Making Heritage: The Case of Black Beluga Agriculture on the Northern Great Plains

Abstract

This article considers the perils and potential of an increasingly popular alternative food commodity: heritage and heirloom foods. Drawing on ethnographic research with Black Beluga lentil farmers in Montana, I develop a process-based means of conceptualizing heritage agriculture, to avoid the pitfalls of simply reifying old crop varieties. This article makes three contributions to scholarship on alternative food commodities: (1) modeling a method of generative critique of alternative food movements that are in danger of being undermined by their articulation as commodity markets, (2) demonstrating how feminist ethnography of situated knowledge production can provide insight into processes of cross-species learning through which alternative food systems are created and sustained, and (3) suggesting that a reflexive approach to alternative food movement praxis is the best means of fostering environmental sustainability and social justice.