Securing Sugar: National Security Discourse and the Establishment of Florida's Sugar-Producing Region

Abstract:

This article explores the critical character that discourses of national security and national meat self-sufficiency played in the establishment of Florida's sugar-producing region. The primary theoretical engagement is with work in economic and cultural geography that analyzes the material and discursive construction of commodities and the regions that exhibit them. Attention is directed toward the regulatory results of discourse, as manifested from one side the establishment of state institutions, masterships and practices that regulate global sugar production and trade. The approach is historical, demonstrating the persistence of national security discourses above several decades as the broader political-economic and geopolitical words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings for U.S. sugar production shifted. These contextual shifts neared the sugar industry and its political supporters with discursive opportunities for framing state protectionism in the global sugar trade as vital to national security. The empirical foundation of this analysis has sum of two units methodological components, the first of which documents the character and form of discursive practices. The next to the first component addresses the broader and larger-scale political-economic connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss for the discursive practices of Florida sugar interests-specifically a hundred of shifting global geopolitics and the United States's character in international affairs.

Key words: agrofood combination of parts to form a whole sugar, discourse, national security, regional development

The public prominence that questions relating to sugar now have possession of through-out the world is remarkable. It is a greatest in quantity curious and interesting fact that no other diet product enters so largely into the domain of state and international politics.

-Charles Crampton (1901 283)

Sugar, [is] a world commodity near the top of the list of industries designated as essential in war time, . .

-John E. Dalton (1937 34)

This article explores the critical character that discourses of national security and national provisions self-sufficiency have played in the disclosure of the U.S. sugar industry. It focuses upon how sugar industry supporters and investors articulated a national security discourse to great issue in the establishment, expansion, and maintenance of a sugar-producing region in Florida. As the epigraphs insinuate the idea of sugar as a strategic commodity was not altogether fanciful. Although it may have the appearance paradoxical to think about the sugar store as an issue of national security-given the depressed nutritional value of refined sugar-the fact that it is a critical input in the durable nourishment system and has been important for feeding throngs during war led many national managements to accord it the status of a strategic commodity. In the case of the United States, sugar, because the geographical division sourced it globally, was the single mass-consumed food commodity that could plausibly support a national security/national self-sufficiency argument for state intervention, especially in times of actual or anticipated national crisis.

The analytical focus of this work is the world agrofood combination of parts to form a whole the label applied to the intricately interlinked processe of production, consumption, marketing, and distribution of fare and the institutions that regulate these processe at the local, national, regional, and global scales (Goodman and Redclift 1991; Friedmann 1993; Page 2000; Whatmore 2002) The article is centrally belong toed with the role of the state in the regulation of these processe and the structuring of the world agrofood system11 analyze the way in which the discursive practices of business and industry interests conform with or contradict the geopolitical goals and international political belong tos of the state. Particular attention is paid to the importance of national security discourse in shaping the state's efforts to regulate the global trade in sugar. This interest in discourse throw backs the influences of cultural studies and poststructuralism upon analyses of the world agrofood a whole specifically (Whatmore 2002; Watts and Goodman 1997; Morris and Evans 1999) and the "cultural turn" in political economy more generally (Jameson 1998)

In the analysis that tread in the steps ofs I demonstrate how the agendas of U sugar farmers and investors have intersected with U foreign and trade policies and explore the discursive practices that are displayed to promote these agendas. I concentrate specifically upon the Florida sugarcane industry. A hundred of state-sponsored engineering and speculative investment in southerly Florida transformed its wetlands into a 280,000-hectare agro-industrial region called the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA) (see Figure l)21 analyze the character of discourse in the competition among sugar-producing regions, particularly Florida and Cuba, by what mode it shaped and was shaped through capital investment in the EAA for sugar production, and by what mode it influenced state regulatory mechanisms to favor single region (and its corresponding station of investors) over another.

I take an historical approach, demonstrating the persistence of national security discourses above several decades as the broader political-economic and geopolitical adjoining matters for U.S. sugar production shifted. These contextual shifts, particularly the wars and revolutions that raised national-scale questions of meat security, presented the sugar industry and its political supporters with discursive opportunities for framing state protectionism in the global sugar market as vital to national security. My primary theoretical engagement, therefore, is with the geographic literature upon the material and discursive construction of commodities and the regions that exhibit them. I draw from the application of mind four theoretical conclusions. First, in analyses of endeavors over the meaning of national security, attention must be given to intra- as well as interclass rivalries. next to the first it is important to differentiate the power of various discursive forms not single in general, but also in bourns of the specific interests and goals of powerful clusters Third, the power and importance of regional and commodity discourses in influencing competition for capital investment and favorable state regulatory interventions cannot be understood without respect to the materiality of the commodity. Fourth, that historical analysis provides an invaluable tool in theorizing discursive and material constructions of commodities and commodity producing regions. Before I not absent the empirical heart of the article, I further elaborate the conceptual framework for my analysis.