Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312

www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Agricultural trade liberalization, multifunctionality, and sugar

in the south Florida landscape
Gail M. Hollander
Department of International Relations, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA
Received 28 October 2002; received in revised form 4 July 2003

Abstract
This paper explores the applicability of the concept of ‘‘multifunctionality’’ to the south Florida sugar-producing region.
Multifunctionality is being promoted in the European Union in response to neoliberal trade pressures in agriculture. It is seen as a
way to address social and ecological concerns such as farm abandonment and biodiversity loss through domestic agricultural
policies that conform to the GATT/World Trade Organization. I have two objectives in this paper. First, I seek to investigate
multifunctionality as one response to neoliberal pressures for agricultural reform. In doing this, I identify two types of multi-
functionality, a ‘‘weak’’ and a ‘‘strong’’ version. Second, I want to explore the possibility for multifunctionality to serve as a vehicle
for resistance to GATT/WTO in other regions. I do this through a study of arguably the most maligned agricultural zone in the
world, the sugar-producing region of south Florida. The specific geographic focus is the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA), the
federally designated, 700,000-acre zone south of Lake Okeechobee that is home to the Florida ‘‘Sugar Bowl.’’
Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Multifunctionality; International agricultural politics; Florida; Sugar

1. Introduction Proponents of neoliberal trade policy thus found

To the extent that Florida’s agroenvironmental poli-
tics entered into the 2000 presidential campaign, the
view from either party––that is, the position of candi-
dates George W. Bush and Albert Gore––was quite
similar. Democrats and Republicans alike decried the
devastation of the Everglades at the hands of Florida’s
‘‘Big Sugar,’’ and both parties embraced the rhetoric of
free trade in agricultural commodities and the expansion
and deepening of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA). As Vice President, Al Gore was a
prominent advocate of Everglades restoration, deployed
to south Florida at strategic moments for public pre-
sentation of the multi-billion-dollar project as the plan
evolved over the course of the 1990s. As candidate,
George W. Bush followed in his father’s and brother’s
footsteps to claim Everglades restoration as a green
cause in an otherwise anti-environmental portfolio.
E-mail address: hollande@fiu.edu (G.M. Hollander).
0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2003.11.004
common cause with major mainstream environmental
organizations in their demands to end the US Sugar
Program in its current form. When the 1996 Farm Bill
left the US Sugar Program intact, the Coalition for
Sugar Reform was formed to lobby for its repeal.
Among the 19 organizations comprising the Coalition
are sweetener users (for example, American Bakers
Association, Chocolate Manufacturers Association, and
the United States Cane Sugar Refiners’ Association),
advocates of ‘‘free trade’’ (such as Consumers for World
Trade, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste)
and environmental organizations (Everglades Trust,
Friends of the Earth, National Audubon Society, and
World Wildlife Fund). In their prepared statement
presented to House and Senate Agricultural Committees
debating the 2002 Farm Bill, representatives of the
Coalition for Sugar Reform emphasized that the sugar
program ‘‘hurts the environment. In Florida alone, al-
most half a million acres just south of Lake Okeechobee
are used for sugarcane production. The 2 million tons of
raw sugar produced there––one-quarter of all US sugar
production––greatly contributed to the degradation of
the Everglades.’’ In addition, they argued, the sugar
300 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
program thwarts the initiative of Congress in funding
the ‘‘multi-billion-dollar, 20-year Everglades clean-up
effort.’’
This convergence of mainstream thought––Demo-
cratic, Republican, corporate, consumer, and environ-
mental––left an opening for an alternative viewpoint. In
US national politics, defense of Florida agriculture in
general, and Florida sugar in particular, emerged from a
seemingly unlikely quarter: namely, former Green Party
presidential candidate Ralph Nader, and the organiza-
tion, Public Citizen, which he founded in 1971. In Au-
gust 2001, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
published ‘‘Down on the Farm: NAFTA’s Seven-Years
War on Farmers and Ranchers in Florida’’ to supple-
ment their general report on the farming crisis in the US
and to emphasize that ‘‘Florida’s farmers were hardest
hit’’ (Public Citizen, 2001, p. 2) by NAFTA-led trade
liberalization in agricultural commodities. Sugarcane
farmers, warns Public Citizen, ‘‘are at ground zero of
risk under the proposed FTAA NAFTA expansion’’
(Public Citizen, 2001, p. 9). Nader and Public Citizen,
then, weighed in on the side of Florida sugarcane
farming in the debate over the liberalization of agricul-
tural trade.
The plight of Florida sugar farmers, as depicted in the
Public Citizen Report, is part of the larger debate sur-
rounding globalization, agricultural trade liberalization,
and domestic agricultural policies. The ‘‘threat’’ to
Florida farmers is one manifestation of the transfor-
mation of the relation between domestic agricultural
programs and globally governed agricultural trade pol-
icy. Agricultural trade liberalization has been institu-
tionalized not just in regional trade agreements, but
also, more generally, by the reintegration of agriculture
into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) in 1993. 1 The Uruguay Round Agricultural
Agreement of 1993 has been recognized as one of the
‘‘defining moments’’ (Potter and Ervin, 1999, p. 53) of
20th century agricultural policy reform. Emphasizing
the link between domestic agricultural policies and
international trade, it commits signatories to reducing
domestic subsidies, except for those support provisions
that are categorized as non-trade-distorting. These,
which are categorized ‘‘Green Box’’ policies, were ‘‘hotly
1
Agriculture has been part of the GATT, covered by all 38 Articles
of Agreement, since 1947. However, special provisions for agriculture
that were built into the GATT at its inception created exceptional
trade rules for agriculture, most notably the clause that permitted
quantitative import restrictions. These exceptions were not due to an
international ‘‘general agreement’’ that agriculture deserved special
treatment, but rather to US insistence at the close of World War II that
its New Deal agricultural programs be maintained. This gave US
agricultural policy a particularly productivist and protectionist tilt,
soon thereafter to be replicated in the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP), which led to a Ôrace to the top’ of the surplus commodity pile.
debated in the negotiations’’ (Josling et al., 1996, p.
206). Indeed, looking inside the Green Box reveals room
for interpretation regarding the impact of the Uruguay
Round on the liberalization of agricultural trade.
One of the new approaches to agricultural regulation
that some countries would like included in the Green
Box is that of ‘‘multifunctionality,’’ first articulated as
such in the European Union (EU). Emerging in the
context of agricultural trade liberalization and reform of
the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), multifunc-
tionality is being promoted as a way to address social
and ecological concerns such as farm abandonment and
biodiversity loss through domestic agricultural policies
that conform to the GATT/World Trade Organization
(WTO). Multifunctionality is a response to what are
seen to be the negative aspects of trade liberalization
and could thus be described as a form of resistance that
has been formulated at scales ranging from suprana-
tional to national to very local.
The analyses presented here are informed by the lit-
erature on the globalization of the agro-food system, to
which geographers have made substantial and formative
contributions, especially in the study of the interna-
tionalization of production and consumption and the
political economy of globalization (for example, Bell
and Valentine, 1997; Goodman and Watts, 1997; Grant,
1993; Le Heron, 1993; Marsden and Little, 1990; Ufkes,
1993; for a review see Page, 2000). Here my focus con-
cerns the issues of global governance that are becoming
increasingly salient following the 1990s, a period of
‘‘unprecedented deregulation of agriculture (a shift from
aid to trade), the hegemony (the so-called Ônew realism’)
of export-oriented neoliberal development strategies,
and a recognition that globalisation . . . of the world
agro-food economy was proceeding apace’’ (Watts and
Goodman, 1997, p. 1). Rural sociologists such as
Friedmann (1994) and McMichael (2000) have empha-
sized the loss of democracy that this ‘‘scaling up’’ to
supranational institutional decision-making entails. In a
complementary fashion, my interest here is with multi-
functionality as a political strategy and policy instru-
ment currently being deployed to negotiate the
particularities of place-based production systems within
the realm of international agro-food politics.
I have two objectives in this paper. First, I seek to
investigate multifunctionality as one response to neo-
liberal pressures for agricultural reform. In doing this, I
identify two types of multifunctionality, a ‘‘weak’’ and a
‘‘strong’’ version. Second, I want to explore the possi-
bility for multifunctionality to serve as a vehicle for
resistance to GATT/WTO in other regions. I do this
through a study of arguably the most maligned agri-
cultural zone in the world, the sugar-producing region
of south Florida. The specific geographic focus is the
Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA), the federally des-
ignated, 700,000-acre zone south of Lake Okeechobee
 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
that is home to the Florida ‘‘Sugar Bowl’’ (Fig. 1).
Viewing the landscape of Florida sugar through the lens
of multifunctionality, I examine the boundaries, possi-
bilities, and limitations in the geographic transferability
of multifunctionality.
To explore multifunctionality in this setting, the re-
search approach employs a variety of methods, includ-
ing ethnographic fieldwork in the EAA, extensive
interviews with farmers, workers, company representa-
tives and scientists, and a review of the current scientific
literature concerning Everglades restoration. The eth-
nography and interviews, conducted from 1995 through
1996, were guided by the idea that there are multiple
interpretations of the environment, shaped by individ-
uals’ and groups’ working relationships to nature and
the landscape. Theorizing these differences, Bina Agar-
wal has argued that people’s relationship with nature
‘‘needs to be understood as rooted in their material
reality, in their specific forms of interaction with the
Fig. 1. South Florida land use. Source: GAO 1995 restoring the Everglades.
301
environment’’ (Agarwal, 1992, p. 126). Similarly, Rich-
ard White poses a contrast between those who ‘‘work
within nature’’ versus those who ‘‘play within nature’’ as
a critique of environmentalism that ignores the necessity
of resource occupations and romanticizes only archaic
forms of agricultural production while demonizing
agribusiness (White, 1995).
I begin by examining the way that EU agricultural
advocates, in their opposition to neoliberal trade poli-
cies, have used ideas of landscape, livelihood, and
agroecology, encompassed by the term ‘‘multifunction-
ality,’’ in defense of domestic agricultural supports, and
then identify what I term the ‘‘weak’’ and ‘‘strong’’
versions. The next section of the paper sets US sugar
policy in an international context, both historically and
in the present to situate the debate regarding Florida
sugar. In the following section, I turn to the case study,
exploring the landscape of sugarcane production in
south Florida. I conclude with a discussion of the
302 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
transferability of multifunctionality to this case and
the wider geographic implications of placing Florida
sugar in the Green Box.
2. The emerging concept of multifunctionality
As noted above, the Uruguay Round Agricultural
Agreement brought agriculture more firmly under the
purview of the GATT and it committed signatories to
the rule-based, market liberalization of the WTO, which
convened an Agricultural Committee for trade negoti-
ations beginning in March 2000. In response to this push
for trade liberalization, as well as to the reintegration of
Eastern European agriculture, EU policymakers artic-
ulated a multifunctional ‘‘European Model of Agricul-
ture’’ in a series of policy documents published during
the late 1990s. The EU Agricultural Commissioner de-
fined ‘‘multifunctionality’’ as the link ‘‘between sus-
tainable agriculture, food safety, territorial balance,
maintaining the landscape and the environment and
what is particularly important for developing countries,
food security’’ (quoted in Buller, 2001, p. 4). Parsing this
list, multifunctionality can be seen in part as a policy
response to address the concerns of the ‘‘strange bed-
fellows that the CAP has joined in opposition, including
environmentalists, food safety activists, animal libera-
tionists, bird watchers, rural preservationists, and neo-
conservative free marketeers’’ (Watts and Goodman,
1997, p. 9). Thus, ‘‘multifunctionality’’ entered the lex-
icon of globalization at the close of the century as part
of the conceptual apparatus and the discursive strategies
deployed to debate and negotiate neoliberal agricultural
trade policies in domestic and international fora.
Some proponents of the multifunctional model
emphasized European distinctiveness, whereas others
provided a more generic statement. Because the concept
emerged in defense of the perceived particularities of
European rurality, it has been characterized as ‘‘a model
that reflects the specific history, cultures and choices of
European society’’ (Givord, 2000). In contrast, Potter
and Burney’s description, which emphasizes agroeco-
logical goals and rural livelihoods, is less geographically
specific: ‘‘The central assumption of this model is that
agriculture is multifunctional, producing not only food
but also sustaining rural landscapes, protecting biodi-
versity, generating employment and contributing to the
viability of rural areas’’ (Potter and Burney, 2002, p. 35).
In the parlance of WTO negotiations, ‘‘multifunc-
tionality’’ provides the philosophical underpinnings to
argue for the expansion of the Green Box, the category
of policy measures not subject to multilateral sanction
because they are decoupled from production and
therefore not considered to be trade distorting. Multi-
functionality provides a strategic opening in which to
recognize the landscape functions of agriculture and
rural settlement, so that the resultant social and eco-
logical complexity can be defined as public goods and
maintained through state policies. It represents a shift in
emphasis from the negative to the positive environ-
mental externalities of agricultural production to argue
for recognition of the social and/or environmental goods
that are ‘‘jointly produced’’ along with agricultural
products (Prem et al., 1999; Swinbank, 2002).
The response at the international level has varied
according to the interests and alignments of various
states. For example, Japan, South Korea, Norway, and
Switzerland, with the EU have formed the ‘‘Friends of
Multifunctionality’’ to emphasize ‘‘non-trade’’ aspects
of agricultural production in multilateral negotiations.
In contrast, multifunctionality has provoked a critical
response from the Cairns Group, 2 which regards it as
‘‘a smokescreen for the continuation of protectionist
agricultural policies’’ (Potter and Burney, 2002, p. 36).
While some characterize the US response as equally
skeptical to that of the Cairns Group (Givord, 2000;
Freshwater, 2001), others have termed it ‘‘equivocal’’
(Potter and Burney, 2002). 3 That the US appears as
both skeptical and equivocal can be seen as a reflection
of the contradictory position it holds, officially advo-
cating free trade while maintaining protectionist agri-
cultural policies. However, US policymakers do not use
‘‘multifunctionality’’ with the same interest in cultural
diversity and ecological complexity that their European
counterparts do. For example, the US Department of
Agriculture (USDA) report on multifunctionality omits
any reference to questions of biodiversity or landscape
heterogeneity, reducing agroenvironmental goods to
‘‘scenic vistas’’ (Bohman et al., 1999).
There has been a flurry of interest in recent years in
the idea of multifunctionality and its role in interna-
tional trade agreements, as evidenced by the burgeoning
list of conferences, reports, publications, and websites
devoted to the topic. It is controversial and contentious,
affording an element of protection––either protectionist
trade policy or protective of valued landscapes, com-
munities, and ecological services––depending on one’s
viewpoint. Invoked in defense of low intensity farming
systems with high nature conservation values associated
with traditional patterns of human interference, it is
2
The Cairns Group is a coalition formed in 1986 to advocate
agricultural trade liberalization, comprising 17 agricultural exporting
countries (Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zea-
land, Paraguay, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, and Uruguay)
that together account for one-third of the world’s agricultural exports.
3
The US negotiating proposals that were tabled at the June 2000
WTO Agricultural Committee Meeting included additional domestic
support criteria––such as environmental and natural resource protec-
tion––that were welcomed by the EU as resembling multifunctionality
and expanding the green box.
 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
being articulated as an anti-development or alternative
development discourse emanating from the ‘‘North.’’ In
analyzing the various conference documents, alliances
for and against multifunctionality, and government and
NGO position statements, I have identified two distinct
versions of the concept, which I label ‘‘weak’’ and
‘‘strong’’ multifunctionality. Weak conceptualizations
of multifunctionality tend to defend a limited set of
national interests in the agricultural sector. Strong ver-
sions challenge the current structure and logic of trade
liberalization as regulated by various GATT agreements
and the WTO and view multifunctionality as a path to
radical reform. The case of the FAO/Netherlands Sep-
tember 1999 ‘‘Cultivating our Futures’’ Conference and
the debates that followed will serve to illustrate the two
approaches to the concept of multifunctionality.
The FAO/Netherlands conference was organized as a
preconference to implement the goals of Agenda 21 for
sustainable agriculture and the World Food Summit.
Because multifunctionality had developed into a highly
contentious term in ongoing trade negotiations, the
organizers proposed ‘‘Multifunctional Character of
Agriculture and Land’’ (which became ‘‘MFCAL’’) as
an alternative. Conference Chair Hans Alders opened
the proceedings by differentiating between the concepts
of MFCAL and of multifunctionality. The former, he
explained, was agreed language from the World Food
Summit and was concerned with the substance of agri-
culture and land use whereas the latter referred to
non-trade concerns under the mandate of the WTO.
However, representatives from Cairns Group countries
rejected this distinction, protesting that MFCAL and
multifunctionality were one and the same, that it was
‘‘seriously flawed as a concept,’’ protectionist, and of-
fered no advance over agricultural sustainability (Doran
et al., 1999, p. 3).
Following the FAO/Netherlands conference and in
preparation for Earth Summit 2002, the French non-
governmental organization SOLAGRAL (solidarite
agricole et alimentaire) posted a caucus position paper
to address the question ‘‘Is it worth defending the con-
cept of multifunctionality of agriculture?’’ (Jadot, 2000).
In defense of multifunctionality, the paper presents the
strong version of the concept as a challenge to the WTO
framework. The author first distinguishes and rejects the
weak version of multifunctionality, founded on the idea
of the European agricultural model as distinct and un-
ique. Jadot (2000) takes issue with this notion of
European exceptionalism: ‘‘There is no ÔEuropean farm
model’, there is an export-oriented model that needs to
become a multifunctional one’’ and challenges the
incremental strategy of tinkering with the ‘‘green box:’’
‘‘Neither the green box nor special and differentiated
treatment offer real opportunities to implement farm
policies.’’ Jadot criticizes the narrow geographic alliance
that forms the ‘‘Friends,’’ arguing that a defensible
303
multifunctional grouping would include developing
countries, ‘‘first and foremost those that face food
security problems.’’ In articulating the ‘‘strong’’ version,
Jadot and others are arguing for a multifunctional
concept of agriculture that would confront ‘‘the global
regulation of commodities per se irrespective of local
character’’ as institutionalized in the WTO (Saurin,
1999, p. 226).
3. The US and Florida in the global sugar trade
The world sugar market in general, and the US Sugar
Program in particular, are vexing to advocates of trade
liberalization. The issues raised by globalization with
respect to sugar are not new, since ‘‘nearly all the
characteristics associated with the postwar globalization
of agriculture . . . have been part of the world sugar trade
not for decades but for centuries’’ (Mahler, 1986, p.
150). Cane sugar was the commodity most closely
associated with mercantilism, slavery, and new world
plantations. From the 17th into the 19th century, it was
the single most important internationally traded com-
modity, ‘‘dwarfing in value the trade in grain, meat, fish,
tobacco, cattle, spices, cloth, or metals’’ (Fogel, 1989, p.
21). Then, from the 1840s, beet began to challenge cane
in international markets. Beet sugar rose to prominence
under the protective policies of European governments,
enacted partly as a rural development strategy to
maintain stability in the face of US grain imports.
From 1884 until World War I, as sugar production
increased world-wide and prices fell, the political
economy of the global sugar trade captured interna-
tional attention and attempts to forge international
agreements proliferated. In the face of this global sugar
glut, US policymakers, farmers, and agroindustrialists
worked hard to expand domestic production in order
to obviate the need for imports and as a strategy of
regional development. Though they did not succeed at
the former, there were sufficiently developed regional
interests after World War I to successfully demand
punitive tariffs when sugar prices plummeted. With
protectionist policies, agroindustrial territorial produc-
tion complexes in various US regions expanded, and
during a period of record low world sugar prices, the
Florida industry was established (Hollander, 1999).
However, the US still depended on foreign sugar for a
substantial portion of its supply so that when, in 1934,
New Deal sugar policy was enacted, the quota system
balanced allotments among mainland, offshore, and
foreign producers. When it expired in 1974 during a
period of record high prices, 40 years of a managed
domestic market ended and ‘‘in one stroke the world
market nearly doubled in size and its residual character
was sharply diminished (Mahler, 1984, p. 719). When
prices again plummeted the program was reinstated,
304 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
this time without restrictive quotas for domestic pro-
ducers. One result has been a steady increase since 1981
in Florida’s production levels and a concomitant de-
cline in Caribbean imports.
The US, though it exports a small amount of refined
sugar, is a net importer of raw sugar. US sugar pro-
duction for fiscal year 1999 was approximately 8.9 mil-
lion short tons, of which 2.1 tons was produced in
Florida. The remainder of domestic consumption needs
was met through imports totaling 1.7 million short tons.
To maintain a domestic price that is usually higher than
world market prices, sugar imports are strictly con-
trolled through a system that allocates tariff-rate quotas
(TRQs), which allows imports at zero or low duty (US
GAO, 2000). In 1999, the US Sugar Program allocated
TRQs among 40 countries. For fiscal year 2000, the US
faced a surplus of sugar because domestic production
had increased and also because, to conform to the
requirements of the WTO, the US must honor the TRQs
as established under the GATT for foreign producers
(USDA Economic Research Service, 2000). Neither of
the other two signatories to NAFTA are pleased with
the US Sugar Program, and Mexico disagrees that the
copy of the side-letter that assigned it a TRQ of 116,000
metric tons (significantly less than either Brazil or the
Dominican Republic) was the final version (Kornis,
2001). Mexico’s claim to access to the US sugar market
is echoed and amplified at the international level, where
US commitment to agricultural trade liberalization is
challenged on the basis of its sugar protectionism (Jo-
sling, 1998).
The world market is a residual market, in which
only a fraction of sugar exports are ‘‘freely’’ traded.
Paralleling the US-based Coalition for Sugar Reform
at the international level is the Global Alliance for
Sugar Trade Reform and Liberalization (GASTRL),
organized by the Queensland Sugar Corporation and
sugar companies from 15 countries. GATSRL first met
at the 1999 WTO Ministerial in Seattle with the pur-
pose of lobbying for reform of US, EU, and Japanese
sugar policies (King, 2000). With respect to sugar
politics, the overlap between GASTRL and the Cairns
Group is extensive but not complete; GASTRL
membership includes Cairns Group members Austra-
lia, Brazil, Columbia, Guatemala, South Africa,
Thailand, Canada, and Chile, as well as El Salvador,
Honduras, India, Nicaragua, and Panama. Of these,
the first six are relatively large sugar producers that
stand to gain substantial benefits from liberalization of
global sugar trade. It has been estimated that devel-
oping countries that would suffer the greatest losses
from sugar trade liberalization are small African,
Caribbean, or Pacific countries who are currently
benefiting from preferential trade agreements under the
Lome Convention or the US Sugar Program (Cana-
dian Sugar Institute, 2000).
4. Florida sugar as a multifunctional agroindustry
European advocates of multifunctionality emphasize
the long and layered history of European cultural
landscapes, from Prehistoric to Antique to Mediaeval to
Renaissance to the ‘‘traditional agricultural landscapes’’
that persist today (Vos and Meekes, 1999). In contrast,
the landscape of sugarcane cultivation in south Florida
represents a sharp rupture with the historic Everglades
landscape it overlays and the process of transformation
was measured not in centuries but rather in decades––
from the inception of commercial sugar production in
the 1920s to the completion in 1972 of the drainage
system mandated in the Central and South Florida
Flood Control Act of 1948. The Act also designated the
EAA, comprising 700,000 acres of muck soils drained
for commercial agriculture and devoid of any topo-
graphical relief that the USDA might consider a ‘‘scenic
vista.’’ Thus neither the ‘‘European model’’ of a
palimpsest of agricultural history nor the US model of a
scenic vista finds a close analogy in the south Florida
sugar bowl.
Venturing into the EAA is not unlike entering the
‘‘modern giant factory building’’ envisioned by early
promoters of Everglades agriculture (Williamson, 1929,
p. 5) in which the visual cues of scenic, touristic land-
scape are missing. The landscape has been shaped to
accommodate the built environment of sugar produc-
tion ‘‘raised to the capacity of the mill and the govern-
ment allotments’’ (Douglas, 1988, p. 355). It is reflective
of the effort to maximize production efficiency. Roads
and rails, oriented to the mills, bear trucks and trains
laden with cane through the landscape. The logic of
sugar production also shapes the geography of human
settlement; where in other agricultural commodity
‘‘belts’’ would be small rural municipalities, for example,
in the EAA are corporate-owned plantation villages that
do not appear on road maps. Some are adjacent to the
highways; most are located on dirt roads that are also
unlikely to appear on public maps. These remote plan-
tation villages are private spaces, part of an extensive
factory landscape. They house not only the plantation
work force, but also the field equipment, cane haulers
and loaders, and the equipment and maintenance
buildings that comprise part of the surrounding factory
landscape. Within the EAA there are also several towns,
including Belle Glade, Clewiston, Harlem, Pahokee, and
South Bay. 4
Issues of cultural landscape, livelihoods, and agroe-
cology are important in the EAA, though these have
been suppressed by dominant images of ‘‘Big Sugar’’ in
4
The approximate population figures for the towns are as follows:
Belle Glade, 14,906; Clewiston, 6460 and adjacent Harlem, 2730;
Pahokee, 5985; and South Bay, 3859.
 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312 305

the popular imagination. Big Sugar––which refers to the The municipal auditorium, recreation areas, and the li-
large vertically integrated grower-processors––is not a brary building and holdings are of a noticeably higher
figment of the imagination, but neither is it the only quality than is typical of towns of this size in this region.
inhabitant of the EAA. Rather, Big Sugar has coexisted
with ‘‘Little Sugar’’ since the 1940s, when ranchers and
4.1. Livelihoods in the EAA
farmers in the area were encouraged to diversify by
planting sugarcane. Today there are approximately 152
The relationship between the sugar corporations and
farms growing sugar in south Florida, compared to
the other farmers and growers in the region is necessary
Hawaii, with fewer than 10, and Louisiana with
and symbiotic. Interviews with family farmers demon-
approximately 705. In terms of agrarian structure,
strate how critical sugar is to farming operations, and
Florida falls between Hawaii and Louisiana. For
how interdependent Big and Little Sugar are. Farmers
example, whereas 43% of sugar farms in Florida re-
need to have a contract to assure their cane will be
ceived $100,000 or less in benefit payments, the corre-
milled: ‘‘Before I planted my first stick of cane I had to
sponding figures for Hawaii and Louisiana were 0% and
go to Sugar (USSC), ÔWill you grind?’ You have to get a
96% (US GAO, 1993). 5 Together, Florida’s large and
home for it. It isn’t like oranges, where you can tote Ôem
smaller growers produce 52% of the US supply of
and sell Ôem. You have to get it lined up, because they’ve
domestically produced cane sugar.
got everything on schedule’’ (Interview, Jim Kirk,
The EAA is an agroindustrial territorial production
Clewiston, Florida, 20 December 1995). 6 This farmer
complex, including 430,000 acres planted in sugarcane,
represented a multigenerational farming operation dat-
six mills, and two sugar refineries. Two corporations,
ing to the 1940s, with 960 acres in cattle, 1280 acres in
Flo-Sun Incorporated and United States Sugar Corpo-
cane, and 340 acres in citrus. They sought to diversify
ration (USSC), account for 190,000 and 160,000 acres of
from cattle in 1984, choosing sugar over vegetables be-
sugarcane respectively, and five of the mills. The sixth
cause the latter are vulnerable to frost and economically
mill is owned by the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative
volatile. Their decision to use sugar to stabilize their
of Florida, which was chartered by area vegetable
income is typical. Another farmer, whose family had
growers in 1960. USSC, which dates to 1930 when
farmed in the area since 1915, explained why he had
Charles Stewart Mott took over the failing Southern
helped to found the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative in
Sugar Company, is now 49% employee owned with the
1960: ‘‘I was in the vegetable business and my family
remainder held by the Charles Stewart Mott Charitable
before me. It’s hit and miss. There’s no stability in the
Foundation. Flo-Sun Incorporated, which includes the
produce business. Sugar is more stable because of our
Okeelanta, Osceola, and Atlantic sugar mills as well as
sugar policy. I wanted to add some stability to my
Florida Crystals, was established in 1970 when the
operations, so when this opportunity came along, we
Fanjul family restructured their Florida sugar opera-
took it’’ (Interview, Hans Schmidt, Belle Glade, Florida,
tions, which date to 1961. Whereas Flo-Sun Incorpo-
22 August 1995).
rated is headquartered 50 miles away in urban Palm
Some families have been raising sugar since the 1940s,
Beach, USSC is headquartered in Clewiston and the
when federal production controls were lifted and farm-
Growers Cooperative in Belle Glade. Thus, the latter
ers were encouraged by USSC to plant cane. A member
two companies are wholly encompassed within the EAA
of one such farming family explained how two house-
and have a much stronger presence in the daily social life
holds and two full time employees are supported on 650
of their respective rural communities. Clewiston, espe-
acres of sugarcane: ‘‘My aunt paid off the land a long
cially, is a company town that centers on USSC, so-
time ago. She owns the land and she makes the big
cially, economically, politically, and spatially. The
decisions’’ (Interview, Jeff Walker, Clewiston, Florida,
public park in the middle of town is flanked at each end
23 August 1995). He felt that USSC had been very
by white-columned, plantation-style brick buildings,
supportive of them, noting that when a freeze killed the
housing the corporate headquarters and the Clewiston
cane in the fields, the company stopped its own har-
Inn, also built and run by USSC. Walking across the
vesting to save the small farmers’ crops. Another farmer,
park, one passes the library, youth center, playground,
a woman who is the primary operator of a 500 acre
and swimming pool, evidence of the Mott Foundation’s
farm, explained how, when the family dairy business
interest in creating the built environment of community.
failed in the 1980s, she learned to cultivate sugarcane:
‘‘The sugar company helped us a lot when we first got
5
A comparison between number and size of sugarcane farms in
started. I was scared slap to death. I knew nothing
Louisiana and Florida shows that of the 705 farms in Louisiana, 190 whatsoever. Thank god for an old guy that worked for
are small (less than 100 acres), 387 range between 100 and 1000 acres,
another 104 are between 1000 and 1999 in size, and 24 are over 2000
acres. In Florida the corresponding number of farms in each category
6
is 56, 53, 13, and 30, respectively (1997 Census of Agriculture, USDA). Names have been changed in order to protect anonymity.
306 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
US Sugar, he taught me how to raise cane’’ (Interview,
Donna Bentley, Clewiston, Florida, 15 December 1995).
With cattle prices falling post-NAFTA and an agri-
cultural land tax for Everglades restoration, EAA
ranchers are being squeezed, either into sugar or out of
business. The few ranching families that did not diver-
sify previously, now find themselves in a precarious
position, unable to maintain their farms on the income
from cattle. Some had chosen to level, ditch and dike
their land in preparation for planting sugarcane; others
were hesitant to undertake this expensive transforma-
tion in light of what they perceived to be the uncertain
future of the sugar program. Referring to NAFTA, one
farmer explained, ‘‘This Mexican thing has killed the
cattle business. I’ve sold my herd. They put me out.’’ He
was fortunate to have gone into sugar long ago, with
regard to which he was adamant about ‘‘fair trade, not
free trade.’’ ‘‘I’ll compete with any producer in the
world, be it Brazil or you name it. I cannot compete
with their governments. I’m expected to compete with
countries that have no such thing as social security, no
unemployment compensation. We’re restricted on pes-
ticides and air quality, so it makes us noncompetitive
against somebody like Brazil’’ (Interview, Hans Schmidt,
Belle Glade, Florida, 22 August 1995).
Many of the livelihood questions in the EAA pertain
to agroindustrial and agricultural workers, including
mechanics, engineers, heavy equipment operators, truck
drivers, mill workers, managers, and clerical workers. 7
Although some of the jobs are seasonal, both the mills
and plantations provide year round employment for
many workers. During the summer the mills are entirely
rebuilt in preparation for the grinding season, while on
the plantations, summer is a time to attend to equipment
and field maintenance. Since 1995, most of the field-
work, including harvesting, has been mechanized, with
one important exception, namely, cane planting. Be-
cause sugar is a ratooning grass, it does not have to be
replanted every year but instead is usually left for at
least three years, in some cases for many more. Thus,
only a portion of the EAA sugarcane acreage is planted
each year. Work crews employ both women and men,
many of them Haitian immigrants who live in Belle
Glade and the surrounding area. A labor lawyer who
represents rural workers identifies cane planting as a
critical component of the seasonal labor schedule be-
cause it offers employment at an otherwise slack time:
‘‘There is a small sweet corn harvest in the fall, while
some people are still up north picking apples. Then
when you hit November, December, January, that’s
7 Jane Kirk ‘‘a front for a corporate entity’’ (Interview,
In 1996 the Florida AFL-CIO opposed the proposed sugar tax in
support of sugar industry workers. Also that year, Jesse Jackson
campaigned against the tax on behalf of workers (Miami Herald, 7/28/
96, 5B and 10/24/96, 1A).
cane planting time, and people make good money’’
(Interview, Gary Miller, Belle Glade, Florida, 21 July
1995). The other important crop for field workers is
sweet corn, which is planted as a fallow crop on sugar
lands. Sweet corn crews, comprised of about 50 people
each, harvest April through May in south Florida and
then follow the crop northward as a group, finishing in
September.
4.2. Living in the EAA
The ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted greatly
informed my evaluation of multifunctionality in the
EAA. Many of the elements of multifunctionality––such
as cultural landscape, cultural heritage, generating
employment and contributing to the viability of rural
areas––are evident in the way that people express their
ideas about the landscape, environment, and the geo-
graphic differences between rural and urban Florida.
Living among and listening to the residents of the sugar
area, one can identify their strong sense of identity
rooted in place, often expressed by contrasting real and
imagined differences with ‘‘outsiders.’’ Several families
talked about their forebears’ experiences surviving the
1926 and 1928 hurricanes, which killed thousands of
people in this area. Many people suggested I read A
Land Remembered (Smith, 1984), a novel that recounts
the historical and environmental transformation of
central Florida as a saga of a pioneering ‘‘cracker’’
family, to understand rural Florida identity.
Many of the residents in and adjacent to the EAA are
second and third generation Floridians (unusual in the
Sunshine State), descendants of immigrants from the US
South or the Caribbean. They view themselves as having
environmental knowledge and a set of values different
from those of the Florida urban masses, more recently
arrived from the midwest and northeast US or from
Latin America. Conversely, coastal residents who are
unfamiliar with the EAA view it as the terrain of Big
Sugar, which they single out as an obstacle to Ever-
glades restoration. The EAA community was galvanized
when, in 1994, the Science Sub-Group of the Everglades
Task Force drafted a report on Everglades restoration
that had, as one possible goal among a list alternatives,
‘‘the return of wetland function to all former wetlands in
current agricultural uses, including the entire Everglades
Agricultural Area.’’ Then, over the next few years,
environmental groups attempted to pass a referendum
to tax sugar produced in Florida, first at a rate of two
cents and then one cent per pound. One of the founders
of the most active anti-sugar groups claimed there were
no family farmers in the EAA, publicly labeling farmer
Jane Kirk, Clewiston, Florida, 20 December 1995).
These assaults helped fuel a prevalent ‘‘us-against-
the-world’’ sense of community, which strengthened the
 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
sense of rural identity and shaped the structure of
environmental debates. When I began ethnographic re-
search, I found that my credentials as a graduate student
from Iowa (a farming state) held me in much greater
stead than did the fact that I had previously lived in
south Florida. At that time, environmental groups
thought phosphorous run-off from the EAA was
responsible for the eutrophication of Florida Bay and
deterioration of offshore reefs. 8 The feeling of injustice
from being blamed for environmental problems was
revealed as a division between urban and rural, or, more
specifically, coastal and central Florida.
I’ll tell you, they are not interested in Clewiston or
nothing else on a small scale in Washington, D.C.
Why is it that we’re the only ones [causing environ-
mental problems] when those automobiles and all
that pollution over on the coasts, the septic
tanks––they accused us of ruining Florida Bay!
(Interview, Bea Stoll, Clewiston, Florida, 14 July
1995).
A USSC plantation foreman noted the irony of
suburban dwellers condemning agriculture as ecologi-
cally destructive. In doing so he reveals knowledge of
the relative ecological benefits of land uses and the his-
torical relation between recent suburban settlement
compared to earlier agricultural development:
One person, he wanted to take the Glades back to
its natural pristine––you know back to that original
environment, which of course is impossible to do,
and I asked this person where they lived and they
lived in Wellington. I said, ‘‘well you know, twenty
years ago all of Wellington was under water, it was
a swampland. I think that oughta be returned to its
natural state.’’ ‘‘Well’’ they said ‘‘that’s not the
same!’’ I don’t know, I didn’t see the difference.
(Interview, Bill Richards, Bryant, Florida, 18
December 1995).
EAA residents felt politically and geographically
dominated by the urban and urbanizing coastal com-
munities of south Florida, and they felt threatened by
the proposals for land buy-outs that they thought would
displace the agricultural community:
And it makes you mad to think that you spent your
lifetime here and some of these people have been
8
Current research suggests that phosphorous in Florida Bay may
be transported by coastal currents from phosphate deposits on the
Gulf Coast of Florida. Nitrogen from the EAA may play a role in
ecological changes in the Bay but nitrogen has not been regulated so
adaptive measures have not been directed toward reducing nitrogen
loads (Brand, 2002).
307
here since about the first farming started, and then
somebody over there can come over here and say,
‘‘well we don’t want you there anymore, we want
you out.’’ Just look at the map now and look at
the land that they’ve gotten and they’re coming clo-
ser and closer. (Interview, Georgia Parker, Clewis-
ton, Florida, 14 July 1995).
People expressed the belief that environmentalist
organizations were unconcerned about rural livelihoods.
Referring to a public hearing on the retirement for
environmental purposes of agricultural land, a labor
lawyer for agricultural workers, after explaining that he
was ‘‘usually sympathetic to environmental issues,’’ gave
this account:
I went to the meeting and then the Sierra Club or
one of those groups showed up to make a presenta-
tion, and this was a meeting of farm worker service
groups, and so they said, ‘‘well what are you going
to do when all the jobs are gone?’’ ‘‘Well, that’s not
our problem.’’ And to say that to that group just
callously, just impressed on me, these guys just
don’t get it. (Interview, Gary Miller, Belle Glade,
Florida, 21 July 1995).
Often lost in the debates over the south Florida
environment is the ecological role of agriculture versus
available alternatives. In the EU, advocates of multi-
functionality emphasize the ecological services of
existing land management regimes. In the US environ-
mentalists have tended to pose agriculture as the main
ecological problem in south Florida. While they may not
be familiar with multifunctionality, some of the farmers
in the EAA articulated what they saw as important
policy differences between Europe and the US with
regard to the ecological services of agriculture. For
example, one farmer noted:
The environmental groups in England particularly,
but I guess in most of Europe, have done a better
job of preserving wildlife and things cause they went
at it where they made it to the benefit of the farmer
to preserve it. Over there you get tax breaks and
advantages if you preserve things. If I go out here
and find something, it’s to my detriment that I’ve
got a protected species on my property. (Interview,
Jim Kirk, Clewiston, Florida, 20 December 1995).
Many farmers questioned the wisdom of state
acquisition and retirement of agricultural land. Their
comments on this topic were informed by their working
relationship with the landscape, which led them to
conclude from observation that idled land would be
susceptible to invasion by exotic species that would
create cover potentially inhospitable to wildlife. One
308 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
farmer noted how this had happened elsewhere in the
state, where sandhill cranes had moved toward agricul-
tural areas out of former grazing lands that were now
state managed preserves, ‘‘because they can’t make it in
the brush, you know’’ (Interview, Jim Kirk, Clewiston,
Florida, 20 December 1995). Another farmer identified
in his comments two species that the state of Florida has
labeled ‘‘invasive exotics:’’
I don’t think they can take care of what they own
now. Melaleuca trees and Brazilian pepper trees
are growing on state land now, where if someone
still farmed it, or was grazing it at least, it would
be in good enough shape to not have exotics grow-
ing on it. (Interview, Jeff Walker, Clewiston, Flor-
ida, 23 August 1995).
4.3. Ecological issues and the EAA
Central to any claim for multifunctionality is that a
particular agricultural system provides ecological ser-
vices ‘‘jointly produced’’ with agrocommodities. This
would seem an unlikely assertion to be made on behalf
of the sugarcane agroindustry, which environmental
organizations, such as ‘‘Friends of the Everglades,’’
suggest should ‘‘move’’ from the EAA to further Ever-
glades restoration. To consider this aspect of multi-
functionality requires some background regarding the
ecological issues of the Everglades in general, and the
EAA in particular.
The original Everglades was hydrologically contigu-
ous, stretching from Lake Okeechobee to Florida Bay,
covering 7500 square miles, and comprised of a mosaic
of habitats. Due to Florida’s seasonal rainfall, this
extensive wetland was characterized by a pulsed sheet
flow that coursed over a low-relief limestone bedrock.
Most importantly, it was a highly oligotrophic system,
limited by phosphorous (Noe et al., 2001). Today, more
than one hundred years since drainage efforts began,
about half the original Everglades remains while the rest
has been lost to urban and agricultural development.
The issues concerning the remaining Everglades center
on altered hydrology, including loss of water storage,
overland flow, and spatial extent; loss of connectivity
among fragmented wetlands; changes in hydroperiod
and fire regime; changes in water quantity and quality;
and subsequent invasion of exotic species.
Within the EAA, a significant environmental problem
stems from the fact that drainage uncovered organic
soils, consisting almost entirely of decomposed plant
remains, which when exposed to oxygen continue to
decompose faster than they accumulate. The resulting
loss of surface elevation is termed ‘‘subsidence,’’ which
is occurring at an average rate of one inch per year in the
EAA. This biochemical oxidation is directly propor-
tional to the depth of the water table, so that a deeper
water table means a greater rate of subsidence (Snyder,
1994). The problems caused by subsidence are twofold;
the obvious one that the loss of soils threatens the future
of agriculture, and second, that as soils decompose,
nitrogen and phosphorous are mineralized and released
into the environment.
The problem of subsidence is thus related to one of
the key issues defining the relation between agriculture
in the EAA and the remaining Everglades: the quality of
water discharged from the EAA, specifically the level of
phosphorous. Phosphorous-laden run-off from the EAA
is blamed for eutrophication and subsequent shift in
species composition in adjacent water conservation
areas, Everglades marshes in which cattails are replacing
sawgrass (Davis, 1994; McCormick et al., 2002; Sklar
et al., 2002). 9 The 1992 Everglades Best Management
Practices (BMPs) Program mandated a 25% reduction in
phosphorous in stormwater run-off from the EAA rel-
ative to historic loads be achieved through BMPs, with
an additional 50% reduction achieved with storm water
treatment areas. 10 During the first three years of the
program, from 1996 through 1998, the EAA achieved an
average 55% phosphorous load reduction using a range
of BMPs (not counting the stormwater treatment areas)
(Rice et al., 2002). 11 In experiments to develop EAA
BMPs, researchers found that phosphorous concentra-
tions in drainage water were slightly lower from sugar-
cane versus fallow drained plots (Izuno et al., 1995).
This was because sugarcane requires low levels of ap-
plied fertilizer (no nitrogen and small amounts of
phosphorous) and more phosphorous left the fields in
biomass than was applied. One of their recommenda-
tions is that ‘‘vegetable field drainage water should be
stored and filtered through sugarcane fields since vege-
table field drainage is critical while sugarcane is rela-
tively flood tolerant’’ (Izuno et al., 1995, p. 743). 12
A USDA agronomist expressed grave reservations
regarding the ecological consequences of a large-scale
restoration that is based on retiring agricultural land for
water storage. First, because it would not be restoring
the natural hydrology he saw the potential for problems
with water control, and second, he thought it unlikely
9
Cattails are not an exotic but their replacement of sawgrass has
adverse implications for habitat and signals eutrophication (McCor-
mick et al., 2002).
10
The Everglades Forever Act (1994) mandated reduction of
phosphorous levels throughout the Everglades by 2006, first to a
narrative standard, which was subsequently revised to 10 ppb.
11
BMPs included avoiding drainage until a predetermined amount
of rain fell; adopting improved practices in fertilizer application and
control; controlling sediment and particulates through fallow field
cover crops, ditch bank stabilization, laser field leveling; using isolated
fields to store water temporarily; and managing water between fields
from high input to low input crops (Rice et al., 2002).
12
For example, a high input crop such as escarole requires 36 times
more phosphorous fertilizer than sugarcane (Glaz, 1995).
 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
that the state could manage the landscape at the scale of
the proposed retirement. Third, he found the emphasis
on using retired agricultural lands for water storage
troubling because it did not address the relationship
between cities and food production, nor the problem of
suburban sprawl. To him, the key to both agricultural
sustainability and ecological restoration lay in address-
ing the problem of soil subsidence.
If we can restore the natural hydrology and still
have a productive sugarcane crop, then, by concen-
trating on controlling soil subsidence and having a
productive agriculture, we’re meeting all the bum
raps against the EAA. If we can control soil subsi-
dence, soil oxidation is actually the major source of
phosphorous. So if we can control soil oxidation
we’re basically coming up with the major long-term
solution for phosphorous control. (Interview, Gary
Baker, Canal Point, Florida, 3 May 1996).
Since the key to reducing or eliminating subsidence is
to raise the water table, the implication for sugarcane
genetics is to breed for flood tolerance. He remarked
that because of low government funding, which resulted
in poor water control and therefore flooded test fields,
his research station had already begun, inadvertently, to
select for flood tolerance. Recent research on its root
structure had revealed sugarcane to be a flood-tolerant
species, which in his mind had tremendous implications
for Everglades restoration.
However, flood resistant cane would not, in itself, be
sufficient to overcome the political and practical prob-
lems surrounding the issue of subsidence and flooding.
To the extent that he had begun to advance the research,
he credited the interdisciplinary work that he had been
engaged with on Everglades restoration:
[W]e felt that in order to control subsidence the
EAA would have to flooded all the time, twelve
months out of the year. But what I learned from
the hydrologists and the ecologists was in fact, this
was never––this was often not flooded twelve
months out of the year. In fact, it would not have
been flooded during the dry season, which just so
happens to correspond to the sugarcane planting
and harvesting season. (Interview, Gary Baker,
Canal Point, Florida, 3 May 1996).
Because the historical water regime included dry
periods that so happen to correspond to the important
seasonal windows in which key farming operations must
be undertaken, he was able to envision an agricultural
system that could closely mimic natural hydrological
systems and in doing so, control the vexing problem of
subsidence. Finally, he noted that the culture of farming
in the region had ‘‘changed dramatically. When I hear
309
EAA people talk, they’re the ones who are accurately
describing the ecological and hydrological problems’’
(Interview, Gary Baker, Canal Point, Florida, 3 May
1996).
In assessing the ecological role of sugar in the land-
scape, the point here is quite adamantly not that the
Everglades should have been drained for sugar. The
question now is, how does it compare to alternative land
uses that are possible in this irreversibly transformed
landscape? Land retirement alone would not solve the
problem of phosphorous run-off and it would quite
likely result in a landscape vulnerable to invasion by
exotic species. Since the topography of the basin has
been altered by subsidence, the question of water flow
across a flooded landscape is unpredictable. Permanent
deep-water storage is problematic in that it is not
‘‘restoring’’ what was once there, and it is predicted that
large amounts of water would be lost in evaporation.
Sugarcane offers certain ecological benefits that land
retirement and permanent deep-water storage would
not, such as the economic incentive and wherewithal to
manage exotic vegetation, the possibility of mimicking
seasonal water regimes associated with the historic
Everglades, and the ability to maintain a landscape
mosaic. In the opinion of a wildlife biologist who spe-
cializes in the study of large reptiles––alligators and
crocodiles––as indicator species, ‘‘there is no area in
south Florida that has the amount of money spent on
it that is needed to do things like controlling exotic
plants.’’ He went on to add:
You get a lot more––you get a lot better combina-
tion of ecological benefits, or at least the potential
for ecological benefits and economic productivity,
with agriculture. And in a land where we’re going
to have this mosaic with different land uses, this is
what you’ve got to look for: where do you get these
combinations of things? (Interview, Dick Jones,
Davie, Florida, 6 May 1996).
5. Discussion
This assessment of livelihoods, landscape, and ag-
roecology in the Florida EAA serves to raise a number
of questions regarding the concept of multifunctional-
ity, including its meaning, geographic transferabil-
ity, coherence, and implications for agricultural trade
liberalization. Though the debate surrounding the
political-economic and geographical limits of multi-
functionality will continue, we can observe that the
weak version will be increasingly harder to defend. The
weak version is articulated on an idea of European
rural landscapes, which are held to be exceptional: ‘‘In
marked contrast to the situation in other parts of the
world, a large proportion of the land area of Europe
310 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
has been farmed for several millennia . . . As a result of
its longstanding management of the land, farming in
Europe has co-evolved with its ecology, landscapes and
other environmental resources’’ (Brouwer and Straaten,
2002, p. 1). The argument for environmental goods and
services has been made on the basis of European
experience, that EU farming has ‘‘been compatible with
the conservation of biodiversity and other environ-
mental benefits’’ and ‘‘may also have actively molded
their very character through a process of joint pro-
duction of food and environmental goods’’ (Potter and
Burney, 2002, p. 39). This informs the philosophical
position that there is a distinctive ‘‘European model of
agriculture.’’ These claims of the case for European
agriculture as somehow distinct from the rest of the
world do not withstand scrutiny. Rather than being a
‘‘marked contrast,’’ Europe is just one example, and
not even the most ancient example, of many other re-
gions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Meso-
america, where land has been farmed for millennia. As
for European agriculture providing environmental ser-
vices as well as agricultural goods, the case of the
Florida EAA demonstrates that this is not particularly
unusual or distinctive.
To return to the case of Florida, what insights does
the Florida example have to offer in terms of multi-
functionality? At first glance, Florida sugar seems an
unlikely example of a multifunctional agricultural
landscape. Agriculture in the EAA can neither be
characterized as ‘‘more traditional’’ (Knickel and
Renting, 2000, p. 526) nor as ‘‘marginal’’ (Potter and
Goodwin, 1998, p. 291). It is a mono-cultural agroin-
dustry devoted to producing a highly refined component
of the modern ‘‘durable’’ food system. Yet EU concerns,
such as ‘‘sustaining rural landscapes, protecting biodi-
versity, generating employment and contributing to the
viability of rural areas’’ (Potter and Burney, 2002, p. 35)
find parallels in this region. The EAA is a distinctive
rural region, located between two of the fastest growing
and urbanizing coastal regions in the US, Lee and
Collier counties to the west and Broward and Miami-
Dade counties to the east. Residents of the EAA feel
their agricultural livelihoods are endangered by de-
mands for water storage and threatened by efforts to
link trade liberalization with Everglades restoration. A
closer look at Big Sugar reveals a differentiated picture,
including several large corporations, thousands of
agroindustrial workers, and a range of small and med-
ium sized diversified farming operations, for which
sugar provides a relatively stable income stream. As
Snyder and Davidson note:
In Florida, many thousands of people owe their
livelihood to the sugarcane industry. If the industry
were to collapse, the majority of these people would
suffer severe, and in many cases, permanent eco-
nomic hardship . . . Small landowners, including
families that have farmed the area for years and
even generations, also would likely be bankrupted
by the elimination of the sugar industry (Snyder
and Davidson, 1994, p. 111).
As we turn to the agri-environmental question, it has
to be asked in reference to the landscape of the present
and with regard to the future. No doubt, the sugar
industry has greatly transformed the prehuman and
early human landscape, but by definition, so has every
other agricultural region. The question is no longer
whether it is ecologically and economically sensible to
drain the Everglades for sugar but rather, what is the
function of sugarcane in the landscape now? Here we
find that sugarcane in Florida has, by virtue of poor
flood control at the USDA experiment station, co-
evolved with the Everglades landscape so as to tolerate a
high water table and flooding. In formulating their re-
sponse to agroenvironmental issues farmers, scientists,
and industry representatives are beginning to develop a
local knowledge base regarding the regional landscape
dynamics. With regard to the future, Glaz suggests: ‘‘As
the EAA evolves to a zero-subsidence agriculture, it
would also be evolving to conditions more similar to its
natural predrainage conditions. Hydrologists may be
able to take advantage of these new conditions to rees-
tablish the natural hydrological links of the EAA’’
(Glaz, 1995, p. 611).
The concept of multifunctionality emerged in the
context of increasing pressure from the WTO that is
perceived as threatening to rural land-based economies
and their associated landscapes. The weak version does
not challenge the overall course of globalization and
trade liberalization, but seeks rather to create a space for
European agriculture by stressing its non-trade charac-
teristics. The weak version appears to be transferable to
the Florida case when we think in terms of the domestic
politics. That is, the ‘‘strange bedfellows’’ arrayed
against Florida sugar, which have their counterparts in
the critics of the CAP, might be appeased with sugar-
cane grown to the limits of flood tolerance as a means to
control subsidence and remove phosphorous. At the
moment this defense of sugar supports is unnecessary
since the US Sugar Program not only survived but was
strengthened in the 2002 Farm Bill (Orden, 2003).
However, tariffs on sugar imports from Mexico are to be
eliminated by 2008 and negotiations for the FTAA
suggest that sugar may have to be ‘‘on the table’’ if a
regional agreement is to be reached.
Does the case of Florida fit the ‘‘strong’’ version of
multifunctionality? The strong version could provide the
conceptual framework for countries and regions to resist
efforts to implement free trade initiatives under condi-
tions that are unfavorable to their survival. Public Cit-
izens’ criticism of NAFTA in defense of Florida
 G.M. Hollander / Geoforum 35 (2004) 299–312
agriculture might be interpreted as one of many exam-
ples around the globe where trade liberalization is being
resisted as a threat to local livelihoods. However, several
problems arise when we attempt to apply the ‘‘strong’’
version to this case. If the strong version includes bio-
diversity, cultural preservation, food security, and sus-
tainable development in an effort to address the
concerns of both North and South, then we see that not
all aspects would apply to Florida. The food security
argument is problematic in this case for a variety of
reasons; first, because sugar is not highly nutritious;
second, because the issue of food security within the US
centers on income distribution, which higher domestic
prices for sugar only worsens; and third, that the US
needs a large domestic supply within its borders as
a matter of security seems a disingenuous claim given
its political and economic power. 13
The difficulty in applying the strong version of mul-
tifunctionality to the case of Florida sugar points to two
conceptual difficulties. First, even its supporters admit
that it is a ‘‘fuzzy’’ concept that seems to mean what it
is needed to mean in a given context. By attempting to
pull into a common framework issues such as food
security in developing countries and the preservation of
stone fences in rural Scotland, the term begins to lose
coherence. Yet to the extent that it does convey that
there are special qualities inherent in land-based food
and fiber production systems and common concerns
regarding rural marginalization, we encounter the sec-
ond difficulty of the term, that it has become the focus of
struggle over agricultural exceptionalism (Diaz-Bonilla
and Tin, 2002; Smith, 2000). Multifunctionality has
become the synecdoche of international agricultural
politics to the extent that the acceptance of the term is
clearly guided by how a country or region sees its inter-
ests in agricultural trade liberalization. The question of
whether the US would use the concept of multifunc-
tionality in international agricultural trade negotiations
in general or with respect to sugar remains to be seen,
but it seems unlikely since the US position usually falls
between the EU and the Cairns Group (Bredahl and
Luecker, 2001).
Meanwhile, the agroenvironmental politics of Florida
sugar have already begun to permeate the next round of
presidential politics. When Governor Jeb Bush prepared
to sign a bill that would weaken phosphorous standards
to 15 ppb from 10, the New York Times editorialized
‘‘Most Florida voters favor Everglades restoration. The
president clearly will not want to campaign in Florida in
2004 with the project in shambles’’ (3/21/03: A24) while
the Miami Herald noted that this would threaten the
13
Orden notes the use of security rhetoric in the 2002 US Farm Bill
(Orden, 2003).
311
governor’s legacy, ‘‘not to mention his brother’s hopes
of winning Florida in 2004’’ (Hiaasen, 4/27/03: 5L).
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