I have attempted to document the recent history of food, and the business, organisations and factors involved in it.

What conclusions can I draw from this ?:-

1. There is a clear process of industrialisation of agriculture and food (from the Changes in Techniques section)
2. Some of the responses and side-effects of this are described in the previous section
3. Parallel to the industrialisation is also a process of Globalisation, which has similarly led to protests and reactions.
4. The reponses to the process of industrialisation evidenced by the other sections are:-

1. From the Business section, one can say the the Industrialisation is being 'down-played', with little or no emphasis on it. One can also note that the 'languages of conservation, sustainability and caring' are now used by ALL of the companies involved ! From the language used, it is hard to tell the difference between the businesses and the environmental campaigners. Some of the firms appear to be making a genuine attempt to change, but perhaps others have a veneer of fine words
2. In the Conservation section, the organisations also do not mention the Industrial aspects of agriculture. One can note that the tone of the organisations is very 'non-disruptive'. A cynic would say that as they are chiefly funded from government sources, they are not going to 'rock the boat'. A positive thinker would say they are trying to work from INSIDE the system.
3. The Government and International bodies use a very administrative and neutral tone - with the vast amounts of information available from them, it is difficult to see what they want. The Aims and Objectives are vague and comforting.
4. The "other sources" seem to be very keen on food, but generally ignore it's industrial sources. The diet, additives, allergies and vitamins sections seem to be indicating an imbalance in nutrition
5. To use an old metaphor, the government, businesses and conservationists all seem to be 'singing from the same hymn sheet'. One might wonder why, where is the hymn sheet itself, is there an organisation for this, or is it a coincidence.
6. All of the pages I have drawn on seem to be entirely sincere, with the deplorable exception of the cynicism of the children's book set in a farmyard.

I am still 'sitting with' this information to see if more major or minor patterns emerge. I fell that, for my purposes, I have a useful picture of the historical events and the various business, official and voluntary organisations which form the 'policy space', adn the way which food is presented to the public by the media. As the next stage, I will:-
A.- look at government policy and statements to see how they 'read' this policy space
B.- gather further techniques for textual analysis, so I can 'read' better what the Government (and businesses, etc.) are really saying. I describe an aspect of some of these techniques here under Text Analysis Theories

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