Substitutionism

Substitutionism refers to industrial sector efforts to reduce agricultural products to industrial inputs for food manufacture or to entirely replace farm-based products with industrially [Page 408]produced substitutes. David Goodman, Bernardo Sorj, and John Wilkinson developed the parallel concepts of appropriationism and substitutionism in their theory of agro-industrial development described in From Farming to Biotechnology. Examples of substitutionism include the industrial addition of synthetic additives to foodstuffs during processing to increase product shelf life or to reach other taste or nutritional criteria not possible through farm-based production. Examples of agricultural product replacement include the production of latex instead of rubber, or margarine instead of butter, which can be made with the cheaper, industrially interchangeable inputs of animal fats or vegetable oils. Together, the concepts of appropriationism and substitutionism explain the industrialization of agriculture through the application of science and capital investments to discrete rural labor and biophysical processes in agricultural production.

Although substitutionism generally occurs in the postharvest, downstream agricultural product processing or involves the replacement of farm products altogether, appropriationism describes the processes whereby industrial products stand in for on-farm rural and biological production processes. Examples of appropriationism include the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer as a purchased input in place of farm-based crops or animal rotation or the use of animal manure for crop nutrient supply.

The first and most essential component of substitutionism, established between 1870 and 1914, was the emergence of industrial intermediaries between the site of agricultural production and food consumption. Initially, industry acted between agricultural production and consumption to scale up food processing activities historically performed by the farm or consuming household.

The technologies applied to food processing in this stage of substitutionism were not new, but labor moved to the factory, and the scale of both food-processing operations and product standardization increased. For example, industrial flour milling outcompeted more localized, decentralized milling as a result of its economies of scale and its ability to supply large quantities of high-quality, standardized flour that industrializing bakeries demanded.

With industrial presence established between farm production and final consumption, industrial investments and role in food production processes expanded by transforming the composition, form, or packaging of foodstuffs. Food processors drew on the large volumes of standardized food products becoming available, like flour, and applied new processing technologies to “add value” by recomposing foodstuffs into more complex products. Food manufacturers then competed by marketing products as having differentiated qualities imparted through a company's food-processing techniques. As food products became increasingly associated with a food processor's technical approach and brand name, rather than with a particular place or farm, the association between farm labor processes and food products began to break down, and larger portions of the profits derived from food sales accrued to industry.

Other iterations of substitutionism created entirely new industrial products that performed the same function as rural products but took on a different form, unlike industrial flour milling, which maintained the same basic milling methods and end product. Milk, for example, was historically preserved through rural cheese and butter production; the industrial sector developed new, less perishable products to preserve milk: dehydrated milk powder or condensed milk, preserved with sugar.

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