Contested Industrialization of Food Systems in the Unequal Anthropocene: Critical Histories of Agriculture- and Food-Affiliated Industries from a Global Perspective (1945-present)

Programma Internationale Workshop

15-16 mei 2025, Universiteit Utrecht

Organisatoren: dr. Floor Haalboom, Amber Striekwold MA, Anna Teijeiro MA

Thursday, May 15 (Central European Time)

9.30 – 10.00 Welcome 
10.00 – 10.30 Introduction

10.30 – 12.00 Session 1: Global Corporations and Industrialized Food Systems I

Chair: Floor Haalboom

• Signe Brieghel & Sebastian Lundsteen Nielsen - Toxic exposures from afar. (Re)making global structures of discrimination and displacement through Danish industrial chemicals
• Omri Polatsek - Merchants of certainty. Global corporations and the agrochemical transformation of Egypt, 1940s-1950s
• Anna Teijeiro - Depoliticising and normalising the pesticide industry. Dutch discourses of necessity, security and doubt (1973-2000)
   

12.00- 13.00 Lunch

13.00–14.30 Session 2: Global Corporations and Industrialized Food Systems II

Chair: Amber Striekwold

• Josué García Veiga - Entangled histories previous the transgenic crops era. German companies and Latin America in the origins of biotechnology
• Floor Haalboom – Food industrial strategies of scientific doubt. The case of the livestock feed industry in northwestern Europe
• Jules Calage & Christophe Bonneuil - Petroculture and the making of the “modern farmer”’s identity in France. A history of agricultural championships organized by the oil & gas industry (1952-1970) 
   

14.30-15.00 Break

15.00-16.30 Session 3: Invisible Connections of Industrialized Food Systems

Chair: Anna Teijeiro

• Maliene Kip - Entangled oils. Transnational and interwoven histories of Indonesian coconut and palm oil
• Ernst Langthaler - ‘Ghost acres’. Global soy trade as uneven ecological exchange since the 1950s
• Dirk-Jan Verdonk - Peeing for pork. The ‘Fata Morgana’ as tool for enabling industrial meat production
   

16.30 - 17.00 Discussion and concluding remarks of the day
19.00 - 21.30 Workshop dinner

Friday, May 16 (Central European Time)

8.45 - 9.00 Arrival & Coffee
9.00 - 10.30 Session 4: Food System Contestations I

Chair: Anna Teijeiro

• Jim Sion - A breach in competing industrial agricultural models in the early 1970s. How industrial beef almost replaced industrial sugar in La Reunion
• Amber Striekwold - From tofu to beyond. The evolution of production and consumption of processed plant-based protein in the Netherlands (1950-1990)
• Anna Sokolova - Soviet food security policies. Wild crop edibles in the era of industrialized food production

10.30 – 11.00 Break
11.00 - 12.30 Session 5: Food System Contestations II

Chair: Floor Haalboom

• Tutku Gizem Yazıcı - Cooperatives in Search of Alternative Food Systems: A Historical Discursive Challenge, The Case of Türkiye, 1945–1982
• Emiel Geurts - Animal welfare in the European Union. Between ‘European ethics’ and international trade interests, 1990s-2000
• Peter van Dam, Max Hell, Mari Janssen & Steven de Rave - A well-planned revolution. The transformation of the Amsterdam food system since 1945
   

12.30 – 13.30 Lunch
13.30 – 15.00 Session 6: The Politics of Industrialized Food Systems I

Chair: Amber Striekwold

• Bryan U. Kauma - “Farming the god’s way”. African agriculture and the development of agro-technologies in colonial Zimbabwe, the 1950s to 1970s
• Larissa Schulte Nordholt & Harro Maat - Reviving the ruins of a plantation industry. Mechanised rice production in Suriname, 1950-2000
• Stathis Arapostathis - Breeding Animals as Machines. Imaginaries, technopolitics and industrial meat production in Greece 1950 to the present

15.00-15.30 Break
15.30 – 16.30 Session 7: The Politics of Industrialized Food Systems II

Chair: Anna Teijeiro

• Sam Hege - “The most non-union place I’ve been”. Race, work, and the transformation of meatpacking in the 1960s
• Diana Mincyte - Soviet-style industrialization. Labor, gender, and material politics in Soviet Lithuania’s milk production
   

16.30-17.00 Conclusion

Organization made possible by: