The Global Restructuring of Agro-Food Systems

321 Pages·2019·30.313 MB·English

by  Philip D. McMichael (editor)

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The Global Restructuring
of Agro-Food Systems

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Food Systems and Agrarian Change
Edited by Frederick H. Butte!, Billie R. DeWalt,
and Per Pinstrup-Andersen
A complete list of titles in the series appears at the end of this book.

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THE GLOBAL
RESTRUCTURING OF
AGRO-FOOD SYSTEMS
EDITED BY
Philip McMichael

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Cornell University Press
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ITHACA AND LONDON

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Copyright© 1994 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must
not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For
information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca,
New York 14850.
First published 1994 by Cornell University Press.
@ The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39·48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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The Global restructuring of agro-food systems I edited by Philip McMichael.
p. em. - (Food systems and agrarian change)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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ISBN o-8014-2940-4 (cloth).-ISBN o-8014-8156-2 (paper)
1. Agricultural industries. 2. Food supply. I. McMichael, Philip. II. Series.
HD9ooo.5.G588 1994

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Contents
Preface vu
Contributors 1x
Introduction: Agro-Food System Restructuring-Unity in
Diversity
Philip McMichael I
PART I. State-Level Restructuring I9
Japanese and South Korean Agricultural Restructuring in
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Comparative and Global Perspective
Philip McMichael and Chul-Kyoo Kim 2I
2 Sweden's 1990 Food Policy Reform: From Democratic
Corporatism to Neoliberalism
David Vail 53
3 Agricultural Change in the Semiperiphery: The Murray-

Darling Basin, Australia
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Geoffrey Lawrence and Frank Vanclay

y PART II. Sectoral Restructuring 105
4 Finance Capital and Food System Restructuring: National
Incorporation of Global Dynamics

Terry K. Marsden and Sarah Whatmore I07
5 Industrial and Labor Market Transformation in the U.S.

Meatpacking Industry

Kathleen Stanley I 29
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v1 Contents
6 The Politics of Globalization in Rural Mexico: Campesino
Initiatives to Restructure the Agricultural Credit System
David Myhre I4 5
PART III. Global Region Restructuring I7I
7 The Global Fresh Fruit and Vegetable System: An Industrial
Organization Analysis
William H. Friedland I 7 3
8 Comparative Advantages and Disadvantages in Latin
American Nontraditional Fruit and Vegetable Exports
Luis Llambi
9 The Restructuring of Third World Agro-Exports: Changing
Production Relations in the Dominican Republic
Laura T. Raynolds 2I4
PART IV. Common, Contradictory, and Contingent Forces 239
o Is the Technical Model of Agriculture Changing Radically?
I
Pascal Bye and Maria Fonte 24I
I I Distance and Durability: Shaky Foundations of the World
Food Economy
Harriet Friedmann 2 58
I2 Global Restructuring: Some Lines of Inquiry
Philip McMichael 2 77
Index 30I

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Preface
This book originated in a workshop held at the Rural Sociological
Society (RSS) meetings in Columbus, Ohio, in the summer of 1991.
Organized at the suggestion of Frederick Butte!, then president of the
RSS, the workshop was successful in two respects: first, it generated
considerable interest among the forty or so people who remained after
the main conference, all scholars working in the area of the political
economy of agriculture; and second, the papers presented converged
thematically in several ways.
The presenters had been asked to address questions of food system
and agrarian change in the late twentieth century. As the resultant chap
ters show, they invariably located these questions in the period of global
restructuring from the 1970s to the early 199os, with two conse
quences. Each chapter develops a part of a matrix of changes occurring
in different regions or in different commodity complexes. This over
arching theme of restructuring addresses a significant transition in the
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world order-and does so from the novel perspective of the transforma

tion of agricultural and food systems. Consequently, this book locates
these changes in the emergence of the twenty-first-century era-an era
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of a new global configuration that will be characterized more by the
"food" and "green" questions than by the "agrarian" question per se.

The following individuals deserve my gratitude for their assistance at
various stages of the book's development: Fred Buttel, for his inspira

tion to hold the workshop and his involvement as a discussant along
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vm Preface
with Alessandro Bonnano, Shelley Feldman, and Gary Green; the au
thors of the individual chapters for their participation in this project;
Billie DeWalt, for his substantive contributions to the organization of
this collection; Peter Agree, for his editorial encouragement and sound
advice; Helene Maddux, for her editorial attentiveness and good hu
mor; Tonya Cook and Margo Quinto, for their skillful copy editing;
Philip Harms, for his timely assistance with preparation of the manu
scripts; and Le Padgett, for her tireless work in tracking down authors
and typing the essays.
Finally, I thank the Third World Quarterly for granting permission
to reprint Harriet Friedmann's essay (Chapter I I), which first appeared
in volume I3, issue 2 (I992), and Policy Studies Review for granting
permission to reprint Kathleen Stanley's essay (Chapter 5 ), which is a
revised version of a previously published article in volume 1 r, issue
2 (I992).
PHILIP McMICHAEL
Ithaca, New York

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Contributors
PASCAL BYE is a senior research fellow with the French National Institute
for Agronomic Research (INRA), Department of Economics, in Montpe
lier. Specializing in the analysis of agriculture-industry relations, he has
stressed the impact of innovations and new technologies on agro-food sys
tem and structure. His present program emphasizes the historical diversity
of social, economic, and technological regimes.
MARIA FoNTE is Associate Professor of Rural Sociology at the University
of Naples, Italy. Her teaching and research topics include the structure of
agriculture and the technological evolution in the agro-food system, with
special emphasis on the social and economic consequences of modern ap
plication of biotechnology to agriculture.
WILLIAM H. FRIEDLAND is Professor Emeritus, having been Professor of
Community Studies and Sociology for twenty-two years at the University
of California, Santa Cruz. His research has concentrated on the social and
technical organization of agriculture, and recently he has worked on the

global fresh fruit and vegetable industry.
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HARRIET FRIEDMANN is Professor of Sociology at the University of To
ronto. Most recently, her research has taken her in two directions: cultural
y and material aspects of diets in relation to sustainable food economies,
and the place of food within the Cold War and post-Cold War shifts in
international power and property relations.
CHUL-KYoo KIM is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Area
Studies, Seoul National University. He is currently conducting research on

East Asian development in the context of global restructuring.
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