Abstract
Existing frameworks offer a holistic way to evaluate a food system based on sustainability indicators but can fall short of offering clear direction. To analyze the sustainability of a geographical indication (GI) system, we adopt a product-centered approach that begins with understanding the product qualification along the value-chain. We use the case of the GI Corsican grapefruit focusing on understanding the quality criteria priorities from the orchard to the store. Our results show that certain compromises written into the Code of Practices threaten the system’s sustainability. Today the GI allows the fruit to be harvested before achieving peak maturity and expectations on visual quality lead to high levels of food waste. Its primary function is to help penetrate mainstream export markets and to optimize labor and infrastructure. Analyzing the stakeholders’ choices of qualification brings to light potential seeds for change in the short run such as later springtime harvests, diversification of the marketing channels, and more leniency on the fruit’s aesthetics. These solutions lead us to reflect on long-term pathways to sustainable development such as reinforcing the fruit’s typicality, reducing food waste, reorganizing human resources, and embedding the fruit into its territory and the local culture.
Highlights
The Corsican citrus fruit sector’s use of geographical indications (GIs) is considered a success story, given the challenges the actors have had to overcome since the first orchards were planted in the 1960s, and thanks to the economic prosperity spurring new investments today
The sector’s success, infrastructure, and commercial strategies were built around a flagship product, the Corsican clementine, which obtained a GI in 2005 and represents over 80% of commercial volumes produced in the Corsican citrus fruit sector
Like the Corsican clementine, we examined to what extent these tensions between terroir and conventional market standards exist and impact the sustainability of the Corsican grapefruit’s GI and, by extension, that of the Corsican citrus sector
Summary
The Corsican citrus fruit sector’s use of geographical indications (GIs) is considered a success story, given the challenges the actors have had to overcome since the first orchards were planted in the 1960s, and thanks to the economic prosperity spurring new investments today. The sector’s success, infrastructure, and commercial strategies were built around a flagship product, the Corsican clementine, which obtained a GI in 2005 and represents over 80% of commercial volumes produced in the Corsican citrus fruit sector (about 31,000 tons in 2017 according to regional census data). A very distant second is the Corsican grapefruit’s commercial production (at 6500 tons) which obtained a GI in 2014 [2]. This secondary fruit is considered complementary to the clementine since it extends the growing season. This helps secure the sector’s place on the market by extending their commercial season and allowing for greater return on infrastructure investments
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