Yıldız Atasoy’s Commodification of Global Agrifood Systems and Agro-Ecology: Convergence, Divergence and Beyond in Turkey examines the structural transformation in Turkey’s agricultural sector and food provisioning system (the agrifood industry), including producer-distributor-retailer relationships, from a political economy perspective. Through a meticulous field study conducted in Ankara and Kırşehir that spanned five years and includes in-depth ethnographic analyses, interviews, and historical insights, Atasoy unpacks the transformation occurring in the agrifood industry under the country’s neoliberal regime and convincingly shows that this transformation is neither linear nor one-dimensional. On one side, there is pressure from neoliberal processes in the form of, among other things, the commodification of land, food, and labor; the expansion and deepening of industrial standardization; the spread of the supermarket model; and an increase in contract farming and large-scale commercialized farming practices. On the other side, however, there is the simultaneous coexistence of traditional methods of production and marketing that, in a way, manage to resist the hegemonic power of neoliberalism. Atasoy’s book thus portrays the varied tensions, ambiguities, and diversities that are concurrently affecting the changing conditions in Turkey’s agrifood industry—and it does so in a very enticing way. Not only is the book’s theoretical framework solid and engaging, but empirically it] is also very rich and illustrative. The reader is offered contrasting observations drawn from diverse locales as examples of the convergence, divergence, and cohabitation of neoliberal practices and efforts to stand against them. All in all, the book treats the shifts occurring in food provisioning in Turkey, such as the commercialization processes controlled by supermarkets via contract farming, as an analytical thread with which to follow and reveal how the normative acceptability of the neoliberal remaking of agriculture and food is entangled with processes of income/wealth generation (and thus class formation) and increased intercapitalist competition—with all this happening in a globalized world and under a Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) regime that promotes Islamic politics. Atasoy does an excellent job in linking all the aforementioned changes to the changes occurring in landscape management, agro-ecological dynamics, and labor practices.

Although there are a substantial number of studies that offer macroanalysis of the erosion of peasant practices and the rise of the hegemony of market rationality in Turkey’s agricultural sector, a process that started in the 1980s and gained momentum under the AKP regime, multilayered inquiries exploring the relationships among producers, distributors, and retailers at the micro and meso levels have been limited, at best. Atasoy fills this gap by providing a very rich and detailed study that persuasively encourages the reader to look at the commodification of agricultural lands and the commercialization of the agrifood industry within the framework of a context-specific historical backdrop so as to more fully account for the dynamics of the neoliberal transformation. One of the astonishing findings of the book is that small-scale producers—who are mostly affiliated with traditional (and sometimes organic) production techniques—are “neither marginalized relics of the past […] nor subjects mobilized to form a political force for creating an alternative ontology that challenges the market episteme in agriculture” (p. 4). We are thus informed that while the neoliberal hegemony remains dominant, it nevertheless has not taken over completely—thereby reinforcing Karl Polanyi’s well-known argument that although the market economy entails the subordination of society to market logic, the organic integrated unity of societies ultimately continues to resist it.

Following an introductory chapter that addresses broad theoretical and methodological issues related to the neoliberal restructuring of agrifood systems, in Chapter 2 Atasoy explores the profoundly transnational dimension of the agrifood industry transformation in Turkey. Subsequently, Chapter 3 provides data on the significance of efficiency and rationality within a market economy model that is geared toward the “optimization of performance” in the agricultural sector. As is well known, the national developmentalist era in Turkey had heavily supported the agricultural sector and farmers; when this era came to an end, though, the role of rural actors gradually weakened and the influence of international actors like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank grew increasingly stronger, as a result of which a market ideology was promoted as the only path to enhancing efficiency. Following this, in Chapters 4 and 5, Atasoy uses interviews conducted in Ankara and Kırşehir with large and small-scale farmers, retailers, local bureaucrats, and other related actors to demonstrate that multiple pathways of commercialization coexist in Turkey’s agrifood industry. Especially important in this section is Atasoy’s finding that, while organic and small-scale producers share the farming imaginaries and ambiguities often present in industrial farming, they also “distrust” agro-industrial methods of production. Yet above all, Atasoy’s fieldwork shows that the existence of different types of supply chains reflects variation in farming imaginaries. Subsequently, Chapter 6 dwells on the labor practices employed by large-scale as well as by organic and small-scale producers alike, and in particular examines ethnicity as a relevant dimension of this topic, since most seasonal workers in Turkey’s agricultural sector happen to be Kurdish. In Chapter 7, Atasoy focuses on the food provisioning system in Turkey, emphasizing how different types of coexisting production methods and supply chains enable supermarkets to enjoy a market hegemony. Finally, Chapter 8 brings the book to a close by stressing the cohabitation of multiple different practices, ontologies, and imaginaries in the agrifood industry in Turkey. Overall, this is a very finely crafted book, revealing on one hand how the neoliberal regime has penetrated into the agrifood industry in Turkey while, on the other hand, detailing how traditional practices in the industry have nevertheless managed to survive. A successful unpacking of this very cohabitation enables the reader to better understand the ongoing transformations in Turkey’s agrifood industry.

Neoliberal ideologies, in Turkey as well as in other parts of the world, are based on the idea of the economization of all aspects of social life via a cost and benefit framework, with such ideologies taking the concept of economic efficiency as their primary motto. This vision is based on a rational, individualistic ontology as well as on a market-centric approach, and it dominates us in every aspect of our lives regardless of where we live—but its domination is not yet total or complete. There are, for instance, heterogeneities in the form of the safeguarding of traditional practices, the creation of resistance movements, and the generation of alternatives. In her commendable book, Atasoy tackles all these issues by providing a detailed picture of the various aspects that coexist in Turkey’s agrifood industry.

Following this generally positive appraisal of Atasoy’s book, however, I would also like to highlight one area that would benefit from additional investigation and would certainly further enrich the line of analysis that Atasoy has laid out so successfully; namely, the link between agrifood practices and ecological dynamics. The debate over how agrifood systems contribute to ecological problems (most obviously to the climate crisis, but also to other ecological problems, such as underwater pollution) and how ecological degradation impacts both the agricultural sector and food security is steadily growing more and more important. Consequently, it is becoming ever more crucial to position the agrifood industry as a critical site for adapting to, and potentially mitigating, ecological problems; this is especially true for Turkey as a developing country with a relatively high share of agriculture and food industries. Given that the general macroanalysis and the cohabitation of diverse ontologies in the agrifood industry, which Atasoy’s book portrays so comprehensively, are at hand, one may reasonably further inquire into what ecological change might imply for different ontologies of the industry, and also how different practices in the industry might affect both global and local ecology. Finally, once we have unpacked the multiplicity of actors concerned about the economic, social, and ecological conditions and consequences of food production and consumption, alongside the actions taken by these actors to reshape said conditions and consequences, we can potentially map out these actors’ possible actions, identify (the likelihood of) conflicts and cooperation among them, and explore how ecological degradation weaves into these processes.