Managing Pests, Consumers, and Commitments: The Case of Apple Growers and Pear Growers in Belgium's Lower Meuse Region

Abstract

The authors analyse the construction of a seed fruit market. The conventional market had led to the ‘anonymousness’ of the fruit and to disconnected temporalities. The process needs new types of coordination and components within the common information channels and actors' network. It also needs the construction of a new contract between producers and consumers, that the conventional market is unable to allow. Producers are experimenting with direct contact with the final consumer to find ways of allowing it. The fruit is replaced in the subject's experience of the final consumer and in the grower's story. The grower's story deals with managing pests, consumers, and commitments through a harmless action: eating a pear or an apple.