Politics of Grain Materiality. Port Silos, Quality, and Futures Markets in France

From food security to the early ability for states to tax and control local populations, scholars have emphasized that grain is power: its material characteristics (a basic staple cultivated off the ground which come to maturity synchronously, easily storable and transportable, etc.) give power to the actors that are able to control its production, circulation, and storage, such as states (Scott 2017) or agribusinesses (Morgan 1980). Logistics innovations also plays a part in the way this politics of materiality unfolds: in nineteenth-century Chicago, shifting from sacks to elevators turned grain into a “golden stream” and gave a central position to grain elevators in the financialization of wheat markets (Cronon 1991). This communication focuses both on the politics of grain materiality (Barry 2013; Bennett 2021) and grain logistics operators to analyse how grain storage characteristics are mobilized for power among the French value chain. France is the first European wheat exporter and producer, exporting mostly towards other European countries (mostly Belgium, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands), northern Africa (mostly Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt), and China. Part of this dominant position is based on logistics infrastructures: port silos are particularly important for grain quality standardization and (futures) markets, and yet little studied. At the crossroads of sociology of agriculture, sociology of markets, and Science and Technology Studies, this communication explores the following question: how do port silos participate to govern grain worlds, through a specific politics of materiality? Based on a qualitative study, the presentation shows that port silos make visible certain plants characteristics – such as quality, which is structural in power relations between upstream and downstream actors, but also play as a market storage infrastructure essential to grain financialization.