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From Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food
The Chinese gooseberry was a minor fruit until New Zealanders, tagging it with a catchier name, began an aggressive global marketing campaign. Soon, transplanted to Italy, France, Spain, Chile, and California, the fuzzy little fruit with the bright green interior was known the world round and the kiwi production war was on.
Globalization of food is not a new phenomenon. Columbus and his contemporaries helped open worldwide trade routes for the distribution of all types of goods. Yet over the last two decades, globalization has completely revolutionized the commercial production and marketing of kiwifruit and countless other consumer goods.
Combining current theory on globalization with revealing case studies, the authors of this insightful collection tackle fundamental questions about the changing agricultural and food system in the era of ConAgra and other large transnational corporations. They look at the structure and operations of these new corporate giants, the state's influence in the global system, innovations in scientific research and technology, the roles of producers and consumers, and regional development. In the process, they take a look at why the winners and losers—countries, regions and even ethnic groups that ebb and flow within a vacillating global system—are constantly changing.
Without question, globalization has become a hotly contested topic, as evidenced by the recent NAFTA debates and by a growing body of critical literature produced by economists, sociologists, historians, and geographers. The authors of From Columbus to ConAgra, writing at the cutting edge of these debates, suggest an emerging consensus to guide future research. Globalization, they conclude, will likely continue its expansion within the context of a new multinational division of labor that may drastically alter the main axes of international power. In an increasingly interdependent world, such shifts will affect life in every society and, for that reason, must be better understood. This book offers an important first step toward that goal.
Globalization of food is not a new phenomenon. Columbus and his contemporaries helped open worldwide trade routes for the distribution of all types of goods. Yet over the last two decades, globalization has completely revolutionized the commercial production and marketing of kiwifruit and countless other consumer goods.
Combining current theory on globalization with revealing case studies, the authors of this insightful collection tackle fundamental questions about the changing agricultural and food system in the era of ConAgra and other large transnational corporations. They look at the structure and operations of these new corporate giants, the state's influence in the global system, innovations in scientific research and technology, the roles of producers and consumers, and regional development. In the process, they take a look at why the winners and losers—countries, regions and even ethnic groups that ebb and flow within a vacillating global system—are constantly changing.
Without question, globalization has become a hotly contested topic, as evidenced by the recent NAFTA debates and by a growing body of critical literature produced by economists, sociologists, historians, and geographers. The authors of From Columbus to ConAgra, writing at the cutting edge of these debates, suggest an emerging consensus to guide future research. Globalization, they conclude, will likely continue its expansion within the context of a new multinational division of labor that may drastically alter the main axes of international power. In an increasingly interdependent world, such shifts will affect life in every society and, for that reason, must be better understood. This book offers an important first step toward that goal.
304 pages, Paperback
First published May 15, 1994
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February 19, 2020
A 25 year old set of conference proceedings is bound to be a crapshoot. For the genre, it is well above average. The introductory essay frames a future that now looks very much like the present. Contributions were uneven. The ones that saw trends in the globalization of the food system leading to increased concentration of corporate wealth, disruption of the nation-state, displacement of farmers, and a growing gap between high income urban centers and rural poverty made picking up the book worthwhile. Others essays plodded along at best or were so filled with loose jargon as to be incomprehensible.
The central issue is that as economies have globalized, both capital and commodities have been freed, while labor remains tightly regulated by nation-states and land is in the hands of a few who collect rents. While the problem is not new, the global crisis of displacement of the rural poor and the increased dependence of transnational corporations on a mobile work force has shaken the modern nation-state. The book was published on the cusp of the internet changing global commerce and is not mentioned once. Obviously it is pre-9/11. None of the authors talked about a country that would build a wall to keep out workers desperately needed to keep corporate agribusiness humming, but the inherent conflict between the winners and losers of globalization is a constant theme throughout all essays.
The final two essays really hit home. Bonnano concludes with a ringing call for a transnational democratic debate about our food systems. We need to go beyond local, regional and national institutions to deal with transnational corporate control, and the nation-states are entirely incapable of dealing with them. Mustafa Koc gets the final chapter, and provides a stark view of the inevitable contradictions and conflicts caused by globalization. Whether we like it or not, we live in a global society as well as a global economy. Changing the discourse has been and will continue to be messy, complicated, and filled with tension. Again, Koc calls for a global response. That call is still relevant today.
The central issue is that as economies have globalized, both capital and commodities have been freed, while labor remains tightly regulated by nation-states and land is in the hands of a few who collect rents. While the problem is not new, the global crisis of displacement of the rural poor and the increased dependence of transnational corporations on a mobile work force has shaken the modern nation-state. The book was published on the cusp of the internet changing global commerce and is not mentioned once. Obviously it is pre-9/11. None of the authors talked about a country that would build a wall to keep out workers desperately needed to keep corporate agribusiness humming, but the inherent conflict between the winners and losers of globalization is a constant theme throughout all essays.
The final two essays really hit home. Bonnano concludes with a ringing call for a transnational democratic debate about our food systems. We need to go beyond local, regional and national institutions to deal with transnational corporate control, and the nation-states are entirely incapable of dealing with them. Mustafa Koc gets the final chapter, and provides a stark view of the inevitable contradictions and conflicts caused by globalization. Whether we like it or not, we live in a global society as well as a global economy. Changing the discourse has been and will continue to be messy, complicated, and filled with tension. Again, Koc calls for a global response. That call is still relevant today.
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