Of Crayfish, Rice, and Anxiety: Agricultural Modernization in Chongzhou, Sichuan

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay examines the emergence of crayfish and crayfish rice production in Chongzhou, Sichuan as a product of China’s agrarian transition and at the conjuncture of several forms of food anxiety. To earn revenue, the Chongzhou government has encouraged the cultivation of crayfish. Once a local peasant food, crayfish has been rebranded as a luxury item and made a centerpiece of local placemaking efforts. However, Chongzhou is also the site of an Agricultural Functional Zone, and is designated as a site for grain agriculture, in response to the Chinese state’s longstanding anxieties about grain self-sufficiency. Thus, rice is grown together with the crayfish. To make it appealing, crayfish rice is marketed as high quality and ecologically friendly, responding to the state’s biopolitical concerns about the “quality” of the population, as well as to middle class consumers’ sense of distinction and their pervasive consumer anxieties about food safety and environmental pollution.