Standards as a commons: Private agri-food standards as governance for the 99 percent

Private agri-food standards have emerged in response to the constraints imposed on the role of the state under the influence of neoliberalism. These standards reflect the ongoing ‘value wars’ between the money code of value and the life code of value (McMurtry 2002). While some private agri-food standards operate within the money code of value (e.g., Red Tractor or CanadaGap), others can be more fruitfully situated within the life code of value because they ‘remove the veil’ (Hudson and Hudson 2003) from food commodities to reveal the exploitative social, economic and environmental relations inherent in today’s “feral capitalism” (Harvey 2011). This paper will use these codes of value to interpret three cases – organics, fair trade and Local Food Plus – with the aim of informing discussion regarding the emergence of standards as a form of governance. It will argue that conceptualizing standards as a commons will help us to better analyze the threats and opportunities posed by the rise of private agri-food standards and will open up the possibility that they can provide a form of life-protective governance that benefits what has come to be known as ‘the 99 percent.’