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The shortest possible summary of the Aims and Objectives text is
:
- The UK food and farming sector is going well and everyone is
happy !
But, the result of my Context Analysis was :-
- There is a world-wide process of industrialisation in food and
farming, and this is rapidly spreading. It may now be more valid
to talk of 'a high-technology food production industry' - 'farming'
is now an obsolete term.
However, when I look at the UK Aims and Objectives, I find a harmonious
system, with no objectors, and there is no mention whatsoever of
this industrialisation process (although industry and business are
mentioned, they seem to be equal partners in the system rather than
a dominant historical force).
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This omission of any mention of industrialisation could be rationalised
in several ways:-
- perhaps all the 'insiders' know about this industrialisation,
and they are keeping it a secret
- perhaps they forgot to mention it
- perhaps this is 'just the way people think' - they don't want
to think about where their food comes from and what it is. They
are not interested in the sources of their food, and this includes
the Government Ministers when they go to the supermarket to buy
their food like ordinary people.
I suspect that point 3 may closest to the truth. Everyone really
knows that food production is industrialised, but they prefer not
to think about it. They prefer to imagine that the adverts using
images of happy rural scenes are true. The products look nice on
the supermarket shelves, they are for sale at a reasonable price,
they taste OK, and it's impossible to tell the difference anyway.
So the dispositive has another deep fault line:-
- while the discourse is all sweetness, light and cooperation
- the 'knowledge contained in the physical objects', that is,
knowledge about the food on sale, is almost entirely ignored,
and is replaced by a 'fantasy knowledge' provided by marketing
I am not suggesting that this is a deliberate secrecy by either
the government or by the food suppliers. I am suggesting that this
is what has developed throughout the whole system, and that consumers
generally choose cheap food that looks OK, and this is what the
supply chain provides for them. I think that the information about
the industrial sources of food is obvious to anyone who thinks about
it, but that everyone is happy with the system the way it is - there
is a collective amnesia.
The Aims and Objectives do not engage with the industrialisation
and globalisation of the food industry, and do not mention them
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