projects, or politics can just as easily be dis-empowering, reactionary, and excluding as they areempowering or progressive. In other words, and an insightthat I follow in this article, scale is socially produced andconstructed. Who benefits and who loses from localizationpolicies and with what ecological and social effects are theproduct of contingent social struggles. This is a point thathas been echoed by DuPuis et al. (2006) in their discussionof food relocalization where they found that communitar-ian and neoliberal discourses can be ‘‘two sides of the samecoin”, and by Winter (2003) who found that a preoccupa-tion with buying local is also often underlain by national-ism and parochialism.

More attention is beginning to be paid to the ways inwhich processes of neoliberalization are not only processesof rearranging social life, but also involve the reworking ofsocial relations with and through biophysical nature(McCarthy and Prudham, 2004; Prudham, 2004). Thiswork seeks not only to highlight the effects of neoliberaliza-tions on environments and people, but also to show howthe rolling out of neoliberalizations involves changingand new relationships between social and biophysical life.Underlying this line of argument is an understanding ofnature as produced (Smith, 1984). From this perspective,nature is not external; rather it is inside the realm of humanrelations (including economy, society, culture, etc.) andhuman-nature relations are historically determined. It fol-lows that across time and space societies have gone aboutproducing their natures in different ways under differentprocesses of governance and through varying technologiesand techniques. Neoliberalizations, as processes of gover-nance, are thus responsible for the production of particularsocio-natural relations, which have certain commonalitiesacross time and space, but which are constituted differentlyaccording to local geographies and histories.

To varying degrees Smith’s production of nature thesisunderlies much of the work of political economists andecologists of late. For example, Swyngedouw (1999) inhis research on the Spanish waterscape emphasizes thatnatural processes are also social processes and vice versa.

998 E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006

In this sense, all production is the co-production of socio-nature. This in an insight that political ecologists workingin the ‘Third World’ on questions around subsistence pro-duction, access to land and resources, and many othershave also taken as fundamental to their work; they haveinsisted on pointing to the politics that mediate all sociona-tures (see for example Peluso, 1992; Watts, 1983; Blaikie,1985; Bryant, 2000). Recently, calls to apply the conceptsand tools of political ecology to countries in the GlobalNorth (McCarthy, 2002; Walker, 2003) have led to a grow-ing body of work on ‘First World’ political ecology. Thestudy of food and agriculture seems an obvious place tobegin such research since a long tradition of political econ-omy has brought to the fore such analyses as the role of thestate in shaping food systems and the ambiguous positionof the family farmer in capitalist agriculture and since anewer focus on (re)turning to the materiality of natureand the role of consumers has taken hold.

4. Feeding the locals: neocommunitarian food projects in the

early 1990s

Jobs Ontario Community Action is a new way ofmaking things happen locally. It is a recognition thatcommunities themselves are best equipped and bestable to stimulate local economic activity. . .The legis-lation empowers communities to raise their owninvestment capital, forge new economic partnershipsand work with both traditional and non-traditionalsources of expertise to provide capital for entrepre-neurial activities.

Drummond White, member of the legislative assem-bly for Durham Centre introducing the CommunityEconomic Development Act (Ontario, 1993a).

In 1990, for the first and only time in Ontario, the NewDemocratic Party (NDP) won a majority government. Thiswas accomplished with just 37.6% of the popular vote(White, 1998).5 Under the leadership of Bob Rae, theNDP had campaigned on an activist ‘‘Agenda for People”

that included, among other things, the implementation ofpublic auto insurance, a minimum corporate tax, environ-mental taxes and significant increases to non-profit hous-ing. Although the NDP was unable to implement manyof their election promises (due to a complex host of obsta-cles including an unexpected economic recession and oppo-sition from business communities to their initial strategy ofdeficit spending) the government went ahead with substan-tial changes in the Ministry of Economic Development andTrade. In 1993, the government brought forward a Com-munity Economic Development Act and established theCommunity Economic Development Secretariat which

5 Canada uses a ‘‘first past the post” system. Fifty percent plus one ofthe parliamentary seats are required to form a majority government, butthis does not always translate to a majority of the popular vote.

was charged with advising the deputy minister of the Min-istry of Economic Development and Trade on policies andprograms related to municipal economic development. Infact, $300 million was directed to promote community eco-nomic development in the 1993 budget at a time whenmany other areas of spending were being cut significantly(Larson, 1993).

Beginning in the early 1990s CED, as a market-basedstrategy of development, was being promoted by academ-ics, development workers, planners and policy-makers inmany countries and from all ends of the political spectrum(Cummings, 2001). Indeed, the NDP recruited a number ofpeople who were already involved in implementing andresearching CED strategies in other provinces and coun-tries to staff the Secretariat. For example, the head of theCED Secretariat came from Britain to work on what wasseen as a radically different way of promoting developmentin marginalized communities. Drawing on international(primarily European) discourses and practices of CED,and on the support of groups and organizations alreadyworking on CED in their communities, the NDP’sapproach departed drastically from those methods ofdevelopment employed under Ontario’s welfare stateregime. The thrust of the NDP’s approach to developmentis nicely summed up in a 1993 publication of the OntarioMinistry of Economic Development and Trade: ‘‘interna-tionalization of capital and other trends now meannational governments are less able to deal effectively witheconomic downturns using traditional tools like public sec-tor spending” (Larson, 1993, p. 4). The head of the Secre-tariat goes on to assert that ‘‘National-level economic toolsare not sufficient and new approaches are required whichemphasize the local level” (Larson, 1993, p. 4). Localempowerment and putting people back to work becamemajor goals of the NDP’s CED approach.

Community Economic Development was institutional-ized in the NDP’s government through the CommunityEconomic Development Act that was introduced in parlia-ment in June 1993 and came into force January 31, 1994.The Act was part of the government’s three-year $300 mil-lion Jobs Ontario Community Action program and cov-ered three main areas. First, it provided mechanisms forcommunities to raise capital through local investmentguaranteed by the province. After the approval of a busi-ness plan, these funds would then be loaned out to a localborrower to initiate projects for which he/she had beenunable to obtain financing through traditional channels.Second, the Act made some changes to the Planning Actthat would allow for a more efficient planning and develop-ment review process. Third, the legislation also amendedthe Municipal Act so that municipalities could partner withthe private sector in financing facilities such as communitycentre complexes, water and sewage facilities and roadsand transit facilities (Ontario, 1993b, p. 286).

While many early CED projects throughout NorthAmerica and Europe have been targeted toward the urbanpoor, the NDP’s strategy included a focus on rural areas

E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006 999

and peripheral municipalities in addition to neighbour-hoods within larger cities such as Toronto. The Niagararegion was identified as a community in need of attentionfrom the CED Secretariat largely because of the effects ofthe early 1990s recession on its manufacturing economy.Indeed, Niagara’s manufacturing (specifically auto parts)sector was drastically affected with an 11% decline inemployment from 1990 to 1993, while employment in man-ufacturing in the rest of the province decreased by only 2%in the same time period (Bank of Montreal EconomicsDepartment, 2000, p. 7).6 Statistics for the whole decadepaint a more drastic picture. For example, between 1989and 1999 employment in the Niagara manufacturing sectordecreased by 14.7% while Ontario experienced a slight(0.6%) increase and Canada as a whole saw 4.3% growth(Regional Municipality of Niagara, 2003, p. 9.7).

In the context of this declining manufacturing base, theSecretariat decided to draw on two other economic legaciesof the region in developing its plan for CED in Niagara.First, with the appropriate climate and soil conditions forgrowing tender fruits Niagara has historically been the‘‘fruit-basket” of Ontario and continues to have an impor-tant and highly visible and vocal agricultural sector. Infact, fruit production still dominates the Niagara land-scape, with 916 farms covering 23,000 hectares of land(Niagara Economic and Tourism Corporation, 2003).However, greenhouses and agri-food processing industries(which include wineries) now generate the most revenuein Niagara’s agricultural economy. Second, Niagara haslong been a tourist destination luring countless honey-mooners and other tourists for over a century. Tourismcontinues to contribute significantly to Niagara’s economywith over 18 million tourists visiting annually (TourismNiagara, 2003).

The historical legacies of entrenched tourist and agricul-tural sectors and the recent shrinking of the manufacturingsector led the CED Secretariat to choose the agricultural/agri-tourist sector as the main focus of its approach todevelopment in Niagara. In fact, the NDP invested heavilyin identifying and implementing sectoral strategiesthroughout the province, with one of the main projectsbeing the improvement of the quality and consumer accep-tance of Ontario wines (Drache, 1997). Thus, when a num-ber of pilot studies and projects were initiated by theSecretariat with local actors in the Niagara economy andorganizations in the ‘‘social economy”7 the stated goal

6 While Niagara’s manufacturing sector was particularly badly hurt bythe economic downturn of the early 1990s, Ontario as a whole suffered asevere structural crisis that involved, among others, adjustment to theNorth American Free Trade Agreement that came into force in January1994, the increasing value of the Canadian dollar and declining federaltransfer payments in many areas (White, 1998).

7 According to Larson (1993, p. 4) in a publication of the OntarioMinistry of Economic Development and Trade, actors in the socialeconomy include ‘‘social service agencies, health services, educationalorganizations, ethno-cultural organizations, religious organizations,sports, feminist, arts and environmental organizations”.

was to engage in tourist and food related endeavours inorder to complement the emphasis on the wine industry.

The NGO discussed at the beginning of this paperbecame enrolled in the Secretariat’s CED projects in Niag-ara when its director met the head of the Secretariat at aCanadian Co-operative Association meeting. As I havealready outlined, in the early 1990s the organization wasprimarily engaged in developing and managing co-op hous-ing and had no experience with food projects or activism,although, it was well aware of the insecure access to foodthat many members of the co-ops experienced. Neverthe-less, a number of NGOs such as this one; private businessorganizations such as Vision Niagara comprised mostly ofchefs and winery operators; planning councils from localmunicipalities; investment companies interested in promot-ing neighbourhood and local investment; and others werebrought together to brainstorm and produce a study onthe possibilities of developing the food and tourism sectorsin Niagara. The study examined methods of linking farm-ers with local consumers, schools and chefs. The primaryfood projects that emerged out of these efforts were theGFB (that linked co-op residents and other consumers tofarmers) and the establishment of a local seasonal cuisine(primarily aimed at tourists and housed in winery restau-rants). The attempt to involve farmers in direct links withschool programs failed.

The development of local seasonal cuisine was alwaysgeared towards complementing the wine industry andexploiting a high-end tourist market. A 1994 study (Niag-ara Region Development Corporation, 1994) funded bythe Secretariat and Jobs Ontario Community Action iden-tified the need for a forum to link chefs with local produc-ers, and an organization initially called Vision Niagara andnow called Tastes of Niagara emerged to realize this need.Importantly, wineries and winery restaurants alreadyexisted in the Niagara region pre-1990, but there was littleattempt to use local produce or to market the cuisine aslocal and seasonal. Thus, the goals of the Secretariat andTastes of Niagara of using and promoting local food inwine tourism have been, to a significant extent, realized.The three chefs interviewed for this research had all beeninvolved with Tastes of Niagara, using the organizationto establish direct relationships with custom growers andto procure from local fruit and vegetable stands, farmersmarkets, butchers, etc. Much of the emphasis of these localproduce and food providers has been on pesticide-free andorganic produce.

While the goal of the CED Secretariat was clearly tocomplement the sectoral promotion of the wine industry,its interest in the agricultural sector was wider than simplyagri-tourism and the fostering of local seasonal cuisine.Indeed, the Secretariat was quite committed to findingand developing a diversity of markets so that farmers (espe-cially small family farmers) could afford to keep their farmsin production. The Secretariat was also interested inpromoting environmental initiatives and encouragingconsumers and farmers to pursue pesticide-free/organic

1000 E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006

production; for example, by helping the GFB launch a (notnecessarily certified) organic box. Furthermore, the Secre-tariat was also dedicated to having farmers produce forlocal populations instead of focusing only on tourism andexport markets. The emphasis put on providing good foodto marginal populations (especially those residing in co-ophousing) through the GFB, and the failed attempt at link-ing farmers with food programs in schools demonstrate aninterest in issues of food security and in both the consump-tion and production aspects of food systems.

The CED Secretariat’s approach to development underthe NDP can be understood as neocommunitarian in nat-ure (double meaning intended). More specifically, CEDin Niagara meant a reworking of economic flows and rela-tionships and the enlisting of different actors and naturesin new ways. Economic flows and relationships werereworked through the fostering of community investmentand loan initiatives that encouraged local sponsors toinvest in local entrepreneurs and projects. This can beunderstood as a strategy of adapting to wider (nationaland international) neoliberal consensuses that contributedto the hardships being experienced in Niagara at the time.Global competition meant that many Ontario manufactur-ing industries had to relocate or downsize at the same timethat the Canadian state was decreasing its transfer pay-ments to Ontario for welfare (White, 1998, p. 223). Further-more, Bay Street (Canada’s financial centre) and Wall Streetwere effectively disciplining Rae’s initial strategy of deficitspending; they forced successive decreases to the province’scredit rating. In this context, turning to the local for meth-ods of mobilizing capital and employment opportunitiesmade much sense. In his presentation to the StandingCommittee on General Government while the CommunityEconomic Development Act was being considered by parlia-mentarians, Roger George, president of the Ontario Feder-ation of Agriculture emphasized this point:

. . .there is approximately $62 billion in the hands of[Ontario] rural people, $62 billion of savings. If wecould just manage to get a small fraction of thatand reinvest it in local communities instead of beinginvested on Bay Street and offshore and in Mexicoand in mutual funds, get some of that in the ruralcommunities, it would have a tremendous impacton the economy and on the way of life, on the jobs.I think that is where this whole issue has to comefrom. It has to be the people (Ontario, 1993b, p. 389).

Rural people and spaces were brought into new eco-nomic, social and environmental relationships throughtheir involvement with the Secretariat’s food and agri-tour-ism projects. The turn to the local and the embrace of com-munity meant increased opportunities for producers to(partly) switch away from export and monocroping sys-tems. This meant that agronomic practices were substan-tially altered among those who participated in the CEDprojects. For example, one family that participated in thisstudy discovered the possibility of ecological farming and

an ecological farming community through a meeting spon-sored by OMAFRA in 1991.

. . .and we went to some supposed entrepreneurialmeeting in 91 or something, remember that ?... Andit was an Idea’s conference, I remember it was calledan Idea’s conference. You see, in those days OMA-FRA still had those nice kind of things that theysponsored. . .we subsequently went to an introductionto agricultural farming that the EFAO [EcologicalFarming Association of Ontario] put on, and thatsort of opened our eyes to another possibility.

Another farmer running a community supported agri-culture farm and also selling to winery restaurantsexplained that the CED strategy of linking farmers withchefs allowed her to grow a wider diversity of crops:

. . .I’m planting over three hundred different things sothat is really a different thing. So it is not like you cantreat your whole two acres the same. You’ve got,everything has different needs like in terms of water-ing and fertilizing and crops need different things.

Producers also forged new relationships with near-by,yet peripheral, cities and towns. Thus, sites they had previ-ously only experienced as centres for their own consump-tion also become outlets for their produce. Farmersinvolved with the GFB began delivering their produce toWelland and Niagara Falls where it was being packed inlocal grocery stores that had agreed to allow the non-profitto use their space when they were closed to the public.Influenced by the non-profit, one chain grocery store evencontracted for a short time with GFB producers for its ownsales. Importantly, paths between the point of productionand consumption of food were shortened, and, in the caseof the GFB, unemployed consumers became paid employ-ees involved in the packing and distribution of their food.

Yet these steps to address social and ecological sustain-ability were tenuous. For example, pushing restaurants touse local produce and encouraging farmers to grow withoutpesticides certainly has positive ecological effects. However,there has been no effort to pressure these same restaurants todeal with other injustices in the restaurant industry includingpoor labour standards, and the consumption of largeamounts of water and electricity and space for parking lots.None of the wineries associated with local seasonal cuisineadvertise the use of ecological practices in their vineyardson their websites; and all of those that participated in thisstudy use agricultural chemicals in their vineyards. When Iasked chefs about any other ecological or socially just prac-tices that are undertaken in their enterprises only one chefcame up with one example – some of the restaurant’s foodwaste was being used by near-by farmers.

Underlying these tenuous links to social and ecologicalsustainability was a romanticism of petty commodityproduction and of independent or small business that isconsistent with neocommunitarianism. As Jessop’s (2002)ideal type highlights, neocommunitarianizations usually

E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006 1001

champion the ‘‘third sector” or ‘‘social economy” which isto be found somewhere between the market and the state.Although family farmers and small businesses operate inthe free market they are often understood as somewhatantithetical to ‘‘big business” as they are driven by differentgoals (for example, to feed and employ family members(Chayanov, 1966), rather than enrich shareholders thatexpect quarterly gains) and behave differently in the publicsphere (for example, they are thought to be more embed-ded in their communities). Furthermore, maintaining via-ble family farms is often thought to be essential tosustaining the rural and ‘‘natural” countryside (Sonnino,2004; Bessiere, 1998). Petty commodity producers are,thus, understood (and often present themselves) as closerto nature and as employing more environmentally benignpractices. The secretariat enlisted small businesses and fam-ily farmers in its projects with the expectation that theywould enthusiastically take up politics and practices thatwould benefit their communities and environments.

The CED Secretariat’s romanticism of petty commod-ity production and small businesses reinforced a positivevaluation of entrepreneurship. All of the Secretariat’sNiagara food projects fostered enterprising subjects, apractice and discourse of governance that was readilytaken up by the subsequent government that championeda revanchist form of roll-back neoliberalism. As thedirector of the NGO involved with the GFB indicatedto me in her interviews, the underlying purpose of Niag-ara CED was to establish self-sustaining small businesses.Thus, unlike the charity models employed in near-by cit-ies such as Syracuse and Toronto, the Niagara GFB paidits employees (although not always terribly well) andworked toward becoming a self-sustaining enterprise thatwould not rely on government support.

In summary, the NDP’s approach to CED exemplifiedmany of the characteristics of an ideal type of neocom-munitarianism. The Secretariat advocated for the commu-nity as the scale through which to address economic,social and environmental problems, and for a movementtoward small-scale projects operating in the local arena.It also focused on bringing actors from the ‘‘social econ-omy” (including small businesses and family farmers)together to brainstorm and cultivate grass-roots initiativesfor overcoming local insecurities, preferably with some tieto green ideals. Niagara neocommunitarianizationsinvolved the reworking of social and environmentalrelationships and economic flows and the fostering of anenterprising subjectivity. These practices of governancewere strategic accommodations to wider neoliberalconsensuses and involved a movement away fromKeynesianism.

5. Selling the locale: adapting food projects to neoliberal

governance post 1995

‘‘Now when the NDP won the election a few yearsago, there was a radical shift to embrace possibilities,

and it was exciting to see that they were thinking,again, like the Quebec model about, you know, wecan take care of both of these communities [referringto both conventional and alternative communi-ties]. . .But under the Tory government it has beenBRUTAL, DESTRUCTIVE and. . .For all farmers.Particularly, there is not anything for ecologicalfarmers. The funding is there for wineries, and forgrapes, but you know, and that is all part of tourism,it is hardly even farming any more. So, just, I thinkthat everything else gets overlooked.

Ecological farmer selling at a farmers’ market and towinery restaurants

The neocommunitarian strategies of developmentemployed by the NDP were intensely criticized andpromptly disbanded by the right-wing Progressive Conser-vative (PC) government led by Mike Harris when it cameto power in 1995 with a strong majority of seats and44.8% of the popular vote. Much has been written aboutthe severe impacts of Harris’ policies and programs onmany aspects of life, and especially on those people andenvironments that were in the most precarious positionswhen the PCs came to power. In fact, academics and activ-ists seem to agree that the Harris regime exemplified neolib-eral governance as an ideal type (Prudham, 2004; Keil,2002; Kranjnc, 2000). His ‘‘common-sense revolution”

was a highly revanchist form of roll-back neoliberalismthat included drastic budget and staffing cuts to nearly allgovernment services and ministries, reforms to regulatorystructures (including environmental regulations) thatwould allow for the freer functioning of markets, signifi-cant lowering of income tax and corporate taxes, imple-mentation of workfare programs, and much more.

A few statistics illustrate the virulence with which Harrisimplemented his ‘‘revolution”. After only one month inoffice, in July 1995, the government cut welfare by 21.6%and recipients began to be forced into retraining or work-fare programs (White, 1998, p.266). The PCs also took par-ticular aim at what they understood as ‘‘governmentwaste”, and state spending was scaled back in nearly everysphere. Interestingly, this PC accusation of governmentwaste persisted despite the budget cuts that Bob Rae hadalready introduced during the NDP administration. Infact, the Harris platform included a promise to reducethe size of the public service by at least 15% (White,1998, p. 251). The Ministry of Environment and the Min-istry of Natural Resources were disproportionately tar-geted by the PCs. From 1995 to 1997, the Ministry ofEnvironment saw nearly one third of its staff (750 posi-tions) and budget disappear, and in 1996 the Ministry ofNatural Resources announced that 2170 layoffs wouldoccur during the next two years (Kranjnc, 2000, p. 114).

Despite the election promise (designed to secure therural vote) that there would be no cuts made to agriculture,The Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and RuralAffairs (OMAFRA) also experienced deep cuts and a

8 The strategy of selling the locale has been well documented as an urbanapproach to adjusting to neoliberalization. This ‘competitive/entrepre-neurial city’ logic positions local governments as marketers whose mainpurpose it is to attract business investment (Kipfer and Keil, 2002). Herethe provincial and regional governments seem to be following a similarpolicy that includes fostering a favourable business environment so thatmore will be invested in Niagara agri-tourism.

9 The Ontario Wine Strategy Steering Committee report (2001) can befound online at <http//winesofontario.org/>.

1002 E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006

re-orientation of its mandate to include the removal of bar-riers to business and the elimination of unnecessary federaland provincial regulations (Ontario Ministry of Agricul-ture and Food, 1995–1996). In the spring of 1996 the gov-ernment announced it would reduce the number ofemployees in OMAFRA from 1850 to 954 (Ontario, 1996p. 3660). This after the OMAFRA budget had already beenreduced significantly under Rae’s deficit strategy and in themidst of further PC cuts; for example a $12.8 million cutduring 1996–1997 and another $31.4 million in 1997–1998 (Ontario, 2004). Furthermore, as the ConservationCouncil of Ontario showed in its environmental review ofOMAFRA (Winter, 2000), the PCs eliminated environ-mental sustainability from the Ministry’s mandate andvision.

In the realm of Niagara agriculture, the severity of thePC’s cuts and the movement away from neocommunitar-ian approaches to development resulted in an increasedpush for high-end agri-tourism and a widening of thepursuit of agri-tourism to include and promote the activ-ities of agri-business. Upon coming to power the PCsimmediately abolished the CED Secretariat and sent itshead back to Britain. This meant the immediate with-drawal of community loan funds and the subsequent fail-ure of community projects that were in their infancy.Support for schemes that linked local populations withfarmers was abruptly discontinued. ‘‘Feeding the locals”

with locally produced food was no longer perceived asa method of pursuing development and instead a strategyof ‘‘selling the locale” was offered as a method ofincreasing farm revenues.

By the late 1990s Niagara was experiencing an economicrecovery with total employment increasing by 6% between1995 and 1999 (Bank of Montreal Economics Department,2000: 7). However, the economic crisis of the early 1990sdrastically altered the structure of the economy. Withrespect to agricultural production, land use and revenueshave changed in the Niagara Region. Fruit production stilldominates the Niagara landscape; however, greenhousesand agri-food processing industries (which include winer-ies) now generate the most revenue in Niagara’s agricul-tural economy. So, while reports boast that theagricultural sector is growing [for example the NiagaraEconomic and Tourism Corporation (2003) charts117.7% growth in Niagara agriculture from 1989–1999]other sources suggest that this growth is particularly tiedto greenhouses. Poultry, egg production and fruit crops(which are among Niagara’s highest revenue generators)have held their own or seen very modest increases since1986 (The Regional Municipality of Niagara, 2003, p.9.6). The Regional Municipality of Niagara (2003, p.4.35) also reports that gross farm receipts in the grape sec-tor have been growing since 1997, and that wineries nowcontribute significantly to the rural economy. Thus, theagricultural growth that the Niagara Region is experienc-ing is particularly associated with greenhouses and agri-tourism.

The neoliberal strategy of ‘‘selling the locale”8 meantthat the provincial government began to pursue a lessactive role in linking local producers and consumers andin fostering ecological agronomic practices. Instead, theprovincial government began to focus on building more‘‘wine route” signs, planning for more and better highwaysand roads, and securing a favourable business climate. Inthese matters the local (regional) state has also been animportant player, and has certainly followed the provincialPCs lead. Agri-tourism has continued to receive muchassistance from all levels of government through associa-tions such as the Wine Council of Ontario (establishedthrough a federal-provincial initiative, the Council isresponsible for marketing and policy development for thewine industry), and the commissioning of reports such as‘‘Poised for Greatness” (a plan for securing a ‘‘strong,prosperous future for the Ontario grape and wineindustry”9).

For the NGO that had established the GFB programwith the help of the CED Secretariat, the progression fromneocommunitarianism to neoliberalism meant the end ofgovernment grants for the GFB, and thus its ultimate fail-ure. The good food box had been established with the ideathat it be a self-sustaining business (an idea mostly pushedby the Secretariat). However, with only a few years of expe-rience at the time of the 1995 change in government, it hadnot had enough time to become a completely independententity. The revenue generated by the box paid a meager sal-ary to all those employed in packing, distribution, etc., butthe coordination of the project was still reliant on smallgovernment grants. Under these circumstances, and stillcommitted to feeding local people with local food, theorganization decided to attempt to subsidize the GFBthrough the establishment of a for-profit small business.In pursuit of a business venture, they drew on the experi-ence they had gained by participating in the Secretariat’sstudy groups on the development of the agricultural andagri-tourist sectors in the early 1990s. In particular, theyhad connections with chefs and wineries from Tastes ofNiagara (the organization working to promote local sea-sonal cuisine), and they had studied a number of differentfood-related projects. With these connections and experi-ences in mind the NGO decided to focus on developingand selling high-end gift baskets to wealthy consumers.

The gift baskets did not produce enough income, and bythe end of 1995 the organization felt it needed to give upboth the gift baskets and the GFB since it was consumingtoo much of the organization’s resources:

10 In ‘‘The Trouble with Wilderness”, Bill Cronon (1995) has arguedsimilarly with regard to the American frontier that ‘‘. . .the romanticideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actuallyto make their living from the land” (80).

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We came to a horrible conclusion one night, that thegood food box was sucking the lifeblood out of us interms of money. It was wonderful, it was INCRED-IBLE community experience, we tried to get anagency to take it over, we tried to get United Wayto fund it, we tried everything we could and we justcould not. . .We decided to cancel the good foodbox, which really hurt everybody that was involved,um, but they went away with some skills. The truckdrivers all got jobs, um, the packers formed a tightcommunity that supported each other even when theydid not have this. So there was some real good out-comes that were not necessarily food related but wereemployment related and self-confidence.

In search of a new project that would be more self-sus-taining, the staff from the NGO went on study tours of flex-ible manufacturing projects. The NGO decided to build akitchen and show room where products made in thekitchen could be sold under a label developed by the orga-nization. Unlike most of the kitchen incubators that theNGO had studied on their tour, their kitchen was set upas a for-profit business (although they have been most con-cerned about maintaining self-sufficiency and have notamassed large profits). Women were invited to rent thekitchen and have their products marketed and distributedby the business. The NGO has also created a charity thattrains women to be employed and start businesses in thefood sector.

The NGO’s value-added business is now firmlyentrenched in the agri-tourist economy, and it has beensuccessful at tapping into niche markets by using local pro-duce and selling a ‘‘heritage” experience. It offers tours tothe public and sells jams, sauces, and other preserves towealthy tourists. The business is not reliant on governmenthand-outs and provides encouragement and facilities forother women in the community to start their own busi-nesses. Furthermore, it contributes to the image of Niagaraas an agricultural heritage area with a product especiallyattractive to elite tourists.

The transition from good food box to value-added busi-ness marks a change in the way that localism and greendevelopment were pursued and mobilized by this NGO,and more broadly, by the food projects involved in thisresearch. Rather than localism involving the participationof the grassroots and the satisfying of community needs(such as access to affordable good food), localism hasbecome a strategy of accumulation targeted at elite tour-ists. In part, the ‘‘value-added” that businesses such as thisone, winery restaurants and other food projects in the agri-tourist sector are producing is a pastoral symbolism ofNiagara and its agricultural heritage. In this sense, busi-nesses are engaged in adding both material and symbolic

value (Cook and Crang, 1996, p. 134); they are primarysites for the production of meaning and knowledge abouta variety of foods/ingredients, natures, trends, and localfarmers and their practices.

As I have argued, a romanticism of petty commodityproduction and of small businesses underlaid the NDP’sturn to the local during the early 1990s. This was a roman-ticism that assumed a priori that farmers and small businesspeople were more invested in their communities and morewilling to pursue green development. In the post-1995 per-iod this romanticism persisted and, indeed, restauranteursand those involved in the NGO have attempted to capital-ize on these representations and symbolisms as marketingtools and sources of value-added. For example, one chefspoke about how he:

‘‘put his [a producer’s] name on the menu and peopleare saying so who is this man? Oh, just drive down tohis farm, he’s just right down Victoria, go say hello.Say you just had this wonderful salad at [name of res-taurant] and, you know, they suggested to go see him”

In this way farmers are romanticized in their rural land-scapes and are presented as available for conversation andinterested in the culinary experiences of those consumingtheir food. Here, the reification of the local, of a Niagaraheritage, and of happy farmers points to what Winter(2003) identifies as nationalist and parochialist ideologiesthat are often associated with local food amongst both con-sumers and the academics studying such phenomenon.

While many of the producers I interviewed were, indeed,interested in forging links with consumers, they were some-what hostile to the form of elite consumption undertakenin winery restaurants. Specifically, as this participant sug-gests, the pastoral construction of Niagara that is inherentin Niagara agri-tourism erases any part of livelihood mak-ing that is less than pleasant or romantic.10

If you live in Toronto and you drive to Niagara once ayear you do not want to see tractors and sprayers andfarm equipment that is needed to make money with afarm, you do not want to see greenhouses, warehousesany of that stuff. What you want to see is quaint fieldswith grapes that kind of remind you of the corridorregion just in front of your doorstep and you wantsome nice wineries to visit right?...What it, agri-tour-ism boils down to is more or less the ideal scenariofor the winery. . .that you declare this here [the bestagricultural lands in Niagara] as some sort of agricul-tural heritage site where you cannot grow anythingother than tender fruit and grapes, ok?

Furthermore, the emphasis on grapes and fruits, and anaesthetically pleasing landscape undermines farmers’ abil-ity to produce food for local populations.

In a similar way to localism, nature has also beenreworked under neoliberalizations in Niagara. While links

1004 E. Eaton / Geoforum 39 (2008) 994–1006

to ecological sustainability were tenuous under the NDP’sneocommunitarianizations, green development has beensignificantly hollowed out post-1995. Winery restaurantsstill use pesticide-free and organic produce, but this prac-tice seems to be more about realizing the market premiumsthat elite consumers are increasingly willing to pay for nat-urally or organically grown food than any commitmentfrom either restaurant owners or the provincial govern-ment to ecological sustainability. Indeed, these businesseshave been successful at exploiting consumers’ concernsfor their health and the environment by charging extrafor local, seasonal, pesticide-free products. Pesticide-free,for example, becomes just another quality through whichmarkets can be differentiated. As this producer recognizes,rather than a philosophy of justice or environmental sus-tainability, organics/pesticide-free production becomespracticed for its lucrative niche value (Guthman, 2004):

‘‘Yeah because it [eating unusual varieties such aspurple beans and yellow tomatoes] was novelty,and, because when they are charging thirty dollarsfor a plate with two or three little vegetables on it,um people want that novelty, um and it is the big cityfolks with lots of money that come and pay for thatyou know.”

Here, as Mansfield (2003) suggests, the significance andmeaning of the biophysical become important in forgingnew economic practices and geographies. Of course, thisputs producers in precarious positions. They are at themercy of changing food trends and the ability of restau-rants to construct meaning and value about nature andlocality.

6. Conclusion

Much about the story of Niagara food projects in the1990s has been witnessed in other parts of the world. Forexample, the turn to agri-tourism and ‘‘quality” local foodproduction and retailing as a methods of coping with pro-cesses of neoliberalization, including the increasing powerand market share of multi-national grocery retailers, globalcompetition in commodity markets, and rural decline, hasbeen well documented by academics studying agricultureand food (see for example O’Neill and Whatmore, 2000;Sonnino, 2004; Marsden and Smith, 2005; Ilbery andMaye, 2006; Veeck et al., 2006). There is varied enthusiasmamong academics about the effectiveness of strategies ofagri-tourism and local food production and retailing, withsome emphasizing that such methods open up space forpositive reworkings of ecological and social relationships(for example by shortening paths from production to con-sumption, by fostering pesticide-free and organic produc-tion, or by reconnecting consumers with the producers oftheir food and the conditions and practices of its produc-tion). Certainly, it is difficult to argue that these are notlaudable goals. On the other hand, as I have shown in thispaper, a turn to the local does not imply a necessary set of

ecological or social relations. As debates in the geographi-cal scale literature have recently taught us, the local is infact produced through struggle (Smith, 1992 and Smith,1993; Swyngedouw, 1997a and Swyngedouw, 1997b).Thus, distinctions must be made about the politics andassumptions that underlie local and green food projects(DuPuis and Goodman, 2005).

In this paper I have pointed to the ways in which neo-liberalizations post-1995 have hollowed out any links toecological and social sustainability that characterizedthe NDP’s neocommunitarianizations in the early1990s. Importantly then, the early 1990s in Niagaraserves as an example of alternative methods of dealingwith global neoliberalizations. Indeed, the strategy ofcommunity economic development was underlain bysome progressive commitments including concerns aboutaccess to employment and good food among low incomepopulations. Yet, this period of CED should not be cel-ebrated uncritically. Specifically, the romanticism of pettycommodity production and small businesses led to theassumption that family farmers and small business peo-ple were automatically more invested in their communi-ties and interested in using and growing pesticide-freeand/or organic produce. The groundwork laid by theCED Secretariat’s linking of farmers and restaurant chefsand the promotion of naturally produced food were eas-ily appropriated and reworked to include the selling ofnature and locality to elite tourists.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the members of the Political Econ-omy and Ecology writing group at UofT, Scott Prudhamfor encouragement and several careful and generous re-views, and three anonymous reviewers for helpful com-ments and suggestions. I am also grateful for AndreyPetrov’s map-making skills. Susanne Freidberg providedan initial response to this paper during an AAG sessionand suggested a great title. Karen Krug provided supervi-sion and financial support during the collection of the data.Finally, thanks to all my research participants.

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