Securing Sugar: National Security Discourse and the Establishment of Florida’s Sugar-Producing Region

Abstract

This article explores the critical role that discourses of national security and national food self-sufficiency played in the establishment of Florida’s sugar-producing region. The primary theoretical engagement is with work in economic and cultural geography that analyzes the material and discursive construction of commodities and the regions that produce them. Attention is directed toward the regulatory effects of discourse, as manifested through the establishment of state institutions, rules, and practices that regulate global sugar production and trade. The approach is historical, demonstrating the persistence of national security discourses over several decades as the broader political-economic and geopolitical contexts for U.S. sugar production shifted. These contextual shifts presented the sugar industry and its political supporters with discursive opportunities for framing state protectionism in the global sugar trade as vital to national security. The empirical foundation of this analysis has two methodological components, the first of which documents the role and form of discursive practices. The second component addresses the broader and larger-scale political-economic contexts for the discursive practices of Florida sugar interests—specifically a century of shifting global geopolitics and the United States’s role in international affairs.