Food Security and Production in the District

It is easy to identify the stable/unstable dichotomy in the context of local cuisine: there are sustainable dishes, mainly created from local resources (Chikachov 1990; Gurvich 1952; Zenzinov 1914), but we also see new introductions to the regional diet: imported fruits, vegetables, ketchup, and many other products. Gradually, imported goods had been becoming part of the local foodscape, installed in the traditional list of food resources (FMA 2019). This rotation of stability and instability is a key feature of the territory (Golovnev et al. 2018). So, sustainability—as (a) process(es) by which food security is kept at a certain level (YouMatter 2021) is the result of efforts, largely determined by an unstable background: the everchanging water levels in the river, and, consequently, the number of fish, the conditions for the passage of cargo ships carrying food at the mouth of the river, the dynamics of food and transport prices, the movement of the reindeer populations, and unstable legal restrictions such as on fishing and shooting animals (Krause 2013).

An important question in this case is whether the local residents articulate this dichotomy between stability and instability. The answer is that while they do not state it directly, this division is revealed through stories about the specifics of supplying the region, their economic activities, seasonal changes of actual material instruments for getting necessary food (e.g., difference between summer and winter fishing), and using fluid affordances of the environment during construction of the foodscape. Sustainability is expressed in the capacity to prepare essential foods and achieve, albeit temporarily, the sense of food security (Ferranti 2019). But at the same time, there are always many risks in the Arctic, so the local residents must understand how to work with changeable environment in order to survive.

This idea of living with risks, which determine stabilizing social practices, was clearly developed in the work of Igor Krupnik (1989: 80) from a historical perspective. He debunked the myth of the absolutely ecofriendly lifestyle led by peoples of “traditional” culture. For example, Krupnik argues the amount of prey hunted in the society of Yuit people in the nineteenth century and earlier significantly exceeded the needs of consumption. Such overhunting was necessary to create excess reserves that serve as a guarantor, a kind of “margin of safety” in case of failure of the next season hunting. Krupnik also notes that the societies could have had several settlements within their lands and sequentially changed them periodically as a pattern of adaptation to the risks. The Paleolithic communities could seasonally split into several smaller hunting associations with their own routes and fixed camp sites. It was common trait among the Yup'ik peoples of northwestern Alaska or Yuit of the southeast of the Chukotka Peninsula (218–219). All these examples demonstrate the varieties of socio-practical adaptations to certain environmental conditions that influenced the whole society in the region.

There are many food risks in the modern Arctic settlements that are caused by supply difficulties. These include navigation problems; when I was in the field, a ship carrying food products to the Allaikhovskii district from Yakutsk could not enter the Indigirka due to low water in the river. Folks said there were other cases when the ship did not manage to get into the river, and it was necessary to unload the ships by helicopters. There is also the lack of motor roads during the snowless season, which means goods are delivered to hard-to-reach settlements on special flights. Furthermore, fishers cannot catch enough fish every year; other types of fish may also have an influence on the fishing industry. For example, humpback salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha) will tear the nets that are set out for broad whitefish (Coregonus nasus), omul (Coregonus autumnalis), and nelma (Stenodus leucichthys nelma). According to respondents, there were no problems in this regard until the 2000s, when humpback salmon fry were launched into the river intentionally by the Republic authority in the line with biological policy. It was made to integrate humpback salmon into the local hydrosphere for biodiversity and economic reasons that did not consider the local fishing practices. Then, this measure negatively affected the fish caught according to the following aspects. For example, many residents of Russkoie Ustie are earning money by fishing. So, they have a co-operative's list in which the cost of each type of fish is indicated, and this list does not include humpback salmon. As mentioned above, this fish tears and tangles the nets installed on other types of fish. Moreover, its meat is considered tasteless and dirty, as worms are often found in it. All these factors make humpback salmon an extremely undesirable actor in the local hydrospace (FMA 2019). Environmental factors can also affect the bird and deer populations. As reported by local people, earlier (until the 2000s), herds of wild reindeer roamed much closer to settlements, but nowadays it is necessary to go far to the east toward the Nizhnekolymskii district (Fig. 3) to catch the animals. This district borders Allaikhovskii to the east is about 130 kilometers from Russkoie Ustie. Inhabitants attribute the changes to both natural and human factors: reindeer change migration areas every few decades, but human activities are also believed to be the reason for the decline in the number of the animals.

Also, the economic system itself is not a permanent phenomenon (Beck 1992); we see this in the transition from the USSR's socialist economy to the present period characterized by capitalist relations. Despite the superficiality of such a division, a socioeconomic crisis in the 1990s led to the decline of the previously functioning infrastructure: the quality of residential facilities gradually decreased, while its accident rate, on the contrary, increased. The systems of village communications began to fail more often. Many residents expressed discomfort about water quality and their inability to control it, and others expressed distrust in imported goods (FMA 2019; for further context, see Gray 2005).

New forms of economic activities came after the breakup of the Soviet Union instead of state enterprises, including producers’ co-operatives (proizvodstvennyie kooperativy). Today, there are two main co-operatives in the district—“Allaikha” and “Russkoie Ustie” (Shakhova 2013), but the latter demonstrates better economical results. The main activity of co-operatives is fishing, partly accompanied by hunting. The final product of co-operatives is frizzed fish without any further refinement. At the end of the summer fishing period, caught fish are sent to the Yakutsk by ships, and during winter it is exported by snow roads. So, producers’ co-operatives have a significant impact on the foodscape. For example, the head of the obshchina “Russkoie Ustie” helps its members and all villagers in supplying them with food (and other) resources.

The respondents explained the small number of domestic animals nowadays in Russkoie Ustie and Chokurdakh by economic and administrative specifics: fodder is too expensive, many problems arise in transporting animals from other places, drawing up the necessary documents for them, and so on. Legal aspects of regulating fish capture also affect the food picture. Representatives of the Even people complained that the almost-annual tightening of the rules for catching fish leads to problems with food security. These thoughts can be illustrated by the speech of the local leader of the Even people in the district: “That's all the prohibitions. Where are we going? How can we live, small-numbered peoples? Why do we need then these lands, territory … if in my territory I cannot eat well?” (FMA 2019). That is why locals perceive poaching not as a violation of the law but rather as defending and realizing their indigenous rights (Fondahl et al. 2018).

Furthermore, many regional problems and instabilities also affect the food landscape of the settlements. These difficulties have different temporalities (Ssorin-Chaikov 2017). Some manifest themselves annually, others change over a longer time, but nevertheless, residents face many difficulties in ensuring their food security. This is what changes the state of “stability” to “instability,” and the task of the people is to take measures to compensate for the negative consequences. In my opinion, any discussion of Arctic “resilience” includes “instability.” In the definition of the very term “resilience” I agree with the Arctic Council, which understands by this “the capacity to cope with stress and shocks by responding or reorganizing in ways that maintain essential identity, function and structures, as well as the capacity to navigate and shape change, including transformational change” (2016: xvii). The Arctic Resilience Report highlights that the definitions of “resilience” vary widely (Arctic Council 2016: 6). For example, some researchers mean by this a component of stability allowing system to return to the point of departure (Tilman and Downing 1994); other say this is intrinsic opportunity of an organization (system) to keep a dynamically stable state that creates an ability to have a well-functioning configuration after a certain collapse or in the circumstances of continuous stress (Hollnagel et al. 2006). Nevertheless, all these views are combined, first, by the idea of a system that is able to be a “sustain” despite destabilizing factors and second, by the opposition between stable core and unstable environment. For me, “negative” factors are not opposed to the Arctic societies and can be considered a relational part of the society structure, one more “social” actor (in the sense of Latour (2005), who explicates the “social” in an extended way).

Instability in the North of the Republic of Sakha is not just a modern feature due to post-Soviet underdeveloped infrastructures (although this is certainly one of the reasons): for example, Vladimir Zenzinov (1914), who visited Russkoie Ustie at the beginning of the twentieth century, mentioned the same difficulties that are relevant at present (e.g., more than a hundred years ago, a ship with provisions could not enter the mouth of the Indigirka). Sergei Buturlin (1907) reported severe cases of hunger in the tundra among the indigenous population, leading to cannibalism. Therefore, local practices need to be organized in such a way to provide residents the possibility of compensating for possible risks. The latter has become an additional structural element in everyday life, and it inspires the measures of local “risk management”—methods that have been developed for a long time.¹ It is also important to emphasize that the everyday lives of these inhabitants of the Arctic are not lived in complete isolation. In fact, their lives are lived in associated with other actors, such as the state, the government of the Republic of Sakha, and commercial companies. These connections are expressed in the organization and maintenance of a winter snow roads, air traffic, and “green flights.” Permanent life with risk in this case generates additional phenomena and objects that texturize local socio-material sphere and reveal connections to agents beyond the region.

Peculiarities of the Social Context: Food + Risk

Now let me uncover what I mean by risk through the examination of specific field realities. What does it mean to “live with risk”? How is the preposition “with” expressed (Beck 1992)? To achieve sustainability in the production of food, various measures are being taken that could be designated as additional if we compare them with the urban situation (e.g., with Yakutsk). However, if one looks at the constellation from the inside, they will realize the existing ways of minimizing risks are not “additional” for residents. They become an integral part of the Arctic life design. For example, an atypical foodscape element for more southern latitudes such as a lednik (an ice room made in permafrost) in the Allaikhovskii district is a common and essential part of the economic cycle and food security. As local people said:

Basically, we used to fry fish, cook fish soup, make iukola [sun-dried fish]. When the collective farms started, it was hard for us. Then the war [Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945], then the war years, and yet the locals donated their fish to the state. Then the fish was handed over in a different way—they put it in the ledniki. The ledniki were small—two meters each. They were called “root cellars.” One and a half meters, maybe two meters … In the fall, the machines took out all the fish, piled up heaps and handed over everything. My father worked at such a job. (FMA 2019)

From this small statement, it is possible to see the connection of this mentioned object (lednik) with everyday activities in retrospective.

Touching on the topic of additional “safety parameters” for food security, three main points can be distinguished: state, regional, and local. The first is characterized by attempts to build a global infrastructure (during all periods of the Russian state being in the region: Empire, Soviet, post-Soviet); it is associated with the stable maintenance of favorable conditions for living in high latitudes, and the search for new forms of development based on “state” view (Ssorin-Chaikov 2017). Since the eighteenth century, Russian scientific expeditions repeatedly surveyed the Arctic shores of the Yakutia region, in which both natural and sociocultural research was conducted. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the northern districts of Yakutia were explored by an employee of the Ministry of Justice: People's Councilor (narodnyi sovetnik) Sergei A. Buturlin. The tasks of the expedition included the delivery of food products to the Kolyma district and the study of both food problems and the communications network of the region. On completion of the work, Buturlin proposed the following measures for the region's development: “[It is necessary to] issue a long-term loan (to local residents) … needed fishing instruments … ; to ease the paid burden … ; streamline the supply of goods on credit; revise the legal status of the non-Russian population … ; to strengthen control over the import of alcoholic beverages … ; prohibit the export of dogs and deer abroad; to give the Kolyma territory the status of a free port,” and other socially oriented measures, among which one of the more important was the need to give the region the opportunity to feed the large population and thus be … a powerful and vital component of the state organism” (Boyakova 2001: 109–111). Striking examples of state regulation in this direction are activities within the Northern Sea Route (Severny Morskoi Put’) (Belov 1969; Zolotukhin 2013) and the Northern Supply Haul (Severny zavoz)² (Vasil'ev et al. 2009). According to respondents, during the Soviet period, food provision in the Allaikhovskii district was even better than in Central Yakutia, which was closer to main land resources arteries. Respondents repeatedly gave examples of how people who came to the Arctic from the southern regions of the USSR ate such exotic products like pineapples in the North for the first time. It was surprising because people thought that in the southern regions there were more appropriate natural conditions for growing these fruits, but governmental regulation had changed the traditional circulation of food (FMA 2019).

The second type includes the actions of regional authorities aimed at maintaining the food security of the Far North. Currently, measures in this direction can be characterized through the implementation of “green flights” (zelyonyie reisy) delivering food by air to the most remote settlements inspired by the Republic authority (Sleptsova 2019), as well as the preparation and maintenance of winter snow roads, along which people and resources move during the snowy season. It also includes delivery of food products by water transport, which is carried out, for example, by the state unitary enterprise “Yakutopttorg,” the purpose of which, according to its website, is “to improve the life quality of the population of hard-to-reach and remote settlements of the Republic by providing socially significant food products.”

The third type of risk compensation is associated with the local level and manifests itself in the daily practices of inhabitants. To conserve key food resources such as fish and meat, people use ledniki in addition to refrigerators and purchase chest freezers (lari). In response to a limited set of resources, folks acquired the skills of effectively use the available products: for example, Aleksei Chikachov counted about 30 fish dishes among the residents of Russkoie Ustie (2007: 47); even dough was made from fish. Gastronomic adaptation to resource conditions can be considered in the diet in the form of fermented fish (kislaia ryba), which is not prepared nowadays. Such cooking methods like drying and smoking were historically relevant (Zenzinov 1914) and remain at present as the natural way to preserve fish, create a specific taste, and adapt the product for a certain type of activity: hunters often used iukola and dried meat during long journeys (Gurvich 1977). There were auxiliary types of activities such as hunting game and gathering berries and herbs as a compensatory and preventive measure to possible hunger and a deficiency of micronutrients.

Some researchers noted the monotony of the diet of the local inhabitants (Zenzinov 1914), but it should be noted that respondents during my fieldwork period rarely complained about the narrow diet. It seems to me that the absence of complaints about food choices can be explained, first, by habit and food tradition, since people have lived in a relatively stable food context since childhood, and second, a narrow range of food resources inspires their more efficient use: in relation to the groups of northern Yakuts (Sakha), Ilia Gurvich wrote: “Despite the relative poverty of food, the northern Yakuts (Sakha) did not feel poorness in food relation. Alternating between different meat dishes—boiled, cold, raw, seasoning the meat with fat, using fish, game, and sometimes reindeer milk, flour cakes—the hostesses diversified food to the best of their ability” (1977: 79).

Above, I have outlined the foodscape in the mode of “being with risk” from the position of local phenomena and practices. Unstable and fluid regimes of the food resilience demand an explanatory model that would help us rethink durable and unfinished efforts of many actors to construct sustain system of food security in the region. Next, I provide interpretations of collected data through the concept of “laboratory” mechanisms.

The Specifics of the Arctic “Laboratory”

I chose the metaphor of the laboratory because the Arctic is the site of numerous experiments on the achieving food security. In the anthropological and ethnographic literature, there are other examples of using “laboratory” as a metaphor. For example, David Anderson and Dmitri Arzyutov argue that for Soviet ethnographers, Siberia was a “living laboratory,” within which “ethnographic intuition could be applied to build a better society. This inward-looking scientific interest coveted Siberia as a resource frontier, but also a human frontier, where experts and local indigenous elites were exhorted to take an active role improving the continent” (2016: 184). Another example is well developed in Africa as a Living Laboratory, in which Tilley (2011) examines how academic British science influenced the process of Africa's colonization and how imperial science was influenced by the collision with local phenomena. The very term “living laboratory” was first used by a British peer and governor of the Punjab William Malcolm Hailey in order to define local processes in Africa: “Africa presents itself as a living laboratory, in which the reward of study may prove to be not merely the satisfaction of an intellectual impulse, but an effective addition to the welfare of the people” (1957: 5). This approach shows clear intersections with the view of Soviet ethnographers on Siberia which was considered not only a place of research activity but also a territory wherein its population could receive numerous benefits as a result of these studies (Anderson and Arzyutov 2016).

However, the famous researcher of science and technology Latour considers the laboratory without metaphor. For him, this is a place where qualified specialists can work with objects at the micro level—transferring them to detailed analysis, moving from one scale to another—and set up experiments to discover and use new properties of objects (Latour 1983; Latour and Woolgar 1979). Using the example of Louis Pasteur's creation of the anthrax vaccine, Latour (1983) describes how the laboratory becomes an effective mechanism in society. Pasteur was one of the scientists who began to apply the laboratory method beyond laboratory—in the field to research sick cattle. After obtaining the necessary data, he went back to the scientific center, where analyzed the unique material collected—Bacillus anthracis. Then, he grew it to such a size that it became suitable for full-fledged biological research and identification of patterns. Pasteur managed to separate the key factor of the disease from the unnecessary details that overshadow the specifics of the disease. Then, he proceeded to act on the anthrax bacillus, weakening its vital functions. As a result, Pasteur created a vaccine. After experiments in the laboratory, he introduced and distributed the vaccine to a wide range for mass vaccination of livestock. An important condition of effectiveness was the need for taking some “laboratory” conditions in the practice of large-scale vaccination of cattle: disinfection, cleanliness, timing, and so on. Finally, it helped solve the problem of anthrax. With this example, Latour shows how changes of the scope of objects and practices, as well as actions to construct them, can transform society. The main role in this process is played by the laboratory.

However, the concepts described above differ from the approach I am proposing here. First, these concepts create the division between an object and a subject: the field of experiments is somewhere outside, beyond the territorial boundaries of those who perform these experiments (Tilley 2011), or, on the contrary, the laboratory is separated itself from the rest of the world (Latour 1983). I propose considering the “laboratory mode” and the state of constant experimentation as characteristic features of the region, its population and “outer” actors connected with this territory. Local people themselves often experiment and integrate the results of these experiments into their everydayness. This is their “laboratory mode,” a form of adaptation to changing social, economic, and natural conditions. In Arctic examples, we are observing not a laboratory as a place but rather the ability of people to act as if in a laboratory. External actors such as the federal and regional authorities with their approaches and actions, despite their outer position, also demonstrate a special mode of activity when interacting with the Allaikhovskii district. Their actions and decisions take on a local connotation. Tilley (2011) argues the science of the British Empire, which functioned in Africa, was under the process of “Africanizing” and acquired local features while changing its goals and methods. The same can be partly said about the North of Yakutia in the context of governmental “developmental” measures: local specificity manifested itself in the activities of the Northern Supply Haul within the framework of the Northern Sea Route, when the existing maritime and coastal infrastructure was adapted to the needs of the Arctic population (Chizhkov 2017). However, the “northernness” of administrative projects does not always reach a degree of compliance with local realities. In particular, it is expressed in the discrepancy between the technologies used and local natural conditions. For instance, in 2013 the Northern Supply Haul (Severny zavoz) of food resources by water from the Republic center was disrupted due to the shallowing of the Indigirka river in the Allaikhovskii region (IA SakhaNews 2013). In 2019, a barge carrying a thousand tons of oil for the neighboring region went aground on the Indigirka in the Abyiskii district. As a result, it was decided to leave the barge until the start of the next navigation season (Korabel 2019). These examples demonstrate the gaps in the modern infrastructural project supported by the authority because of disability to meet the specific Arctic realities. Outside administrative and official forces affect local people and supplement them in order to manage food risks; they also have partial control over the experiments in the “laboratory.” But the crucial point is that local inhabitants by their being in the certain environment, with certain kind of living “correspondence” (Ingold 2017), create the main reason for the “laboratory” presence. This is “laboratory” from the local perspective, and actions of northern inhabitants are its major implementation.

The laboratory metaphor also helps us better understand the numerous measures to maintain food security that have been taken in the district for more than a century. Even though local residents do not use the concept of a laboratory, they often think in a similar direction; at least this is their “practical thinking” (Bourdieu 1990): there are many narratives about some experimental forms of practical activity, and discussions about “discoveries” made by local residents—some of which I present below.

Efforts to find new ways to ensure food security often had an experimental character, because they had not been tested before and were thus innovative in the local context. On the one hand, there are canals that are charted and implemented by state actors through the creation of new water, land, and air routes, constantly maintained with varying degrees of efficiency (Kulakovsky and Vinokurova 2013). These canals can be called the “rails” (Latour 1983), on which the “big laboratory” in the form of the state and bureaucracy projects operates. On the other hand, there are many “small canals” in the region, created by the practices of local communities; these are people's connections with each other, and with the tundra, rivers, lakes, and the environment. These small and big canals have different origins and functioning specifics, but they are united by a connection with the population of the Arctic territories, and by the goal of creating suitable conditions for local people to live.

I believe Latour (1983) is not interested in “small canals” because he sees the laboratory as a pure space of analytical-synthetic operations, its plot, and sequences. However, there is another type of interaction—a more complex and ecological one represented by Ingold ( 2011)—in which there is no way to reduce everything unnecessary or to arrange abstract games with scale, since the object and the subject are too closely intertwined. His main methodology is a phenomenological analysis of the beings and processes of the environment, which makes it possible to shift and decentralize research “optics” toward a multitude ontologies of elements and flows penetrating a single environment of existence. Objects are not complete isolated units, but represent a continuous process of “ontogenesis,” in which independent phenomena are permanently modified, entering into many interactions with other “becoming” phenomena (Ingold 2018).

The “laboratory” attributes in this case include the situation of creating nonstandard assemblages. So, Georgii Kulakovsky and Liliia Vinokurova (2013: 59) argue the transport connection of the Arctic and northern regions have the following features in common: “Residents use any transport opportunity … as an additional opportunity to carry a passenger or cargo … For a long time, in the everyday life of remote Yakutia villages, any type of transport was not even divided into passenger and freight,” as they always were practiced both at the same time. I experienced this myself, when flying from Chokurdakh to Yakutsk, as I received numerous packages to bring to relatives of local residents in the city.

There were experiments in the history of the district when, in order to develop agriculture in the North, some social groups were resettled there from southern territories. It can be illustrated by the example of the Skoptsy,³ who were resettled to the Arctic region of Yakutia from the southern territories in the nineteenth century by the local authority. It was assumed they would be able to use their agricultural skills to develop northern agriculture. However, this experiment was unsuccessful (Boyakova 2001). One can also see “experimental” intentions in attempts of local authority to introduce reindeer herding to the Russian people (Vakhtin et al. 2004). Many of these, as well as other measures, ended unsuccessfully.⁴ Hybridization (Davydov and Davydova 2020; Stépanoff and Vigne 2018) turned out to be more productive with social infrastructure facilities. It involves the combination of initially autonomous phenomena. For example, manure from a preexisting pig farm is used to grow tomatoes and cucumbers; a greenhouse at a diesel power plant gets the opportunity to heat well; the roof of the garage creates a place for growing potatoes, and so on.

Sardana Boyakova (2001) writes that the first scientifically based programs for the economic development of the Arctic and North of Yakutia, which appeared at the end of the 19th century and turn of the 20 century, can be divided into two approaches: a) in the first, the emphasis was on improving the life and economic conditions of the local population, b) the second involved emphasis on further colonization by resettlement of large groups of people from European Russia to Yakutia. Here is an example of a strategy proposed by the Commission for the Identification and Construction of Strongholds and Food Points on the Coast of the Arctic Ocean. Based on the program of this institution, a key step for the implementation of Arctic Yakutia development was “the resettlement of the Pomors”⁵ and “other fishing elements from European Russia, familiar with the best methods of catching and harvesting fish and sea animals.” Monks of northern monasteries were considered the main candidates from the European part of the country to be teachers for people from the Northern Yakutia. Their mission was also to send local children from Yakutia for training in “advanced methods of hunting and fishing and processing of products of trades to the places and persons of our northern exemplary trades” (Boyakova 2001).

The organizers and members of the expeditions themselves sometimes reflexively perceived the studied region as a platform for socioeconomic improvisations. For example, Nikolai Kalinnikov (1912) conducted a study of the Chukotka Peninsula in 1908–1910 and wrote in a report that the created system of all-Russian education would have an extremely positive effect for local residents, and the school would become “an experimental station [italics mine – N.G.] for reindeer breeding, dog breeding and fishing, [it] would teach them to speak Russian, will give elementary concepts of citizenship, help them be more stable in the struggle for existence” (cited in Boyakova 2001). Examples of ideas and actions on the part of representatives of the authorities and the administration can be continued. In many respects they were associated with the task of solving the problem of supplying essential resources to remote settlements by creating transport routes, by both land and by water. Later, in Soviet times, light aviation, which still plays the extremely important role in the mobility of people and goods, was developed (YakutskHistory.net 2022).

At the local level, on the part of the population, there have been and are numerous variants of experiments. These include experiments in private animal husbandry (breeding pigs, rabbits, chickens), agriculture (the full growing cycle of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and onions is in apartments on the windowsills). Pig breeding was popular in the area during the Soviet period. A local resident talks about her animal husbandry:

From a young age [I got an interest in pig breeding]. When we were in school, in the ninth or eighth grade, the collective farm bought pigs, and my friend and I … So we were appointed to take care of the pigs … And we left alone pregnant animal. And no one knows that the female pig must be separated from the male, that she must be locked separately before giving birth. When parturition began, a pig gave signs. None of us knew anything … And the pig began to give birth, she came out and walked along the slope, and dropped these newborn pigs. Their umbilical cords were long, and they twisted behind the bushes. So people in the morning began to collect piglets and gave them to the breeding pig. She accepted them … And since then I somehow have a craving for pigs. The first reason is this. Second, it gives income. (FMA 2019)

In this form, the ideas of the Soviet government about the need to develop agriculture in the Far North were combined with the individual interest and experience of local residents. Another respondent described her own experience of growing cucumbers at home this way:

I grew cucumbers. When I planted it at home, well, then it was either a warm summer, or it was heated longer, cucumbers grew on my windows. Over the summer, I just collected 50 pieces … Over the summer. Even my daughter-in-law once did not believe me. “Where did you get the cucumbers?” I said: “From the window.” “How from the window?” And I brought two bushes and put them here, in this place. She came, looked, and said: “You are right!” These were the cucumbers. And then the guys made me a greenhouse. Sheathed everything with foil. But it didn't work out. (FMA 2019)

People of the older generation in their youth, in conditions of a shortage or absence of imported goods (e.g., tea), actively compensated for them with environmental resources:

The herbs were brewed. Somewhere in the prewar years, there was no tea at all. And here are the lingonberry leaves. I remember the lingonberry exactly. Lingonberry. Well, we were sent. We were children. To collect lingonberry leaves. Then we would sort them out of the garbage, and so. And fry in a skillet, in a dry skillet. Dry skillet, well, no fat, not greasy. And they fried it like that. And so, they were shaking, apparently, and now, the color of the tea leaves changed. I am indifferent to tea leaves. But the old people needed tea leaves. (FMA 2019)

Nowadays, in addition to windowsill vegetable growing, unusual options are practiced in the form of growing potatoes on the roof of a garage. In the recent past, greenhouses, private and public, functioned successfully. There was a greenhouse at a diesel power plant in Chokurdakh, where tomatoes and cucumbers were well grown. The head of the Chokurdakh administration told me about his plans for the development of local foodscape in the village:

Next year I am planning to build a year-round greenhouse, have five to ten pigs there. I have been already looking for personnel. I have found one old man who used to keep pigs on the collective farm. He is ready. That is, you see, we need to think now how to build all this, a small shed in order to dilute this compound feed with water and make an agreement with kindergartens so that food waste is handed over there. This is how, at this level, we are now operating. (FMA 2019)

During the expedition, I watched fish drying in Russkoie Ustie boiler house. This, along with the example of using a power plant and greenhouse, is an option for embedding the village infrastructure into the local process of food production. For the same purpose, the utilitarian incorporation of organic consequences of animal breeding into another agricultural cycle is carried out: this concerns the use of manure from a previously existing pig farm for growing vegetables.

The foodscape also influences the design of social interactions of local residents. Those who are in the regional center or Yakutsk are often asked to bring a certain set of products to the smaller settlements: it can be chicken eggs, sweets, medicines, small technical parts for snowmobiles, gadgets—something that a person can easily carry on an airplane. There is also an informal service that makes it possible to purchase the necessary food and household items in Yakutsk in order to send them by waterway to Chokurdakh: a special person who lives in Yakutsk provides their services in acquiring necessary goods in the city and delivering them to a transport company, which will then bring cargo to the Arctic. Such goods may include household appliances, furniture, and long-term storage foodstuffs. Mobile phones and social networks (especially WhatsApp) are mainly used for communication, discussions about products, orders, shortages, and so on.

Conclusion

Living in the described context, the locals produce a certain foodscape. It is expressed in using ledniki and lari, as well as in storing ice for drinking, a stable set of dishes in their usual diet. A distinctive feature of this mode is that it is not automated and does not exist along well-laid “rails” (Latour 1983). This is not just a component difference from a prosperous urban environment with stable algorithms (well-established scheme of production, supply, sale of food products), but another type of spatiotemporal being of this foodscape. External actors and local residents are constantly trying to create sustainable mechanisms for maintaining food security in the area. However, this process is not completed and involves the constant attention, energy, and creative actions of local residents. The problems are evidenced by complaints from residents about the quality of water and imported products and legal restrictions in the field of hunting and fishing, which contradict the needs of the community (from their point of view). The mode of permanent searching for methods of achieving food security under the risks I suggest can be described through the concept of a laboratory. The latter acts as an adaptation regime that demonstrates flexibility and constant social, material, and economic mobility.

This laboratory format differs from one described by Latour (1983), who argues the main specificity of a scientific laboratory is that a scientist works on a simulated scale. Scientists can do as many experiments as they need and will release the results only after they have made enough mistakes to achieve certainty. A scientific laboratory is isolated from external processes, and this is its “power.” The “food laboratory,” on the other hand, is a consequence of external and internal factors interwoven together. In other words, the “laboratory” principle not only operates in the classical laboratory but actively manifests itself in the Arctic zone. Constant experiments are based on the many parameters of the region, such as natural, economic characteristic, historical colonization processes, infrastructure features, economic realities, and so forth. Thus, the modality of this process is the result of the relationship between actors that define the people in the area. The experiments are strongly correlated with the vital consequences for the population. Analytical work and laboratory principles are realized through the practice and vice versa (Ingold 2013). Latour's laboratory sets up and fixes dichotomy between subject and object, while the given examples demonstrate their interaction and non-separatedness. For example, it can be demonstrated through the permanent search and testing the new ways of cooking, growing atypical plants for the region (watermelons), periodically including/excluding the eating of various local plants and mushrooms, using the village infrastructure to maintain greenhouses, drying fish in a boiler room, growing potatoes on the roof of a garage, and many other measures that require the inclusion of a person into the social environment as a local resident. Thus, experimentation is a local feature of being people in the landscape. Some traits of the scientific laboratory are also located within local community, but because of the undivided construction and high connectedness with other parameters “scientific” way cannot work in these circumstances purely. Despite what Latour (1983) wrote about fusion of scales and disappearing of division into subject and object during the laboratory process, one could still see those who act and who/that undergo action. There is a significantly different situation with inhabitants of Allaikhovskii district. Local residents are the key actors of this “laboratory,” since it is their presence in space determines the very existence of the described concepts. Their actions simultaneously combine the construction of the laboratory modality and the results of its functioning. “Laboratoriness,” or constant experimentation, arises when there is a certain problem, and it deals with questions and tasks that represent unformed phenomenon. When there is no challenge, there is no need for a laboratory, because actions are automated.

This is consistent with what Annemarie Mol and John Law (1994) argue. Scholars write that Latourian networks do not always work correctly. The network, as a concept and a methodological tool, is suitable for cases in which there is structural clarity, the ability to ensure a smooth transition from one actor to another—that is, where the network operates. Latour has developed actor-network theory based on research in specialized laboratories (Latour and Woolgar 1979). The ethnography of Arctic Russia shows that some features of the laboratory and its properties are manifested not only in research institutes. It is determined by the impossibility (at a particular time) to create an automated, mechanized way of the system of subsistence for the population of the region. The space of the Allaikhovskii district is not stable and fixed but rather has been constantly reproduced (Ingold 2018), and the methods of this production are often changed. So, to describe the mode of this space, it is better to use the concept of “meshwork” (Ingold 2017), reflecting fluidity and a permanent state of movement (Mol and Law 1994) rather than the term “network,” which is based on stable system.

In conclusion, I note that the proposed concept for considering the problem of food security is relevant not only for the Allaikhovskii district. It can be perceived as a framework for describing the special type of relationship between actors, which is characterized by the low level automation of system of subsistence. Similar cases can be found in different regions of the Russian Arctic and beyond (Davydova 2019; Gray 2005; Yoshido 1997). In a historical perspective, it can be seen in the context of the dynamic patterns of socioeconomic transformations among the Yuit people (Krupnik 1989). Speaking of not-so-ancient times, it is worth noting that in the difficult period of the 1990s after the collapse of the USSR, the inhabitants of Chukotka, accustomed to Soviet supplies, began to more actively collect “traditional” products in the tundra (pine nuts, berries, mushrooms, herbs), but not for personal consumption. They started selling them for the external consumers, because it gave the opportunity to buy store products: flour, milk powder, pasta, sausage, and confectionery (Gray 2021). Anastasiia Yarzutkina (2021) describes how the hybridity of economic activities in the Chukotka village Vaega, combining reindeer herding and vegetable growing, was the result of people's need for food security. As Ekaterina Kapustina (2020) showed, modern immigrants from Dagestan, working in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug and Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug (Yugra), build translocal routes (Greiner and Sakdapolrak 2013) with Dagestan, through which they are sent food resources. The most popular food sent to Siberia is meat, since migrants do not eat local meat products. Food resources obtained in this way are not only consumed by people from Dagestan; they also become an object of trade in Siberian cities. Given cases demonstrate that a lack of well-functioning mechanisms for reproducing sustained multilayered existence of people in the environment activates the “laboratory” principle.