Abstract

This article examines the role of place—specifically the place of Silicon Valley in California—in the emerging economic geographies of alternative proteins (APs), including cellular and plant-based substitutes. Drawing on original fieldwork data and existing economic geography debates on food, place, and innovation, I develop the concept of innovation terroir to examine the key role Silicon Valley has played in shaping the spatial trajectories and political possibilities of the AP sector. I first illustrate the power of Silicon Valley’s place-myth in (re)producing the importance for AP founders to be physically in place within the region, in part to access its renowned industrial resources but also to provide a protective niche of credibility and credulity for these nascent ventures. Second, I outline that to be there in spatial terms has also involved an encountering with a specific culture of logics and practices of the technoindustrial region of Silicon Valley. To succeed at doing protein food in this region has required a choice by AP ventures to become culturally in place and thereby reimagine food through the Valley’s image of high-tech entrepreneurial innovation; in short, it has required food to become software. This exploration of cultural emplacement builds directly on recent work in geography and related fields on alternative food economies, geographies of innovation, and the ontological politics of APs. It offers timely contributions for considering how AP development might be done otherwise and what it means to look to Silicon Valley for solutions to global food security and broader planetary challenges.

抽象的

本文探讨了替代蛋白质（APs）新兴的经济地理环境中的位置，尤其是加利福尼亚州硅谷的位置，包括细胞和植物替代物。借助原始的现场工作数据和有关食物，地点和创新的现有经济地理辩论，我提出了创新风土的概念，以研究硅谷在塑造AP行业的空间轨迹和政治可能性方面所发挥的关键作用。我首先说明硅谷的地域神话的力量在（重新）再现AP创始人在身体上的重要性在该区域内建立的位置，部分是为了获得其著名的工业资源，同时也为这些新兴企业提供了信誉和信誉的保护性利基市场。其次，我概述了在空间方面的存在还涉及到硅谷技术工业区的特定逻辑和实践文化的遭遇。要在该地区成功生产蛋白质食品，AP企业必须选择一种文化背景到位，从而通过硅谷高科技企业家创新的形象重新构想食品；简而言之，它要求食物成为软件。对文化安置的这种探索直接建立在地理学和有关替代食品经济，创新地理学以及AP的本体论政治的相关领域的最新工作的基础上。它为考虑如何以其他方式完成AP开发以及为硅谷寻求全球粮食安全解决方案和更广泛的星球挑战提供了及时的帮助。