Making Masa in a Place-Based Way: Relationality, Maize, and the Local Food Movement

As local food movements continue to grow in industrialized regions globally, greater reflexivity concerning the “local” is necessary for more sustainable and just relocalization. While the ethical values associated with “local” food systems are often ambiguous, the ethical values associated with “place-based” food systems (forming and maintaining reciprocal relationships and responsibilities through and with particular places) offer us a more palpable way of conceiving concepts like “embeddedness” and “nested markets." This paper brings a new case study with nixtamal tortillerias into conversation with the literature on place-based and relational maize foodways. I focus here empirically, through in-depth conversational interviews, on the motivations for participation in local food systems of a small group of fresh nixtamal tortilleria owners across the U.S. who are choosing to source locally grown corn for their masa despite the availability of imported criollo maize from Mexico. These tortillerias are making masa in a “place-based” (but not place-bound) way through using what is available to them regionally—sourcing local corn in reciprocal relationship with local farmers and farmland—while also seeking to be in solidarity with small farmers and tortillerias in Mexico and serve (especially Latin American immigrant) communities locally. I offer that these local food systems are therefore examples of emerging “place-based” food systems in the U.S., that is, local food systems built on place-based ethical values. This case study both illustrates and challenges the concept of “nested markets” specifically in relation to “common pool resources,” emphasizing instead place-based reciprocity and relationality through a particular crop.