Handbook On The Globalisation of Agriculture (Guy M. Robinson & Doris A. Carson)

HANDBOOK ON THE GLOBALISATION OF
AGRICULTURE
Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

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HANDBOOKS ON GLOBALISATION
Series Editor: Jonathan Michie, Kellogg College, University of Oxford, UK
The objective of this series is to publish Handbooks that offer comprehensive overviews
of the very latest research within the key areas in and surrounding the field of globalisa-
tion. The aim is to produce prestigious high-quality works of lasting significance. Each
Handbook will consist of original contributions by leading authorities, selected by an
editor (or editors) who is/are recognised leader(s) in the field. The emphasis is on the
most important concepts and research as well as expanding debate and indicating the
likely research agenda for the future. The Handbooks provide an international and com-
prehensive overview of the debates and research positions in each key area of interest,
while also offering space to those who believe that their work fits neither designation
easily.

Handbook on the Globalisation of
Agriculture
Edited by
Guy M. Robinson
Director, Centre for Rural Health and Community Development,
University of South Australia
Doris A. Carson
Department of Geography and Economic History, Umeå University,
Sweden, and Centre for Rural Health and Community Development,
University of South Australia
HANDBOOKS ON GLOBALISATION
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson 2015
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transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, or
otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
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is available from the British Library
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01
Contents
List of contributorsvii
Acknowledgementsxv
1 The globalisation of agriculture: introducing the Handbook 1

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson
PART I THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF AGRICULTURE
2 Agriculture and environment: fundamentals and future perspectives 31

Ros Taylor and Jane Entwistle
3 Effects of agricultural activities on biodiversity and ecosystems: organic
versus conventional farming 77
Tiziano Gomiero
4 Measuring and managing the global agricultural footprint of countries’
consumption106
Stefan Bringezu, Helmut Schütz and Meghan O’Brien
5 Meeting the food security challenge through sustainable intensification 125
Noel Russell and Amani Omer
PART II GLOBALISATION AND POLICY REGIMES
6 Agricultural trade 143

Wyn Grant
7 US agricultural policy and the globalization of world agriculture 157
Bill Winders
8 Contributions of trade reforms to agriculture’s globalisation 175
Kym Anderson
9 Heroes, villains and victims: agricultural subsidies and their impacts on food
security and poverty reduction 194
Andrew Dorward and Jamie Morrison
10 Agricultural production in China under globalisation 214
Hualou Long, Yansui Liu and Tingting Li
v
vi Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture
PART III GLOBALISATION AND TRANSNATIONAL

CORPORATIONS
11 Geographies and histories of the Green Revolution: from global flows to

place-based experiences 237
Pratyusha Basu and James Klepek
12 Biotechnology and the global food riots: why genetically modified foods
will not end world hunger 255
Simon Nicholson
13 Private agri-food governance and the challenges for sustainability 274
Agni Kalfagianni and Doris Fuchs
14 Trade-related intellectual property: implications for the global seed industry,
food sovereignty and farmers’ rights 291
Claire R. Parfitt and Daniel F. Robinson
15 The financialisation of food and farming 309
Geoffrey Lawrence, Sarah Ruth Sippel and David Burch
16 All you need is export? Moroccan farmers juggling global and local markets 328
Sarah Ruth Sippel
17 Inequality regimes in food processing industries 350
Lia Bryant
18 Global companies and local community relations: power, access and
partnership in food production and rural resource development 368
Roy E. Rickson, Kara E. Rickson, Peter Hoppe and David Burch
PART IV CHALLENGES TO THE GLOBALISATION OF

AGRICULTURE
19 Multifunctional agricultural transition: essential for local diversity in a

globalised world 389
Simon J. Fielke
20 Recreating diversity for resilient and adaptive agricultural systems 404
Douglas K. Bardsley
21 The changing dynamics of alternative agri-food networks: a European
perspective425
Brian Ilbery and Damian Maye
22 Building sustainable communities through alternative food systems 446
Alison Blay-Palmer and Irena Knezevic
23 The ‘White Revolution’ and dual dairy economy structures 461
Bruce A. Scholten
Index483

Contributors
Kym Anderson is the George Gollin Professor of Economics at the University of

Adelaide, Australia, and Professor of Economics in the Arndt-Corden Department
of Economics, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University,
Canberra. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
He was on extended leave at the Economic Research division of the GATT (now
WTO) Secretariat during 1990–92 and at the World Bank’s Research Group as Lead
Economist (Trade Policy) during 2004–07. He has published more than 350 articles and
35 books, among the more recent being a set of four regional and three global books
in the Distortions to Agricultural Incentives series. He earned his PhD from Stanford
University, USA in 1977.
Douglas K. Bardsley is a Senior Lecturer in Geography, Environment and Population
at the University of Adelaide, where he convenes the Masters of Environmental Policy
and Management. He has been trained as an agricultural scientist, a social geographer
and an educator, completing a PhD at the University of Melbourne in 2002. Most of
his research involves the analysis of the interface between social and ecological systems,
including: links between agrobiodiversity conservation and development; environmental
risk management; climate change adaptation planning; and education for sustainable
development. That work has been undertaken within different contexts in Australia,
Thailand, Turkey, Switzerland, Nepal and the European Union.
Pratyusha Basu is an Associate Professor of Geography in the Department of Sociology
and Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso, USA. Her research focuses on rural
development, agrarian livelihoods and gender issues in India and Kenya. Her research
has recently been funded by the US Fulbright Program and the American Institute
of Indian Studies. Her publications include a book on India’s rural cooperative dairy
programme, a journal special issue on the Green Revolution, and articles in various
journals including the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Professional
Geographer, and the International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability.
Alison Blay-Palmer is an Associate Professor and the founding Director of the Centre for
Sustainable Food Systems at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. Alison works
in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies where she does research on
resilient food systems and sustainable communities.
Stefan Bringezu is Director at the Wuppertal Institute, Germany, heading the Research
Group on Material Flows and Resource Management, and Professor for Sustainable
Resource Management at the Center for Environmental Systems Research (CESR) at
the University of Kassel, Germany where he also co-chairs the Sustainable Resources
Futures group. Stefan is a biologist by training and has a PhD in ecosystems analysis. He
worked on chemicals assessment, supply systems and environmental planning. He has
lectured at several universities, initiated scientific networks (ConAccount, cofounder of
vii
viii Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture
the International Society for Industrial Ecology), and pioneered methods such as MFA
(material flow accounting) and derived indicators. He is a member of various advi-
sory boards and a member of the International Resource Panel of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP). His main research subject is the analysis of the
socio-industrial metabolism and related land use, and the instruments to sustain resource
supply, use and waste management.
Lia Bryant is an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Social Change in
the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy at the University of South
Australia. She has published widely on gender, sexuality and embodiment in the rural,
with an ongoing interest in class and its intersections with gender in shaping relations
in rural communities. She has authored Gender and Rurality (Routledge, 2011) with
Barbara Pini, and edited Sexuality, Rurality and Geography (Lexington Books, 2013)
with Andrew Gorman-Murray and Barbara Pini. She has published in numerous jour-
nals including Journal of Rural Studies, Sociologia Ruralis, Gender, Work & Organization
and Human Relations.
David Burch (PhD) is an Emeritus Professor at Griffith School of Biomedical and Physical
Sciences and the Environmental Futures Research Institute at Griffith University,
Australia. He is also an Honorary Professor in Sociology in the School of Social Science
at the University of Queensland. His research focuses on supermarkets and agri-food
supply chains, food and farming in the Asia-Pacific region, and the ‘financialisation’ of
agriculture in Australia and globally.
Doris A. Carson has recently completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Centre
for Regional Engagement, University of South Australia, and is now a researcher in
the Department of Geography and Economic History, Umeå University (Sweden). Her
research focuses on population mobilities, innovation processes and post-productive
development in small, rural and remote communities.
Andrew Dorward is Professor of Development Economics at the Centre for Development,
Environment and Policy at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),
University of London. He has long-standing interests in smallholder livelihoods and
agricultural development policy. He has researched and published widely on agricultural
input subsidies in low-income countries and has recently published a book with Ephraim
Chirwa, Agricultural Input Subsidies: The Recent Malawi Experience (Oxford University
Press, 2013).
Jane Entwistle is a physical geographer with a specific interest in soil science. She
completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the Institute of Earth
Studies, University of Aberystwyth, Wales, and following a lectureship at Kingston
University London she left to return to the North of England where she is currently
Head of the Department of Geography, and Reader in Environmental Geochemistry, at
Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Jane has two broad areas of research
interest: geoarchaeology and soil contamination. The underlying, unifying theme to her
work is soil geochemistry. Over the past 25 years, she has undertaken projects as diverse
as radioecological studies in Belarus, prospecting historic landscapes, and investigat-
ing the bioavailability and bioaccessibility of potentially harmful elements in soils and
sediments.

Contributors ix
Simon J. Fielke is a PhD candidate in the discipline of Geography, Environment and

Population at the University of Adelaide. His work focuses on the future of agricul-
tural land use in South Australia, particularly in regard to the governance of agri-food
systems, in an effort to increase the economic valuation of socio-environmental conse-
quences. He has also examined alternative food networks and mechanisms of agricul-
tural organisation.
Doris Fuchs is Professor of International Relations and Sustainable Development at the
University of Münster, Germany. Her research focuses on the structural and discursive
power of non-state actors (especially transnational corporations), sustainable develop-
ment and consumption, financialisation, and energy, climate, and food politics and
policy. She is the author of Business Power in Global Governance (Lynne Rienner, 2007),
and has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Millennium,
Global Environmental Politics, International Interactions, Agriculture and Human Values,
Food Policy, and Energy Policy.
Tiziano Gomiero is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science
and Technology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain (since 2013). His work
focuses on the relation between farming-food systems, environment and society. His
main research interests concern: integrated farming- food system analysis, organic
farming, agroenergies, biodiversity and environmental conservation, and ecological
economics. He has published widely on these topics, including about 20 publications
in international scientific journals. He has participated in a number of international
research projects on rural development and biodiversity assessment in Europe, Asia
(China and Vietnam), Africa and Latin America.
Wyn Grant is Professor of Politics at the University of Warwick, UK. He has written
on agricultural policy, including agricultural trade, since the 1970s with a particular
emphasis on the Common Agricultural Policy. In recent years he has been working with
life scientists at Warwick on projects on biological alternatives to chemical pesticides and
the governance of livestock diseases.
Peter Hoppe’s industrial career was in the cement and construction industry. Concerned
with project cost overruns caused by unsatisfactory industry/community relations
regarding critical industrial developments, his PhD research (at Griffith University
School of Environment, Australia) focused on developing more inclusive industry
approaches to community engagement and participatory practices. Appointed Business
Sustainability Manager for Queensland Urban Utilities (QUU), a focus was the
development of 16 sustainability programmes from which his sustainable stakeholder
management model is now successfully applied to QUU’s major projects as a matter of
routine and attracted a number of state and national awards from the Public Relations
Institute of Australia.
Brian Ilbery is Emeritus Professor of Rural Studies at the Countryside and Community
Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. His research interests lie
in different aspects of agricultural change and policy, including local and alternative
food networks, organic farming and farm diversification in the EU’s less favoured
regions. Recent research projects include an evaluation of the Local Food programme

x Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture
in England, the impact of plant diseases on land use and the UK rural economy, and
farmer confidence in the use of badger vaccination for reducing the risk of bovine TB in
cattle in England.
Agni Kalfagianni is Assistant Professor in Global Food and Environmental Governance
at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), VU University of Amsterdam. She
is interested in the challenges and opportunities that increasingly powerful private
institutions, such as standards, codes of conduct and corporate social responsibility
initiatives, pose for global governance, from a democratic legitimacy, effectiveness and
justice perspective. She has published extensively on these issues in international peer-
reviewed journals, such as Agriculture and Human Values, Business and Politics, Journal
of Business Ethics, Marine Policy, Globalizations, Innovation and edited volumes with
major university publishers (e.g., MIT Press).
James Klepek holds an MA in Latin American Studies and a PhD in Geography from
the University of Arizona. His research centres on environmental politics, food and
agriculture and social movements in Latin America. His doctoral investigation, sup-
ported by Fulbright-Hays, the National Science Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson
Foundation, examined political struggles over the regulation of genetically modi-
fied (GM) corn in Guatemala. Klepek’s publications are featured in the International
Journal of Agricultural Sustainability and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies.
He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in environmental studies at Rollins
College, Florida. He is currently an investigator and human rights monitor at the Fair
Food Standards Council in Sarasota, Florida.
Irena Knezevic is an Assistant Professor of Communication, Culture, and Health at
Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication, Canada. She studies
food systems, food policy, food and health communication, and informal economy in
everyday practices.
Geoffrey Lawrence (PhD) is Emeritus Professor of Sociology in the School of Social
Science and Chair of the College of Experts, Global Change Institute, University of
Queensland, Australia. He is President of the International Rural Sociology Association
(2012–16). His current research explores the ‘financialisation’ of agriculture, and the
governing of food security nationally and globally.
Tingting Li is a PhD candidate at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, from which she was
awarded her Master’s degree. Her research interests are urban–rural development, land
use transition, and sustainable land use. Her PhD examines ‘The synthetic measurement
of land use transition in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, China’.
Yansui Liu is Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Center for Regional
Agriculture and Rural Development at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and
Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Yangtze Scholar Chair
Professor of Beijing Normal University. He is currently also General Director of the
Specialty Committee of Agricultural Geography and Rural Development, Geographical
Society of China. His research interests are land resource science, urbanisation, urban–
rural development, and sustainable land use. He has published 12 books and over 300
papers.

Contributors xi
Hualou Long is Professor of Human Geography and Deputy Director of the Center for
Regional Agriculture and Rural Development at the Institute of Geographic Sciences
and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. He is also
Secretary-General of the Specialty Committee of Agricultural Geography and Rural
Development, Geographical Society of China. His research interests are China’s rural
restructuring, urban–rural development, land use transition, and sustainable land use.
He has published six books and over 150 papers. Currently, he is serving as a Member of
the Editorial Board for four international journals, including Land Use Policy, Journal
of Rural Studies, Habitat International and Disaster Advances.
Damian Maye is Reader in Agri-Food Studies at the Countryside and Community
Research Institute at the University of Gloucestershire, UK. He has a long-standing
research interest in the geography and sociology of alternative and local food networks.
Recent research projects in this area of interest include an evaluation of the Local Food
programme in England, a multidimensional assessment of global and local food chain
performance in Europe, Peru and Senegal, and an examination of short food supply
chains, waste recycling and multifunctional land use in European city regions.
Jamie Morrison is a Senior Economist in the Trade and Markets Division of the Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. He has been actively engaged in debates
related to trade negotiations and is the editor of several recent books including WTO
Rules for Agriculture Compatible with Development, Articulating and Mainstreaming
Agricultural Trade Policy and Support Measures, The Evolving Structure of Global
Agricultural Trade, and Food Security in Africa: Market and Trade Policy for Staple
Foods in Eastern and Southern Africa. Jamie has a PhD in Agricultural Economics
from the University of London, an MSc in Agricultural Economics from Wye College,
University of London, and a BSc in Agricultural Science from Massey University,
New Zealand. Prior to joining the FAO in 2004, he was Senior Lecturer in Agricultural
Economics at Imperial College London.
Simon Nicholson is Assistant Professor and Director of the Global Environmental
Politics programme in the School of International Service at American University,
Washington, DC. His research, teaching and public engagement centre on global food
politics and the politics of emerging technologies, with a focus most recently on climate
geoengineering. He is co-editor (with Paul Wapner) of Global Environmental Politics:
From Person to Planet (Paradigm, republished 2014).
Meghan O’Brien is a researcher in the ‘Material Flows and Resource Management’
Group at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, Germany.
She holds a Master’s degree in Sustainable Resource Management from the Technische
Universität München, Germany and an Environmental Studies degree (BA) from Elmira
College, New York. Her research focuses on the transition to a green economy and the
development of sustainability indicators. She particularly works on issues related to eco-
innovation, resource efficiency, land use, sustainable levels of consumption, biofuels and
forestry. She has been involved in a number of EU projects, leading a study on resource
efficiency for the European Parliament and leading four flagship annual reports of the EU
Eco-Innovation Observatory, including Europe in Transition. She was a co-author of two
International Resource Panel reports: Assessing Biofuels and Assessing Global Land Use.

xii Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture
Amani Omer is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Humanities

and Social Sciences at the Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi. She carries out applied
research on the economics of environmental management of agro- ecosystems. Her
research focuses on the economics of sustainable intensification, food security and
climate-smart agriculture.
Claire R. Parfitt completed a Master of Arts (by research) and is now a PhD candidate
in the department of political economy at the University of Sydney, after several years
working as a researcher for trade unions and non-government organisations. She has
written about genetically modified crops and class relations in agriculture, whilst also
contributing to the People’s Food Plan for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance.
Kara E. Rickson is a PhD student in the Urban Research Program at Griffith School
of the Environment at Griffith University, Australia. Grounded primarily in environ-
mental sociology, her current work focuses on the construction and social allocation of
environmental risk. Her research, past and present, on environmental risk, resource use
conflicts, and the politics of social and environmental assessment has been presented at
numerous Australian and international conferences, and her contribution to the analysis
of socioeconomic and spatial aspects of social and environmental well-being published
in Urban Studies.
Roy E. Rickson is Emeritus Professor, Griffith School of Environment and the
Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Australia. He publishes
widely with colleagues on agricultural and environmental issues, particularly production
contacts as significant dimensions of interaction between global agri-food companies
and local farmers. His current research interests are in environmental sustainability,
distributive justice as a dimension of sustainability, and the social and environmental
impacts of large-scale agri-food and mining investments upon farmers, rural landscapes
and communities.
Daniel F. Robinson (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer and Master’s Coordinator at
the Institute of Environmental Studies (IES), School of Biological, Earth and
Environmental Sciences (BEES), University of New South Wales, Australia. He
has just published his second book, Biodiversity, Access and Benefit-Sharing: Global
Case Studies (Routledge, 2014). He has worked and published on biodiversity trade,
intellectual property, traditional knowledge and related topics for ten years, and
been involved in projects for organisations including UNDP, DSEWPAC, GIZ, and
UNCTAD-ICTSD.
Guy M. Robinson is the Director of the Centre for Rural Health and Community
Development at the University of South Australia and Adjunct Professor in the School
of Population Health at the University of Adelaide. He was the Inaugural Professor
of Geography at Kingston University London where he was also Director of the
Centre for Environmental and Earth Science Research. Previously he held positions
at the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh and visiting positions in 12 universi-
ties in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK, most recently at the University
of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Sustainable Rural Systems (Ashgate, 2008),
Conflict and Change in the Countryside (Wiley, 1994), Methods and Techniques in Human

Contributors xiii
Geography (Wiley, 1998) and has edited the international journal Land Use Policy
for the last eight years. His main research interests are in rural development and agri-
commodity production, and community/public participation in sustainable development
policies and initiatives.
Noel Russell is Senior Lecturer in Economics at the School of Social Sciences, University
of Manchester, UK. His research interests include economics of sustainable intensifica-
tion, information and incentives for agri-environmental conservation, and economics of
hunger and food insecurity.
Bruce A. Scholten is Honorary Research Fellow at Durham University’s Department of
Geography, UK. His books include India’s White Revolution: Operation Flood, Food Aid
and Development (Tauris, 2010), Food and Risk in the US and UK (Lambert, 2011), and
US Organic Dairy Politics: Animals, Pasture, People, and Agribusiness (Palgrave, 2014).
He has contributed to a variety of international publications, and his doctoral work
found significant consumer power in Anglo-American organic chains. Current work
explores pasture dairying and farmers’ cooperatives in the Global North, India, and East
Africa. He grew up on a dairy farm near Lynden, Washington, USA.
Helmut Schütz is project coordinator at the Wuppertal Institute, Research Group on
Material Flows and Resource Management, Germany. He is biologist by training and
holds a PhD in microbiology. He worked on microbial metabolism pathways, methane
emissions from rice paddies, and contributed at the Wuppertal Institute to the develop-
ment of methods such as material flow accounting and derived indicators and global
land use accounting. He was consultant for several national authorities in the field of
environmental-economic accounting and contributed in particular to the implementa-
tion of economy-wide material flow accounts into regular monitoring and reporting at
Eurostat.
Sarah Ruth Sippel (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Area Studies at
the University of Leipzig, Germany. In her past research she has investigated intensive
agriculture and livelihood security in the Mediterranean. Her current research focuses
upon the nexus between food security, financialisation and new solidarities within global
agri-food systems.
Ros Taylor has a keen interest in plant–environment interactions and multidiscipline
studies. An ecologist by background, she developed and led environmental and sustain-
ability programmes at Kingston University London instigating a series of undergraduate
and postgraduate environmental and sustainability degrees. Within the university she
championed sustainability strategy and was appointed Founding Director of Kingston
University Sustainability Hub. She has travelled extensively in her career promoting sus-
tainability and environmental education in diverse national and international contexts.
She has spoken widely on sustainability and environmental concerns, and was a regular
contributor to BBC Radio 4’s programme, Home Planet. Ros has recently retired from
full-time academic work but retains an honorary link with the university. She currently
volunteers as the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs appointed conser-
vator of Wimbledon and Putney Commons, a major public open-space and semi-natural
area in London.

xiv Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture
Bill Winders is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of History, Technology,

and Society at Georgia Tech, USA. His research examines national policies, social move-
ments, and the world economy. His book, The Politics of Food Supply: US Agricultural
Policy in the World Economy (Yale University Press, 2009), won the 2011 Book Award
from the Political Economy of the World-System section of the American Sociological
Association. His current research examines food crises in the world economy, such as the
2007–08 food crisis that saw food prices and world hunger rise dramatically.

Acknowledgements
The production of a large volume involving numerous authors is a long and arduous
process in which the editors are greatly reliant on the willingness of the contributors to
put up with various delays and numerous queries as the volume gradually takes shape.
We are very grateful to all the authors for their support, patience and forbearance – the
book simply would not have been possible without their creative input.
We would also like to acknowledge the assistance received from Dr Jen Cleary at
the University of South Australia. Jen commented on several of the draft manuscripts
and participated in initial discussions about the nature of the volume and who might
be asked to contribute. As a colleague at the Centre for Rural Health and Community
Development (CRHaCD) she provided assistance to both editors in her capacity as
Senior Research Development Manager, helping to create a supportive and stimulating
academic environment at the university’s Whyalla Campus.
Thanks should also go to Professor Peter Høj, former Vice- Chancellor of the
University of South Australia, who provided funding for the Post-Doctoral Fellowship
awarded to Doris Carson, enabling her to work with Guy Robinson and colleagues in
CRHaCD on various projects, including this co-edited volume.
Initial planning for the Handbook took place whilst Guy Robinson was contribut-
ing to an Australian Research Council-funded Linkage project (no. LP100100890).
This provided crucial insights to the various conflicts occurring in farming in South
Australia between local concerns, national and international regulation, and the process
of globalisation, and hence highlighted several of the issues subsequently covered in the
Handbook.
The Handbook was concluded whilst Guy Robinson was a visiting researcher in
the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of
Birmingham, UK. Thanks are due to Professor David Hannah and Dr Julian Clark for
their support and hospitality.
Finally, we are deeply indebted to our spouses, Susan Robinson and Dean Carson, for
their unfailing support, tolerance and encouragement.
Guy Robinson
Doris Carson
xv
1. The globalisation of agriculture: introducing the
Handbook
Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson
INTRODUCTION: GLOBALISATION AND THE AGRI-FOOD

SYSTEM
In the last four decades there has been a radical restructuring of the scope and character
of the production and distribution of many goods, including food. This process has been
termed ‘globalisation’, shaping people’s lives in profound cultural, ideological and eco-
nomic ways. The term has become part of the standard vocabulary of the social sciences,
as it has been widely recognised that the world is experiencing a new and qualitatively
different phase of capitalist development (Galbraith, 2002; Stiglitz, 2003; Steger, 2009).
The characteristics of globalisation include the worldwide spread of modern technolo-
gies of production, particularly including in communications but also into farming, the
agricultural supply sector and food processing. This involves money, production and
trade as part of what has been termed ‘the borderless world’, and the networking of
virtually all the world’s economies, fostering ever-closer functional integration (Yeung,
1998; Ohmae, 2005; Snyder, 2009). It also refers to the linking and interrelationships
between cultural forms and practices that develop when societies become integrated into
and dependent on world markets as part of the congruence and homogenisation of capi-
talist economic forms, markets and relations across markets (Cowen, 2004).
So globalisation is the process whereby the world is becoming ever more interconnected
through new forms of trade and cultural exchange. This is increasing the production of
goods and services, often involving transnational corporations (TNCs) that have estab-
lished subsidiaries in many countries. The freer movement of capital, goods and services
is making people more dependent on the global economy, with brands like McDonald’s,
Starbucks and Levi’s jeans becoming recognised worldwide. The process is being driven
by improvements in transportation and communications, greater freedom of trade,
and greater availability of cheap labour and skills (especially in and from developing
countries). This is increasing inward investment in certain countries, especially through
the activities of the TNCs, which in turn is producing profound economic, social and
cultural changes (Ietto-Gillies, 2012; Jenkins, 2013). Whilst many of these changes are
positive, increasing choice and generating wealth, there are recognisable negative conse-
quences, such as increased discrepancies between rich and poor (including between the
developed and developing worlds), increased competition for small businesses unable
to take advantage of economies of scale, negative impacts on cultural diversity and the
environment, and wholesale transfers of capital and jobs to certain favoured locations
(Dreher et al., 2008).
Globalisation has been greatly facilitated by the advance of instantaneous informa-
tion flows via the Internet, producing what has been termed time–space compression
1
2 Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture
and time–space shrinkage (Harvey, 1999). The information flows reflect economic
processes embracing links and dependencies extending well beyond local, regional or
even national environs. In part this has given rise to the growth of global brands and
products that essentially offer a uniform experience wherever they are consumed in the
world. This interconnectedness in terms of product availability and consumption is part
of trends towards greater social and cultural homogenisation, though this has not elimi-
nated small, private traders selling locally made goods, including locally produced foods
(Jackson, 2004).
Accompanying interconnectedness is flexible accumulation, in which flexibility applies
to production, labour utilisation, consumption and relations between the state and the
economy (Scott, 1988). Flexibility has been interpreted as the search by capital for new
technological, social and spatial solutions to the economic problems arising in the 1970s
and 1980s. It has global dimensions that have dramatically increased the circulation of
goods, objects and cultural artefacts. The pace of change has accelerated because the
goods being produced and circulated are not only material goods such as grain, oil and
manufactured items, but also information and items with cultural or aesthetic charac-
teristics (Kraidy, 2005). The consumerism with which this globalisation is associated
focuses on cultural images, symbols and signs, of which agri-commodities are a com-
ponent part. For example, labels such as ‘green’, ‘fresh’, ‘organic’ or associations with
particular localities or traditional images have become part of ‘the aestheticisation of
consumption’ (Lash and Urry, 1994).
The development of globalisation is qualitatively different from the internationalisa-
tion of world trade that developed in the nineteenth century. Globalisation implies a
degree of purposive functional integration amongst geographically dispersed activities.
In the case of TNCs this integration is aimed at reaching a global market, irrespective
of where the company headquarters is located or from where resources are sourced and
manufacturing plants are located. Thus, production transcends the locus determined by
the physical limits of the nation state. One of the effects has been to intensify agricultural
specialisation on individual farms and within regions whilst it has also brought increased
transformation of agricultural products from items destined for immediate consumption
into inputs for the greater food and industrial manufacturing system. In addition, the
impacts of globalisation have varied across the wide range of agricultural products. For
some commodities it is the processing corporations that are globalised; for others it is the
retailers that are global but the production has a local, regional or national focus.
In referring to the advance of globalisation in recent decades it should be recognised
as a complex, uneven and fragmented set of processes producing considerable geographi-
cal variation. However, it has tended to reinforce the ‘global triad’ of North America,
Western Europe and Southeast Asia/China where trade and capital investment is
increasingly being concentrated (Dickin, 2015; Glaenzel et al., 2008). This contrasts with
most parts of the developing world, but there is also pronounced differentiation of ‘the
South’ as parts of Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean become pro-
gressively more marginal to the world economy. This suggests that globalisation should
be seen as partial rather than overarching and inexorable. Marginal areas have increas-
ingly become providers of cheap labour and sites for capital investment in ‘alternative’
ventures such as tax write-offs and low-yielding primary production (Giddens, 2002;
Goldberg and Pavcnik, 2007).

Introducing the Handbook 3
The creation of global markets has been a chief outcome of globalisation processes in
agriculture. This is well illustrated in the expanding trade in fresh fruit, fresh vegetables
and cut flowers. This market now exceeds 5 per cent of global commodity trade, compa-
rable with that of crude petroleum (Diop and Jaffee, 2005). New players in this global
trade have appeared, notably from countries where there are low costs of production,
complementarity to the seasons in the prime markets of North America and Western
Europe, relatively short flight times, and development of reliability in meeting the guar-
anteed quality and quantity required by international markets. This has favoured pro-
ducers in parts of Africa and Central America, but in particular through exploitation of
other key aspects of global agri-food networks. For example, the majority of the UK’s
fresh horticultural imports from Africa are made through supermarkets that control
80 per cent of all food sales (Barrett et al., 2004; Dolan and Humphrey, 2004). The
policies and operations of supermarkets are vital to this trade, as offering year-round
supplies of fresh produce lines requires sourcing from different areas around the world.
This highlights the significance of the changing nature of retailing and consumption
patterns as part of the globalisation process (Coe and Wrigley, 2009). However, these
cannot be divorced from other parts of the globalisation process, including increased
flow of investments from developed countries to developing countries, which can have
the potential to be used for economic reconstruction.
This Handbook recognises that a key area in which globalisation processes have
had massive impacts is the agri-food sector where the complexities of supplying food
to the ever-increasing world population have grown. The Handbook seeks to elucidate
the complexities of globalisation within the agri-food sector, throwing into sharp relief
the key conflicts and critical outcomes. It utilises a judicious mix of overview and case
study to detail both globalisation processes and the various forms of resistance appar-
ent to illustrate that there are definite alternatives to the homogenisation associated
with globalisation. As a result it provides an innovative introduction to the impacts of
globalisation on world agriculture, highlighting the challenges faced by those involved in
the agri-food sector, including consumers, producers, retailers and regulators, who are
increasingly faced by a choice between mass-produced foods sourced from around the
world and local produce associated with ‘alternative’ systems of production.
STRUCTURE OF THE HANDBOOK
This Handbook is arranged in four parts that detail the various impacts of globalisation
via a combination of state-of-the-art analysis and original case studies. Part I illustrates
how agriculture differs from most other economic activities by being reliant upon the
physical environment for a number of vital inputs. Of course, it is how these inputs have
been shaped and modified by human activity that has created the variety of different
farming systems, and global forces have affected the extent to which the environmental
underpinnings of agriculture have been modified. One unintended global consequence
is human-induced climate change, both affecting and affected by agricultural activity
(Dinar and Mendelsohn, 2012). However, it is the intended consequences of human
input that are primarily considered here, especially in terms of biotechnical inputs con-
stituting large-scale modifications to soils and water supply and so creating distinctive

agro-ecosystems (Jarvis, 2010). In addition to considering ‘environmental fundamen-

tals’ within world agriculture, this part of the book also illustrates a significant debate
about the nature of agro-ecosystems. This is namely whether globalised technology,
championed as the prime ‘conventional’ means for increasing food production, can be
challenged by different models that are focused on organic and more sustainable forms
of production not linked to applications of oil-based inputs such as inorganic fertilisers,
herbicides, pesticides and petrol-/diesel-driven machinery (Etingoff, 2014).
Part II comprises a series of studies that examine how globalisation processes are regu-
lated and governed by policy regimes operating at various levels. This includes studies
that chart the changing nature of global regulation, acknowledging the rising importance
of supranational bodies, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Trade Organization (WTO), operating within codified rules of governance. This has
moved some power away from the nation state, changing the ability of individual coun-
tries to regulate trade and offering new opportunities for TNCs to operate on a global
basis (McGrew and Lewis, 2013). This part emphasises the importance of the evolution
of US and European Union (EU) trade policies in shaping the nature of global agri-food
systems. However, it also highlights ways in which rapidly growing economies outside
the traditional power blocs of the developed world, notably China, India and Brazil,
have challenged established trade patterns. Many individual countries still maintain
subsidies for their agricultural producers, but in general these have diminished in recent
decades and hence competition for lucrative markets has increased. Sometimes relatively
small changes in global regulation or the policies of an individual country can have sig-
nificant consequences, both short and long term. For example, changes to EU and other
regulations have contributed to a fall in UK self-sufficiency in food grown in temperate
climates from 87 per cent in 1991 to 73 per cent in 2013 (National Farmers’ Union, 2014).
Part III covers the growing importance of TNCs not only in driving world trade, but
also in shaping the nature of every aspect of the agri-food chain, and especially produc-
ing inputs (e.g., biotechnology), processing, distribution and retailing. TNCs are organi-
sations that own or control production or services in one or more countries. They may
have a ‘home’ base, but are in many ways stateless and possess an ability to respond to
local circumstances without the restrictions that may apply to a company based in a
particular country. TNCs have a worldwide approach to markets and production that
can enable them to respond flexibly to new opportunities, maximising scale economies
and sourcing both materials and labour globally (Jenkins, 2013). The agri-food industry
has proved a particularly lucrative sector for TNCs because of global opportunities to
combine particular aspects of production, processing, distribution and retailing. Fast
food companies are good examples – for example, McDonald’s and Yum! Brands – often
exploiting globalisation’s role in exporting Western culture around the globe. TNCs
have been seen as key drivers of globalisation, with their strong autonomy helping to
shape political agendas and so determining the very nature of globalisation processes
(Capra, 2002).
Part III also includes reference to various changes in developing countries that have
contributed to the evolution of globalisation in the agri-food sector. In particular it
contains contributions that examine the emergence of the so-called Green Revolution,
which has been integral to the spread of biotechnology from the West into different parts
of the world. The pros and cons of this revolution are debated (see also Evenson and

Gollin, 2003) and the latest stages examined in terms of the ongoing spread of genetically
modified (GM) foods. The arguments in favour of this development are advanced as well
as alternative points of view. The unevenness of spread, spatially and temporally, of both
the Green and GM Revolutions is highlighted, further accentuating the differentiation
that has been associated with globalisation. Within the developing world the nature of
this differentiation has evolved as the Chinese economy has grown dramatically in recent
decades, presenting profound implications for world trade. The story of this Chinese
economic and agricultural revolution is one of the aspects covered in this part. Other sig-
nificant developments are also addressed, notably the growing role of developing coun-
tries in meeting the demand for fruit and vegetables in developed countries. The key role
of TNCs is highlighted with respect to the growth of intellectual property (IP) regimes,
the so-called ‘financialisation’ of farming and the role of private agri-food governance
(Burch and Lawrence, 2013). In addition there is reference to how the global division of
labour has been affected by globalisation processes, and specifically the impacts on the
use and role of female labour in the agri-food processing sector.
Part IV addresses some of the current challenges to globalisation of the agri-food
sector. In particular, these chapters pursue ‘alternative’ models to the dominant agri-
industrial system in the developed world, reflecting initiatives taken not only by farmers
but also right across the agri-food sector and including different patterns of consump-
tion within society. At the farm level, there have been moves to reduce artificial inputs
to create more environmentally friendly outcomes from farming, contributing to systems
that are more ecologically sustainable (Robinson, 2009). This part considers key issues
relating to the search for sustainability and the extent to which eschewing industrial-
style farming methods can deliver sufficient outputs to meet the challenges posed by
rising global food demand. The growth of ‘alternative’ farming systems is also reflected
in ‘downstream’ alternatives as illustrated by food marketing that avoids using major
supermarket chains and consumption in which the emphasis is on buying locally pro-
duced foods and avoiding ‘fast’ foods. This part introduces examples of environmentally
friendly farming in both developed and developing countries, and includes references
to policy supports for such farming, including the EU’s initiatives on multifunctional
agriculture (Van Huylenbroeck and Durand, 2003). It discusses alternative food net-
works (AFNs) and alternative food economies (AFEs), which comprise several differ-
ent possibilities for the development of agri-food systems that have reduced reliance
on globalisation processes. These possibilities can also be seen in the developing world
where the cooperative production of milk in India represents the productive utilisation
of the family-farming sector to greatly increase output and meet rapidly growing urban
demand (Scholten, 2010).
The following sections discuss the contributions to this Handbook in more detail.
Part I: The Physical Basis of Agriculture
In contrast to most economic activities, the physical environment is of fundamental

significance to the nature of farming systems, even where farmers have used their capital
to modify physical characteristics of the land upon which farming is based. So farming
is strongly shaped by the natural ecosystems from which agricultural systems are
derived, and hence the recognition of the agri-ecosystem in which there is a reciprocal

r elationship between environmental factors and agricultural activity. This relationship

injects elements of risk and uncertainty into farming unknown to other areas of eco-
nomic activity. Some of the key characteristics of this physical basis to agriculture are
explained in Chapter 2 by Taylor and Entwistle. They outline the origins of agriculture
using standard classifications and focus on the environmental context for agriculture by
covering key climatic, edaphic, site and biotic factors. Particular attention is given to the
role of carbon dioxide in the agro-ecological systems.
Taylor and Entwistle highlight significant human modifications of the physical basis
of agriculture for their importance within the production process, for example, irriga-
tion, various modifications to the microclimate including greenhouses, addition of
fertilisers and pesticides, and modifications to the soil structure and composition. They
also acknowledge that not all of the changes associated with creation of agro-ecosystems
have been positive, with issues such as salinisation, nitrate run-off into watercourses,
destruction of major ecosystems, and loss of biodiversity all constituting ongoing prob-
lems attributable to agricultural development. However, in considering the question of
the sustainability of agriculture they focus on a global phenomenon affecting all agro-
ecosystems, namely human-induced climate change. They acknowledge that, whilst
climate change will certainly affect agriculture, agriculture also has a key role to play in
the potential mitigation of climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and
adopting land management options to increase soil organic carbon.
A key challenge is the ability of agriculture to supply sufficient output to meet the
world’s demands for food whilst maintaining ecological diversity. Globalisation has
helped spread industrial-style farming systems that have generally been antithetical
to maintaining biodiversity. Hence in recent decades there has been growing concern
about the impact of some farming systems and a countermovement in favour of more
environmentally friendly farming systems. Some of the latter are commonly referred to
as ‘organic farming’ with one of the key arguments championing attempts to increase its
extent being its claimed positive impacts on preserving or improving biodiversity. This
claim is investigated by Gomiero (Chapter 3), who notes how agriculture in general has
had various deleterious influences upon biodiversity, especially through the impacts of
agri-chemicals. Human population increases are exacerbating negative consequences
as measurements of the ecological footprint of human activity indicate ever-growing
habitat destruction as well as a dangerous reliance on a few selected varieties of crop
and livestock species (Rees and Wackernagel, 1998). Gomiero systematically examines
the effects of organic agriculture upon soil characteristics and soil biodiversity, above-
ground biodiversity (including vegetation, arthropods and pollinators), the relation-
ship between biodiversity and agricultural landscapes and pest control. In general, his
meta-analysis reveals that organic production is better for preserving or improving soil
quality with regard to both biophysical and biological properties. However, some similar
results might be obtainable from conventional agriculture if inputs of agri-chemicals are
reduced and crop production is better integrated with soil protection and maintaining
diverse landscapes.
The organic movement has a relatively recent history of formal organisation, and its
characteristics in terms of agricultural production vary tremendously, from low-intensity
grazing throughout ‘outback’ Australia to closely regulated production, free of artifi-
cial pesticides and fertilisers within the EU. Hence, making international comparisons

is difficult and, in effect, organic production represents a range of different systems

worldwide, with varying environmental consequences. A major criticism is that organic
production gives rise to lower yields than conventional agriculture (Badgley et al., 2007).
Even if the reduction on average is only 20 per cent, this could have a major impact on
world food supplies, though if allied to reductions in food waste, more direct consump-
tion of grain (rather than feeding to livestock) and reductions in the growing of biofuels,
it could have positive impacts on food consumption and health (Seufert et al., 2014). The
caveat here is that, despite all the technological inputs and ability to hugely increase food
production in recent decades, around one billion people still go hungry each day and live
on the edge of starvation. Changing to more sustainable production systems would have
to be accompanied by various structural changes in the agri-food system if it is to have a
serious impact on these figures.
Bringezu, Schütz and O’Brien (Chapter 4) examine the global footprint associated
with the growth of food consumption, and specifically the global use of cropland. They
argue that this provides a good measure of the degree of sustainability (or the lack
thereof) of agricultural production. They observe that although the amount of cropland
has increased relatively little in the last half-century, the amount of production has
trebled. This would seem to indicate substantial increases in efficiency of production, but
it has not been without negative consequences, including environmental deterioration
and human health issues. Also, it is unrealistic to expect the growth of output to continue
in the face of diminishing returns from increased investment and limitations imposed by
climate change and other environmental constraints. Furthermore, demand for land to
produce crops for biofuels and biomaterials will remove land from producing crops for
food, and the changing diets in favour of meat in the developing world will reduce direct
human consumption of grain, reducing the conversion rate of grain output to food con-
sumption (Popkin, 2004).
The chapter by Bringezu and colleagues examines the agricultural footprint of coun-
tries, focusing primarily on the EU, and the potential for expanding the cropped area.
The authors’ estimates and those from other studies suggest that population pressure
alone will produce further deforestation and conversion of grasslands to crops. So, faced
by the prospect of this expansion, they ask: what constitutes safe operating limits for
the maintenance of global biodiversity? Their calculations imply that over 100 million
ha above the 2005 level of cropland might be ‘safely’ attained. They consider the conse-
quences of this for the EU, acknowledging the need to factor in the continued expansion
of biofuel production and crops grown for animal feed. However, they also acknowledge
that there may be changes in patterns of consumption in favour of healthier and more
sustainable options that will translate into effects on agri-food production and the area
under crops. The iterative steps within this change in consumption are outlined and they
discuss the possible policy changes that will promote greater sustainability over the next
quarter century.
One of the ‘solutions’ suggested to meet the growing world demand for food is for
there to be continued intensification of production (i.e., greater productivity per unit
area) but in a sustainable fashion, termed ‘sustainable intensification’ (Pretty, 1997).
Russell and Omer (Chapter 5) consider this proposition, formulating it in terms of a
scenario ‘in which increasing input use and ecological services jointly contribute to food
production even as ecological degradation is balanced by induced conservation’. They

set out the challenges posed by the need to expand the output of food and then assess
the various conditions to be met by the application of sustainable intensification. This
is a complex equation, in part dependent on population projections, but also reflecting
changing diets and hence patterns of consumption across the world allied to the Earth’s
finite resources that make attaining an acceptable balance between production and
maintenance of biodiversity extremely difficult.
Russell and Omer consider the technological and social underpinnings for sus-
tainable intensification, which includes a closer interrogation of the concept itself
(and its historical antecedents), using input and output approaches. They employ a
simple model of the decisions facing a self-interested agricultural producer seeking
the highest levels of utility consistent with available resources, technology and eco-
system quality. This uses mathematical equations to consider the impacts of different
production systems (including use of artificial inputs) on the environment over time
and space. The analysis enables different ‘regions’ to be recognised, including those
where a balanced adjustment between intensification and maintaining biodiversity is
impossible. They consider how equilibrium might be obtained between intensification
and ecosystem degradation, and demonstrate how a process of sustainable intensifica-
tion could be a natural outcome of self-interested managerial decisions. However, this
depends on the initial starting point in terms of the existing stock of natural capital,
with the potential to add to low stocks by combining some environmentally friendly
activities with intensification. The types of ecosystem present are also extremely
important, as only some can be sufficiently resilient to the impacts of intensification to
avoid damage. The modelling raises issues regarding the extent to which policies sup-
porting agri-environmental schemes eliminate or reduce voluntary pro-environment
actions (Whitfield, 2006).
Part II: Globalisation and Policy Regimes
Globalisation has been fostered by new institutional mechanisms of control and cooper-
ation in the global movement of capital. So the IMF has assumed increased importance
as several aspects of policy-making have been displaced from state to supranational
institutions following the demise of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s (contribut-
ing to the ending of national currency regulation via the gold and dollar standard). This
declining significance of national regulation has also applied to agricultural production
where many domestic tariffs on key national produce have been cut, in part through the
outcomes of the 1990s Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT). This promoted trade liberalisation, as has the new trade organisation emerging
from the Uruguay Round, the WTO, and it has further assisted institutional mecha-
nisms and norms of a system of global regulation (McMichael, 1994; Landau, 2001;
Lanoszka, 2009). This should benefit global accumulation strategies of TNCs, further
enhancing control of markets and production sectors by major companies. Yet, regula-
tions of trade have by no means disappeared, with new measures protecting domestic
markets emerging in the USA and the EU. These measures can be seen as an evolution of
post-war state support for agriculture, which has been widespread across the developed
world. However, this support was also geared towards increasing production, often with
a focus on investment in research and development, and hence the term ‘productivism’,

characterised by agricultural intensification, concentration and specialisation (Ilbery

and Bowler, 1998; Wilson, 2001).
Grant (Chapter 6) notes that trade in agricultural goods provides both an indication
of the extent of globalisation and also the extent of resistance to it. He examines the dif-
ferent types of national interest that conflict in international negotiations, and how these
differences affect the politics of subsidies. The latter are often related to ‘agricultural
exceptionalism’ and the difficulty in attaining a balance between supply of and demand
for food. Exceptionalism (meaning that agriculture is treated differently to other areas
of the economy) is closely related to the powerful presence of the family farm in many
national psyches, including the USA and many parts of Europe (Grant, 1995; Daugbjerg
and Swinbank, 2008). The protectionism of family farming associated with the EU’s
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has its roots in a previous era when the farm lobby
was more politically powerful and when agriculture was more prominent in national
economies. Meanwhile, growing prosperity in China and India is both altering con-
sumption patterns in those countries and presenting new challenges for those advocating
greater freedom of trade in agricultural produce. However, Grant observes that within
negotiations on world trade the dominant neoliberal paradigm continues to encourage
reductions in subsidies, though the global financial crisis has reduced the effectiveness of
some of the neoliberal arguments (Anderson and Nelgen, 2012).
Grant concludes that despite a gradual erosion of agricultural exceptionalism it
appeared in different guises in the Uruguay Round and the Doha Development Round
of world trade negotiations. He charts the key elements in these two rounds, acknowl-
edging that the dominance of US and EU interests gave way to more multilateral con-
cerns and some binding commitments to reduce subsidies. Yet, several key elements
remain for further negotiation, including possible recognition of ‘sensitive’ products for
some countries, to enable retention of protectionism. And indeed protectionism remains
an ongoing presence for some products and for some countries/trading blocs, distorting
trade and restricting the advance of globalisation processes. In part this reflects a cooling
towards further liberalisation on behalf of the USA, but also with the stance taken by
other countries that contributed to the demise of the Doha Round of world trade nego-
tiations (though a dispute settlement mechanism remains in place) (Richter, 2014).
Winders (Chapter 7) discusses the contribution of US agricultural policy to globalisa-
tion. He notes how past concerns with price supports, production controls and export
subsidies effectively ended with the 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvements and Reform
(FAIR) Act, mirroring worldwide moves away from national regulation and support for
agriculture (see Guyomard et al., 2000). He examines the evolving complex interrelation-
ship between US policy and world agriculture throughout the twentieth century, includ-
ing more recent policy directions and the consequences of the shift away from supply
management. He focuses on the relations between class, state and market, especially for
the key crops corn, wheat and cotton, using the concept of food regimes. This links inter-
national relations of food production and consumption to forms of accumulation and
regulation under capitalist systems from the 1870s onwards (Robinson, 1997). Usually
three regimes are recognised: one running from the 1870s to World War I, based on
grain and meat exports from family farms in New World settler colonies; a second from
the 1920s to the 1980s based on supplying food for mass consumption in the developed
world; and an evolving third regime (post-Fordist agriculture) focused on globalisation

of production and consumption but recognising the emergence of ‘fresh’, organic and
reconstituted foods (Holt Giménez and Shattuck, 2011).
Winders argues that trade liberalisation, underpinning the most recent manifesta-
tions of globalisation, contributed to US policy ceasing to regulate agricultural prices
and production, but in the context of new supranational regulation (e.g., the WTO).
This has produced greater international and sectoral competition but accompanied
by increased export opportunities, in turn making world agriculture more vulnerable
to market fluctuations and creating greater instability in agricultural prices. This has
prompted calls for the reintroduction of regulation and protests at the rising power and
importance of the major food TNCs (Desmarais, 2007; Thomas, 2007). However, the
USA retained fixed income farm supports until the 2014 Agricultural Act (the 2014 US
Farm Bill), which has placed income caps on farm subsidies and ended direct payment
subsidies that had cost USD5 billion per annum. Some of this money will be added
to the government-subsidised crop insurance scheme (United States Department of
Agriculture, 2014).
Anderson (Chapter 8) extends the analysis of trade in food and fibre by examining the
impacts of neoliberal trade reforms in the last three decades, though he notes that there
remain policies subsidising agricultural production in developed countries whilst in the
developing world farmers exporting ‘plantation crops’ are often directly taxed for doing
so. He focuses on policies distorting prices faced by farmers in developing countries over
the past half-century and the ongoing need for further pro-poor policy reforms world-
wide. He summarises how policies distorting farmer incentives have evolved, starting
with how Britain used export taxes and licences to control prices of domestic food for
six centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution. In general in the twentieth century the
trend in the developed world has been increasingly to assist agriculture relative to other
industries. Meanwhile, post-1945 many developing countries imposed direct taxes on
exports of farm products. For OECD member countries producer support has risen since
the mid-1980s, though it has fallen as a share of overall returns to farmers. Anderson
argues that full trade liberalisation offers the prospect of developing countries increas-
ing both their share of world food exports and outputs in an expanding world trade
market. Latin America would account for nearly half of this projected increase. Net farm
incomes could rise considerably in some parts of Africa and Latin America but with falls
elsewhere because of the growth of other sectors of the economy.
Anderson also assesses prospects for further reductions in trade-distorting meas-
ures, noting how China acted unilaterally to dismantle its supports in recent decades.
Elsewhere favourable loans from international financial institutions have encour-
aged India and others to effect reductions. The GATT multilateral Uruguay Round
Agreement on Agriculture had a positive effect, though many developing countries
remain reluctant to implement further reductions. Indeed, some may be tempted to
follow Japan, South Korea and Taiwan into high agricultural protection, yet investment
in public agricultural research and development would probably produce far greater
returns.
It is often argued that globalisation processes are restricted or modified by actions
imposing regulations and introducing subsidies that distort the free market. Dorward
and Morrison (Chapter 9) investigate this particular aspect of globalisation by consid-
ering how agricultural subsidies impact on food security and the reduction of poverty

in developing countries. They differentiate between output price supports (e.g., import
restrictions, export promotion and intervention prices), output price subsidies to pro-
ducers or consumers, and production subsidies (e.g., credit or input subsidies). They
conclude that agricultural subsidies had significant positive influences on the Green
Revolution in Asia by encouraging farmers to adopt new technologies, thus overturn-
ing conventional wisdom from the 1980s and 1990s that said agricultural subsidies were
largely ineffective and inefficient policy instruments. However, they stress that subsidies
in developed countries depress the earnings and welfare of small producers and societies
in poor countries. Subsidies in the Global South can be used for misappropriation of
government resources or alternatively they fail to produce the desired outcomes if prior
and complementary investments are not made. Yet, they argue that under the ‘right’
circumstances subsidies in different countries may actually be crucial in promoting
substantial food security and poverty reduction by supporting supply chains and rural
input and output markets (see Dorward et al., 2004; Poulton et al., 2006). The authors
produce a framework to show the particular role of subsidies in the processes and con-
ditions for agricultural transformations whilst recognising that it can be harmful to
expand and continue with market interventions and subsidies when they are no longer
necessary.
The final chapter in this part by Long, Liu and Li (Chapter 10) deals with some of the
most dramatic changes to occur in a single country within the last half-century, namely
China. Here there are some of the best examples of how global influences can shape the
whole of the agri-food sector when allowed to permeate a previously highly protected
and controlled economy. The policy change that brought about the opening up of the
Chinese market was profound, ending long isolation and allowing global forces both to
shape the Chinese economy and, in turn, to be shaped by China’s own rapid economic
advance. The very nature of globalisation in the twenty-first century now owes much to
decision-making in Beijing and the way in which China will interact with the rest of the
world. Long and colleagues show how China’s dramatic recent industrialisation has been
closely allied to rural transformation in which agriculture has responded to globalisation
and marketisation following the implementation of economic reforms from 1978. This
has produced strong competition for prime farmland, with rampant urban sprawl con-
tributing to the loss of farmland and decreased national grain production, exacerbated
by the ‘Grain for Green’ programme aimed at preserving biodiversity in sensitive areas
(Uchida et al., 2005; Lin and Yao, 2014). The reforms have also promoted rapid adop-
tion of mechanisation in agriculture, substituting machinery for labour and intensifica-
tion of production involving more capital investment to increase output in response to
growing demand for food. This has involved a growth in multiple cropping (Waldron,
2010; Yilong, 2014). Long and colleagues highlight some key geographical variations in
measures of farm output and intensity of land use, which are giving rise to major policy
issues for the country and beyond. Indeed, the need to feed China’s 1.3 billion popula-
tion is having global impacts as Chinese interests purchase land and food processors
in different parts of the world, especially in the last decade in East and West Africa, as
a potential source of additional food that can be exported to China (Cotula, 2013). In
China itself the policy challenge is reflected in a growing amount of legislation under the
overriding agenda of ‘building a new countryside’ (Long et al., 2010).

Part III: Globalisation and Transnational Corporations
Many analysts of the overall impacts of globalisation contend that the benefits are
largely confined to those in control of key parts of the process or with particular con-
nections to it. Elsewhere the majority of humanity has received few benefits or has
actually been impoverished. This has furthered the world divide between the developed
and developing worlds, and within the latter between small wealthy urban elites and
the countryside. However, the situation is not static, with globalisation contributing to
rapid and sustained economic growth in parts of China, India, Brazil, the oil-rich Middle
Eastern states and the so-called Southeast Asian ‘tiger’ economies. These successes have
led some to argue that developing countries will be able to take increasing advantage of
markets in the rich North for primary produce, processed foods and cheap manufac-
tured goods. Others contend that the mixture of freer trade, protectionism practised by
the USA and the EU, and economic controls under the WTO, IMF and World Bank will
undermine the competitive abilities of farmers in the Global South, recreating neocolo-
nial relationships dominated by major TNCs who control the processing and marketing
sectors of the agri-food industry (Swinnen, 2007; McCulloch et al., 2008). Indeed, one of
the principal impacts of globalisation upon agriculture has been the growing dominance
of international corporations both downstream (processing, retailing) and upstream
(supply of machinery and other purchased farm inputs), so that farming has been ‘repo-
sitioned’ within this wider agri-food system (Pimbert et al., 2001). To compete within this
system many farms have had to invest heavily in machinery and acquiring more land to
benefit from scale economies and by increasing production. The latter has often led to
negative environmental consequences occasioning corrective policies to promote ‘envi-
ronmentally friendly’ actions on-farm (Sage, 2011).
The potential trajectories under globalisation will be operating on very different
systems of agricultural production around the world. At one level there are major con-
trasts between the Global South and the higher capital investment in machinery and
purchased inputs in agriculture in the developed world. Similar patterns of investment
have also contributed to increases in output in China and in some tropical regions where
increases in labour input have been accompanied by dissemination of improved crop
varieties, for example raising the global production of padi rice and maize. However,
continuing reliance on a large farm labour force has been unable to provide jobs for all
of the rapidly growing rural population of the tropics, and large-scale rural to urban
migration has continued for many decades. As numbers of city dwellers have grown,
so too has the need for farmers to produce food for the burgeoning urban market. This
has placed increased pressure on subsistence production systems in parts of the tropics
as food production solely for purposes of consumption by farmers and their families is
inexorably displaced by production for sale, and even farmers remote from metropolitan
centres become part of the global agri-food system (Mertz et al., 2009; Gudeman, 2013).
This process has produced greater wealth for some, but there have also been negative
outcomes (see Rigg, 2006), including the abandonment of ecologically beneficial tradi-
tional farming practices; increased environmental destruction; the demise of traditional
social and cultural institutions as a result of intensified production; the shedding of farm
labour, which adds to rural unemployment or swells the numbers migrating to rapidly
growing cities; and increased production of non-food crops like cotton, coffee, tobacco

and palm oil, where processing (and sometimes crop production too) is largely domi-
nated by the TNCs.
An additional component producing key changes to the smallholder sector in some
parts of the world was the impact of the so-called Green Revolution, first popularised
in the 1960s, consisting of high-yielding crop varieties (HYVs), fertilisers, pesticides,
machinery and irrigation, and promoted largely by funding from the West. Basu
and Klepek (Chapter 11) directly assess the geographies and histories of the Green
Revolution. In terms of the revolution’s role in advancing globalisation of agriculture,
they highlight the links between global imperatives and transfers of new agricultural
technologies, the importance of place and environment in shaping outcomes, and its role
in increasing the ‘corporatisation’ of the agri-food sector. The key role of the USA in
sponsoring the spread of Green Revolution technology is well known, but the pre-1940s
roots of this international focus are traced alongside the stimulus posed by the Cold
War and US attempts at asserting its global influence. The authors discuss the ongoing
role of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR) along-
side key United Nations’ agencies as a means of providing an institutional framework
for the globalisation of the Green Revolution. Despite its undoubted impact on grain
output in certain parts of South and Southeast Asia and Latin America, the negative
environmental and social consequences of the Green Revolution are also well known
(Leaf, 1987; Conway and Barbier, 2013). Case studies from Mexico and India are used
as illustrations.
Basu and Klepek also address the emergence of biotechnology and especially GM foods
as the latest phase of the Green Revolution, making it a Gene Revolution (Fukuda-Parr,
2012). The authors note how the USA has again been the leader in exporting the new
GM technology, especially to Brazil and Argentina, but largely through US-based
TNCs, such as Monsanto, Dow and DuPont. The growth of intellectual property rights
(IPRs) and global regulation through the WTO has helped cement the role of TNCs in
this dissemination process, as has US involvement in bilateral and multilateral trade
agreements with developing countries. Set against these developments are oppositional
forces concerned with GM’s environmental effects, the need to protect biodiversity, and
promote free trade in biotechnology products, for example, the Cartagena Protocol on
Biosafety (CPB) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the latter not signed
by the USA. So GM crops remain the subject of intellectual dispute (Weis, 2007). The
relative lack of Green Revolution developments in Africa is considered in this chapter,
whilst acknowledging ongoing attempts to disseminate new biotechnology, as in the case
of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) established in 2006 (Sanchez
et al., 2009). However, here the links between the spread of biotechnology and land grabs
by non-African governments suggest that benefits may not accrue to local communities,
but rather may primarily serve the global economy.
The spread of biotechnology and GM foods is further addressed by Nicholson
(Chapter 12), who argues strongly that GM foods are unlikely to provide a solution to
world hunger. They have the potential to be a transformative technology, but to date the
high costs and corporate controls have restricted their impact on global food supplies.
Nicholson contrasts some of the rhetoric associated with GM foods against the ongoing
presence of food shortages across the developing world, and protests in the form of
so-called ‘food riots’ in the face of rising prices for staple grains. He highlights 2008 as

a pivotal year with respect to both food riots and meetings to decide on new strategies
to tackle hunger. The latter have repeated previous emphasis on biotechnology solu-
tions, moving GM foods firmly to the top of the global agenda, reflecting the fervour
with which GM technology has been championed in some quarters. The potential of
GM technology in this context is contrasted with ecocentric alternatives, termed here as
the ‘organic option’ (see Harris, 2012). Nicholson investigates some of the key debates
presented about GM foods, dispelling several myths, but primarily in the context of
‘solving’ world hunger by referring to standard Malthusian explanations, Amartya Sen’s
(1981, 1999) entitlements explanation, and the work of Jenny Edkins (2002). Nicholson
reassesses the ‘food riots’ of 2008, many of which sought political and structural changes,
regarded by many observers as the antithesis of the growing control of GM technology
in the hands of a small number of major corporations. Hence at present the develop-
ment of GM foods is doing little to address the needs of those suffering from hunger and
malnutrition.
Some have seen globalisation as representing another form of colonialism, introduc-
ing the tyranny of the global market instead of the controls exerted by a colonial power.
Yet the legacy of the latter can still be seen vividly in the ongoing widespread cultivation
of ‘plantation’ crops across the tropics, such as rubber, cotton, sugar, bananas, coffee,
tea and palm oil. This colonial impost created a dual economy between the colonial-run
plantation sector and locally operated smallholdings producing food crops, which was
at its peak in the first half of the twentieth century (e.g., Barker, 1993; Hayami, 2002).
However, blurring of the sectors has occurred for many decades, now fostered by glo-
balisation as plantations have passed into local hands and the smallholders too have
grown some plantation crops, often on holdings subject to structural change through
land reforms, such as those operating for over a century in Mexico. Globalisation
has introduced some new ‘plantations’, notably the huge cattle ranches created across
large parts of Amazonia, and exports of high-value foods, such as fruit and vegetables,
which now exceed the value of exports of coffee, tea, sugar, cotton, tobacco and cocoa
from developing countries. Pre-existing agribusiness TNCs have taken advantage of
this growing trade whilst for some commodities, notably bananas in Central America
and the West Indies, neocolonial patterns of production and trade are still dominant,
involving companies such as Del Monte, Chiquita Brands International and Geest, who
have developed vital relationships with individual retail chains in targeted countries
(Raynolds, 2003).
Kalfagianni and Fuchs (Chapter 13) tackle this key element in globalisation, in explor-
ing the role of private agri-food governance in the form of TNCs, whose global reach
has extended enormously since 1945. These TNCs are now dominant players in areas
of agricultural inputs, trade and processing, and retail distribution, and private govern-
ance is increasingly influencing governmental regulation. Examples of governance have
included the implementation of codes of conduct, quality assurance, certification and
labelling programmes, and product and process standards. However, the role of private
governance is not necessarily a benign force when examining negative externalities of the
agri-food system, and it presents various challenges including issues of democratic legiti-
macy and equity. The authors discuss four areas of contention: uptake boost, regulatory
capture, weakening of standards, and barriers for small-scale capital. They examine
three prominent private governance institutions showing how there has been uptake in

the market, though unequally dispersed geographically, with the Global North dominat-
ing. Regulatory capture, marginalising the vulnerable and actors representing broader
social interests, is clearly evident, accompanying a weakening of standards towards less
stringent goals and creation of barriers to participation by small-capital actors.
Parfitt and Robinson (Chapter 14) examine another emerging aspect of globalisation,
namely intellectual property (IP) regimes, which are contributing to a concentration of
capital in a small number of private companies. These rights have emerged as a concern
for governments from the 1980s, but now with globalising effects impacting on agricul-
tural production and agri-food systems (Maskus, 2000). In part this reflects the growing
role of the WTO and its ability to promote enforcement of IP internationally. For agri-
culture, the IP focus relates to patents and plant breeders’ rights. Parfitt and Robinson
discuss the nature of IP rights within the agri-food sector, recognising that GM plants
can be covered by several patents. They contend that the USA has been able to maintain
influence worldwide over IP rights through bilateral and regional arrangements encour-
aging greater convergence with respect to plant-related intellectual property. This may
be having an adverse impact on farmers’ rights, though treaties established in the last
decade have started addressing this – for example, the International Treaty on Plant
Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2004) and the putative Nagoya Protocol,
though with limited impacts to date.
As described by Parfitt and Robinson, plant breeding has accompanied major
biotechnology developments in world agriculture, both before and during the Green
Revolution. By 2011 this was a multibillion-dollar industry, but with two-thirds of the
global proprietary seed market controlled by just a few companies, and with consolida-
tion of private power in particular markets (Borowiak, 2004). Close links of such firms to
government and universities have helped those companies impact public policy, further
emphasising the changing role of farmers as lessees of patented seeds, plants, fertilisers
and pesticides. Farmers’ rights movements, such as La Via Campesina, are champion-
ing ‘food sovereignty’ or the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food
produced through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agri-
culture systems (Desmarais, 2007). However, such aims often bring farmers into conflict
with the holder of IP. Parfitt and Robinson provide examples of these conflicts, includ-
ing organic producers affected by neighbouring farmers growing GM crops.
Lawrence, Sippel and Burch (Chapter 15) examine one aspect of the subsumption of
farming into other sectors of the economy and specifically finance. In the past, agricul-
ture has generally been deemed too big a risk for serious investment and hence finance
has focused on real estate, shares and bonds. However, various aspects of globalisa-
tion are making agriculture more attractive to major investors, including the growth
of biofuels, the scarcity of prime farmland in the developed world, and changing food
demands in India and China. Furthermore, major farm commodities are becoming
assets ripe for speculation. The authors refer to this new attention being devoted to
agriculture as part of ‘financialisation’ or the rising importance of the finance sector in
the operation of economies and governing institutions. It is a process that has grown
from the 1970s under neoliberalism, favouring short-term speculation, especially in com-
modity markets, though this has increased economic volatility and contributed to the
recent global financial crisis (Russi, 2013). Lawrence and colleagues chart the precondi-
tions for and the drivers of the financialisation of food and farming. They identify three

forms of financialisation in the sector: takeovers of food manufacturers and retailers,

commodity speculation, and direct investment in farmland. A key player in the process
of farmland investment is the sovereign wealth funds, usually derived from sales of oil
and other natural resources and held by sovereign states, especially oil-rich Middle East
countries. These have increasingly been invested in foreign countries to tackle food secu-
rity through acquisition of land. Investments are still small but several African countries
have been targets (Cotula and Vermeulen, 2009; Von Braun and Meinzen-Dick, 2009).
The investment may have positive effects by ‘liberating’ underutilised land for produc-
tive use. However, other views refer to ‘land grabs’, and neocolonialism that marginalises
local knowledge and exploits local people. Various resistance movements have been
created to oppose foreign land grabs and protect the livelihoods and rights of farming
communities. This is a challenge also taken up by one of the most well-known rural
rights organisations, La Via Campesina (Borras, 2008).
Major food retailers have increasingly helped to shape farm-based production through
forward production contracts, and especially those concluded with larger enterprises
located close to processing facilities (Watts and Little, 1994). Fruit, vegetables, pigs and
poultry have been most affected by such contracts, though farms have largely remained
in the hands of families rather than large corporations. Some exceptions have occurred
in the USA, notably where gigantic beef feedlots have been assembled by processors such
as ConAgra and EXCEL. Contracts between retailers and farmers have also become
increasingly important, with major supermarkets generally able to determine the market
price for both food processors and farmers. However, these three-way relationships are
also occurring on a global basis so that processors and farmers are experiencing new
levels of competition. This is especially so for certain types of produce, notably fruit and
vegetables, and is illustrated by Sippel (Chapter 16), who uses the example of Morocco
to demonstrate how farmers outside the developed world have to juggle competing
demands of global and local markets. Sippel notes that the Global South has accounted
for 40 per cent of the increasing volume of the global fruit and vegetable trade in recent
years as agri-food networks have been extended. This has often replicated traditional
colonial ties but with greater complexity that reflects the role of new players, for example
major supermarket chains, new multinational shipping firms and transnational food
processing giants.
Focusing on the fertile Souss region, the heartland of Morocco’s exports of vegeta-
bles, tomatoes and citrus fruits, Sippel recognises significant differentiation within the
region’s farming sector. Production for export is dominated by a small group of actors
that include some family businesses and a mixture of Moroccan and European investors.
They are organised in export groups and cooperatives or are contractually affiliated
to packing stations that export fruit and vegetables. However, in the last two decades
foreign investment has entered this sector, encouraging counterseasonal production
during the European winter months. Joint Moroccan–European ventures have prolifer-
ated as private export enterprises, controlling every level of the value chain and develop-
ing high compliance standards. Increased export production has led to overexploitation
of water in the region, so there are real concerns over the future sustainability of the
industry. The export industry utilises cheap local labour and in-migrants who have
swelled the ranks of wage labourers. Many of the export businesses, though, are not
owned by locals and there is a new phenomenon of absentee landlords. Sippel concludes

that there is a range of negative outcomes from the export model adopted, not least the
move to greater reliance on wage labour (Gertel and Sippel, 2014).
Bryant (Chapter 17) addresses the impacts of globalisation on the food processing
sector, drawing upon Australian examples to show how many of the labour requirements
of the sector have tended to accentuate low-skilled jobs occupied by women, though gov-
ernment policies have often introduced programmes supporting new technologies, train-
ing to raise skill levels, and strategies to address skills shortages to increase productivity.
Yet, there has been a widespread tendency by firms to develop employment conditions
based on low-wage, low-skill, under-or non-unionised employees, reliance on tempo-
rary labour from agencies (mostly migrant labour), and high proportions of female
workers. This has been true for different enterprises in the sector, including meatworks,
dairy, fruit and wine processing, where ‘inequality regimes’ have been established that
maintain class, gender and racial inequalities (Bryant and Pini, 2011). These have paral-
leled similar inequalities within the production sector associated with the growing use of
cheap, unregulated labour on farms to undertake low-skilled tasks, such as fruit picking
(Hoggart and Mendoza, 1999; Martin, 2002). Bryant provides an overview of work-
skilling policies employed across the food processing industry in Western economies,
starting from some of the arguments presented by Manuel Castells (1996) regarding the
globalisation of labour markets, emphasising the importance of a highly skilled, creative
and autonomous labour force at the heart of productivity and competitiveness. This has
given rise to debates about how best to ensure that the workforce is ‘properly skilled’
and the need for policies to minimise ‘skills shortages’. However, training to upskill the
workforce can be viewed as a cost by employers who see their needs met by a particular
type of worker and might ignore people who possess skills not deemed congruent with
particular industry needs. Alternatively, the industry has ‘deskilled’ many jobs associ-
ated with assembly and batch production.
Rickson, Rickson, Hoppe and Burch (Chapter 18) investigate how global agri-food
companies interact with local communities. They consider major issues relating to who
obtains the economic benefits from these interactions and how the social and environ-
mental risks are distributed. There are complex power relationships involved between
the companies and the locals, often based on who owns resources and how access to land
and resources is obtained. Often different global players are in competition for land,
especially where mining interests may desire land also targeted by the agri-food sector.
The authors discuss the various strategies adopted by companies to secure access, noting
that it is not always the company that succeeds in obtaining control and that legislation
can sometimes protect local interests. They refer to various concepts and programmes
that apply to companies, including corporate social responsibility and the ‘triple bottom
line’ in which social and environmental concerns are addressed rather than just a narrow
focus on profit (Foran et al., 2005). They also note that many companies are not rigid
‘top-down’ vertical structures but are characterised by ‘structural heterogeneity’ in
which local managers have more authority and autonomy to deal with local communi-
ties. Hence there can be tensions between ‘standard’ company policy and localisation.
Community responses can also be highly variable, complex and not necessarily mono-
lithic as there may be several competing interest groups demanding that their interests
are satisfied.
As discussed by Rickson and colleagues, the farmers’ lobby may be one of several

competing for attention. One of the major changes in recent decades has been the nature
of the relationship between some farmers and major agri-food companies. The farmers
have become contract suppliers, especially to processors and supermarkets, often having
to meet stringent compliance standards (Wrigley et al., 2005; Wrigley and Lowe, 2014).
In most of the contracts the power resides with the company, and farmers often complain
about this power imbalance, and how this most adversely affects their profit margins.
Compliance represents one way in which companies increasingly exert control over day-
to-day operations on farms, so that family farm labour and land become organisational
assets. Farmers frequently refer to their relationship with the companies in stark terms,
complaining of ‘ruthlessness’, ‘betrayal’ and ‘powerlessness’. This feeling of being on the
receiving end of company power is often greater for women farmers – embodying a lack
of consultation by the companies. However, there are also examples of how farmers are
meeting this global challenge by mobilising themselves into lobby groups and coopera-
tives (e.g., Franks and McGloin, 2007).
Part IV: Challenges to the Globalisation of Agriculture
The rising costs of farm inputs and the narrow margins imposed upon farmers by proces-
sors, wholesalers and retailers have had major implications for farm incomes. Amongst
responses to this ‘price–cost squeeze’ has been diversification of the activities of farm
families, including new on- farm enterprises (e.g., new crops/livestock, farm- based
tourism, on-farm processing and direct marketing to consumers) and off-farm income
generation (e.g., haulage, contracting, non-farm employment) (Robinson, 2004; Barbieri
et al., 2008; Maye et al., 2009). This has produced significant variety amongst farm fami-
lies, but with a tendency for a dualism between small marginal operations, often located
in limiting physical conditions, and large heavily capitalised businesses often in favour-
able physical environments. The latter has on occasion involved accumulation strategies
pursued through corporatisation of agribusiness development, involving complex rela-
tionships with finance and industrial capital (Paarlberg, 2013). However, family farms
have proved resistant to being subsumed by other sectors of the economy, and many
‘agribusinesses’ remain family owned and family operated (Johnsen, 2004; Smithers and
Johnson, 2004).
Family farms have remained dominant in the developing world, and have increas-
ingly produced not only food crops for local consumption but also plantation crops
whereby they engage with global processes. Hence, although greater control on ‘plan-
tation’ production is now exerted by major corporate retailers and the global retail
market, the segmentation of the latter has given rise to new opportunities for small
producers through new market niches – for example, exploiting the growth of concern
over ethical aspects of production and trade, including the treatment of workers and
producers within farming systems. ‘Ethical trade’ has included fair trade agreements,
safe working conditions for disadvantaged producers and employees, and sustainable
and environmentally safe natural resource management (Nicholls and Opal, 2005). This
largely reflects consumer concerns and power in developed countries, giving rise to so-
called fair trade products (e.g., fair trade coffee) and new links between producers and
consumers (e.g., Cafédirect), favouring agreements between retailers in the developed
world and small producers in the Global South (Raynolds et al., 2004; Renard, 2005).

This development combines both the creation of new global links and the emergence of
a more local dimension to consumption patterns, sometimes termed ‘relocalisation’, in
which mass consumption is mediated by local specificities. Amongst the characteristics
of relocalisation are concerns for the place or region of origin of food as part of a desire
for authenticity, greater variety and concerns over the standards of mass production and
processing practices (Ricketts Hein et al., 2006; Marsden, 2010). While global chains of
supply have grown as a result of globalisation, so too have ‘alternative’ food networks
that reflect local manifestations of growing global concerns, including social movements
related to concerns with the environment, sustainable agriculture, health issues, conser-
vation of genetic resources, animal rights, social justice, consumer preference, organic
foods, non- traditional medicine and ethnic cuisines (Sonnino and Marsden, 2006;
Jarosz, 2008; Goodman et al., 2012).
Changes on farms have been integral to these alternative developments, including
increased direct marketing from farmers to customers, producing for niche markets
(such as organic and speciality foods), and placing greater emphasis on environmentally
friendly production as part of what has been termed post-productivism. First popu-
larised as a term in the 1990s, this refers to adjustment strategies pursued by farmers,
partly in response to the challenges posed by globalisation. It has frequently been linked
to the adoption of agri-environmental measures, especially in the EU but also in other
developed countries, and a raft of other changes has been highlighted. These include the
diminished political power of the farming lobby, changing views of the countryside (in
which food production is only one of many activities), new forms of rural/agricultural
governance (including growing environmental regulation and measures promoting sus-
tainability, but also progressive withdrawal of support for agriculture), commodification
of former agricultural resources (including land, wildlife habitats, barns and cottages),
new forms of agricultural production (often emphasising quality not quantity), and
various farm adjustment strategies (Tilzey and Potter, 2008). Yet the emphasis on many
farms remains predominantly productivist, even on holdings pursuing organic produc-
tion or combining ‘traditional’ crop and livestock output alongside a more diversified
business (Walford, 2003). This does not imply a sharp break from concerns for the need
to produce food for mass consumption, but in part addresses the greater segmentation
of the food market, and hence the growth of organic foods, food with a clear geographi-
cal or artisanal provenance, and an emphasis on ‘local’ production. This has led to the
suggestion that the term ‘multifunctional’ agriculture is a better descriptor than post-
productivism (Wilson, 2007).
Fielke (Chapter 19) examines the characteristics of multifunctionality, and specifically
its role in maintaining local diversity in the face of globalisation. Multifunctionalism
recognises that there are both commodity and non-commodity outcomes to farming
activity, and hence that activity incorporates explicit social and environmental impacts
which are not treated as ‘externalities’ that are simply the responsibility of the rest of
society. This was recognised by the EU in its Agenda 2000 and subsequent reforms
of the CAP. Fielke refers to this as ‘top-down’ policy that economically values the
multifunctionalityof agricultural land use, extending beyond agri-environmental pro-
grammes that promote ‘environmentally friendly’ farming. However, criticisms of the
policies contend that essentially farming in the EU remains productivist, with envi-
ronmental and social benefits being less than fully integral to farming activity. Fielke

draws contrasts between the EU and Australia, where there have not only been limited
producer supports for farmers in recent decades, but also a more limited tradition of
finding compensation for the social and environmental disbenefits of farming. Within
the dominant export-orientated productivist agricultural sector, however, there are some
AFNs representing ‘grassroots’ multifunctionalism, especially organic production and
the emergence of farmers’ markets. Fielke discusses some of the factors encouraging
these developments and explores the differences between the ‘bottom-up’ paradigm in
Australia and the ‘top-down’ state-supported multifunctionality in the EU.
Bardsley (Chapter 20) notes how globalisation has produced contrasting and con-
tradictory outcomes when viewed at the local scale. On the one hand it has entailed the
availability of a diversity of globally sourced foods from a multiplicity of production
systems worldwide, but on the other hand it is eroding diversity by promoting uni-
formity of production at the expense of agrobiodiversity and a loss of local specificity
in production systems. He notes the presence of various forms of resistance to these
globalising trends both in developed and developing countries, where maintenance of
local diversity is supported by the complex interaction of state policy, conservation
programmes, marketing initiatives and cooperative action. He argues that maintenance
of agrobiodiversity is a significant component of future global food security, and to this
end some of the assumptions of the dominant liberal-productivist paradigm need to be
challenged. In part this reflects a need to continue learning lessons from the early phases
of the Green Revolution when, despite some major gains, risks were also apparent and
notable disbenefits were incurred from the over-reliance on new technology, unproven
under certain physical conditions. Greater adaptability to risk can be saved by maintain-
ing diverse agro-ecosystems, as illustrated by Bardsley using examples from Thailand
and Switzerland.
He discusses initiatives that have sought to retain landrace crop varieties, such as
traditional rice varieties in the Isaan region of Thailand or traditional cereals (e.g., rye,
spelt, emmer and einkorn) in the canton of Graubünden in Switzerland. He identifies
government support as a crucial factor in encouraging greater agrobiodiversity, along
with support from other players such as NGOs, supermarkets and local marketing
cooperatives. From these case studies he considers a policy agenda to support agricul-
tural diversity, including initiatives such as cultural recognition, regional and organic
production accreditation, and direct environmental payments for agrobiodiversity. He
discusses both in-situ programmes and ex-situ conservation initiatives, but notes that
loss of agrobiodiversity is still occurring, partly because scientific values are prioritised
over farming communities’ own knowledge (Raymond et al., 2010), and greater value
needs to be given to immediate use values that can be recognised explicitly to support
farmers to recreate diversity.
Ilbery and Maye (Chapter 21) provide a European perspective on the changing
dynamics of alternative food networks (AFNs). They view AFNs as part of the new
relations developing between the state and the private sector, and between the market
and civil society. These relations can be traced directly to the impacts of deregulation,
privatisation and reduced state involvement. Increasingly it can be argued this is produc-
ing a contrast between an agri-industrial paradigm, dominated by industrialisation and
globalisation of the agri-food production chain, and an integrated, territorial agri-food
paradigm, characterised by AFNs and food production based on specific qualities and

distinctive features of an area or region (Goodman and Goodman, 2009). The chapter
elaborates the theoretical debate about AFNs, reflecting different academic approaches
in political economy, rural sociology/development and network theory, and discusses the
emergence of key related concepts. Amongst these are short food supply chains, with a
small number of nodes between the producer and final consumer; concentration theory,
whereby economic relationships are ‘culturalised’ reflecting the emergence of particular
conventions relating to quality food products; and social embeddedness, whereby eco-
nomic behaviour is embedded in and mediated by a complex web of social relations.
They caution, though, that simple interpretations of AFNs as representing positive
values of social justice, equality, sustainability and ethics are misleading. Indeed, many
producers involved in AFNs may also be part of more conventional networks.
In focusing on Europe, Ilbery and Maye look at how AFNs and ‘relocalisation’ of
food systems have exploited product, place and process to emphasise differentiation
of particular foods. For example, there have been EU-wide attempts to establish the
link between product and place through quality food labels, and hence the protected
designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical indication (PGI) quality labels
to protect producers from those in other locations attempting to copy their product,
whilst promoting products with a recognisable geographical origin (Parrott et al., 2002;
Gutierrez, 2005). The chapter examines the geography of PDOs/PGIs whilst also consid-
ering the retail end of AFNs, for example, farmers’ markets and box schemes (Renting
et al., 2003; Brown and Miller, 2008). Finally, the role of AFNs in the broader context of
food security is considered with respect to AFNs in the UK. Whilst it is acknowledged
that in outright quantitative terms they will not make significant contributions, their
major impact is considered to be at a micro rather than a macro scale, affecting particular
communities, households and individuals. However, there are also wider impacts relat-
ing to the social and cultural acceptability of certain types of food and education about
food (linked to health issues, social inclusion and social justice). It is in these areas that
there remains a need for much research to be done on the role and impacts of AFNs.
Blay-Palmer and Knezevic (Chapter 22) examine the growth of alternative food
economies (AFEs) and specifically their contribution to sustainable development.
Drawing on ideas contained within complex adaptive systems theory they use examples
from Ontario, Canada, to consider how bottom-up participatory schemes can be scaled
up and scaled out (replicated). They note the diversity of the initiatives in the goals and
motivations of AFEs, and report on particularly promising schemes, including several
spanning more than a decade of activity. They are cautiously optimistic about the
potential for scaling up from local initiatives, both developed by the provincial govern-
ment and civil society organisations. The Ontarian provincial food system has become
increasingly diverse and prolific, with evidence of the diversity and complexity needed
for future development of robust and resilient food systems. Ongoing provincial govern-
ment involvement is providing seedcorn funding for new local food initiatives. However,
the long-term sustainability of some of the individual projects is less certain, highlighting
a major concern over many of the world’s agri-environmental and ‘local’ food projects,
namely what happens when the period for which targeted funding has been allocated
comes to an end. In particular, the authors express a concern about the extent to which
large TNCs are able to co-opt local agendas to produce food that does not adhere to
sustainable production methods. Nevertheless they recognise the potential to expand

cooperation, improve food economies, and give more serious attention to environmental
sustainability.
Finally, Scholten (Chapter 23) tackles the issue of the dual economy, the legacy from
European colonisation in many parts of the developing world, using the example of
dairy production to illustrate how smallholder agriculture in parts of India has been
transformed first by the impacts of the Green Revolution and then by globalisation. He
argues that the White Revolution, the growth of fresh milk production in India by small-
holder producers, parallels the Green Revolution in that it has involved a major increase
in output, but differs because it has not been reliant on the mechanisation, irrigation and
chemicals that characterised the Green Revolution. In contrast, the White Revolution
was founded on a low-input/low-output model, but like its green counterpart, with a
particular investment catalyst, namely Operation Flood, which commenced in the 1970s.
Essentially this is a cooperative production scheme, initially involving 1.5 million farm
families, with overseas aid (especially from the EU and World Bank), and contributing
to growth of well-defined ‘milksheds’ for India’s major cities (Dalal and Pathak, 2007).
Funding for the project ended in 1996, but the cooperative model has been extended in
some provinces, notably Gujarat and Karnataka, and the White Revolution remains a
model for other UN-FAO dairy industry development programmes.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
This Handbook discusses various facets of the globalisation of agriculture, which can be
broadly summarised under four key themes: (1) the physical basis underpinning world
agriculture and the ongoing impacts of globalised agriculture on the physical environ-
ment; (2) the policy regimes aiding or restricting the advance of globalisation; (3) the
key role of TNCs in developing globalisation; and (4) various challenges facing the glo-
balisation of agriculture. Within the ongoing debates about the impacts and potential of
globalisation there are two key issues that stand out and need further attention as they
represent the immediate context in which the globalisation of agriculture will develop in
the next decade: food security and climate change.
The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing ‘when all people at
all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active
life’ (WHO, 2014, paragraph 1). An additional component relates to cultural aspects of
consumption, as people’s cultural preferences can compromise health through people
eating unhealthy diets despite having good access to plentiful supplies of nutritious food.
Thus, in general, food security rests on food availability, access to food, and food use.
Clearly food security is a complex issue. It is an ever-present concern throughout human
history and development, but its global political connotations have increased in recent
years, in part because of the different views associated with globalisation. One argument
contends that globalisation is ensuring there is greater distribution of food around the
world, but a counterargument says that globalisation is increasing disparities, enhancing
uneven development and failing to overcome endemic problems of hunger and malnutri-
tion in some parts of the developing world (Brown, 2012; Naylor, 2014).
Growing political concern can be seen regarding national food securities, in which
national stances with regard to both domestic agriculture and trade in food are critical.

Some countries contend that the push to enhance globalisation through trade liberalisa-
tion threatens their domestic food production and hence national food security. This
has led to some developing countries requesting that current negotiations on agricul-
tural agreements allow them to re-evaluate and raise tariffs on key products to protect
national food security and employment (Schanbacher, 2010; Rosegrant et al., 2014).
Other countries (notably China) are developing policies to help support increased
domestic food production whilst also establishing additional production offshore
(Kugelman and Levenstein, 2012). Yet the latter may contribute to reduced access
to food in countries where foreign concerns are increasingly controlling the means of
production while at the same time developing a pattern of trade that sits outside a glo-
balised free market. The impacts that such changing national policies may have on food
security in a globalised context are only poorly understood and require more detailed
investigations.
Rising energy demands and the expansion of biofuel production are considered as
posing another considerable threat to national food securities, as they reduce availability
of farmland for food production and may drive up food prices, while doing relatively
little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Scharlemann and Laurance, 2008). So-called
second-generation biofuels, which can be produced from non-food crops like prairie
grasses or trees grown on marginal lands, may have less impact on food production,
but there may continue to be tensions between food production and energy production.
The potential outcomes of this collision between food security and energy security are
complex and are likely to once again place rich and poor nations on opposite sides of the
argument.
Rising concerns over food security are closely linked to the emergence of forecasts that
global warming may have major negative consequences for food output. In particular,
declining global per capita agricultural production linked to climate change may have
serious consequences in parts of the developing world, especially for cereal production.
Many developing countries rely primarily on local agricultural production to meet food
needs, so if that production is disrupted by climate change or other factors then hunger
and starvation can ensue. Globalisation can only transform this picture if it contributes
to raising yields in those parts of the world most susceptible to further food shortages
associated with climate change-induced yield reductions from staple crops. It is most
likely to do this via contributing to improved distribution of seeds and fertilisers, which
can then raise yields (Funk and Brown, 2009). However, the extent to which such pro-
grammes will be able to avoid repeating the mistakes made during previous rounds of the
Green Revolution remains debatable.
Debates on the impacts of global climate change and their links to globalisation pro-
cesses frequently portray the latter as contributors to human-induced global warming
through increases in generation of greenhouse gases. Hence the ongoing worldwide
concerns about climate change are inextricably linked to debates about the nature of
globalisation. For the latter, this has principally concerned the drive towards industriali-
sation and mass consumption in developing countries. China has been the best example
of a transformation inspired in part by change that has permitted hugely increased
participation in global processes, and it is generally the impacts of transport, the eco-
logical footprint of trade with the rest of the world, and environmental destruction that
have attracted the most attention. However, climate change may impact negatively on

gricultural output worldwide and so pose a significant threat to the ability of agricul-
a
ture to meet the growing demands for more food from a rising world population.
Greater connectedness associated with globalisation means that extreme weather in
one part of the world may have wide-ranging global consequences. For example, exten-
sive drought and above-average temperatures in the major cereal-growing belt in Russia
in 2010 led to fires that destroyed one-third of the country’s wheat output that year.
The subsequent ban on Russian wheat exports for national food security reasons raised
prices on the international market, which exacerbated food shortages in several countries
reliant on this market (McMichael, 2013). Yet, while such extreme weather events may
become more frequent as a result of climate change, the chief threat to food production
from climate change lies in the increased pressures likely to arise from increased land
degradation and water shortages.
One of the issues regarding potential impacts of climate change is that they are
uncertain and contradictory (Nelson et al., 2009). For any particular crop, the effects of
increasing temperatures will depend on the optimal temperature for growth and repro-
duction of the crop. Warming may help improve crop performance, and hence output,
but if warming exceeds a crop’s optimum temperature, yields could decline (United
States Environmental Protection Agency, 2014). Higher CO2 levels could increase
yields, especially for wheat and soybeans, but other crops, such as maize, would show
smaller positive responses. However, other factors may counteract these potential yield
increases – for example, if temperature exceeds a crop’s optimal level or if sufficient
water and nutrients are unavailable, increases in yield may be reduced or reversed. Many
weeds, pests and fungi thrive under warmer temperatures, wetter climates and increased
CO2 levels. Together these problems alongside greater frequency of floods and droughts
could reduce output, but with highly differential impacts worldwide, increasing the pro-
pensity for large disparities in food availability.
Understanding the combination of threats and opportunities associated with climate
change worldwide, and how these will interact with globalisation processes to impact on
global food security, poses an unprecedented challenge to future generations. Increasing
our understanding of these complex relationships remains a key priority and requires
ongoing research and critical debates to inform future policies aimed at addressing food
insecurity, global hunger and uneven development. This Handbook seeks to provide a
state-of-the-art summary of current debates and a starting point for subsequent discus-
sions and investigations into the relationships between globalisation, agri-food systems
and food security issues.
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Professional Publishing.

PART I
THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF

AGRICULTURE

2. Agriculture and environment: fundamentals and
future perspectives
Ros Taylor and Jane Entwistle*
INTRODUCTION
Crisis looms as extreme weather hits crops. . . High prices could lead to social unrest. . .
Poorest countries (will be) hardest hit by shortages. (Moulds and Goldenberg, 2012, p. 13)
What does agriculture mean? To what extent is it governed by physical environmental

controls? Can physical environmental controls realistically be divorced from whole
ecosystem perspectives, which include the role and fate of non-target organisms present,
and – of vital importance – within crop ecosystems? To what extent do farming deci-
sions and policies prioritise the physical environment conditions above issues of
economy, society and politics? These questions need addressing if we are to avoid the
social and political unrest that it is claimed agricultural failure could bring (Moulds and
Goldenberg, 2012).
For some people, instinctively, agriculture simply implies the growing of plant crops
and most especially food crops for human consumption, though in practice it also
embraces animal husbandry and non-food crops. Food security has become a major
current global concern given the context of recent rapid population growth and a pro-
jected global human population of nine billion by 2050 (United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs, 2012). These concerns are amplified when coupled with cli-
matic uncertainty associated with projected global warming linked to rising greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions. Our current inability to predict with any certainty the practical
implications of global warming for crop production, alongside the evidence of recent
harvest failings linked to abnormal weather patterns and extremes, has turned attention
back to more fundamental consideration of physical constraints and the opportunities
for agriculture.
Examining whole farming systems within the context of agriculture, encompassing
animal husbandry and non-food crops, is important since these also play a vital role
in global economies and in diet, health and food security. Historically, mixed farming
systems embracing both livestock rearing and crop production have been the classic farm
model throughout much of the world, and especially in developed countries. The move
to factory farming and agribusiness was largely a post-World War II development driven
by advances in chemical fertilisers and pesticide production; by technological change in
farm mechanisation; by innovations in plant and livestock breeding; by intensification
of livestock rearing; and by the demands and raised expectations of an expanding world
population. These energy-intensive approaches, which have also generated major land-
scape and biological changes, are now challenged by consumer-driven moves to more
environmentally benign production systems. This development favours small farmers
31
(often marketing through cooperatives), which may, incidentally, give a surer guarantee
of food production in a time of change. Smaller units have greater flexibility and can
respond more quickly to change whereas financially driven, high-technology agribusi-
ness systems can find rapid adaptation difficult. These issues, which are complex –
reflecting an interplay of environmental, social and economic factors – are discussed
again later in this chapter.
Agriculture, though, is more than production of food crops. Food production com-
petes for land with important textile crops such as cotton; timber crops for structural
uses and as raw materials for diverse major industries (e.g., paper, cellulose, rubber); and
increasingly, agricultural land is being used for bioenergy crops. Land competition is a
major issue and one that, historically, has driven soil ‘improvements’, irrigation, devel-
opment of greenhouse crops, and related measures to extend the areas of productive
land. Competition with agriculture for space and food resources also threatens wildlife.
It is pertinent to the survival of large game animals in Africa (Attenborough, 2013) and
Asia (World Conservation Society, 2013), as well as many less celebrated wild biota,
as noted by diverse authors, from all cultivated regions worldwide (e.g., Wilson, 1999;
Hambler, 2004).
In this chapter we aim to explore the fundamentals for crop production whether for
food or other societal benefit. We will not confine our debate to plant crops, though our
focus inevitably will dwell on the key physical environmental controls of crop cultivation –
the basics: suitable climates, suitable soils, sufficient and suitable water or the means to
make suitable apparently unfavourable locations. It is crop agriculture that promoted
more settled patterns of living for humans and opened the way to societal development
and diversity. It has also transformed vast swathes of the global land surface. Animal hus-
bandry too has changed landscapes through clearances for ranching or crops for animal
feed, often in controversial contexts, such as in the Mato Grosso in Brazil. From the pas-
toral fields of upland Europe to the vast savannahs of Africa, to the plastic greenhouses
of the present day Campo de Dalías in Southern Spain, all alterations visible from space,
agricultural activity has profoundly transformed landscapes and on vast scales.
ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE AND FARMING SYSTEMS
The transition from hunting- gathering to agricultural systems began around

15 000–10 000 calendar years before present (cal. BP) (Roberts, 1998). It is clear from pal-
aeobotanical and ethnohistorical evidence that the spread of agriculture was a complex
phenomenon and the pace and nature of this transition varied spatially and temporally.
Archaeological sites older than around 12 000 cal. BP (Mesolithic) are mainly small and
were mostly occupied seasonally. It was not until the later pre-pottery Neolithic (10 500–
9300 cal. BP) that actual farming villages begin to be recorded (ibid.). The change to
sedentary agriculture was not instantaneous, but involved experimentation, mixed liveli-
hood strategies and great local variability.
To understand the origins of agriculture one needs to appreciate the complexity in the
number and location of domestication of crops and animals. Traditionally, the origins
of domestication have been determined based on the geographic distribution of the wild
ancestor, supported by palaeobotanical, palaeozoological and archaeological remains,

Agriculture and environment 33
but more recently techniques using molecular markers have been applied (Gross and
Olsen, 2010). Current evidence suggests domestication arose independently in a number
of regions across the globe: China and Southeast Asia, Mexico, Southwest Asia, the
Near East (the Fertile Crescent), the Andes and Amazon, the New Guinea highlands,
eastern North America and Africa (Roberts, 1998; Gepts et al., 2012). So why not more
areas? The reason is thought to lie with the local plant and animal assemblages and their
suitability, or lack of suitability, for domestication (Diamond, 2012). Attention has often
focused on the origins of wheat and its development as a cultivated crop in Eurasia along
with barley and the husbandry of sheep, cattle, pigs and goats, although similar devel-
opments are now known to have arisen independently across the world. In Central and
South America, agriculture developed around maize, potatoes, beans and squash, linked
with husbandry of llamas, alpacas and guinea pigs in the south, while goosefoot and
sunflower emerged as important crops in the north. In Africa, rice, millet and sorghum
were domesticated, whilst in East Asia rice emerged as a key crop (Robinson, 2004;
Gepts et al., 2012). Gepts (2008) argues that centres of domestication are dispropor-
tionally associated with biodiversity ‘hotspots’ though the role of local environmental
conditions and short-term climatic events would also have influenced the transition from
hunting-gathering to agriculture and the subsequent spread of these agricultural systems
(Fuller, 2006). Compared with hunting and gathering, agriculture is a far more efficient
way (on a per unit area basis) of providing a food supply despite an increasing depend-
ence on fewer and fewer species for food (Harris, 2012). As food production and food
security increased, so population increased, as did labour specialisation and the rise of
hierarchical societies and settlements.
The continued development of agricultural systems and emergence of a wider range
of regularly grown food crops, as distinct from more opportunistic food-gathering sup-
plements, was largely a matter of chance, of trial and error experimentation both in
terms of crop plant and its subsequent improvement and in terms of understanding the
optimum physical environments. In more recent times, with more advanced expertise
in plant breeding and technological advances in mechanisation, fertiliser use and pest
and disease control, major and large-scale innovations have been implemented. But
these agricultural improvements also generated some spectacular failures and envi-
ronmental degradation. These range from problems experienced worldwide such as
eutrophication of waterways due to run-off of excess nitrogen fertiliser, to species loss
associated with pesticide and herbicide use (Carson, 1962); to major soil erosion linked
with poor understanding of environmental constraints and/or inappropriate crop selec-
tion; to environmental damage where changing practice was not fully thought through
and not appropriately linked to physical environmental constraints, and the ecological
and social contexts. Formation of the ‘dustbowl’ in the USA, the spread of bilharziasis
(schistosomiasis) linked with expanding irrigation following the Aswan Dam develop-
ment in Egypt, and the diminishing Aral Sea in the former Soviet states of Uzbekistan
and Kazakhstan all testify to unintended detrimental consequences of changing agri-
cultural practice. As contemporary efforts to model crop–environmental relationships
reveal (Kang et al., 2009) the interplay of soils and climates creates a complex matrix
of environmental controls. These further interact with a highly diverse range of com-
petitor (pests) and beneficial organisms (e.g., pollinators, earthworms), making a highly
multivariate situation to which, in a modern society, must be added the influences of

Table 2.1 Classification of world agriculture
Major Agricultural Systems (after Whittlesey, 1936) Helburn’s (1957) Additional Variables
Nomadic herding Degree of specialisation
Livestock ranching Labour and capital ratios to land and to
each other
Shifting cultivation Sedentary as against migratory habits
Rudimentary sedentary tillage Scale of operation
Intensive subsistence rice tillage with rice dominant Land tenure systems
Intensive subsistence tillage without paddy rice Level of living standard achieved
Commercial plantation crop tillage Value of the land
Mediterranean agriculture Value or volume of production
Commercial grain farming Authors’ proposed additions:
Commercial livestock and crop farming Degree of habitat modification
Subsistence crop and stock farming Degree/extent of species modification
Commercial dairy farming Ecosystem change/simulation
Specialised horticulture External energy demand/ water footprint
Authors’ proposed additions:
Intensive poultry farming
Commercial forestry/timber production
‘Intensive’ organic systems
Agroforestry/agro-ecology/permaculture/diversified
farming systems
financial institutions, global politics, cultural expectations and shifting dietary prefer-
ences often driven by the food processing industry. These latter considerations are far
removed from the fundamental needs of successful agriculture, namely, the right envi-
ronmental conditions, or the realistic means to create them.
Early attempts by geographers to identify the principal agricultural systems of the
Earth were largely descriptive of the agricultural activities in specific areas or regions.
Whittlesey’s attempt to classify agricultural systems according to key functional aspects
or inherent properties of the agriculture undertaken was perhaps the first objective
classification of world agriculture (Whittlesey, 1936). This classification combines ele-
ments of the natural environment (such as climate, soil, slope), with human factors
(e.g., population density, technological stage, intensiveness of the system and cultural
tradition) and identifies 13 types of agriculture that categorised the major systems of the
time (Table 2.1). Helburn (1957) proposed a number of refinements or additional vari-
ables to allow for a more quantitative approach and these, along with our own sugges-
tions, are included in Table 2.1.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTEXT
Despite the range of environmental adaptations and modifications humans make

to facilitate crop and livestock production, the physical resource base still largely
determines the type of agriculture that can be economically undertaken. Table 2.2

Table 2.2 Environmental factors influencing growth and productivity of agricultural

animals and plants
Key Specific Subfactors Comment

Factors
Climate Precipitation: quantity, Major control of crop productivity; essential for animal
factors distribution, type husbandry. Impacts on ‘water-use efficiency’
Low soil moisture levels can retard uptake of plant
nutrients both directly and indirectly through effects on
soil microorganisms
Extreme storm events, e.g., hurricanes, hailstorms may
destroy plant crops; damage animal housing
Temperature (air, soil): Optimum temperature ranges vary with species, age and
relative humidity stage of development
Affects all metabolic reactions in plants and animals
(including nutrient absorption). Respiration and
transpiration directly affected by temperature
Linked with humidity; influences plant and animal
comfort and productivity (e.g., disease incidence)
Some plant species require cold stimulus to trigger
germination or flowering (vernalisation)
Light: quantity, Essential to photosynthesis
intensity, duration Photoperiodism also important to plants
Animal fertility/production may be affected by day length
(e.g., egg laying)
Wind: velocity, May generate wind chill factors for livestock in cool
distribution conditions but beneficially cool livestock in high
temperatures assuming adequate water is available to
avoid dehydration
Evaporation and transpiration rates increase for higher
wind speeds; creates a greater water demand to avoid
water stress
Eddying may interfere with pollinators; cause direct
damage to crops; increase soil erosion
Atmospheric CO2 concentration limits growth of C3 plants at current
composition: ambient levels. C4 plants are less likely to benefit from
carbon dioxide projected elevated CO2 levels than C3 plants
(CO2) concentration Certain gases (e.g., sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide)
can be toxic to plants
Photochemical reactions with farm-derived nitrous oxide
emissions can generate damaging ground-level ozone
pollution
Edaphic Topsoil depth Rooting depth influences access to water, nutrients and
factors structural stability of plants
Texture and structure Influence on the bulk density of the soil and stability of
soil aggregates to withstand compaction
Influence on pore space, soil air and plant available
water in soil
High bulk densities inhibit seed establishment
Soil packing influences seed establishment
Organic matter content Influences a wide range of soil properties including the
cation exchange capacity of soils, soil structure, soil

Table 2.2 (continued)
Key Specific Subfactors Comment

Factors
Edaphic structural stability, water-holding capacity of soil, soil
factors colour, the retention and mobility of pollutants, buffering
capacity and chelation
pH Influences availability of certain plant nutrients, both to
the form/availability in the soil but also through influence
on the cation exchange capacity
Many species of soil-living organisms are influenced by
pH as are some soil-borne diseases (such as potato scab and
tobacco black root rot)
Base saturation An optimal supply of essential nutrients is desirable to
avoid deficiency symptoms, increased vulnerability to pest
and diseases, and a consequent reduction in yields
Site Slope and topography Influences radiation balance, temperature and water
factors availability. May affect germination and ‘growing season’
In undulating topography, temperature inversions commonly
render valley bottoms cold and may trap pollutants.
Thermal zone on the valley sides is optimum for
cultivation, with shelter from summit exposure as well as
valley bottom cold
Drainage Following a rainfall or flood event, the drainage of
gravitational water down through the soil profile is
essential as waterlogging can influence the nature, as well
as the rate, of organic decay; it also impedes the movement
of oxygen into the soil and thereby severely limits the
respiration activity of the plants. Waterlogging can also
lead to the development of reducing conditions and
nitrification is prevented, and denitrification may occur
Potentially harmful Presence of growth-restricting substances; subclinical and
substances: in air, clinical toxicity and death
water, soil Direct and indirect effects of acid rain
Biotic Soil fauna and flora: Influence a wide range of vital soil functions including
factors symbionts (e.g., the breakdown of organic compounds, role in soil
mycorrhizae) biogeochemical cycles, humus formation, role in aggregate
formation and stability, food webs
Mycorrhizae promote water and nutrient uptake
Local fauna and Source of pollinators and alternative hosts for beneficial
flora insect predators
Pests and Reduced productivity due to competition and reduced
pathogens: insects, absorption potential following attack/infestation
diseases, weeds Inappropriate use of pesticides may lead to pest
resurgence, emergence of new pests and loss of beneficial
associates, such as pollinators
Source: Developed from Tisdale et al. (1993) and information from wide-ranging sources, including the
authors’ personal research.

highlights the key environmental factors that influence crop and livestock growth,
aspects of which are explored in more detail in subsequent sections. Whilst a skilled
farmer can modify and address many of the edaphic (soil), biotic and site factors,
the climate factors, with the obvious exceptions of precipitation (through irrigation)
and wind (through shelterbelts), are less readily controlled (Tisdale et al., 1993). The
influence of each subfactor will vary according to crop species and growth stage. For
temperate areas warmth is crucial; for tropical areas water availability is key. Many
environmental factors are also interrelated and interdependent, and may also exhibit
inverse relationships. For example, in all areas the interplay of water availability at
‘comfortable’ temperatures is crucial to animal and plant growth, but as soil moisture
increases, soil air decreases and this may detrimentally impact on root growth and
nutrient cycling.
Photosynthesis
All agriculture hinges on successful photosynthesis. Photosynthesis is fundamental to

plant growth, which in turn supplies animal food chains and the raw material of decom-
position, which is essential to fungal crops. Water and carbon dioxide (CO2) are the
essential materials for carbohydrate production in photosynthesis; oxygen (O2) is the
waste product. Photosynthesis is driven by solar energy in the wavelengths suitable for
absorption by the green pigment chlorophyll, usually referred to as the photosynthetic
active range (PAR). This is typically 400 to 700 nanometres (nm). In greenhouse cultiva-
tion ensuring the right quality of light is an important consideration.
Self-evidently abundant and disease-free chlorophyll is also a key requirement. This
in turn requires good mineral nutrition, notably nitrogen and magnesium, avoidance
of predation, and disease control. Plants also need structure to hold their leaves in an
optimum position to intercept light; calcium is important for plant structural materials.
All cellular processes need to release the energy trapped in the carbohydrate food
produced in photosynthesis, and to build the diverse tissues essential for growth and
reproduction, thus extending the range of mineral nutrients and trace elements essen-
tial for success. Phosphorus is vital to DNA and RNA, essential genetic materials; it
is also important for energy release and transfer. Potassium is essential for numerous
enzyme reactions and is second to nitrogen in terms of the quantities needed for good
plant growth; sulphur is another major constituent of many proteins. Overall, plants
and animals need 30–40 mineral nutrients and most enter the food chain through plant
absorption from soils (Russell, 1961; Tisdale et al., 1993, Taylor et al., 1997). Mineral
uptake is driven by water availability to plant roots and transpiration rates to the atmos-
phere. Water is thus vital for successful plant growth; its role in mineral nutrition far
exceeds its direct involvement in the photosynthetic process (2 per cent of water absorbed
is used in photosynthesis). Soil conditions, aeration, porosity and so forth, as they affect
water and mineral availability and root development, are further fundamental physical
controls of crop productivity. Water availability, and hence nutrient uptake, are both
also affected by air humidity and temperature since these will influence stomatal activity.
Stomata will close during dry conditions; transpiration may also slow if the atmosphere
is saturated with water. When stomata close, conserving turgor and avoiding wilting,
water and mineral nutrient uptake cease as does gaseous diffusion from the atmosphere.

Photosynthesis rates are then reduced or cease. Dealing with dry conditions poses a
major conflict for plants between water conservation and the need for mineral uptake
and gaseous diffusion. Disease and predatory control will also be important for maxim-
ising leaf and thus chlorophyll availability.
Photosynthesis, and indeed most enzyme-controlled cellular functions for temper-
ate plants, operates best at temperatures around 25°C (77°F). Though the rate of
reaction can double for each 10°C (18°F) rise in temperature, other factors, especially
water and CO2 availability and problems of shading or excessive radiation exposure,
may interact to restrict the benefits of increased warmth. In this and in other ancil-
lary requirements plants vary and though many researchers have sought to make
geographical-scale generalisations, indicating prime zones for differing crop products
or farming activity (e.g., Seeman et al., 1979; Blaxter and Fowden, 1982; Robinson,
2004), for fundamental, day-to-day, decision-making these have limited application.
Paradoxically perhaps, given current concerns about rising CO2 levels and the poten-
tial impact on global climate, CO2 availability is a major limiting factor for photosyn-
thesis and, particularly for some greenhouse crops, may become a ‘limiting factor’ for
plant productivity.
In any specific situation these ‘controls’ interact and in the competition for light,
nutrients and water, plants exhibit a huge diversity of strategies. A fundamental con-
sideration is the photosynthetic pathway. Most crop plants have either a C3 or C4
photosynthetic mechanism; a minority use the crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM)
pathway (Table 2.3; also see Box 2.1). The C3 pathway is the oldest, or ancestral
pathway originating around 2800 million years ago (Edwards et al., 2010) at a time when
Earth’s atmosphere had more abundant carbon dioxide. C3 pathway plants are more
CO2 and water demanding than C4 pathway plants, which are believed to have evolved
later (late Oligocene, 30 million years ago; Sage and Zhu, 2011), when atmospheric CO2
concentrations were already reduced by earlier vegetation production and its subsequent
fossilisation and storage as coal, oil and so forth due to major geological change. In
general, C4 pathway plants are more productive than C3 plants. Though they need more
energy to produce a unit of carbohydrate they are less water demanding and use carbon
dioxide and nitrogen more efficiently. Because they use more energy per unit carbohy-
drate produced they are better suited to tropical areas than C3 plants. Productivity rates
in C3 pathway plants peak at lower light intensities. Experimentally it has been shown
that in temperate climates or poor light conditions their productivity may exceed C4
plants. C4 pathway plant crops are typically, though not exclusively, tropical grasses
(e.g., Panicum, millet), whereas temperate crops (e.g., wheat, barley, rye) are C3 pathway
plants. Exploring the differing ecological requirements of these plants provides impor-
tant developmental hints for future agriculture. Recently, attention has turned to the
possibility of genetically engineering important C3 food crops, such as rice, to adopt a
C4 photosynthetic pathway. If achievable this would raise rice productivity and perhaps
help to bridge the 70 per cent food deficit predicted for 2050 (FAO, 2009; Connor et al.,
2011; Oosterveer and Sonnenfeld, 2011; Sheehy and Mitchell, 2011a, 2011b). Rice is the
staple cereal for about half the world’s population. The additional CAM photosynthetic
mechanism is mainly, but not exclusively, found in succulents and is less directly impor-
tant for agricultural production. Pineapples are a notable example of a CAM pathway
agricultural crop (Table 2.3).

Table 2.3 Photosynthetic systems of some globally important crops
Product Photosynthetic System

C3 C4 CAM
Beverages and drugs Tea Agave
Coffee
Root crops Potatob
Cassavab
Peanutsb
Grains Wheatb Maizeb
Barley Millet
Riceb Sorghum
Amaranth
Sugars Sugar beet Sugar caneb
Fibres Flax Sisal
Cottonb
Oils Soybeanb
Sunflower
Rapeseed
Fruits Appleb Pineapple
Banana Prickly pear
Tomatob
Grapeb
Forage crops Ryegrass Panic grass
Afalfa Rhodes grass
Clovera
Notes:
a. There are no C4 pathway legumes.
b. The 12 most valuable crops.
Source: Adapted from Connor et al. (2011); Sage and Zhu (2011).
The Carbon Dioxide Conundrum
Carbon dioxide is clearly essential for photosynthesis. The CO2 concentration in the
atmosphere is regularly monitored at Mauna Loa, Hawaii; as of 2013 it was at 394 parts
per million by volume (ppmv), having risen from 316 ppmv in 1959 when routine record-
ing began. This represents an average annual growth rate around 1.4 ppmv per year
though, as the Mauna Loa data show, annual increases are greater for recent years
than in the 1960s (Tans and Keeling, 2013). It is projected that CO2 levels may rise to
500 ppmv by 2050 (IPCC-DDC, 2011) and, unless globally we change our patterns of
fossil fuel production and use, levels may reach 600–1000 ppmv by 2100 (Taub, 2010).
The rise in global CO2 has triggered extensive research on likely consequences for all
life on Earth, with a special focus on global warming. For crop agriculture, however,
irrespective of any global warming effect and its consequences (e.g., weather extremes,
changing rainfall patterns, excessive high temperatures), we also need to understand

BOX 2.1 PHOTOSYNTHETIC PATHWAYS AND THEIR AGRICULTURAL

IMPLICATIONS
C3 pathway photosynthesis has two key processes, termed the light- dependent and light-
independent (dark) reactions. In the light reaction, energy trapped by chlorophyll splits water,
releasing oxygen (O2), which diffuses back to the atmosphere, and hydrogen (H1) ions that
become available to the light-independent reaction, the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2). This
gives the basic C3 organic molecule, which ultimately (through the Calvin cycle reactions) gives
a C3 sugar. Both stages of the process occur together in the mesophyll cells of the leaves.
The source of CO2 is the atmosphere and its availability in the chloroplasts depends on diffu-
sion through the plant stomata and uptake by the photosynthetic enzyme ribulose bisphosphate
carboxylase oxygenase (rubisco). However, rubisco also has an affinity for oxygen, which is more
abundant than CO2 in the air diffusing into the mesophyll cells from the atmosphere, and that is
released in the light-dependent reaction, which splits water. Thus there is competition for uptake
by rubisco and at temperatures in excess of 20°C (68°F) O2 begins to out-compete CO2 and
photosynthetic productivity in C3 plants declines. This is termed photorespiration, as distinct from
photosynthesis, because it is a process driven by light, which consumes oxygen and releases
carbon dioxide, as occurs in normal respiration. In C4 pathway plants this problem is overcome
in two ways: the sites of initial absorption of CO2 and subsequent incorporation into the carbohy-
drate by rubisco are separately located within the leaf and the initial absorption, into a C4 acid,
is by the enzyme phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) carboxylase, which is insensitive to oxygen. The
C4 product is then transported from the outer mesophyll cells to internal bundle sheath cells
with chloroplasts where the CO2 is released generating a high CO2 concentration. There the CO2
is re-fixed by rubisco in the absence of oxygen. The transfer from outer mesophyll cells to inner
bundle sheath cells is termed a CO2 ‘pump’ and requires energy to drive the process. Thus, C4
plants require more energy than C3 pathway plants and hence it is only in hot and sunny climates
that the C4 pathway is beneficial. However, the C4 process has emerged independently in over
45 groups of unrelated species in 19 vascular plant families, suggesting that this alternative trait,
and the rewards of higher tropical crop productivity it promises, may be relatively straightforward
to introduce into key C3 food crops grown in tropical areas. The evidence that some agriculturally
important plants, e.g., cassava and grasses of the forage genus Panicum, have photosynthetic
behaviour and leaf structures intermediate between the C3 and C4 processes further reinforces
this view. Currently, work is focused on rice (Connor et al., 2011; Sheehy and Mitchell, 2011a,
2011b). This research is of major importance given expectations of increasing global population
and climate change. However, it is likely to be a long-term endeavour. Sheehy and Mitchell (2011a)
estimate it will be 15 years before C4 rice strains are produced.
The CAM pathway is a specific adaptation to the conflicting problems of hot, typically near-desert
environments, namely the need to conserve water by closing the stomata versus the need to absorb
carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, which can only occur when light energy is available; in other words
when stomata most need to close. In CAM plants this dilemma is resolved through CO2 absorption
at night when conditions are cooler and stomata open. The CO2 is stored as malate, a C4 organic
acid, and subsequently, in daylight, it can be released into C3 pathway photosynthesis. The CAM
mechanism, though prevalent in succulents, is not confined to these families. It has been noted in
over 300 genera and 16 000 species from 40 major plant groups. As such, it is a prime example of
convergent evolution in response to a widely experienced strong environmental constraint. There
is evidence that some plants can be facultative rather than obligate CAM plants, meaning they can
switch to the CAM mechanism when conditions are extreme and revert to C3 or C4 behaviour in
more favourable circumstances. This transition can be seen in pineapple giving very high rates of
crop productivity (Connor et al., 2011).

the potential benefit of increased productivity especially in C3 pathway plants, which

comprise 95 per cent of all plant species and ten of the 12 most valuable food crops
(Ziska, 2008; Sage and Zhu, 2011). Recent research has mainly focused on potential
climatic effects (Parry et al., 2007) rather than the direct ‘fertilisation’ benefits and wider
plant community effects (Ziska, 2008). However, there is evidence that beneficial plant
response can already be seen during the change from mid-twentieth century to current
CO2 levels. For C3 plants, at around 320 ppmv (the mid-twentieth-century level) CO2 is
an important limiting factor on productivity. Laboratory-based research from the 1980s
clearly demonstrated that raising CO2 levels led to increased productivity in photosyn-
thesis for C3 plants (Kimball, 1983; Cure and Acock, 1986). The increased CO2 levels
nearly saturate rubisco (see Box 2.1) within the photosynthesising cells and thus suppress
the potential for photorespiration. C4 plants, on the other hand, showed more limited
response to experimentally raised CO2 levels since, due to the physical separation of the
sites of initial CO2 absorption and conversion to carbohydrate, the process is efficient at
typical ambient levels of carbon dioxide.
However, a simplistic view that more CO2 means more plant productivity and thereby
means more productive agriculture demands caution. Results from single species
growing under controlled conditions in growth chambers or greenhouses with abundant
water, nutrients and light may not apply to the more complex field situation. In the
outdoor environment, water and nutrients and light may be more variable. Furthermore,
all plants will benefit so that from an agricultural perspective increased competition
from weed species may result. More recently free-air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE)
experiments have been developed in an attempt to more realistically evaluate implica-
tions for agriculture and for natural ecosystems (Taub, 2010). Natural or agricultural
ecosystems are fumigated with elevated levels of carbon dioxide ranging from 475 to 600
ppmv. From a range of FACE experiments, with diverse plant species, growth at ele-
vated levels of CO2 increased leaf photosynthesis in C3 plants by 40 per cent on average.
Typically a 17 per cent increase in overall above-ground dry matter productivity was
seen and around 30 per cent for below-ground produce. Legumes in particular responded
positively to CO2 enrichment. This may reflect exchanging benefits of increased carbon
fixation to root nodule bacteria, in turn promoting increased nitrogen fixation (ibid.).
Raising CO2, however, also changes plant physiology and water absorption. As the
need for abundant stomata to ensure good supplies of CO2 declines, the number of
stomata decreases, thus also reducing transpiration losses and thereby water require-
ments. In short, plants acclimate. This though may also reduce nutrient uptake from soil
and the reduced crop or natural ecosystem water demands may also ultimately affect
local hydrological cycles. Observation shows that under raised CO2 levels leaf nitrogen
concentrations typically decrease by up to 13 per cent; and since protein concentrations
in plant tissues are closely tied to plant nitrogen status, these changes may have important
effects on species at higher trophic levels including livestock and human nutrition. Crop
concentrations of other nutritionally important minerals including calcium, magnesium
and phosphorus may also decrease under elevated CO2 levels. There is also evidence that
plants adjust, initially doubling productivity but subsequently showing a more limited,
20 per cent, response (Cure and Acock, 1986) in part due to the adjustment of stomatal
frequency. The situation is complex and much more research is needed. All that can be
said with certainty is that all C3 plants will show a marked increase in productivity due

to increased levels of CO2, though the extent of this will be governed by nutrient avail-
ability; that some plants may respond more than others opening the way for selection of
‘favourable responders’ (Ziska, 2008); that new competitors to agricultural crop species
may emerge (weeds too will grow more rapidly); and that effects will be seen throughout
the food chain. For C4 plants where the response is less, new competition from C3 weed
species may emerge.
These observations have considerable importance for future agriculture and for inno-
vation in plant breeding and crop selection, such as the genetic modification of important
C3 crop plants, for example, rice and soybean, to include C4 characteristics. Increased
productivity in C3 rice, for example, may be achieved without recourse to C4 transfer.
Greenhouse production and carbon dioxide

Globally, since 2012, the area of greenhouse vegetable production has exceeded one
million acres and currently approaches 408 890 ha (1 101 353 acres) (GrowerTalks,
2013; Hickman, 2013). Data from 125 countries show a continuing global expansion of
this industry with rapid increases in Mexico, Turkey, Russia, China and Canada. The
Netherlands and Mediterranean Europe, and especially Almería province in Southeast
Spain, are major producers and exporters of greenhouse crops. Greenhouses repre-
sent a commercial-scale controlled environment where potentially farmers may ensure
adequate water, nutrients, warmth and light at all times. In these ‘ideal’ growing condi-
tions artificially increasing carbon dioxide will further enhance productivity and large-
scale intensive commercial greenhouse crop producers have long adopted this practice.
Indeed, where greenhouses are tightly sealed against the external environment carbon
dioxide levels may become as low as 100 ppmv in daylight hours, restricting productivity
(Jin et al., 2009). Raising levels to 700–1000 ppmv will generally raise productivity,
though species’ response may vary in detail. Raising CO2 concentration beyond this level
does not improve returns (Mortensen, 1987).
Enhancing carbon dioxide levels has been less common in the individual family-owned
smaller-scale plastic greenhouses commonly found in the major greenhouse crop region
of Almería. These family systems are not well suited to the high-technology approaches
adopted, for example, in the Netherlands. Experimental work by Fundación Cajamar
(Uclés Aguilera, 2012, personal communication) is now exploring the feasibility of
low-technology mechanisms for CO2 enrichment in these greenhouses. CO2 levels in
plastic greenhouses are typically below ambient levels, at around 350 ppmv, and raising
CO2 levels to around 400 ppmv can bring considerable benefits. Work is being done to
explore the possible use of greenhouse plant waste to generate CO2, thus, incidentally,
also addressing another major regional problem – organic waste disposal. Similar work
for small-scale greenhouses has been trialled in China by Jin et al. (2009). Importantly
this CO2 production does not rely on fossil fuels. In the Almería research station associ-
ated heat generated is used to prevent night-time condensation and thereby also helps to
reduce the potential for fungal infections.
Water: Too Little and Too Much
Water is a fundamental requirement for crop growth and typically comprises

60–95 per cent of an organism (Taylor et al., 1997). Water availability is therefore vital to

all forms of successful agriculture. Maintaining adequate freshwater supplies for human
societies overall, including supply to urban communities, is a major twenty-first-century
challenge. Water for agriculture thus must be seen as part of the broader web of water
supply issues. The competing demands of farmers, industry and urban societies need
careful management and may require behaviour change and innovation. Sufficient water
is not the only concern; water quality matters, as do the concerns of extreme precipita-
tion such as damaging hail and flood. Farmers must also avoid contaminating run-off
such as is associated with excess nitrogen fertiliser use and silage and which has triggered
eutrophication problems in rivers and some coastal waters. At a time when climate
change associated with rising greenhouse gas emissions is changing weather patterns,
predictability of water supply and guaranteeing good-quality water for agriculture are
particularly challenging.
Most crop agriculture is rainfed, sometimes with top-up from intermittent spray
irrigation as, for example, typically happens in East Anglia in the UK. This works well
where seasonal water deficits are short and infrequent, occur in predictable cycles, and
access to stored water is easy and affordable. However, even in temperate mid-latitudes
where historically winter water replenishment of groundwater aquifers has ensured sup-
plies, this approach is being questioned. Media perception is of an increased frequency of
drought (Rumore, 2011; Rushe, 2012) associated with climate change but a UK analysis
of historical weather data does not entirely support this view (Marsh et al., 2007). In
practice, a wide diversity of factors contributes to the perception of drought. Increased
urbanisation and changed land use patterns and practices, which influence rates of water
consumption and precipitation absorption and transfer to groundwater storage, along
with changing seasonal patterns in temperature regime and precipitation patterns, have
led to an increased duration and intensity of drought and flood episodes. These factors,
together with the projected challenges of likely climate change, are prompting some
farmers to rethink crop choice. Devastating droughts and failed harvests in the USA in
2012, leading to major financial losses and beyond that to reduced food aid potential,
and similarly failed Russian grain harvests, reinforce the view that generally we may need
to rethink our approach to water use and crop selection even in temperate areas (Devitt,
2012; Goldenberg, 2012). They have also prompted a search for new dependable water
supplies.
In Mediterranean climates where summer warmth coincides with seasonally dry
conditions more radical water conservation approaches are needed. Irrigation systems
and even large-scale water distribution have been long established, initiated by Roman
and Arab peoples. In Southern Spain sophisticated water conservation systems were
developed by Moorish societies in the eighth to fifteenth centuries AD. These included
underground water transfers in qanat systems, remnants of which can still be seen, for
example, near Tabernas in Andalucía, as well as the more familiar and widespread open
water irrigation systems typically linked with terraced agriculture. Mixed systems of
citrus, or at higher levels almonds, with underplanting of cereals, salad and fodder crops,
were common, with late season grazing providing manure. More recent expansion of
olives and vines into semi-arid areas has seen more conservative water practices with the
introduction of drip irrigation delivered, often computer controlled, along with nutrients
(termed fertigation). Supply pipes in newer developments are often buried, emerging
only at the point of feed and thus minimising evaporation losses. This approach also

minimises the risk of salinisation of the soil surface, which is a major hazard of open air
irrigation systems.
Salinisation of soils, rendering them unusable, is a major risk in irrigation that
draws on groundwater. Stored groundwater derives from rainwater that has percolated
through the soil into storage. En route it will have gained nutrients and thus it has higher
conductivity than rainwater. When used in irrigation these dissolved nutrients will be left
as a residue on the soil surface unless particular attention is given to reducing surface
evaporation or periodically flushing to remove salts. Details depend on local topogra-
phy, water sources and delivery mechanisms and the lessons learned from early irrigation
failures mean that current practice designs to mitigate this hazard.
The major challenge is the source of water for irrigation. As agriculture has developed
in dry areas and urban populations have expanded and living standards risen, demands
on water supply have increased. As Figure 2.1 shows, readily available terrestrial fresh-
water from rain, rivers, soils and near surface groundwater, comprises only a small
fraction of water on Earth. Of this, agriculture accounts for 70 per cent of all freshwater
consumed worldwide, though the balance between agriculture, industry and human
consumption varies considerably. For example, in Belgium less than 1 per cent of avail-
able water abstraction is used in agriculture, in the UK 8–10 per cent and the USA 40
per cent, whereas in Bangladesh 87 per cent of abstracted water is used for agricultural
purposes (FAO AQUASTAT, 2012). Globally, demand for freshwater is increasing by
64 million m3 annually. Potential supplies include locally captured and stored rainwa-
ter, direct abstraction from rivers, the use of wells and groundwater, major reservoir
impoundments, interbasin transfers from areas of surplus to areas of need, and desalina-
tion of brackish and seawater. In extremis even rainmaking by cloud seeding has been
attempted but the efficacy of this process for rain generation, rather than avoidance
of crop damage (e.g., through dispersion of potentially damaging hail), is challenged
and costs can be considerable (UNEP, 1998; Chernikov, 2009). Major engineering
approaches involving dam developments and interbasin transfers are increasingly being
challenged on environmental grounds. Irreversible impacts on donor area wildlife may
be experienced in addition to ecological and environmental changes around the dam
location.
Reservoir systems only work if there is a river or snow melt to impound and geological
conditions support water storage. Evaporation losses must also be low or controllable.
In this respect the rapid expansion of plastic greenhouse cultivation on the Campo de
Dalías in Eastern Andalucía was supported by reservoir developments in the impervious
strata of the neighbouring high mountains of Sierra Nevada trapping snow melt. Beyond
the high Sierra, water percolating though sedimentary strata generated groundwater
reservoirs. Greenhouses developed on the coastal plains of the Campo de Dalías initially
drew on this groundwater source, later supplemented by reservoir development that also
supported the associated expanding communities and industry. Now groundwater tables
have fallen and in some near-coastal areas saline water ingress from the Mediterranean
has locally rendered groundwater supplies unsuitable for some crops. Tomatoes are an
exception and widespread tomato production including the development of new varie-
ties has occurred. Nevertheless, greater opportunities for crop diversification, achievable
through greater certainty of high-quality water supplies, would give more stability to
this industry, which is annually worth several thousand million euros and delivers salad

Note: Not all precipitation reaches the ground surface; much is intercepted and evaporated from vegetation
canopies. Interception loss reflects evaporation from the surface of the tree, or other vegetation, canopy;
throughfall is precipitation that passes through the canopy to the ground and is less than open totals;
stemflow is water that funnels down the branches and tree trunks, spatially concentrating rainfall gains at
ground level. Transpiration is water loss from the stomata of plants; evapotranspiration includes all water
losses from soils and small open areas with that transpired by plants from vegetated areas. In some weather
conditions vegetated surfaces, especially tree canopies, may trigger moisture deposition from low clouds,
increasing moisture received by plants over open precipitation totals.
Source: Created by the authors (data from Barry and Chorley, 2010).
Figure 2.1 Water stores on Earth: the hydrological cycle
crops to much of Northern Europe, and now even exports to the USA and Canada
among other destinations (Hortidaily, 2013).
A sustainable water solution must be found. In common with other European Union
(EU) countries Spain is a signatory to the EU Water Framework Directive (European
Commission, 2000). Local communities are working to implement more integrated

approaches to water management that are sustainable, enable crop diversification and
continued development, and avoid pollution and degradation of semi-natural areas
and depletion of natural wetland ecosystems (Downward and Taylor, 2007; Grindlay
et al., 2013).
In this Spanish context a variety of solutions have been proposed, which arguably
apply in many dry regions. Creating a sustainable regional water policy is a priority and
a highly political issue. Presently major water transfers from the wetter north have been
shelved (Programa Agua); they posed major environmental concerns, in part conflict-
ing with the EU Habitats Directive (European Commission, 1992), as well as triggering
legitimate opposition from farmers in the donor regions. New reservoir developments
are possible, but they are vulnerable to drought as occurred in 1990–95 (Mestre Barcelo,
1995) and potential climate change. Drier conditions are a regionally predicted con-
sequence of global warming, making reservoir replenishment vulnerable in the longer
term. One alternative solution is water reuse (from urban waste discharge). The irriga-
tion cooperative, Las Cuatro Vegas de Almería, has already implemented this in farming
areas of the Andarax valley close to Almería city. Ozonation gives bacterial control,
which is imperative, and the system provides good-quality water that also has the addi-
tional economic benefit of some nitrate enrichment from previous fertiliser additions,
reducing new fertiliser needs and costs for users. However, the perceived health hazards
of grey water are currently restricting its use. This, in part, arises from unfounded criti-
cism relating to food poisoning incidents in Northern Europe (later proved to be unre-
lated to Spanish produce) that led to huge market losses for Spanish cucumber suppliers
in 2011. Nevertheless, where water supplies are locally acute farmers may be tempted
into very localised grey water reuse, lacking formal sanitisation processes. It is this type
of situation that, worldwide, has led to incidents questioning the safety of some irrigated
foodstuffs. Ensuring sufficient affordable water is an important priority for maintaining
quality guarantees and thus markets and profitability.
The reliable alternative is desalination of seawater but this option is currently under-
used. The key problem is cost, which, once installation costs have been allowed for, is
mainly a question of energy supply. The energy should also preferably be supplied from a
renewable, non-CO2-emitting source. Differential costs (pumping from the family well is
free or minimal cost) mean that desalination has not been used as extensively as perhaps
it should be. There is potential to mix desalinated water with well water and thereby
extend the life of the well and help to replenish groundwater stores and reduce costs of
use of desalinated water. But in Southern Spain, recent wetter years, and paradoxically
problems of flood and rising water tables, have meant that the perception of drought
vulnerability has reduced. The costs of developing desalination thus no longer seem
justified.
A similar situation has been reported in the Western Cape, South Africa (Millar, 2012).
Here extreme drought in 2009–10 led to innovation in desalination plant design and
installation of rapidly constructed emergency ‘modular’ plants. However, return of
rainfall has seen ‘mothballing’ of these plants and, as in Almería, seeming denial of
potential drought vulnerability. These Spanish and South African desalination examples
flag up one of the major issues of semi-arid areas. Not only are they seasonally dry but
rainfall periodicity is also highly variable. This makes acceptance of, and investment
in, expensive long-term new technology projects difficult. More integrated planning

i ncorporating long-term weather data as well as projected water use is needed to maxim-
ise regional potential and, where a high-value agricultural industry has developed, as in
Southern Spain, to ensure its longer-term security.
Too much water, or rainfall at the wrong time or intensity, challenges agriculture
just as much as too little. Late spring rainfall may waterlog soils and prevent timely
crop planting or soil preparation. This may have knock-on effects through the ensuing
growing season. For example, a late-emerging crop may be more vulnerable to late
season frosts; peak pollinator presence may not coincide with flowering; incidence
of insect predators or disease vectors may be favoured; and harvest may be delayed.
Equally, late season rains may delay harvest and reduce crop value. Silage making is
a common solution to rescue late or damaged crops and conserve for fodder in humid
areas. Wet weather after grain and oilseed crops reach maturity can delay dry down,
reduce grain quality and in some cases, for example wheat, can lead to sprouting that
may result in total loss of crop value. The details will vary with context but the aim
is always to optimise water use, timing planting and harvesting and adjusting crop
or varietal selection to coincide with predicted weather patterns and avoiding water-
logging through appropriate drainage. Of course, weather predictability cannot be
guaranteed and in the current situation where effects of global warming appear to be
greater weather extremes and seasonal shifts, the challenge to farmers has intensified.
Flexibility is key but for many, locked into intensive production systems underpinned
by large-scale financial institutions and investments, this may be hard to achieve
(Liu et al., 2008).
For most crops flooding, especially uncontrolled flood, is detrimental. Reliable drain-
age systems are needed where flood hazards are common. Flood meadows, for example,
have long been integrated into European agriculture in low-lying seasonally flooded
areas. In Europe, water meadows were traditionally artificially created adjacent to
rivers. A system of sluices and stops directed water circulation from the river through,
typically, hay meadows and pastures and back to the river. Beneficial silt and nutrients
were imported to the meadow, incidentally reducing eutrophication hazard in the river;
the water kept the meadows warmer and frost free in spring, promoting early cropping
and ensured water availability throughout the growing season. Late summer or post-
harvest grazing provided manure for further nutrient enrichment ahead of winter fallow
and renewed spring flooding. These controlled systems avoided the key flood hazard of
deoxygenated soils.
Rice is the only major crop adapted to waterlogged environments. The root systems
of rice avoid anoxia due to the presence of aerenchymatous tissues that enable diffusion
of oxygen from the leaves to the root system. However, plants cannot survive prolonged
periods of flooding and submergence of aerial parts. Where topographically feasible,
paddy rice farmers have developed water management systems of varying degrees
of technological sophistication but, in principle, similar to those used in traditional
European water meadows. However, in the heavily populated lowlands of Southeast
Asia periodic floods of a week of more in duration are common, frequently leading
to crop losses that are devastating for small-scale family farmers. Developing flood-
tolerant rice strains is a long-standing aim of rice breeding programmes and has achieved
some success. Swarna-Sub1, a widely used cultivar in India and Bangladesh, has been
genetically transformed to give flood tolerance for two to three weeks. It is now grown

over 5 Mha, giving yield benefits between 1 and 2 tonnes per hectare without loss of grain
quality (Connor et al., 2011).
Human adaptive ingenuity to excess water is perhaps seen at its most extreme in the
floating garden cultivation systems of Asia and Central America (Irfanullah et al., 2011;
Green Economy Coalition, 2012). But though locally important, these systems are not
a major consideration for global agriculture. A far less pleasing consequence of human
activity is watershed disruption and transformation through deforestation. This speeds
up the flow of water through the hydrological cycle, giving rapid run-off after rain and
promoting local flood events. It also means that less water is retained in the drainage
system for future crop use. Seasonal drought is thereby also intensified. Similar effects
are seen in catchments modified by extensive urbanisation due to the spread of imper-
meable land surfaces. Indeed, any land use change that reduces vegetation cover will
significantly affect local hydrological regimes. It will reduce percolation to groundwater
and intensify run-off to rivers since it will reduce rainfall interception by canopy cover
as well as diminishing uptake by root systems. Resultant flood–drought extremes are a
predictable outcome.
A Comfortable Environment
All organisms have preferred environments and exhibit ‘limits to tolerance’, as first
defined ecologically by Shelford (see Odum, 1971) in terms of environmental controls. A
key aim in agriculture is to achieve a comfortable environment, which should maximise
crop plant or animal productivity. In nature a complex interaction of environmental con-
trols occurs and thus an organism may have its maximum distribution displaced from its
optimum environment in terms of, for example, temperature, if this zone is also favoured
by a major predator. Agriculturally we eliminate these conflicts by pest and disease
control – predator removal chemically with pesticides or physically, as in hunting, or
by habitat removal, or by guarding crops and animals. We select, or genetically design,
plant crop strains resistant to known pests and livestock tolerant of anticipated climatic
extremes. We modify environments through, for example, irrigation and applying ferti-
lisers; by provision of drinking water for livestock and growing supplementary fodder;
and more obviously, in livestock rearing, through housing that provides shelter against
winter cold or extreme winds and shading to protect from summer heat. Greenhouses
and related measures such as polytunnels similarly protect plants from weather extremes.
Traditionally, agricultural scientists have tried to identify ‘the growing season’ as a
means of understanding the major crop growing regions. Growing season is at best a
very broad-brush concept since each species will have its own distinctive thresholds for
temperature, water, light and nutrients –indeed a plethora of environmental variables
such as identified above (see Table 2.2). Furthermore, at different points in a plant’s
development different threshold temperatures may be relevant. Young plants are gener-
ally more temperature and water susceptible than established plants, annual crops more
vulnerable than perennial trees. Germination may have different threshold demands
from seed production. Many crop plants require a phase of winter cold, termed ver-
nalisation, to induce flowering, and hence seed production, or to stimulate germination.
Different strains of the same species may vary in their response and this variation is
made use of commercially and in plant breeding programmes. For example, winter-sown

wheat cultivars require a cold stimulus to induce flowering whereas spring-sown culti-
vars do not. Winter varieties are therefore used in areas with moderate winters such as
England, Ukraine and Ohio in the USA. Here prolonged winter cold guarantees vernali-
sation but is not so extreme that the young plants are killed. Spring-sown wheat is used
where winters are too severe for survival, for example, Canada, and ‘spring’ cultivars
may also be autumn sown in climates such as Australia, Chile and South Africa where
winters are less severe but summers are very hot and hence the earlier maturation that
autumn sowing affords is advantageous.
As most typically used, ‘growing season’ implies the vegetative season, the time when
plants are actively and rapidly growing. Various definitions have been proposed but
all tend to have a mid-latitude focus. For example the 6°C (43°F) daily average tem-
perature threshold has often been taken to represent the start of growth in temperate
cereals and grasses, though in practice species may vary widely. The accumulated degree
days of average daily temperature above this key threshold has also been suggested as
a more informative and sensitive criterion. In the USA, the period from the average
date of the last killing frost of spring to the first of autumn was a widely used growing
season definition (Smith, 1975), but again this will vary for different species and locally
with topographic detail. These criteria, even for mid-latitudes, fail to acknowledge the
important interplay between temperature and water availability and, indeed, for many
areas of the world it is water, rather than temperature in terms of warmth, that is the key
determinant of the main crop-growing period. For tropical agriculture, protection from
heat rather than cold may be crucial. Fundamentally, attempts to define growing season
in terms of average conditions also ignore a key aspect of organic life – it is extremes that
kill and lead to crop failures and livestock deaths. No matter how benign the average, if
the extreme exceeds an organism’s limit of tolerance the crop will fail unless artificially
protected and animals may likewise die. In farming practice this is well understood and
for centuries assorted small-and large-scale modifications have been made, as discussed
above for water and for greenhouse crops.
Diverse mechanisms have been employed to avoid early season frost damage or chance
late killing frosts. These range from adapting crop selection to fit local microclimates,
to selecting favourable aspects and avoiding cold valley bottoms, to genetic modifica-
tion of crops to improve frost resistance. Modifying climate locally – in terms of spatial
configuration (use of ridge and furrows), or by short-term temporal adjustments (use of
burners), or by use of shelter such as temporary or permanent polytunnels – and beyond
that, greenhouse cultivation – are just some common adjustments. There are many strat-
egies (Oke, 1978); what works will depend on the details of crop physiology, topography,
albedo, synoptic weather situation and crop value in terms of the economic or social ben-
efits of protection in relation to projected returns. Some common approaches to avoid
damage are summarised in Table 2.4.
Many organisms are photosensitive, making this an important consideration for agri-
culture. Flowering in some plants is triggered by increasing day length (long-day plants)
while others (e.g., chrysanthemum) occupy the ‘late summer niche’ with blooming trig-
gered by decreasing day length (short-day plant). Changing day length, rather than the
absolute period of light or dark, is the key stimulus (Connor et al., 2011). This means
simple generalisations in relation to photoperiod, as sometimes proposed, need cautious
interpretation. Some long-day plants flower at day lengths well below 12 hours whereas

Table 2.4 Strategies to avoid ‘killing frosts’
Strategies Description
Artificial mists from water Reduces exposure to clear skies and thereby reduces night-time
sprays or smoke (it should radiative cooling
be ensured that these are not
polluting and not from CO2-
emitting fossil fuel sources)
Physical barriers such as:
Cheesecloth or straw Reduces exposure to clear skies and thereby reduces night-time
radiative cooling. Small physical barriers can be opened by day
to ensure maximum radiative input for photosynthesis
Mulches Protect the soil by becoming the effective surface for radiation
exchange
Polytunnels or glass Plastics in polytunnels or glass can be designed to ensure
transparency to PARa and thus avoid the need for complete
daytime removal. Aeration will be important to avoid high
humidity and condensation that favour pests and disease
Latent heat control Used especially on fruit crops. The actual temperature of frost
damage is usually (but not always) sub-zero, giving a range of
below-freezing temperatures that do not cause crop damage.
Freezing water droplets release latent heat and can thereby
raise the temperature around the developing buds or other
sensitive growing points
Artificial air mixing to avoid Useful when temporary night-time temperature inversions start
temperature inversion to form, especially over high-value crops, e.g., orchard crops at
sensitive blossom time
Direct heating Use of electric cables in soil. Use of burners or heaters
in orchards – these give direct warmth and also promote
convective mixing, avoiding short-term damaging frosts.
Burners need care to avoid air pollution and the use of CO2-
emitting fossil-sourced fuels should be avoided
Note: a. Photosynthetically active radiation.
flowering in some short-day plants is stimulated at longer (though declining) daylight

periods. For example, chickpea, a long-day plant, only flowers after day length exceeds
eight hours whereas a short-day cultivar of soybean flowers only as the daylight period
declines below 14 hours. Research suggests that for some plants periods of darkness may
be as crucial as light duration as the stimulus for flowering. Plant selection and breed-
ing can manipulate photoperiodism in major crop species, and in horticulture growers
may artificially stimulate day length triggers to promote out-of-season production, or to
achieve production in differing climates that are otherwise unsuitable. Some plants are
day-neutral and insensitive to day length and for these species temperature is the stimu-
lus for flowering. Some widely distributed species, for example, sunflower and ryegrass,

have cultivars showing all three photoperiodic responses. This is not unexpected since
phenotypes will be adapted to the day length characteristics of their native location on
Earth. This within-species variation gives opportunities for plant selection and breed-
ing to facilitate production in widely diverse climatic regions. As a very broad gener-
alisation tropical plants are day-neutral or short-day plants whereas plants originating
from higher latitudes tend to be day-neutral or long-day plants, often also requiring
vernalisation.
Animals also respond to the seasonal change in day length, which influences migra-
tory patterns, the resting phases of insect development, and reproduction in birds, some
mammals and many fish species such as trout (Odum, 1971). Egg laying in domestic
poultry is triggered by increasing day length and reduces as day length shortens. In
intensive systems artificial lighting is used to avoid the ‘autumnal’ decline in production.
Shelter for plant crops and animals is widely used for diverse purposes. In the open
landscape shelterbelts of trees or hedges may serve to modify the general environment, to
extend range, to promote early germination, to reduce water loss and exposure to wind
chill and excessive evapotranspiration, to avoid disease incidence, to prevent soil erosion,
and to provide habitats for beneficial organisms such as pollinators and the predators
of pests. In short, they promote a highly complex interplay of factors (Cleugh, 1998;
Maudsley, 2000). Historically, shelterbelts were a characteristic landscape feature of
many mid-latitude environments, for example Lombardy poplars (Populus nigra) in the
Netherlands and Northern France, and cypress (Cupressus spp.) providing shelter from
the mistral in Southern France and Italy. Though many were lost as farm mechanisation
favoured larger field units, replanting of hedgerows and shelterbelts has occurred as their
wildlife and protective function became more widely appreciated. Today their use has
been extended to large-scale projects, for example to mitigate potential desertification
in China and the Sudan (Mohammed et al., 1996, 1999; Wang et al., 2010). However,
the main uses remain in localised farm and nursery projects as well as general weather
protection for roads and housing. Diffuse barriers (40–60 per cent) are best since these
semi-porous barriers avoid severe lee-side eddying as may occur behind dense barriers
(Barry and Chorley, 2010). Effects of a barrier will start to be experienced 15–18 times its
height upwind and by planting a series of cross-wind barriers wind speed reduction and
associated growing climate benefits may be achieved over a large area. Barriers can be
used directly to protect crops, especially high-value crops such as flowers and soft fruit,
or indirectly to reduce heating bills in greenhouses and animal housing. Shelterbelts also
give beneficial shade for outdoor-reared livestock during hot summer periods and against
extreme winter cold. Incidentally, they provide wildlife reservoirs and habitat continuity,
increasingly important conservation concerns (Dover and Sparks, 2000; Maudsley, 2000),
which also have important direct agricultural benefits. These are the habitats for natural
predators and for wild pollinators. In a major global study, Garibaldi et al. (2013) showed
that wild pollinators were more effective and important than managed pollinators, such
as honey bees, for successful pollination and fruit set in a wide diversity of crops from
every farmed continent, including oilseed rape, coffee, onions, almonds, tomatoes and
strawberries. Reservoir habitats for wild predators can reduce the need for pesticides,
giving economic as well as environmental benefits. Shelterbelts may also be designed to
include commercially valuable species (Mohammed et al., 1996).
Animals too need shelter from wind, rain and snow and extremes of heat (Photos 2.1a,b).

Source: Authors’ own photographs.
Photos 2.1a,b Seasonal cattle shelters in the Italian Alps

Wind chill factors, straining maintenance of body temperature, will reduce animal pro-
ductivity as will extreme heat and thirst. All animal husbandry needs to ensure a com-
fortable environment for livestock to achieve high-quality, maximum-value produce.
Animals reared in intensive indoor systems will need appropriate adjustments of
warmth, humidity and light regimes alongside the comforts of bedding, food and space
to achieve maximum productivity and quality and, from the perspective of human con-
sumption, good flavour. Recent European legislation (European Union, 1999, 2007) to
increase the roosting space of battery-farmed and broiler chickens acknowledges not
only societal concerns over conditions but also these practical needs. Healthier (happier)
livestock are also less susceptible to chance disease that can cause major financial losses
in enclosed farming systems.
Edaphic Aspects
An ideal soil structure for agriculture is a loosely packed ‘crumb’ structure, with suffi-
ciently stable aggregates to withstand the impact of raindrops, wind and the trafficking
and trampling of machinery and animals over the soil surface. Tillage aims to promote
the optimum soil conditions for crop growth, and to generate a suitable ‘tilth’. Tilth
refers to the physical condition of the soil with respect to plant growth. Tillage may
be required to prepare the seedbed, to break up large aggregates, to loosen compacted
soils to aid root penetration and to incorporate organic matter. Soil structure refers to
the degree and type of aggregation of the aggregates or ‘peds’ that make up the soil and
the nature and distribution of pores and pore space. Soil structure affects the rainfall
acceptance by soil (i.e., infiltration rate and capacity), the ease with which excess water is
shed from the soil profile (drainage) and the storage and availability of water (and hence
supply of nutrients) to roots. It also plays an important role in heat transfer, increases
soil permeability, facilitates the exchange of gases, whilst the packing of soil around the
seed influences germination and the early development of the crop. The development of
soil structure results from a complex interplay between weather, cultivation practices,
soil texture (percentage of sand, silt, clay), chemical composition (e.g., iron oxides) and
organic matter content. Exposure of the soil to wetting and drying, and to freeze and
thaw cycles encourages the breakdown of larger aggregates into smaller peds. Sandy soils
do not readily form stable aggregates, whilst clay soils are typically highly cohesive and
vulnerable to swelling or cracking, or compaction, according to soil moisture conditions
(see Table 2.5). The cementing properties of free iron and aluminium oxides can also lead
to micro-aggregation and light friable soils can be found in the tropics even where clay
contents are greater than 85 per cent (Tivy, 1990). It is principally organic matter that
binds particles together to form stable aggregates and the role of humus (well decom-
posed organic matter) is crucial in promoting aggregate stability. Soil fauna and flora
also have a role to play in the development of a good soil structure, from the production
of exudates through to the binding properties of fibrous plant roots and fungal hyphae
(Tisdall and Oades, 1982).
Maintenance of the soil organic matter content (at least above 3 per cent) is of vital
importance to the farmer since soil organic matter plays a key role in a wide array of
other important soil functions and its influence extends across the range of physical,
chemical and biological effects. The clay–humus complex in soils plays an essential role

Note: NPK 5 nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
Source: Adapted from Alloway (1995) and Cresser et al. (1993).
Figure 2.2 Key components of the soil–plant system in relation to input, outputs and
nutrient availability
in the adsorption and plant availability of nutrients; from 20–70 per cent of the cation
exchange capacity of many soils is due to organic matter (Brady and Weil, 2002). In the
majority of agricultural systems, the soil is the source reservoir that supplies a range
of essential macronutrients (needed in relatively large amounts) and micronutrients
(needed in trace amounts) required for optimal plant growth. The principal fertiliser-
supplied macronutrients are nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The micronutrients
include elements such as sulphur, copper, zinc, molybdenum and boron. These nutrients
occur naturally in most soils but optimal nutrient uptake is dependent on sufficient
quantities of plant-available elements at or near the root–soil interface or rhizosphere.
Readily available nutrients are those either in the soil solution or as labile forms (such
as absorbed onto the humus–clay colloidal fraction of the soil; Figure 2.2). The amount
of available nutrients held in the soil is influenced by a complex range of factors includ-
ing the soil structure, texture (and clay mineralogy) and pH, and can be expressed by
the cation exchange capacity (CEC) of the soil colloidal complex. Soil pH affects the
chemical form and hence the availability of some nutrients to plants. Less available
(non-labile) forms of these essential elements also occur in soils in complex organic and
inorganic compounds, which may be slowly released, such as through weathering of the
residual mineral fraction (Figure 2.2).

The typically dark colour of soil organic matter facilitates the warming of soils by
reducing the surface albedo. The water-holding capacity of soil is also greatly influenced
by organic matter; indeed, organic matter can hold up to 20 times its weight in water
(Brady and Weil, 2002). Through the process of chelation, organic molecules form com-
plexes with metal cations and enhance the mobility and availability of micronutrients to
higher plants whilst mineralisation or decomposition of the organic matter yields a range
of macronutrients such as ammonium, nitrates, phosphates and sulphates. Organic
matter also plays a role in buffering soils against changes in pH, thereby helping to
maintain a uniform reaction in the soil (ibid.). The presence of soil organic matter can
also influence the bioactivity (and hence application rate), persistence, mobility and bio-
degradability of pesticides and other organic chemicals in the soil.
Soil texture refers to the fine earth fraction of the soil, or the less than 2 mm fraction.
Soils fall into one of a number of broad textural groups according to their particle size
distribution: sand, silt and clay (loams being a variable mixture of sand, silt and clay;
ibid.). Soil texture influences a number of other soil properties and knowledge of soil tex-
tural class can provide an indication as to the general soil physical properties (Table 2.5).
In natural systems, elements taken up by plants are eventually released back in the soil
and recycled and establish a so-called ‘steady-state’ system. In such contexts outputs,
or losses, through processes such as leaching, erosion and volatilisation are considered
largely insignificant and offset by the supply from weathering, biological fixation and
other imports as highlighted in Figure 2.2. By contrast in agro-ecosystems nutrient
cycling is modified by human activity with the aim of maintaining a balance of inputs
and outputs to sustain, and ideally improve, agricultural yield. Cultivation also affects
both the addition and rate of breakdown of organic matter. Unless the organic matter
Table 2.5 General influence and behaviour of soil particle size categories on selected soil
properties
Property/Behaviour Rating
Sand (0.06–2 mm) Silt (2–63 μm) Clay (, 2 μm)
Water-holding capacity Low Medium to high High
Aeration Good Medium Poor
Drainage rate High Slow to medium Very slow
% soil organic matter (SOM) Low Medium to high High to medium
SOM decomposition rate Rapid Moderate Slow
Warm-up in spring Rapid Moderate Slow
Compactibility Low Medium High
Susceptibility to wind erosion Moderate (if fine sand) High Low
Susceptibility to water erosion Low (unless fine sand) High Low if aggregated,
high if not
Suitability for tillage when wet Good Medium Poor
Cation exchange capacity Low Medium to high High
pH buffering capacity Low Medium High
Note: Exceptions to these generalisations occur due to differences in clay mineralogy and soil structure.
Source: After Brady and Weil (2002).

is decomposed (mineralisation), the nutrients it contains will remain in an unavailable

form. The decomposition of organic matter, and the formation of humus, is carried out
by soil organisms. Organic inputs are attacked by a host of different soil organisms and
the readily decomposable compounds, such as sugars, starches and simple proteins, are
broken down first via a series of stages into simple, soluble products such as gaseous
nitrogen, nitrates, phosphorus ions, and ammonia (ibid.). As decomposition of organic
matter proceeds, the more complex compounds (e.g., cellulose, fats, waxes and lignins)
are modified or broken down, and newly synthesised organic compounds are also pro-
duced by microorganisms, thereby providing the basic framework for soil humus. Nearly
all of the ten key groups of soil microorganisms (bacteria, actinomycetes, fungi, algae,
protozoa), meso-and macroorganisms (nematodes, oligochaetes [earthworms], arthro-
pods, molluscs, vertebrates) are involved to some extent in the decomposition and/or
breakdown of organic matter and the soil food web and thus form a vital component of
the soil, and hence agricultural, system (Kilham, 1994). Each group performs a range of
functions, but in most healthy soil ecosystems there are several to many different species
capable of carrying out the same process or activity, giving rise to ecosystem resilience
(Brady and Weil, 2002).
Bacteria play a key role in a number of biogeochemical cycles (e.g., nitrogen, carbon
and sulphur) and one of the best-known examples of a plant–microbe interaction in soil is
the symbiotic association between the soil bacterium Rhizobium and the roots of legumi-
nous plants. The actinomycetes help break down some of the more resistant compounds,
such as cellulose and chitin and play an important role in soil aggregation through the
generation of soil-binding agents such as filamentous hyphae. In more acidic soils a
similar role is provided by the fungi, but one of the most ecologically and economically
important roles of soil fungi is that certain specialised fungi, referred to as mycorrhizae,
form symbiotic associations with most higher plants. This mycorrhizal system influences
nutrient uptake and water relations, the fungus extending the plant’s reach for water and
nutrients, as well as increased disease resistance (Kilham, 1994). The protozoa form an
important link in the soil food webs and some are root pathogens; they consume bacteria
and, like many other soil organisms, excrete nitrogen and other nutrients in their waste.
Nematodes form another vital component of the soil ecosystem, although they can cause
a lot of damage through parasitism, whilst predaceous nematodes control levels of other
microorganisms in soil.
Earthworms are intimately involved in the decomposition of soil organic matter; they
mix and bury the litter fall and comminute the litter into smaller pieces for other soil
organisms. Earthworms also play a key role in soil aeration, soil penetrability and may
also influence nutrient movements as their channels allow greater infiltration of rainwa-
ter and their casts are rich in ammonia and partially digested organic matter. They also
serve as food for vertebrates such as birds, snakes, moles, shrews and foxes (ibid.). As
well as eating harmful insects and weed seeds, and causing some damage to crops, soil
vertebrates mix subsurface materials with topsoil, bringing nutrients to the surface layers
and distributing mycorrhizal fungus spores and other microorganisms. This mixing also
improves soil aeration and structure, and through their waste products they add addi-
tional nutrients to the soil. Molluscs typically form a small component of soil fauna but
under damp soil conditions can become of great agronomic and ecological significance
when they are responsible for intense herbivorous activity and cause severe damage to

crops. Finally there are arthropods (crustaceans, arachnids, insects), whose principal
roles are to shred organic matter into smaller pieces, assisting the decomposition process
and nutrient recycling and to mix and churn the soil, particularly in acid moorland and
forest soils (ibid.).
Changes in the environment affect both the number and diversity of soil organisms
and in doing so have the potential to affect the stability and resilience of the soil eco-
system. It is important we maintain the diversity of organisms in soil, not only to safe-
guard the ecological functions that they perform, but also through their contribution
to global biodiversity. Agricultural practices such as extensive tillage, mono-cropping,
residue burning, plastic mulches and the use of fumigants, nematicides, insecticides and
industrial wastes typically reduce both the abundance and the diversity of soil organisms
(Brady and Weil, 2002). From a soil ecological perspective, if we are to maintain and
enhance our current agricultural systems, then there is a need to adopt practices such as
those associated with efforts to make agricultural systems more sustainable, such as bal-
anced fertiliser use, reduced or zero tillage, grass–legume pastures, cover crops or mulch
fallows and the use of animal manures and composts.
AGRICULTURAL ECOSYSTEMS
Agricultural systems, whether crop or livestock or integrated mixed farming enterprises,

are essentially modified natural ecosystems. Agricultural activity simplifies ecosystem
interactions and channels energy and production into the desired component, whether
plant crop, forest plantation or farm animal. In doing this agriculture has radically
altered natural landscapes, and beyond that soil, hydrological and even climatological
characteristics. Ancillary ecosystem services that, for example, avoid flood–drought
extremes in watershed management or maintain soil carbon stores are lost. Agriculture
has also simplified food chains and, especially during the period of mechanised agricul-
ture, it has created artificial communities dominated by a single target species. This in
turn, by incidentally concentrating food and other key essentials of competitor plants
(weeds) and animals (pests) has, from a human perspective, led to damaging population
explosions of weeds, pests and disease vectors. In the mid-twentieth century farming
response became increasingly dominated by a series of synthetic pesticides and herbi-
cides, usually fossil-fuel derived, which many people claim has led directly to biodiversity
decline in the countryside and to far-reaching, unforeseen and damaging pollution, for
example emergence of ‘super bacteria’ resistant to almost all known bactericides. At the
same time plant breeding and, much more recently, genetic modification (GM) have
developed new strains of crop species that also have significant environmental impacts.
For example, growth of monocultural ‘Green Revolution’ rice, and indeed many major
commercial grains, demands high fertiliser use supported by high use of herbicides and
pesticides to maintain high productivity and thereby profits. This, coupled with associ-
ated essential farm mechanisation, generates major fossil fuel demands with attendant
negative implications for global climate change as well as resource conservation. It
also generates problems of contaminated run-off from agricultural fields, with implica-
tions for wildlife and future quality of water supplies for human consumption as well
as agricultural use (Moss, 2010; Taylor, 2012). Concerns have been raised over the

potential spread of GM pollen from target crop species to closely related weed species
and possible wider impacts on biodiversity. On the other hand, attempts to manipulate
nitrogen-fixing characteristics typical of leguminous plants into wheat (Morris, 2014), if
successful, it is claimed, could beneficially reduce the requirement for nitrogen fertilisers.
This would in turn reduce the requirement for industrial nitrogen fixation via the Haber-
Bosch process, which is highly demanding of energy, usually fossil fuel derived. Indeed,
modern mechanised farming relies heavily on fossil fuel energy inputs, which may not
be long-term sustainable in terms of resource availability and potential climate impacts.
The debate is complex. For example, addition of nitrogen into the active ecosystem,
from an ecological perspective needs a counterbalancing removal mechanism if we are to
be sure to avoid unforeseen and possibly damaging consequences. Excess nitrogen run-
off promotes eutrophication in neighbouring streams, rivers and coastal waters beyond;
it may also accelerate growth of competitor ‘weed’ species. Careful monitoring is needed.
The developing use of computerised fertiliser applications systems for outdoor crops,
through linking fertiliser application to satellite imagery and GIS monitoring of within-
field variability in crop nutrient needs, may enable more environmentally sound fertiliser
use. Such ‘precision farming’, high-technology approaches should improve crop produc-
tivity and give environmental and economic benefits through ensuring optimum timing
and evaluation of fertiliser needs and thus potentially reducing fertiliser costs and envi-
ronmental damage associated with agricultural run-off enriched with excess fertiliser.
Among the major effects of agriculturally induced ecosystem simplification is biodi-
versity loss. This takes many forms, from elimination or major population reduction of
large predators such as the wolf and lynx in Europe to the decline of bird populations
linked to the expanding use of broad spectrum organochlorine pesticides and herbi-
cides (Carson, 1962; Robinson and Sutherland, 2002). Though in many countries less
immediately wildlife-damaging pesticides have now replaced those originally applied,
problems persist for migratory bird species and top chain feeders. Moore (1967) showed
how species loss associated with pesticides and herbicides was not confined to direct
poisoning and reproductive failures but had widespread ecological effects including acci-
dental loss of species that predate on pest species, loss of habitat for breeding and shelter
(through weed suppression) and loss of essential prey species of non-target organisms.
Farmland birds, such as barn owls (Tyto alba), cannot thrive without an associated small
mammal prey population, which will in turn need safe nesting sites and insect, gastro-
pod, plant and other food supplies that may be lost in intensive agricultural systems.
Numerous studies have shown the benefits of retaining hedgerows and unploughed
and unsprayed field margins (conservation headlands) or strips within agricultural land
(Tew et al., 1992; Thomas et al., 1992; Montgomery and Dowie, 1993; Landis et al.,
2000; Peach et al., 2004; Nicholls and Altieri, 2012). Similarly, Matthews et al. (2004)
demonstrated the benefits of habitat manipulation of apple orchard floors to favour
ground-dwelling predators of major pest species. Habitat fragmentation also leads to
biodiversity loss. Small woodlands isolated in an agricultural landscape are particularly
vulnerable to species loss (Mader, 1984; Zhang and Usher, 1991); even a small service
road may provide too great a barrier for effective insect and mammal migration and
thus lead to the decline of top chain predators. Woodlark (Lullula arborea) and hare
(Lepus europaeus) populations have declined in many UK farm landscapes since cereal
crop stubble, which provided winter shelter and breeding sites, is no longer left but

may be ploughed in or, until the practice was recently banned, was frequently burnt.
Wildflower populations have declined, which may also be important alternative food
sources for agriculturally beneficial organisms including wild pollinators (Nicholls and
Altieri, 2012).
In forestry, some prized species such as American mahogany (Swietenia spp.) have
been logged in the wild to commercial extinction (e.g., S. humilis and S. mahagoni), with
S. macrophylla (big leaf mahogany) approaching a similar fate through overexploitation
and illegal trade. S. humilis and S. mahagoni have been protected as Appendix II endan-
gered species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) since 1975 and 1992 respectively, but big leaf mahogany
was not transferred from Appendix III (first listed in 1995) to Appendix II until 2003.
Growth in plantation or in carefully managed agroforestry systems is the main hope to
prevent its commercial extinction in its native region and maintain its availability to trade
(including from new plantations elsewhere) and prevent its increased vulnerability in the
wild. Altering trade demand would also improve the prospects of this species since it
would reduce the temptations for illegal logging (Clack et al, 2004; Kometter et al., 2004).
This is a common story. For many vulnerable species, reducing market demand would
be beneficial. Some plant and animal species with medicinal uses are similarly vulnerable.
The African rhino is one extreme example; its vulnerability reflects the trade of rhino horn
(currently illegal under CITES), which is highly valued in traditional Asian medicine, as
well as for dagger handles in the Middle East. The growing fashion for consumption of
bush meat species from West and Central Africa and its developing commercial trade and
worldwide distribution presents a threat to some primate species, for example the western
lowland gorilla, as does habitat fragmentation associated with agricultural expansion and
commercial logging. The catalogue of wildlife losses and the chain of causes are immense
(see, e.g., work by the Zoological Society of London). Many tropical, large and rare
mammals such as tigers and elephants are in conflict for land and food resources with
human populations. It takes innovation in conservation and farming practice to ensure
joint survival of viable wildlife populations and farming herds or crops. Nevertheless, some
outstanding examples exist: for example, in Kenya, use of Maasai expertise in monitor-
ing and conserving lion populations while also protecting herders’ cattle (Attenborough,
2013); and studies in Oman and the Yemen (Rushby, 2011), engaging local communities
in monitoring critically endangered species, such as the Arabian leopard, and at the same
time ensuring their conservation alongside protection of farmers’ sheep.
Researching and understanding the ecosystem perspective can have many benefits to
farming. It underpins organic farming that yields produce that commands a premium
price; it also underpins agroforestry and more localised permaculture farming systems.
Furthermore, these approaches are based on understanding ecosystem principles; they
potentially retain intact, or at least disrupt less, wider ecosystem services such as regula-
tion of water catchments and prevention of soil erosion. Many commentators, though,
claim that we cannot feed a growing world population through organic production,
or less intensive agroecology/agroforestry systems, using the land currently available
to agriculture. They also consider that the claimed nutritional benefits of organic and
less intensive agriculture have little scientific supporting evidence. Others (e.g., Badgley
et al., 2007b) have challenged this view. In a study based on 293 datasets from developed
and developing countries and encompassing most major food groups, they claim that

organic agriculture gives yields similar to conventional (Green Revolution) methods in

the developed world and significantly exceeds these in developing countries. The key
benefit lies in reduced synthetic fertiliser demands, which reduce farming economic costs
and associated environmental damage (including eutrophication of water, release of
nitrogen oxides to the atmosphere and the fossil fuel demands of fertiliser manufacture
and application). This research has been challenged in a published debate and response
(Badgley et al., 2007a). While there is agreement that substantive benefits would flow
from designing farming practice to maintain wider ecosystem benefits, the optimum
means to achieve this is contested. There is, though, a consensus that more supportive
research is needed to assist farmers worldwide in decision-making and that the needs
of developed and developing world farmers may be very different. Modern intensive
systems may be underachieving in the developing world through lack of resources (insuf-
ficient finance, distribution networks etc. for fertilisers, sensitive pest control and so
forth). A more pragmatic and immediately productive approach may be to work with the
resource base widely available. This is an important debate for future farming.
Our understanding of food chain and ecological population interactions has been
put to practical use in biological pest control, for example the control of prickly
pear (Opuntia spp.) by the cactus moth Cactoblastis cactorum and in integrated pest
management (IPM) systems where timely (or spatially selective) application of care-
fully selected pesticides can complement natural control from introduced predators.
Detailed understanding of pest life history and behaviour through population ecology
studies has developed our knowledge of pest resurgence problems (e.g., Dempster,
1968; Moore, 1983) and further promoted biocontrol of pests and IPM systems. For
example, hormonal stimuli that can attract pest organisms to pesticide minimise the
pesticide damage to beneficial predators that would otherwise be caused by succes-
sive widespread spray applications of pesticides. Hormonal traps are now used for
pest control on a wide diversity of crops, including cotton and many fruit crops. IPM
systems in greenhouse cultivation have become increasingly sensitive and widely used
despite initial grower resistance. In Almería, for example, the use of ‘banker’ plants,
in this case pots of barley, to provide an alternative food source for the omnivorous
predatory mite of assorted whitefly and thrips pests, Amblyseius swirskii, has facilitated
reduction in pesticide use. The system, evaluated by scientists at the Cajamar-funded
research station (Cabrera Sánchez and Uclés Aguilera, 2011), is robust and suitable for
use by family greenhouse growers. Its uptake has spread rapidly, from 1400 ha in the
2006–07 season to 13 750 ha in 2009–10 (Van der Blom, 2010). This represents biocon-
trol use in 59 per cent of the main greenhouses in this region, including 100 per cent use
on sweet pepper crops. Consumer preferences in North European markets, and hence
demands of large supermarket chains together with the need to offer a superior product
to that available from new competitor growers in North Africa, are the principal drivers
for these changes. In the Netherlands, key rivals for Spanish producers, more than 90
per cent of all tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers and aubergines are produced under
IPM (Van Lenteren, 2000). Worldwide, pests in protected cultivation are now managed
by biological control on around 40 000 ha compared with just 200 ha in 1970 (Bueno
and Van Lenteren, 2010). Spanish evaluations show that costs for IPM are similar to
conventional pest control but accrue economic benefits since crops treated this way can
command a higher price and access more lucrative markets.

AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT: CONSIDERATIONS

FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE
Future agricultural practices will shape, perhaps irreversibly, the surface of the Earth, including
its species, biogeochemistry and utility to society. (Tilman et al., 2002, p. 676)
As noted earlier, agriculture has changed ecosystems, soils and climate since its evolution
and agricultural practice reflects a complex interaction of social, cultural, technological,
economic, political and environmental factors (e.g., Box 2.2 and Figure 2.3).
BOX 2.2 INTEGRATED SYSTEMS: LANDESQUE CAPITAL – TREVELEZ,

ANDALUCÍA, SPAIN
Livelihood strategies are the method s by which people seek to make a living, using the mate-
rial and non-material resources available to them (Ashley and Carney, 1999; Bebbington, 1999).
These resources can be analysed as five types of interlinked forms of capital (natural, physical or
manufactured, social, financial-political and human) and all come in to play to influence the land
use and ultimately the land use capability of a site (Figure 2.3).
Natural capital is the natural environment, for example, soils, rainfall, temperature. Physical or
manufactured capital is produced by human investments using natural resources, in the building
of roads, towns, vehicles. ‘Landesque’ capital is a particular form of physical capital and consists
of investments in land improvement, for example structures such as irrigation systems, terraces
and improvements to soil texture and composition (Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987), all of which raise
land productivity over long periods of time but need considerable inputs of human labour and
time for their construction and maintenance (Barrow and Hicham, 2000). Typically, large inputs of
labour are needed for the initial creation of the components of ‘landesque’ capital but less labour
is needed for their maintenance. In Machakos (Kenya), the previous catastrophic environmental
degradation, famine and poverty were replaced from the 1960s by economic and social develop-
ment through environmental creation, including the construction of terraces and irrigation systems
(Tiffen et al., 1994). Without maintenance, ‘landesque’ capital will degrade, for example, through
loss of soil fertility, erosion, siltation of irrigation ditches and terrace collapse, and ultimately a
reduction in the land use capability.
Social capital describes the benefits that accrue through the existence of particular social struc-
tures. In Trevélez, Andalucía (Southern Spain) for example, as in many areas of farming, there has
been a tradition of shared labour on farms and the sharing of equipment. The most important of
these social institutions in Trevélez is the maintenance of the irrigation system through a coopera-
tive effort at the beginning of the irrigation season in April, which ensures the possibility of arable
farming across the whole of the slope. The irrigation water is used down valley so that other
farmers are willing to contribute their labour to allow this possibility. Social capital is often built up
over centuries.
Financial capital, funding and policy drivers also have an interlinked influence on the land use
and land use capability of an area. Farmers can compensate for the lack of money by the use of
labour, the key component of human capital. Human actions, whether planned or unintended, may
build on or degrade natural capital.
In terms of human capital, the traditional skills in water and land management can be an impor-
tant component of the system’s sustainability. There are, however, several examples of ways in
which farmers have made use of modern technologies or crop innovations to maintain the agricul-
tural system. Modernisation, and the resulting widening range of opportunities for livelihoods and
lifestyles other than traditional peasant farming, can drive change in the agricultural landscape.

Source: Created by the authors.
Figure 2.3 Five types of interlinked forms of capital (natural, physical or

‘landesque’ capital, social, financial-political and human)
Not all change has been beneficial. Some damaging environmental degradation has
also been experienced, which may have links to wider social problems and societal col-
lapse (Zhang et al., 2011). So what is different now? The key answers would seem to lie in
the speed of change, the much greater technical knowledge and expertise at our disposal,
and the deep-seated fear that we might be causing our very own human-induced global-
scale catastrophe – climate change.
Climate not only profoundly influences agriculture but the nature of farming activities
will also affect climate. Agriculture has a key role to play as a cause of climate change;
in its mitigation; and in adaptation to future climates. Successful agriculture is also
clearly fundamental to human well-being and survival. Twenty-first-century agriculture
faces two major challenges: continuing to produce under new and uncertain climatic
conditions as global warming influences the global atmospheric circulation and regional
weather patterns and periodicity change; and dealing with the needs of a rising global
population, predicted to be close to nine billion by 2050. Estimated additional food
needs vary from 70 per cent to 100 per cent increase on current production (Tilman et
al., 2002; Howden et al., 2007; Badgley et al., 2007b; FAO, 2009, 2012; Paul et al., 2009).
However, this picture is further complicated by global imbalances and distribution
problems. Approaching one billion people (one in eight) go hungry under present condi-
tions (Osterveer and Sonnenfeld, 2011; FAO, 2012), but many consider this has less to
do with agricultural underproduction than with economic, social and political failings.

Addressing these problems will be every bit as important as adapting agriculture to

future environmental conditions. Indeed, the overall context of agriculture is highly mul-
tivariate. Decisions on crops grown or animals farmed can be driven by investment deci-
sions from major corporations every bit as much as local-scale decisions relating to soils
and climate suitability and immediate human needs. Governments and policy-makers
sometimes use scientific uncertainty as a reason for ignoring the potential impacts of
environmental change or adverse effects of intensive agriculture; they need to accept that
‘fuzzy knowledge is better than no knowledge at all’ (Howden et al., 2007), and scientific
concerns, despite uncertainties, need to be incorporated into planning. Scientists in turn
must become better at quantifying and communicating uncertainties. Future agricultural
success in an environmentally changing world needs more integrated models of physical
and environmental sciences, which are also better integrated with social understanding
and economic and political constraints. A holistic viewpoint is needed and one that is
informed by deep understanding.
For future successful agriculture, it is not just changing global climate that needs
addressing from an environmental standpoint; maintaining biogeochemical cycles
is also crucial to maintenance and supply of essential nutrients in a suitable form
for plant uptake, and beyond that animal nutrition, while at the same time ensuring
avoidance of pollution and land degradation. Applying excess nutrients makes no
economic sense and creating synthetic nutrients generates an energy demand that is
usually met through fossil fuels adding to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There
are many nutrient-related impacts (e.g., phosphate mining) that have negative impacts
on source areas. Guano removal has detrimentally affected fisheries, which in terms
of global nutrition is ‘Peter robbing Paul’. There are also long-term concerns over
availability of some mineral fertiliser supplies unless more ‘conservative’ approaches
are used in terms of mining, application and resource recovery (e.g., from plant and
animal wastes). In many commercial greenhouses nutrients are delivered with water in
hydroponic systems. This leaves plants needing a rooting medium for support, which
is typically supplied artificially, for example using perlite, which in turn affects supply
environments, and is a finite resource and imposes an energy demand in its preparation
and distribution. Maintaining quality soils is fundamental to most agriculture, yet most
modern intensive systems have triggered major soil erosion losses largely through loss
of soil cohesive structure. Again, this makes no economic sense. Soil replacement is a
very long-term process.
Plant and animal water needs have also significantly altered local environments and
current irrigation practices in many semi-arid areas depend on fossil water with no equiv-
alent replenishment in current day conditions. This applies equally in developed and
developing world contexts, such as the Southwestern USA, North Africa, or the Arabian
Peninsula (Jones, 2010). Effects on biota have also been profound. Genetic erosion of
crop species may already have limited the potential for future crop breeding and makes
current commercial strains vulnerable to pests and disease. Constant reselection and
engineering is needed to keep ahead of rapid adaptations from associated pests and
diseases. Loss of wild varieties of major crop species and their gene pools may also have
important implications for countering new crop diseases should these arise. Collecting
and preserving wild strains of major crop species is one underpinning objective of global
seed banks, such as the Kew Millennium seed bank at Wakehurst, UK.

Redistribution of species, either deliberately through crop cultivation or through

associated accidental alien introductions or deliberate eliminations to protect crops and
herds, has greatly impacted on biodiversity. Isolation of species populations through
agricultural activity has diminished their survival chances, through local reduction of
gene pools; overhunting of some marine species, especially marine mammals such as
whales and seals (e.g., Monachus monachus, Mediterranean monk seal), has had similar
impacts. This raises ethical considerations as well as foreclosing on resource opportuni-
ties for people in terms of potential future food, fuel and fibre crops, predatory control
of pests, pollinators, nutrient cycling and a whole host of ecosystems services, as well as
loss of tourist and leisure attractions.
Agriculture’s role in changing the face of the Earth and its biota has already been
profound; its future role in changing the atmosphere and further impacting on biota
demands careful review. From a human perspective agricultural failure will generate
immense disruption and hardship, not just in terms of commodity shortages but also
in terms of lost ecosystems services and potentially extreme environmental change.
However, it could be considered that at the present time we have a special opportunity:
society is actively engaged in research on global climate change; politicians are aware
of potential impacts; international agreements have been framed, even if some consider
they lack requisite rigour or are inappropriately influenced by business concerns (Paul
et al., 2009). The multidisciplinary and international expert groups established under
the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) have given an opportunity
for truly integrated evaluation of underpinning science, likely environmental and social
consequences and problems, future prospects, and remedial and adaptive responses that
can be made (Parry et al., 2007). This has opened debate and by stimulating research has
generated more experts with interdisciplinary backgrounds and ideas; it is developing
a more appropriately educated workforce and public from which entrepreneurial solu-
tions can flow. There is still work to be done, however, in incorporating the knowledge
and practical expertise of farmers from around the world and especially from developing
countries (Naess, 2013; Singh and Bagchi, 2013). Local farmers’ environmental under-
standing and experience needs reinforcing, rather than overriding, to maximise success
particularly when a major change of agricultural production system is mooted. Work by
Badgley et al. (2007b) in showing the differential between the ability of organic farming
to feed communities in developed and developing world situations is insightful in this
context. There is more scope for success and improved productivity with ‘back to the
future’ farming techniques in developing countries where success with Green Revolution
agriculture may experience many practical and financial barriers but experience of
intercropping, green manures and similar approaches is more familiar and can be more
readily intensified.
Transgenesis as a research tool has undeniably made a contribution to our under-
standing of plant growth and development, specifically in the agricultural sector in
relation to how plants react to environmental stress and how they deal with pests and dis-
eases (Murphy, 2007). A high-profile example of a transgenic (genetically modified, GM)
crop is the insertion of the so-called Bt gene (from the soil bacterium Bacillus thuring-
iensis) into maize, cotton and potatoes to increase insect resistance (Kumar et al., 2008).
One of the concerns of the ‘anti-GM’ lobby was the need for specific land management
strategies alongside the transgenic crop, and in this case the nearby growing of the same

crop, though a non-transgenic variety, was required as a refuge for non-Bt-resistant

insects to prevent (or perhaps more realistically to delay) local development of resistant
insect strains (Murphy, 2007). Whilst many transgenic crops focus on insect and disease
resistance, ‘golden rice’ developed in the late 1990s is an example of a nutritionally
enhanced GM crop (Ye et al., 2000; Paine et al., 2005). Whilst still under development,
the yellowishgrains reflect the accumulation of B-carotene (vitamin A), and the con-
sumption of these grains is claimed to reduce vitamin A deficiency in at-risk populations.
How the future scientific and commercial directions of plant biotechnology will play
out is unclear, but it is not helped by the polarised public debate that now surrounds
GM crops and the seeming unwillingness of the large corporations to adopt more
acceptable alternatives to address some of the key issues of concern (e.g., the insertion of
‘unnecessary’ DNA and antibiotic-resistant genes into crops and their transfer to human
and animal gut bacteria; the risk of gene movements, such as herbicide tolerance, from
transgenic crops to other plants; effects of the random insertion of foreign genes into a
plant; Murphy, 2007). Furthermore, the significance and importance of non-transgenic
high-tech breeding must not be overlooked, nor be underfunded by a narrow focus on
transgenic technology, if we are to develop an agricultural sector fit for the challenges
that lie ahead.
The agricultural sector is an obvious target for policy-makers to mitigate greenhouse
gas emissions. Table 2.6 summarises selected examples of the options available to
mitigate the three principal greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and
nitrous oxide (N2O). Increases in global population, the increasing urbanisation of this
expanding population and rising food demands mean the next decade looks set to main-
tain this upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions. The adoption of mitigating strategies
by modifying agricultural practices, alongside the utilisation of emerging technologies,
becomes even more pressing if we are to counteract this trend and see a reduction in
emissions per unit of food (or protein) and fibre produced.
In 2005, agriculture accounted for 10–12 per cent of total global anthropogenic emis-
sions of greenhouse gases. Of global anthropogenic emissions, agriculture accounted for
50 per cent of the methane and about 60 per cent of the nitrous oxide emitted, whilst
the net flux of carbon dioxide is estimated to be approximately balanced under current
agricultural practice (Smith et al., 2007). Over the past several hundred years, deforesta-
tion and other land use changes have contributed substantially to atmospheric carbon
dioxide increases. The soil carbon pool is at the heart of soil carbon sequestration and
the carbon mitigation potential of agricultural land is significant (Smith et al., 2000a).
Arable soils have been depleted of much of their native carbon stocks as the ploughing
under of grassland causes a rapid decrease in soil organic carbon and as such arable
land has a significant CO2 sink capacity (Paustian et al., 1997). Agricultural manage-
ment strategies have considerable potential for carbon mitigation (Smith et al., 2000a).
Estimates for agricultural carbon (C) mitigation in the UK (compared with 1990 as the
baseline year) indicate that bioenergy crop production on surplus agricultural land has
the greatest potential due to fossil fuel substitution replacing some use of fossil fuels
(Table 2.7; Smith et al., 2000b). All other strategies listed in Table 2.7 (with perhaps
the exception of the small amount of fossil fuel saving with no-till farming) would tend
towards a new steady state of soil carbon after 50–100 years, where additional carbon
accumulation slows and eventually stops. This UK-focused case study suggests that

Table 2.6 Measures for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural

ecosystems and apparent effects on individual gases
Mitigation Effects
Measure Examples CO2 CH4 N2O
Cropland Agronomy 1 1/−
management Nutrient management 1 1
Tillage/residue management 1 1/−
Water management 1/− 1
Rice management 1/− 1 1
Agroforestry 1 1/−
Set-aside, land use change 1 1 1
Grazing land Grazing intensity 1/− 1/− 1/−
Increased productivity (e.g., fertilisation) 1 1/−
Nutrient management 1 1 1/−
Fire management 1 1 1/−
Species introduction (inc. legumes) 1 1/−
Management of Avoid drainage of wetlands 1 − 1/−
organic soils
Livestock Improved feeding practices 1 1
management Specific agents and dietary additives 1
Longer-term structural and management 1 1
changes and animal breeding
Manure/biosolid Improved storage and handling 1 1/−
management Anaerobic digestion 1 1/−
More efficient use as nutrient source 1 1
Bioenergy Energy crops, solid, liquid, biogas, residues 1 1/− 1/−
Notes:
1 Positive mitigation effect (reduced emissions or enhanced removal).
− Negative mitigation effect (increased emissions or suppressed removal).
1/− Uncertain or variable response.
Source: Adapted from Smith et al. (2007).
by combining a number of these individual management options, and applying where

realistically viable, then a mitigation potential of 10.4 teragrams of carbon per year
(Tg C yr−1) can be expected (equivalent to about 6.6 per cent of 1990 UK CO2-carbon
emissions). Clearly we will not meet even current climate change commitments solely
through changes in the agricultural sector but integrated land management options have
an important role to play.
The second most important greenhouse gas covered by the Kyoto Protocol is methane.
Important agricultural sources of methane include the biological activity of bacteria in
paddy fields, the digestive tract of ruminants such as cattle, and decomposing organics
at the bottom of reservoirs and storage ponds. Indeed, the United States Environmental
Protection Agency forecast that between 2005 and 2020 methane emissions from
combined enteric fermentation and manure management will increase by 21 per cent
(US-EPA, 2006). All of these sources represent anaerobic environments where organic

Table 2.7 Land management options to increase soil organic carbon (SOC) and their
carbon mitigation potential in the UK
Land Management Comments % of Arable Carbon

Option to Increase SOC Area to Which Mitigation
this Could be Potential
Applied
Animal manure (derived Manure currently spread on 85.7 3.7 Tg C yr−1
from housed cattle non-arable land would be better
and pigs; application employed on arable land where
rate of 5–20 t/hayr−1) carbon stocks are lower and where
less carbon would be oxidised as it
would be incorporated by cultivation
Sewage sludge Only 3% of UK arable land was 8.3 0.3 Tg C yr−1
(application rate of estimated to be subject to sewage
1 t/hayr−1) sludge application in 1990
Cereal straw Only 8.3% of arable land was subject 40.4 1.9 Tg C yr−1
incorporation to straw incorporation in 1990
(incorporation rate of
2–10 t/hayr−1)
No-till farming As well as increasing SOC 36.8 3.5 Tg C yr−1
accumulation, no-till farming also
reduces fossil fuel carbon emissions.
The maximum area of arable land
under no-till in the baseline year
(1990) is estimated as 3%
Agricultural SOC accumulates under extensive 28.5 3.3 Tg C yr−1
extensification farming
Natural woodland SOC accumulates under natural 10 3.2 Tg C yr−1
regenerationa afforestation, plus the additional
carbon in tree biomass
Bioenergy crop SOC increases under short-rotation 10 4.1 Tg C yr−1
productiona woody bioenergy crops
Note: a. A figure of 10% for surplus arable land in the UK by 2010 was adopted.
Source: After Smith et al. (2000b).
matter undergoes decomposition (fermentation) in the absence of free oxygen (O2) and
methane is generated. The flux of methane from rice paddies is likely to grow as world
population and demand for rice grows. Flooding of the land during production cuts
off the soil’s oxygen supply and results in anaerobic activity. Most of the methane that
escapes into the atmosphere from rice paddies does so through the gas-conduit system
of the plants (up to 90 per cent of emitted methane; Holzapfel-Pschorn et al., 1986) but
also by emission of gas bubbles from the soil. Even a thin aerobic soil layer can cause
the oxidation of most of the methane generated. The highest methane emissions from
paddy fields principally occur during the period of flooding as the numbers of methano-
genic bacteria increase in response to anaerobic conditions. However, not all soils have

the same propensity for methane production. Sandy soils generate greater amounts of
methane than clay soils with similar carbon levels because the coarser pore size distribu-
tion facilitates diffusion and the emission of gas bubbles (Neue and Roger, 1993). Soils
with a higher amount of readily mineralisable carbon (e.g., green manures), and low
contents of active oxidants, produce more methane per unit carbon than those with more
humified forms of carbon like compost (Neue, 1997). Control of emissions by draining
and re-flooding and using selected rice cultivars that are better able to conduct O2 from
the atmosphere to the roots where it is released into the soil, counteracting the reducing
effect of the flooded soil, and selected manurial treatments (the addition of sulphate-
containing fertilisers can decrease methane production), are seen as important strategies
to aid emission reductions (Neue, 1997). With an increasing demand for food and rising
CO2 levels stimulating plant growth and increasing above-ground and root biomass,
higher methane emissions can be expected, and US-EPA (2006) projects a 16 per cent
increase in methane emissions from rice crops between 2005 and 2020, largely due to an
increase in the area of irrigated rice. The incentive to develop high-yielding rice cultivars
with low methane emissions, and viable land management strategies to reduce emissions,
has never been more pressing.
The potential for a rise in cattle rearing linked to increasing demand for meat, which
typically arises as societies become more affluent, is another concern for rising methane
emissions. While GM solutions have been mooted, involving changes to the gut bacte-
ria of ruminants, the wider implications of this are poorly understood. A more sensible
strategy might be changed human dietary behaviour. This would also avoid the addi-
tional GHG emissions associated with production and transport of cattle feed and pos-
sible livestock-associated increases in nitrous oxide emissions.
An upward trend in nitrous oxide (N2O) concentrations in the atmosphere has been
observed during the last few decades, attributed to a number of factors including changes
in land use (natural forest to agriculture) and agricultural intensification (increased use
of nitrogenous fertilisers and the number of livestock). This looks likely to continue with
agricultural N2O emissions projected to increase by 35–60 per cent up to 2030 due to
increased animal manure production and nitrogen fertiliser use (FAO, 2003). In the soil
environment, N2O and nitric oxide (NO) are released during microbial transformation
of nitrogen (i.e., during nitrification), the oxidation of ammonium to nitrate, as well
as during denitrification (the reduction of nitrate, which also generates dinitrogen, N2;
Oenema et al., 1997). As nitrogen is a major plant nutrient, losses can also reduce soil
productivity and hence crop yield. Fluxes of nitrogenous gas from soil to the atmosphere
vary diurnally, seasonally and spatially and are largely dependent upon a wide range of
soil conditions and agricultural practices. Tillage practices that aerate the soil, the use of
agri-chemicals, and crop rotations especially those with legumes, all influence gaseous
production. Precision farming (matching fertiliser type and quantity to site and specific
crop conditions using advance computer and satellite technology), along with better
timing and placement of nitrogen, the use of controlled release fertilisers and nitrification
inhibitors have all indicated significant potential to reduce fertiliser inputs and emissions
from arable and grasslands (Smith et al., 1997; Dalal et al., 2003; Paustian et al., 2004).
Grazing animals excrete much of the nitrogen they consume and when expressed on a
global basis urine and dung patches are important sources of N2O (Flessa et al., 1996;

IPCC, 1997). Management options to reduce N2O emissions specifically from grasslands
include the following (after Oenema et al., 1997):
● Decreasing the size of herds by increasing the productivity per animal (high pro-
ductivity herds via selected breeding etc.) with concomitant effects such as reduced
compaction and reduced number of dung patches.
● Lowering the nitrogen content of urine through activities such as delaying grazing
in order to offer animals herbage with a low nitrogen content, supplemental
feeding of low-nitrogen fodders like maize, reducing the amount of nitrogen
applied to the pasture.
● Restricted grazing to decrease the number of urine and dung patches (N2O emis-
sions are much higher from urine and dung patches than from slurry that has been
properly applied to the soils). As well as ethical animal welfare issues this also
requires investment in housing, appropriate slurry storage basins and slurry appli-
cation techniques, and indoor feeding.
Adapting to climate change is a prerogative for agriculture as is development of strate-

gies that are more resource conserving. While plants will benefit from rising CO2, there
are many counterbalancing variables, not least water availability and increasing compe-
tition from weeds, and changes in pests and diseases. Rising CO2 is unlikely to prove a
panacea for crop productivity. Anticipated agricultural land gains in high latitudes and
at higher altitudes may well be offset by losses elsewhere. Prospects in this respect are
not clear (Parry, 1990). Most commentators agree that the atmospheric circulation will
intensify and that greater seasonal contrasts will be experienced with greater frequency of
extreme weather events. But exactly where and when and to what extent remains uncer-
tain. More relevant and clearer to work with is farming response and, very importantly,
wider societal response. Unless consumers support changes favouring more environ-
mentally benign agricultural practice (such as reduced meat consumption, fewer tropical
hardwood products, higher-priced organically or sensitively farmed produce etc.) then
there will not be the positive reinforcing feedback that agricultural adaptation requires.
Similarly, financial institutions and governmental policies need to support agriculture
through investing in research and safeguards that facilitate sustainable change and enter-
prise development, and supporting policies that mitigate the worst environmental effects.
Change to more climatologically suitable crops and regimes, where these have not
traditionally been used, requires courage and expert knowledge. Major financial invest-
ment or support is needed, such as that offered by the regional bank Cajamar through
its research station in Almería that trials innovations and diversification projects for the
greenhouse industry and its regional infrastructure. Optimum strategies are likely to be
regionally specific since they will vary with terrain, local climate, water availability and
biological resources, as well as historical land use practice and access to markets and
wider social factors. Thus regional research centres are vital; universal global solutions
are unlikely to be the most successful way forward. Some of the debate around the effi-
cacy and ethics of carbon trading reflects these points (Paul et al., 2009; Harper et al.,
2012; Calel, 2013; Hyams and Fawcett, 2013). Managing risk is another big issue relating
to enterprise change. This can be demonstrated in the UK with the current spread of
vineyards that produce high-quality wines winning international awards but are vulner-

able to climate uncertainty and poor seasons. For some, diversification to include alter-
native drink-related crops such as cider, linked microbreweries, or extension to include
wider products (e.g., traditionally made cheeses), has provided a safety net for seasons
when the grape harvest is poor. Other specialised vine growers with high-quality niche
products decided against marketing the poor 2012 vintage (poor due to an exceptionally
cool, damp summer preceded by drought) preferring not to risk their emerging reputa-
tion for high-quality produce (BBC News, 2012; Kendon et al., 2013).
Every innovation is complex, but change and innovation is needed in all regional con-
texts, if we are to meet the challenge of sufficient food and crop resources for a growing
world population in a warmer world. We should be open to all possible approaches from
the highly technical, such as precision farming and genetic engineering, to ‘back to the
future’, ecosystem-mimicking concepts such as agroecology (Wezel et al., 2009), agro-
forestry, and wider use of intercropping and green manures (Kremen et al., 2012). But
we must also incorporate lessons of the past and so avoid further land degradation and
pollution, avoid alien species introductions without proper evaluation (including newly
engineered ‘species’), avoid overharvesting of wild species, and adopt a precautionary
approach. We should undertake full life-cycle or cost–benefit evaluations into proposed
new enterprises, for example the implications of introducing biofuel crops on marginal
grazing lands (Witt, 2010); of artificially engineering meat (Datar and Betti, 2010); or
generating biofuels from algae (Waltz, 2013). Beyond that we can strive to alleviate
existing problems. For example, work on degraded landscapes of Southwest Australia
suggests that new agroforestry development may help to restore biodiversity, desalinate
soils and improve wider ecosystem services such as water management and carbon
sequestration, and enable production of biofuels, while maintaining food and fibre pro-
duction. A new sustainable agricultural landscape should emerge (George et al., 2012).
Such endeavours encapsulate the benefits of integrated science and holistic thinking.
Understanding physical and ecological constraints and their interface with society
should underpin our ambition for sustainable development; a future that gives food and
fibre products for all without environmental damage; in a ‘new and greener revolution’
(Beddington, 2010).
NOTE
* The authors wish to thank Claire Ivison, recently retired cartographer in the School of Geography,
Geology and the Environment, Kingston University London, for her generous assistance with Figures 2.1,
2.2 and 2.3 during the days immediately preceding her retirement.
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3. Effects of agricultural activities on biodiversity
and ecosystems: organic versus conventional
farming
Tiziano Gomiero*
INTRODUCTION: AGRICULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND

BIODIVERSITY
In this chapter I review the effects of farming practices on biodiversity, focusing in

particular on the potential role of organic agriculture in preserving biodiversity. The
chapter is based on the contention that farming and environmental conservation have
to be understood within the whole structure of the food system, and that analysis should
be made and actions towards agricultural sustainability and biodiversity conservation
should be taken accordingly. The relationship between agro-ecosystem management
and biodiversity is, in fact, characterized by a number of factors, such as ecological and
environmental characteristics of a region, socioeconomic structure of the society and the
structure of the food system (on regional and global scales), market, technology, invest-
ment in research and rural development, and agriculture policy.
To care about biodiversity and the environment when farmers, even in developed
countries, are facing economic hardship, or where poverty is widespread and food
security constantly at threat, may seem an irrelevant issue. However, given that it is
actually the soil, the environment and the biodiversity that are at the foundation of agro-
ecosystem health and functioning, to care about these issues means also to care about the
very future of people too.
The chapter is organized in six sections: (1) the impact of agriculture on the environ-
ment and in particular on biodiversity, and the challenges ahead, (2) the basic principles
of organic farming and the main critics of the organic movement, (3) a review of the lit-
erature on the effects of organic agriculture on soil and (4) on above-ground biodiversity,
(5) the importance of the farming–landscape interaction on biodiversity, and (6) some
reflections on the matter.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES
Currently, croplands and pastures have become one of the largest terrestrial biomes on
the planet, occupying about 50 percent of the land surface (Foley et al., 2005, 2011; Ellis
et al., 2010). Ellis et al. (2010) state that in the terrestrial ecosystems of most biomes,
form and process are quickly becoming predominantly anthropogenic. About 40 percent
of global croplands may be experiencing some degree of soil erosion, reduced fertility,
or overgrazing, and soil erosion and the intensive use of agri-chemicals (e.g., pesticides
and fertilizers) combine to exacerbate the threat to biodiversity by mining the e cosystem
77
foundation, the soil health, and polluting the environment with often persistent and
harmful agri-chemicals (Pimentel et al., 1995; Krebs et al., 1999; Benton et al., 2003;
Foley et al., 2005; Butler et al., 2007; Geiger et al., 2010a; Gomiero et al., 2011a;
Gomiero, 2013).
On a global scale, 70 percent of the 3800 km3 of water that humans use is directed
towards agriculture, 20 percent towards industry and 10 percent towards urbanized
areas (Molden, 2007; Foley et al., 2011). By 2050 agricultural water use is expected to
have increased by 13 percent (Molden, 2007). Although such long-term estimates may,
of course, include a lot of uncertainty, still they may underline a potential trend that we
should take into account. Some irrigated lands have already become heavily salinized,
causing the worldwide loss of about 1.5 million hectares of arable land per year, along
with an estimated USD11 billion in lost production (Postel, 1999; Molden, 2007).
Synthetic fertilizers have been at the core of the Green Revolution, but there is
awareness that their widespread and intensive use represents a serious threat for the
environment (Tilman et al., 2002; Smil, 2004; Vitousek et al., 2009). Global data for
maize, rice and wheat indicate that only 18 percent to 49 percent of nitrogen applied as
fertilizer is taken up by crops; the remainder is lost to run-off, leaching, or volatilization
(Cassman et al., 2002). Widespread use of pesticides on crops has led to the emergence
of many pesticide-resistant pests and pathogens (Pimentel, 1997; Hoy, 1998; Krebs et al.,
1999; Pretty, 2005; Sanchis and Bourguet, 2009; Powles and Yu, 2010; Heckel, 2012).
Paradoxically, research demonstrated that insecticides, by suppressing the natural
enemies of pests, lead to increased pest damage in crops (Van den Bosch, 1989; Winston,
1997; Bommarco et al., 2011). Moreover, pesticides also have a major impact on animal
and human health. The book Silent Spring, published in 1962 by Rachel Carson, has been
a landmark on this issue, raising public awareness of the side-effects of chemicals that
once seemed to be a silver bullet to defeating pests. People can be exposed to excessive
pesticide levels while working, via food, soil, water or air; or by directly ingesting pesti-
cide products. Along with other synthetic chemicals, some pesticides have a direct effect
on the reproductive system of many high organisms, acting as endocrine disruptors, and
inducing severe reproductive problems and modifying sexual behavior (Colborn et al.,
1997; Lyons, 2009; Robin, 2014). Dietary accumulation through the tropic chain, or bio-
magnification, can cause additional bioaccumulation (Kelly et al., 2007). Lu et al. (2006)
demonstrate that an organic diet provides a dramatic and immediate protective effect
against exposures to organophosphorus, pesticides that are commonly used in agricul-
tural production, in children who were most likely exposed to these organophosphorus
pesticides exclusively through their diet.
Agriculture is also responsible for 30–35 percent global greenhouse gases (GHGs)
emission, largely from tropical deforestation, methane emission from livestock and rice
cultivation and NOx from fertilized soil (FAO, 2006, 2010a; Foley et al., 2011), and
its energetic efficiency, as output/input, is steadily decreasing (Pimentel and Pimentel,
2008).
The Impact of Agriculture on Biodiversity
Biodiversity refers to the number, variety and variability of living organisms in a given
environment. It includes diversity within species, between species, and among ecosystems

Effects of agricultural activities on biodiversity and ecosystems 79
(Wilson, 1988; Gaston and Spicer, 2004; Koh et al., 2004; Chivian and Bernstein, 2008).
The concept also covers how this diversity changes from one location to another and
over time. The term biodiversity includes the biodiversity of crops and reared animals
and the management strategy of the farm itself (e.g., rotation pattern, intercropping)
(Lampkin, 2002; Noe et al., 2005; Norton et al., 2009; Jarvis et al., 2010).
The most dramatic ecological effect of agricultural expansion on biodiversity has
been habitat destruction, which, along with soil erosion and the intensive use of agri-
chemicals (e.g., pesticides and fertilizers), has combined to threaten biodiversity at global
scale (Wilson, 1988; Matson et al., 1997; Krebs et al., 1999; Benton et al., 2003; Foley
et al., 2005, 2011; Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Butler et al., 2007; Sachs
et al., 2009). In a Europe-wide study in eight Western and Eastern European countries,
Geiger et al. (2010a) found important negative effects of agri-chemicals on wild plant,
carabid and bird species diversity and on the potential for biological pest control.
Agricultural expansion and intensification also threaten the benefit that biodiver-
sity provides to crops by, for instance, pest control and other environmental services
(Paoletti et al., 1992; Altieri and Nicholls, 2004; Hillel and Rosenzweig, 2005; Bianchi
et al., 2006; Sachs et al., 2009; Crowder et al., 2010), and pollinators, including domes-
ticated and wild bees and many other species of insects (Kremen et al., 2002; Biesmeijer
et al., 2006; Klein et al., 2007; Potts et al., 2010; Burkle et al., 2013). In addition to the
loss of wild biodiversity, the present path of agricultural intensification, by relying on
a few selected varieties, is displacing the large number of traditional cultured varieties
of plants (Harlan, 1975; Fowler and Hodgkin, 2004; FAO, 2010b). Jarvis et al. (2010)
point out that poor, small-scale farmers largely undertake the continuing maintenance
of traditional varieties, so it is important to enable farmers to take a greater role in the
management of their resources.
The Challenges Ahead
The coming 50 years are likely to be a period of rapidly expanding global human environ-
mental pressures. In 2000, it was estimated that the human appropriation of net primary
productivity (HANPP) reached 50 percent (Haberl et al., 2002; Imhoff et al., 2004; Haberl
et al., 2014). In addition, other indicators of sustainability (or better, unsustainability),
such as the ecological footprint (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Wackernagel et al., 2002),
are telling us that the ecological overshoot has already reached an alarming stage. Today,
it has been estimated that humanity uses the equivalent of 1.3 planets to provide the
resources we use and absorb our waste (Global Footprint Network, 2009; WWF, 2012) –
an underestimation according to some (e.g., Van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999; Fiala,
2008; Van den Bergh and Grazi, 2010; Wiedmann and Barrett, 2010).
With a human population projected to grow from 7.1 billion in 2013 (United
Nations, 2013) – 5.9 billion of whom live in the less developed regions – to a staggering
figure of 8.3 billion by 2030 and 9.2 billion in 2050 (UNEP, 2009; Godfray et al., 2010;
Alexandratos and Bruinsma, 2012), we have to expect HANPP and the human footprint
to further increase just to keep pace with the production of food and fiber. In addition,
more land will be lost to urbanization and to energy production (e.g., agroenergies,
biofuels), posing a further threat to the subsistence of the poor (by contributing to rising
food prices all over the world), and accelerating the conversion and then destruction

of the remaining natural ecosystems and currently unexploited land in tropical biomes
(Righelato and Spracklen, 2007; Action Aid, 2008; Fargione et al., 2008; Giampietro and
Mayumi, 2009; Gomiero et al., 2010).
ORGANIC AGRICULTURE: A MODEL FOR A MORE

SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVE?
In this section I will briefly provide some information about organic agriculture and its
main criticisms. I will also discuss some other key issues that are relevant for a better
understating of the relation between organic farming and food system.
The Organic Agriculture Movement: A Brief Introduction
The organic movement appeared in Europe in the 1920s and in the USA in the 1940s,
representing the refusal of some farmers and citizens to use newly available agri-
chemicals, and their willingness to persevere with traditional agricultural practices. For
details on this topic refer to the extensive works of Conford (2001) and Lockeretz (2007)
or, for more concise summaries, to Lotter (2003), Kristiansen et al. (2006), Heckman
(2006), Gold and Gates (2007) and Gomiero et al. (2011b). Historical information can
also be found on the website of the main organic associations such as the British Soil
Association (http://www.soilassociation.org), or the International Federation of Organic
Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) (http://www.ifoam.org).
Although low-input agriculture practices have been adopted by an increasing number
of farmers, organic agriculture is a label regulated by law, which strictly forbids the use
of agri-chemicals (with the exception of a few traditional ones, such as copper sulfate)
and regulates the use of drugs in animal rearing; it also forbids the use of genetically
modified organisms (GMOs). It has to be highlighted that regulations do not include
other characteristics of the farming system, such as soil management, biodiversity con-
servation and resource use efficiency.
Organic agriculture was officially recognized by the European Union in 1991 and
by the American federal government in 1995. Internationally, the Codex Commission
approved the Codex Guidelines for plant production in June 1999, followed by animal
production in July 2001. The Codex Alimentarius Commission at point 5 states that:
‘Organic Agriculture is one among the broad spectrum of methodologies which are
supportive of the environment. Organic production systems are based on specific and
precise standards of production which aim at achieving optimal agroecosystems which
are socially, ecologically and economically sustainable’ (Codex Alimentarius, 2004, p. 4).
Organic farming aims to provide farmers with an income while at the same time
protecting soil fertility (e.g., by crop rotation, intercropping, polyculture, cover crops,
mulching, minimum tillage) and preserving biodiversity (even if tending the local flora
and fauna as a goal for organic farming is often little understood by consumers and
policy-makers), the environment and human health. Broader ethical considerations
regarding the above aims have also been made (Halberg et al., 2006; IFOAM, 2008).
According to recent data by IFOAM (Willer and Kilcher, 2011) there are 37.2 million
hectares of organic agricultural land (including in- conversion areas). The regions

with the largest areas of organic agricultural land are Oceania (12.2 million hectares –
32.8 percent), Europe (9.3 million hectares – 25 percent), and Latin America (8.6
million hectares – 23.1 percent). The countries with the most organic agricultural land
are Australia, Argentina and the United States. It should be noted that it is difficult to
compare figures coming from different countries: most of the area in Australia is pasto-
ral land used for low-intensity grazing, therefore one organic hectare in Australia is not
directly equivalent (e.g., does not have the same productivity) to one organic hectare in
a European country.
Scholars working in the field of organic farming claim that organic and low-input
agriculture can represent a valuable option for a more sustainable agriculture, and
deserves wide experimentation to fully explore and understand its potentialities as well
as its constraints and limitations in relation to different contexts (Pretty and Hine, 2001;
Lampkin, 2002; Halberg et al., 2006; Van Veluw, 2006; Badgley and Perfecto, 2007;
Badgley et al., 2007; FAO, 2007; Niggli et al., 2007; Hodgson et al., 2010; Gomiero et al.,
2011b; Lynch et al., 2011).
Main Critics of the Organic Movement
According to some authors (e.g., Halberg et al., 2006; Badgley et al., 2007), models of
a hypothetical global food supply grown organically indicate that organic agriculture
could produce enough food on a global per capita basis for the current world population.
Some long-term studies (e.g., Pimentel et al., 2005; Cavigelli et al., 2008; Delate et al.,
2013) report comparable yields in organic and conventional farming systems.
However, criticism has been made of this scenario (e.g., Trewavas, 2001, 2004;
Cassman, 2007; Leifeld, 2012; Seufert et al., 2012). A recent meta-analysis by Seufert
et al. (2012), although stating that yields from organic farms are in some cases compa-
rable with those from conventional farms, reports that the overall yield is 13–34 percent
lower. In their wide meta-analysis, De Ponti et al. (2012) report that organic yields of
individual crops are on average 80 percent of conventional yields, but that results are
rather heterogeneous. The authors also hypothesized that the organic–conventional
yield gap is higher when conventional yields are high, that is to say when conventional
systems can benefit from high external inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides and water), a
level of inputs (especially fertilizers) that organic systems cannot achieve. Tuomisto et al.
(2012) reach similar conclusions concerning yield gaps in their meta-analysis for Europe.
The authors also stress the fact that there are wide variations between the impacts within
both conventional and organic farming systems, and that ‘there is not a single organic
or conventional farming system, but a range of different systems, and thus, the level of
many environmental impacts depend more on farmers’ management choices than on the
general farming systems’ (Tuomisto et al., 2012, p. 318).
Comparatives studies, however, often overlook key issues, such as the impact of agri-
chemicals (pesticides and herbicides in particular) on environmental and human health.
Agri-chemicals are usually accounted for only in terms of energy cost or GHGs emission,
and eventually come to be elements of minor (if not negligible) importance on the overall
output/input accounting, but, of course, this is not so. Agri-chemicals require a differ-
ent system of accounting. Furthermore, the ban on synthetic agri-chemicals is the main
reason why consumers buy organic products.

Various authors have questioned to differing degrees the benefits associated with
the adoption of organic farming practices. Some authors claim that organic farming
is an ideology rather than a scientific approach to agriculture (e.g., Kirchmann and
Thorvaldsson, 2000; Edwards- Jones and Howells, 2001; Trewavas, 2001, 2004; De
Gregori, 2003). Others express criticism based on the concern that: (1) organic crops are
reported to be less productive than conventional, both on a per area and per working
time basis; and (2) that not all organic agriculture strategies can be applied globally and
without many local adjustments, and so this approach may actually lead to a worsening
of agricultural problems (e.g., Tilman et al., 2002; Elliot and Mumford, 2002; Cassman,
2007; Wu and Sardo, 2010; Seufert et al., 2012). It also has to be pointed out that when
organic farming becomes a business itself, the concern for the overall environment and
social issues, which historically and theoretically were at the basis of the organic move-
ment, may lose importance in favor of the exploitation of a new and growing market
(Guthman, 2004).
Some authors (e.g., Elliot and Mumford, 2002) recommend the adoption of integrated
pest management farming, rather than upholding solely organic practices (which they
find more harmful than conventional farming, for instance in the case of pest control
technologies). For some scholars, agricultural intensification (increasing yield on already
cropped land, while sparing the rest for the biodiversity) represents a more practicable
and effective solution to environmental and biodiversity conservation (e.g., Foley et al.,
2011; Phalan et al., 2011).
Rethinking our Food System and Farming Goals
Some criticisms of organic agriculture are, of course, reasonable and already part of
the discussion taking place within the research field (e.g., Mäder et al., 2002a, 2002b;
Badgley et al., 2007; Gomiero et al., 2011b; Reganold, 2012). As Badgley et al. (2007,
p. 94) summarize:
In spite of our optimistic prognosis for organic agriculture, we recognize that the transition to
and practice of organic agriculture contain numerous challenges – agronomically, economi-
cally, and educationally. The practice of organic agriculture on a large scale requires support
from research institutions dedicated to agroecological methods of fertility and pest manage-
ment, a strong extension system, and a committed public.
It has to be stressed that specific ecological contexts and socioeconomic systems may
pose heavy constraints on the adoption of alternative, more sustainable, farming strate-
gies. For example, three high-yield crops per year, as happens in some areas of Asia, may
not be achievable without applying a large amount of synthetic fertilizers, but that is
what is required to sustain a very high population density that relies mostly on rice for its
subsistence (Smil, 1999, 2001). While profit maximization may be the main objective (or
the objective) for large, high-capital and high-input companies in developed countries,
achieving self-subsistence and preserving the resilience capacity (i.e., the capacity of
recovering from stressful events) of their farming system may the objective for hundreds
of millions of small farmers around the world (Beets, 1990; Chamber, 1997; Altieri, 2002;
Mäder et al., 2002b; Pretty et al., 2006; Badgley et al., 2007).
We may further discuss whether emergent countries (e.g., China) should follow the

same pattern already experienced by Western countries without learning from previous
experience, and, on the other hand, whether the Western world should not reconsider
its development goals and food system structure. For example, it has been estimated
that if the world’s population today were to eat a Western diet of roughly 80 kg meat
per capita per year, the global agricultural land required for production would be about
2.5 billion ha, two-thirds more than is presently used (Smil, 2002; Keyzer et al., 2005;
Naylor et al., 2005). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2006) estimates that
in 2002 about 30 percent of the global cereal harvest and nearly all the soymeal produced
globally were fed to livestock (it has to be stressed that typical efficiencies of protein
production via animal feeding are very wasteful: at least 80 percent and as much as 96
percent of all protein in cereal and leguminous grains fed to animals are not converted to
edible protein (Smil, 2001, 2002). Increasing meat consumption would also put signifi-
cant pressure on water resources, greatly contributing to water contamination and GHG
emissions (Subak, 1999; FAO, 2006, 2010a; Molden, 2007; Koneswaran and Nierenberg,
2008; Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). An estimated 2.5–10 times more energy is required
to produce the same amount of calorie energy and protein from livestock than grain
(Smil, 2001; Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008). A vegetarian diet of an equivalent 2200 kcal
per day requires 33 percent less fossil energy than the average American diet with meat
(Pimentel and Pimentel, 2008).
With reference to the food system, it is disturbing that 30–40 percent of the food pro-
duced in the field is wasted; in industrialized countries it is estimated that 15–20 percent
just passes directly from our refrigerators to the bin (Smil, 2001; Stuart, 2009; Godfray
et al., 2010). A recent FAO report (FAO, 2013) estimates that food wastage amounts
to a staggering 1.3 billion tonnes yearly, adding 3.3 billion tonnes of GHGs to the
planet’s atmosphere and accounting for an economic loss (excluding fish and seafood) of
USD750 billion annually.
In developing countries the huge boost in food production provided by the Green
Revolution, was not followed by a parallel implementation of proper rural and social
policies, and that eventually limited the potential benefits of Green Revolution, while
at the same time it spurred population growth. From 1960 to 2000 world population
jumped from three to six billion (with the increase concerning mainly developing coun-
tries), so that the objective of ending the problem of world hunger could not be achieved
as hoped (Cohen, 2003; FAO, 2008; UNEP, 2009; Gomiero et al., 2011a; Pingali, 2012).
At present, the World Food Programme (WFP) and FAO estimate the number of
hungry people worldwide to be more than 900 million, the largest number ever, repre-
senting almost 16 percent of the population of developing countries (FAO, 2010c; WFP,
2010). As the FAO (2010c, p. 4) points out: ‘The fact that nearly a billion people remain
hungry even after the recent food and financial crises have largely passed indicates a
deeper structural problem that gravely threatens the ability to achieve internationally
agreed goals on hunger reduction’.
As summarized by The Royal Society (2009), the drivers for chronic food insecurity
include: increasing population; changing and converging consumption patterns; increas-
ing per capita incomes, leading to increased resource consumption; growing demand for
livestock products (meat and dairy), particularly those fed on grain; growing demand
for biofuels; increasing water and land scarcity; adverse impacts of climate change; and
slowing of increases in agricultural productivity. It has to be pointed out that at present,

malnutrition is often more a matter of lacking access to food rather than one of insuf-
ficient availability, and hunger is more a problem of income distribution rather than one
of food shortage (Sen, 1982; Conway, 1997; Smil, 2001; Patel, 2008; Perfecto et al., 2009).
Many poor countries are also caught in insidious poverty traps (e.g., debt, fights for the
control of the nation’s natural resources, widespread corruption) that pose a serious
constraint to development, and that have to be seriously addressed if we really wish to
resolve the problem (Collier, 2007).
EFFECT OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURE ON SOIL

CHARACTERISTICS AND BIODIVERSITY
In this section I will review the effects of organic agriculture on soil biophysical and eco-
logical characteristics and how these effects relate to long-term soil fertility (for a wider
view on this topic I refer the reader to more extensive reviews by Gomiero et al., 2011b
and Gomiero, 2013).
Soil Chemical Properties, Organic Matter and Soil Erosion
Soil organic matter (SOM)

It has been widely reported that intensive farming exacerbates soil erosion and loss
of SOM, threatening the long- term sustainability of crop production, especially
under extreme climatic events such as droughts (Pimentel et al., 1995; Sullivan, 2002;
Montgomery, 2007; Lal, 2010; NRC, 2010). Given the crucial importance of preserv-
ing soil health, the aim of organic agriculture is to augment those ecological processes
that foster plant nutrition yet conserve soil and water resources. Soil characteristics are
generally site specific, but to date many studies have proven organic farming to perform
better in preserving or improving soil quality with regard to both biophysical (e.g.,
SOM, stored nutrients) and biological (e.g., biodiversity) properties (Reganold et al.,
1987; Clark et al., 1998; Drinkwater et al., 1998; Siegrist et al., 1998; Stockdale et al.,
2001; Mäder et al., 2002a; Lotter et al., 2003; Pimentel et al., 2005; Briar et al., 2007;
Fliessbach et al., 2007; Teasdale et al., 2007; Gomiero et al., 2011b; Gattinger et al.,
2012; Gomiero, 2013). Other studies, however, did not find significant differences in
soil carbon for organic systems compared with conventional systems (e.g., Kirchmann
et al., 2007).
Nitrogen
Nitrogen (N) fertilizers are of key importance in intensive conventional agriculture.
Yet, their use is a major cause of concern with respect to environmental pollution (Smil,
1999, 2004; Tilman et al., 2001; Robertson and Vitousek, 2009; Vitousek et al., 2009).
Techniques to reduce N loss and to increase the efficiency of N uptake are widely used
in organic farming, and many trials have demonstrated the benefit of organic farming
in reducing N leaching and increasing N uptake efficiency (Drinkwater et al., 1998;
Lampkin, 2002; Kramer et al., 2006; Küstermann et al., 2010). However, some scholars
(e.g., Mondelaers et al., 2009; Gomiero et al., 2011b) argue that the performances of some
indicators (e.g., nitrate and phosphorous leaching, energy use, and GHG e missions) for

some products may be positive when accounted in unit per area, and less pronounced, or
not present at all, when accounted per unit of product. Possible drawbacks from organic
fertilization have been reported by some authors (e.g., Tilman et al., 2002; Sieling and
Kage, 2006; Kirchmann et al., 2007; Wu and Sardo, 2010): the ‘slow release’ of nutrients
from organic compost or green manures can be difficult to control and harness and may
fail to match crop demand, resulting in N losses through leaching and volatilization.
Moreover, in organic systems, competition with weeds can greatly reduce efficiency of N
intake (Kirchmann et al., 2007).
Water
Sustainable agricultural practices can be effective in improving efficiency of water use in
particular in poor developing countries affected by water scarcity (Pretty et al., 2006).
Long-term stability of crop yields and the ability to buffer yields through climatic adver-
sity will be critical factors in agriculture’s capability to support society in the future.
A number of studies have shown that, under drought conditions, crops in organically
managed systems produce higher yields than comparable crops managed convention-
ally. This advantage can result in organic crops out-yielding conventional crops by 70–90
percent under severe drought conditions (Lockeretz et al., 1981; Stanhill, 1990; Smolik
et al., 1995; Teasdale et al., 2000; Lotter et al., 2003; Pimentel et al., 2005). According to
Lotter et al. (2003) the primary mechanism for higher yields in organic crops is due to
higher water-holding capacity of soils under organic management.
Greenhouse gasses (GHGs)

Agricultural activities (not including forest conversion) account for approximately
5 percent of anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and the 10–12 percent of total global
anthropogenic emissions of GHGs (5.1 to 6.1 gigatonnes carbon dioxide equivalent per
year [Gt CO2 eq. yr−1] in 2005), accounting for nearly all the anthropogenic methane and
one-to two-thirds of all anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions are due to agricultural
activities (IPCC, 2000, 2007). Adopting conservation tillage (including no-till practices)
could reduce GHGs by an important amount (Kern and Johnson, 1993; Drinkwater
et al., 1998; Schlesinger, 1999; Pretty et al. 2002; Lal, 2004; Grandy and Robertson,
2007). Smith et al. (2008) estimate that, by adopting sustainable practices, agriculture
could offset up to about 20 percent of total global annual CO2 emissions. Evidence from
numerous long-term agro-ecosystem experiments indicates that returning residues to
soil, rather than removing them, converts many soils from ‘sources’ to ‘sinks’ for atmos-
pheric CO2 (Rasmussen et al., 1998; Lal, 2004; Smith et al., 2008). However, because
there is a limit to how much carbon the soil can capture acting as a carbon sink (SOM
can be increased to a certain level where it starts leveling off), and because fossil fuels
are being used at a very rapid pace, conversion to organic agriculture only represents a
temporary and partial solution to the problem of carbon dioxide emissions. Although
organic agriculture may represent an important option in reducing CO2 (Gomiero et al.,
2011b; Lynch et al., 2011), long-term solutions concerning CO2 and abatement of GHG
emissions should rely on a more general change of our development path, for instance by
reducing overall energy consumption.

Soil Ecology and Biodiversity
One hectare of high-quality soil contains an average of 1300 kg of earthworms, 1000 kg

of arthropods, 3000 kg of bacteria, 4000 kg of fungi, and many other plants and animals
(Pimentel et al., 1992; Lavelle and Spain, 2002). Transition to organic soil management
can benefit soil biodiversity. In this context, it should be noted that SOM plays an essen-
tial role in increasing soil biodiversity. Enhancement of soil microbes and soil micro-
fauna by organic inputs has been demonstrated in alternative farming systems across
different climatic and soil conditions (Paoletti et al., 1995, 1998; Gunapala and Scow,
1998; Fliessbach and Mäder, 2000; Hansen et al., 2001; Mäder et al., 2002a; Marinari et
al. 2006; Tu et al., 2006; Fliessbach et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2007; Birkhofer et al., 2008;
Mondelaers et al., 2009; Phelan, 2009; Gomiero et al., 2011b; Gomiero, 2013). From
their study on soil health in Ohio, Briar et al. (2007) conclude that transition from con-
ventional to organic farming can increase soil microbial biomass, N and populations
of beneficial bacterivore nematodes while simultaneously reducing the populations of
predominantly plant-parasitic nematodes. The authors also indicate that reducing tillage
provides benefits for the development of a more mature soil food web.
Although varying from different crops and management activities (plowing may
affect earthworm species to a different degree), it seems that organic agriculture may
benefit earthworm abundance and biodiversity (Pfiffner and Mäder, 1997; Paoletti
et al., 1998; Hole et al., 2005; Pfiffner and Luka, 2007; Irmler, 2010). Greater abundance
of earthworms (up to more than 100 percent) and insects on organic farms has been
reported also for Swiss farming systems (Pfiffner and Mäder, 1997; Pfiffner and Luka,
2007). In Germany, Irmler (2010) found that the abundance of Lumbricus terrestris was
three to ten times higher on the organic fields, but also differences were much smaller
or not detectable for other species. Other authors, nevertheless, have reported different
findings for other agro-ecosystems (e.g., Czarnecki and Paprocki, 1997; Pelosi et al.,
2009).
Soil management also seems to affect pest response (Liu et al., 2007; Hsu et al., 2009).
A number of studies report pest-preferring plants, which have been nurtured with syn-
thetic fertilizer rather than those growing in organically managed soil (Phelan et al.,
1995, 1996; Alyokhin et al., 2005; Staley et al., 2010). This is explained by the ‘mineral
balance hypothesis’ (Phelan et al., 1996), which states that organic matter and microbial
activity associated with organically managed soils allow enhanced nutrient balance in
plants, which in turn can better respond to pest attack. Phelan and colleagues (Phelan
et al., 1995, 1996; Phelan, 2009) report that under greenhouse-controlled experiments,
females of the European corn borer (Ostrinia nubilalis) were found to lay consistently
fewer eggs in corn on organic soil than on conventional soil.
ABOVE-GROUND BIODIVERSITY
Agricultural intensification results in a dramatic simplification of landscape composi-

tion and in a sharp decline of biodiversity. This affects the functioning of natural pest
control, as natural habitats provide shelter for a broad spectrum of natural species that
operate as pest control in agriculture crops. Organic farming tends to rely on a higher

number of crops, compared with conventional, because of the very nature of the man-
agement system, involving for example: rotation, cover crops, intercropping, set-aside,
and minimum tillage. A more complex crop pattern offers more opportunities for ‘wild
biodiversity’ to thrive.
Whether organic agriculture enhances biodiversity has been a matter of research and
debate over the last decades. Work by many researchers suggests that organic farming
is generally associated with higher levels of biodiversity with regard to both flora and
fauna (Moreby et al., 1994; Pfiffner and Niggli, 1996; Stockdale et al., 2001; Mäder
et al., 2002a; Shepherd et al., 2003; Fuller et al., 2005; Roschewitz et al., 2005; Gabriel
et al., 2006, 2010; Clough et al., 2007a; Hyvönen, 2007; Norton et al., 2009; Geiger et al.,
2010a; Hawesa et al., 2010).
A wide meta-analysis by Bengtsson et al. (2005) indicated that organic farming often
has positive effects on species richness and abundance: 53 of the 63 studies analyzed
(84 percent) showed higher species richness in organic agriculture systems, but a range
of effects considering different organism groups and landscapes. Bengtsson et al. (2005)
suggest that positive effects of organic farming on species richness can be expected in
intensively managed agricultural landscapes, but not in small-scale landscapes compris-
ing many other biotopes as well as agricultural fields.
A review of the literature carried out by Hole et al. (2005) confirms the positive effect
of organic farming on biodiversity in Europe, and lists the prohibition/reduced use of
chemical pesticides and inorganic fertilizers, the sympathetic management of non-crop
habitats and field margins, and the preservation of mixed farming (which create greater
habitat heterogeneity at a variety of temporal and spatial scales within the landscape), as
reasons. However, Hole et al. (2005) point out that such benefits may also be achieved
by conventional agriculture when carefully managed (a finding that seems supported by
other authors, such as Gibson et al., 2007), and indicate the need for long-term, system-
level studies of the biodiversity response to organic farming.
In the largest and most comprehensive study of organic farming in the UK to date,
Fuller et al. (2005) show that organic farms provide greater benefits for a range of
wildlife (including wild flowers, beetles, spiders, birds and bats) than their conventional
counterparts. Fuller et al. (2005) found that organic fields were estimated to hold 68–105
percent more plant species and 74–153 percent greater abundance of weeds (measured
as cover) than non-organic fields support, 5–48 percent more spiders in pre-harvest
crops, 16–62 percent more birds in the first winter and 6–75 percent more bats (see also
Wickramasinghe et al., 2004 who have found that organic farming is beneficial to bats,
both through provision of more structured habitats and higher abundance of insect
prey). Plants indeed showed far more consistent and pronounced responses to the use
of organic systems when compared to other taxa, as reported also by Bengtsson et al.
(2005). In the case of other taxa, Fuller et al. (2005) report that even where significant dif-
ferences were detected, the results showed high variability and wide confidence intervals.
Compared with the review by Bengtsson et al. (2005), Fuller et al. (2005) find in their
meta-analysis that predatory invertebrates showed a significant response to agricultural
practices only infrequently.
In a recent review of the literature, Gomiero et al. (2011b) confirm the previous find-
ings and point out that the effect of organic farming on biodiversity should be read
across scale (from the field to the landscape) and understood within the complex context

that agricultural activities take place (e.g., research, food system structure, agricultural
policy).
Vegetation
A large body of literature reports that organic agriculture benefits vegetation biodi-
versity (Moreby et al., 1994; Hyvönen and Salonen, 2002; Hyvönen et al., 2003; Aude
et al., 2004; Roschewitz et al., 2005; Bengtsson et al., 2005; Hole et al., 2005; Gabriel
and Tscharntke, 2007; Ekroos et al., 2010; Hawesa et al., 2010; Jonason et al., 2011;
Nascimbene et al., 2012). Benefits, however, may vary in relation to the landscape com-
plexity and farming system (Roschewitz et al., 2005), or the typology of plants (e.g., in
a sample of Italian vineyards [Nascimbene et al., 2012] only perennial species seemed to
benefit from organic farming).
In Scotland, Hawesa et al. (2010) found significantly more weeds in the seed bank and
emerged weed flora of organic farms (compared with either integrated or conventional
farms) and concluded that organic systems tend to support a greater density, species
number and diversity of weeds compared with conventional management. Hyvönen
et al. (2003), however, argue that a change in species composition would require a longer
period of organic cropping.
It has been demonstrated that when farming management is turned from conventional
to organic, the weed populations can be restored to a state comparable with that before
application of intensive cropping measures (Hyvönen and Salonen, 2002; Hyvönen,
2007). However, the recovery of the weeds is reported to differ between species – those
with a more rapid recovery being nitrophilous species that suffered from the application
of herbicides or species that were tolerant against herbicides. Perennial species favored
by grasslands showed the slowest recovery. The authors point out that application of
diverse crop rotations in organic cropping is the focal factor affecting species composi-
tion of weed communities.
Arthropods
Arthropods generally seem to benefit from organic farming (Moreby et al., 1994; Clark,
1999; Pfiffner et al., 2001; Mäder et al., 2002a; Bengtsson et al., 2005; Hole et al., 2005;
Fuller et al., 2005; Rundlöf and Smith, 2006; Rundlöf et al., 2008; Gomiero et al.,
2011b). Cases where no differences were found have been also reported (e.g., Clark,
1999; Weibull et al., 2003). Pfiffner et al. (2001) conducted a review of 44 investigations
worldwide concerning the effects of organic and conventional farming on fauna, and
reported organic farming as performing much better on both organism abundance and
species diversity.
In Swiss trials (Pfiffner and Niggli, 1996; Mäder et al., 2002a; Pfiffner and Luka,
2003), earthworms, carabids, epigeal spiders and other epigeal arthropods have been
reported to be more abundant and with higher biodiversity in organic/biodynamic
fields compared with conventional fields. They suggest the higher abundance might be
a result of low-input and organic fertilization, more favorable management of plant
biota protection (especially weed management) and possibly of closer interaction with
semi-natural habitats. Pfiffner and Niggli (1996) report higher diversity and abundance

of carabid beetles (90 percent greater) and other epigeic arthropods on organic plots
of winter wheat than in conventional plots. Research carried out in Northeastern Italy
in different types of orchards and vineyards found that arthropods, carabid species
and earthworms were more abundant in organic than in conventional agro-ecosystems
(Paoletti et al., 1998). A review of literature on carabid beetles in organic and conven-
tional farming systems in Germany and Switzerland by Döring and Kromp (2003) found
that in most cases species richness was higher in the organically than in the convention-
ally managed fields. According to the authors the methods of weed control in organic
agriculture lead to higher cover and a greater number of weed species compared with
the conventional use of herbicides. Thus, in organically managed fields there is a higher
food supply for herbivorous animals. No difference for carabid biodiversity, however,
were reported by the USA Farming Systems Project in Maryland, by Clark et al. (2006)
in organic, no-till, and chisel-till cropping systems. Purtauf et al. (2005), studying the
biodiversity of carabid beetle in wheat fields, found that organic management did not
enhance species richness.
Instead, landscape context (e.g., percentage cover of surrounding grassland) had an
effect on species richness irrespective of management type. In Japan, Amano et al. (2011)
found that organic farming, because of reduced pesticide applications, increases spider
abundance, particularly in areas with high precipitation, which were also associated with
high potential spider abundance (only one genus, Tetragnatha, was monitored). They
further argue about the importance of macro-scale factors, such as climate and topogra-
phy, in regulating the impact of within-farm management on biodiversity, and possibly
ecosystem services. According to Attwood et al. (2008), in order to optimize arthropod
conservation, native vegetation should be preferred over agricultural. Brittain et al.
(2010) also stressed the importance of preserving the connectivity among habitats within
the landscape mosaic, in order to benefit biodiversity.
Pollinators
Pollination by animals is an important ecosystem service because, although 60 percent

of global production comes from crops that do not depend on animal pollination,
35 percent of crop production still depends on pollinators (5 percent are yet unevalu-
ated). Losses of pollinating insects may be particularly troubling because of the potential
effects on plant reproduction (Pimentel et al., 1997; Biesmeijer et al., 2006; Klein et al.,
2007; Burkle et al., 2013). New findings are revealing that our knowledge of ecosystem
functioning is still very limited, and that we are greatly underestimating the importance
of pollinators and the environmental services provides by biodiversity. Recent findings
by Klatt et al. (2014) showed that strawberries, a plant that can self-pollinate, or be
pollinated by wind, have fruits with less malformation, are heavier, redder, and with a
higher sugar-to-acid ratio (which is more commercially desirable and results in a longer
shelf life) when pollinated by bees. Garibaldi et al. (2013) studied pollination in 41 crop
systems worldwide and found out that wild insect visitation enhanced fruit set by twice
as much as an equivalent increase in honey bee visitation, and independently from the
latter. They conclude that pollination by managed honey bees supplemented, rather than
substituted for, pollination by wild insects.
Data from Britain and the Netherlands provided by Biesmeijer et al. (2006), suggest

a strong causal connection between local extinctions of functionally linked plant

and pollinator species. It is therefore of major importance to know whether organic
farming can preserve or enhance pollinators. Data from research seem to support
the claim that insect pollinated plants benefit from organic farming (Gabriel and
Tscharntke, 2007; Holzschuh et al., 2008; Rundlöf et al., 2008; Ekroos et al., 2008,
2010; Brittain et al., 2010; Andersson et al., 2012; Kehinde and Samways, 2012).
Gabriel and Tscharntke (2007) argue that with increasing local species richness the
proportion of insect pollinated plants increases, and warn that disruption of plant–
pollinator interactions due to agricultural intensification may cause important shifts
in plant community structure.
Landscapes with a larger proportion of organic fields are reported to support greater
bee diversity (Holzschuh et al., 2008), suggesting that the environmental services sup-
plied by organic farming can benefit from the scale effect. However, when management
practices that remove the vegetation are carried out by farmers (e.g., vegetation mown
in organic systems rather than chemically controlled as in conventional systems leading
to a little difference in weedy flower diversity between farming systems) no difference
in visitation by wild bees in crops are reported (Winfree et al., 2008; Brittain et al.,
2010). From their study in Finland, monitoring bees and butterflies, Ekroos et al. (2008)
conclude that a successful conservation strategy for lepidopterans occurring in boreal
agro-ecosystems depend on proper management of field boundaries, irrespective of
the farming regime. They also noted that as bumblebee diversity tended to be higher at
organic plots, these important pollinators might possibly be able to react to even small
changes in habitat quality of cultivated lands. Rundlöf et al. (2008) found that species
richness and abundance of bumblebees were significantly positively related to both
organic farming and landscape heterogeneity, but stress this was an interaction effect
between farming practice and landscape context, and that species richness and abun-
dance were only significantly higher on organic farms in homogeneous landscapes. The
authors conclude that both organic farming and landscape heterogeneity can be used to
increase richness of bumblebee species and abundance, but that organic farming has a
larger effect in homogeneous landscapes and landscape heterogeneity a larger effect on
conventional farms.
According to Rundlöf et al. (2008), the two major factors that may favor bumblebees
on organic farms, compared with conventional ones, are the prohibition of agri-chemicals
and the larger proportion of leys (as green manure) that provide bumblebee forage. The
use of agri-chemicals can affect bumblebees with either direct lethal or sub-lethal effects
or indirectly by altering habitat quality; it has been reported that an environment free
from agri-chemicals favors a richer flora in and around arable fields, resulting in more
forage resources for bumblebees (Hyvönen et al., 2003; Aude et al., 2004).
FARMING–LANDSCAPE INTERACTION AND BIODIVERSITY
How landscape characteristics affect biodiversity patterns and ecological processes at

local and landscape levels is a complex and little understood issue, but still of crucial
importance for agro-ecosystem, environmental management and biodiversity conserva-
tion (Turner et al., 2003; Rand et al., 2012; Tscharntke et al., 2012).

The Role of the Landscape in Characterizing Farm Biodiversity
An increasing body of evidence indicates that landscape heterogeneity is a key factor in

promoting biodiversity in the agricultural landscape (Benton et al., 2003; Purtauf et al.,
2005; Schmidt et al., 2005; Tscharntke et al., 2005; Rundlöf and Smith, 2006). A mosaic
landscape may support a larger number of species in a given area, simply because the
landscape contains a larger number of habitats. Organic farming systems, when properly
managed, tend to produce greater field and farm complexity than farms employing a
non-organic system (Gabriel et al., 2006, 2010; Clough et al., 2007b; Norton et al., 2009).
Maintaining a complex landscape and its biodiversity may provide valuable environ-
mental services in supplying pest control to crops (Gurr et al., 2003, 2004; Altieri and
Nicholls, 2004; Perfecto et al., 2009; Vandermeer et al., 2010).
Concerning invertebrates, agricultural landscapes with organic crops have overall
been reported to support higher biodiversity for pollinators (Holzschuh et al., 2008),
butterflies (Rundlöf and Smith, 2006), carabids (Döring and Kromp, 2003), spiders
(Fuller et al., 2005; Schmidt et al., 2005), and a number of invertebrate taxa (Benton
et al., 2003; Bengtsson et al., 2005; Clough et al., 2007b). It has to be pointed out that
the extent of non-crop habitat in the vicinity of organic farms (usually larger than for
conventional farms) is likely to be beneficial for biodiversity (Holzschuh et al., 2007;
Norton et al., 2009). Holzschuh et al. (2007), for instance, found that landscape het-
erogeneity and the availability of semi-natural nesting habitats resulted in higher bee
diversity on farmland.
To identify whether organic farming may benefit farmland biodiversity more in
homogeneous than in heterogeneous landscapes, Smith et al. (2010) and Dänhardt et al.
(2010) compared bird species richness and abundance during the breeding season in
organic and conventional farms, in different landscapes (see also Geiger et al., 2010b for
a different approach). Data indicate that invertebrate feeders can benefit from organic
farming, probably because of increased invertebrate abundances. Seed eaters also may
benefit from increased insect abundance, but they may also utilize crop seed resources in
homogeneous landscapes and conventional farms, so that their presence is less promoted
by the presence of organic farms. Based on data from the French breeding bird survey
and studies at regional scale in France on farmland birds, Filippi-Codaccionia et al.
(2010) found that habitat quality and species feeding habits are closely related, but warn
about the need to account for both community richness and composition when assess-
ing agriculture ecosystem services or similar conservation planning, as they argue that
reliance solely upon richness indexes can show confusing trends and provide misleading
information about the status of communities facing disturbances (see also Devictor and
Robert, 2008).
Some scholars argue that because many organic farms are often isolated units, embed-
ded in non-organic farmland managed with conventional levels of pesticide and fertilizer
inputs, offering relatively low levels of habitat heterogeneity, this may reduce the ben-
efits offered by organic farming and also by species colonization. In these cases organic
farming probably offers insufficient resources to affect population sizes of species with
large spatial needs, such as birds (Bosshard et al., 2009; Brittain et al., 2010).
It has to be pointed out that not only the landscape affects in a number of ways
agro-ecosystem biodiversity, but also it seems that also the history and evolution of

the landscape may play a role in determining the characteristics of local biodiversity
(Lindborg and Eriksson, 2004).
Landscape, Biodiversity and Pest Control
One key feature of agricultural intensification has been the increasing specialization
in the production process, resulting in reduction in the number of crop and livestock
species, leading to monoculture and intensive farming (Matson et al., 1997; Zhu et al.,
2000; Tscharntke et al., 2005). On the other hand, it has been demonstrated that increas-
ing crop genetic diversity can play an important role in pest management and in control-
ling crop disease, as well as enhancing pollination services and soil processes (Zhu et al.,
2000; Barberi, 2002; Hajjar et al., 2008). Zhu et al. (2000), for instance, demonstrated
that crop heterogeneity is a possible way to solve the problem of vulnerability of mono-
culture crops to disease.
Agricultural intensification also results in a dramatic simplification of landscape
composition and in a sharp decline of biodiversity. This also affects the functioning of
natural pest control, as natural habitats provide shelter for a broad spectrum of natural
species that operate as pest control for all crops (Thies and Tscharntke, 1999; Barbosa,
2003; Gurr et al., 2003, 2004; Altieri and Nicholls, 2004; Perfecto et al., 2004, 2009; Ponti
et al., 2005; Bianchi et al., 2006; Macfadyen et al., 2009; Crowder et al., 2010; Rand
et al., 2012). Research demonstrates that insecticides disrupt the communities of pest
natural enemies, reducing the effectiveness of pest control and leading to increased pest
damage in crops (Van den Bosch, 1989; Winston, 1997; Crowder et al., 2010; Bommarco
et al., 2011). Hoy (1998) points out that effective resistance mitigation requires a holistic
approach to pest management.
Preserving landscape-ecological structures (e.g., hedgerows, herbaceous strips and
woodlot) means also preserving the function they have to host beneficial organisms that
can provide useful services to agriculture. Mols and Visser (2002, 2007), for instance,
found that the great tit (Parus major L.), a European cavity-nesting bird, reduces the
abundance of harmful caterpillars in apple orchards by as much as 50–99 percent. In
the Netherlands, the foraging of P. major increased apple yields by 4.7–7.8 kg per tree.
Bianchi and Van der Werf (2003) found that landscapes with 9–16 percent non-crop
habitat provided enough resources for local populations of ladybeetles to control aphid
outbreaks. On the contrary, reducing ecological structures and causing habitat fragmen-
tation results in a significant reduction in local biodiversity and its impact in the biologi-
cal control of pests (Paoletti et al., 1997; Thies and Tscharntke, 1999; Letourneau and
Goldstein, 2001; Thies et al., 2003; Gurr et al., 2003; Bianchi et al., 2006; Gardiner et al.,
2009). Some studies, nevertheless, do not find a correlation between landscape complex-
ity and parasitoid diversity (e.g., Menalled et al., 1999; Macfadyen et al., 2009). Menalled
et al. (1999, 2003) point out that long-term studies are needed to adequately understand
the effects of landscape structure on parasitism. Letourneau and Bothwell (2008), then,
argue that few studies have measured biodiversity effects on pest control and yield on
organic farms compared with conventional farms, and that relevant studies suggest that
an increase in the diversity of insect predators and parasitoids can have both positive and
negative effects on prey consumption rates.
Ecological interactions, in fact, are often very complex, and the pest- parasite/

parasitoids are among the most complex (Hochberg and Ives, 2000; Gurr et al., 2003;
Altieri and Nicholls, 2004; Thies et al., 2005; Macfadyen et al., 2009; Rand et al., 2012).
Thies et al. (2005) argue that because of the striking differences of the populations
between years, long-term experiments are needed to better understand the relative role
of spatial and temporal factors that shape local ecological processes.
Gurr et al. (2003, 2004) provide a number of suggestions for increasing levels of com-
plexity at different scales, to achieve biodiversity enhancement benefiting pest manage-
ment, and claim that potential additional advantages apply when pesticide inputs are
reduced (in an integrated pest management) or almost completely removed (as in organic
agriculture). Others, on the contrary, cast doubt on whether large-scale conversion to
organic farming may really benefit pest control (e.g., Adl et al., 2011).
It has been suggested that biodiversity conservation, by retaining local food web
complexity can also represent an effective management strategy against the spread of
invasive species that often act as pests in new environments (Kennedy et al., 2002). This
may help to avoid the downsides from using exotic natural enemies to fight novel inva-
sive species, as species introduced for biocontrol can act as invasive species in their own
right (Thomas and Reid, 2007).
Some Methodological Remarks
Agro-ecosystems are complex systems, and assessing farming systems and agricultural
sustainability requires embracing at the same time a number of different scales, criteria
and sets of indicators, keeping in mind the multifunctional nature of agriculture (not
only producing commodities, but also preserving the health of ecosystems, consumers
and rural communities and the long-term sustainability of the agro-ecosystem itself), and
then discussing and choosing from different sets of trade-offs (Altieri, 1987; Gomiero
and Giampietro, 2001; Rigby and Càceres, 2001; Giampietro, 2004; Gomiero et al.,
2008; Bohlen and House, 2009).
Comparing organic and conventional farming systems is even more complex
(Giampietro et al., 1992; Gomiero et al., 2008, 2011b; Gelfand et al., 2010; Reganold,
2012; Gomiero, 2015). This is especially true with regard to how the boundaries of the
farming system are defined and what sort of bioindicators and sampling systems are
employed. For example, as underlined by Clough et al. (2007b), species can be expected
to respond differently to the biotic and abiotic environment according to: feeding group,
dispersal ability, level of specialization or searching mode and so on, and they point
out that information about these responses can be accessible only if data are analyzed
accordingly.
To carry on extensive long-term trials for a number of crops in several different geo-
graphical areas is of fundamental importance in understanding the potential of organic
farming as well as improving farming techniques in general (Mäder et al., 2002a,
2002b; Hole et al., 2005; Pimentel et al., 2005; Cavigelli et al., 2008; Gomiero et al.,
2008, 2011b). Proper analysis should also include the account of ‘externalities’, such
as: soil degradation, the effects of harmful agri-chemicals on human and environmen-
tal health, water consumption, loss of biodiversity, loss of environmental quality and
decontamination, and so on. Indicators able to internalize those ‘hidden costs’ should
be employed.

CONCLUSION
Intensive farming tends to exacerbate soil erosion and loss of soil organic matter,
posing a threat to long-term sustainability of agriculture, especially under extreme cli-
matic events such as droughts. To date many studies have proven organic farming to
perform better in preserving or improving soil quality with regard to both biophysical
(e.g., SOM, stored nutrients) and biological (e.g., biodiversity) properties. According
to the studies reviewed, it seems that organic farming can provide greater potential for
biodiversity than its conventional counterpart, as a result of greater habitat variability
and more wildlife-friendly management practices, and from the exclusion of pesticides.
This greater potential is most readily observed for wild plants, but is also observed for
their hosts. Indeed, an increasing body of evidence indicates that landscape heteroge-
neity is a key factor in promoting biodiversity in the agricultural landscape. It has to
be pointed out that, according to some authors, such benefits may also be achieved by
conventional agriculture when reducing the inputs of agri-chemicals and better integrat-
ing crop production with soil protection and landscape ecological structures. Organic
farming, then, could represent and serve as a reference model, to which farmers could
aim at as a sort of experiment in progress. On the other hand, when organic agriculture
just sticks to the label for the sole market purpose, it may not be able to achieve in full
those environmental services that are expected. Of course, if farming can be carried out
avoiding the use of synthetic agri-chemicals (pesticides and herbicides in particular), it
is already good news.
Individual farmers cannot take that challenge alone, nor bear the whole cost of this
effort. Strategies to achieve a more sustainable agriculture need to be worked out by
society as a whole. Feasibility and viability should also be gauged under a number of
trade-offs, and an open discussion should be enhanced among stakeholders and society
at large, free from ideologies and extreme positions (which are never very useful in
solving complex problems). Long-term experiments and multicriteria analysis of the
range of feasibility and viability of organic and low-input agriculture should also be
carried on under a number of different scenarios (e.g., changing food habits in the afflu-
ent and developing societies, the structure of subsidies, climate change scenarios, cost of
fossil fuels and energy policies, population dynamics and population growth).
Critics should be welcomed as they are helpful to push for more research and help
to address new and important challenges. Certainly, many scientists (and farmers and
citizens alike) would be ready, and more than happy, to set large, complex and long-
lasting research programs to test organic farming. Yet funding is needed. A number of
alternative agricultural practices can be tested that may help to make agriculture less
environmentally damaging, and much more research is needed to check the feasibility
and viability of different, more ecological agriculture practices in developing countries.
It is regrettable that comparatively little is invested in this field.
Critics again may be right in pointing to some inherent limits of organic agriculture
(e.g., lower yield), but they should agree that yield is just one part of the story, and that
the sustainability of the food system has to be addressed from many different perspec-
tives. In the USA in 2008, as many as 49 million people (about 20 percent population)
went without access to sufficient food, and more than one in five children went without
enough food during the same year (Nord et al., 2009). This cannot be attributable to a

lack of food supply due to low crop yields in the USA, especially when 30 percent of
American corn production is devoted to generate ethanol. Nor can organic agriculture
be blamed for that as nearly all agriculture in the USA relies on high-tech and high-input
agriculture. At the same time the USA has one of the highest rates of obesity on the
planet. Is there not something grotesque in all that?
Moving our agriculture toward a more sustainable path will not be an easy task, as
it is necessary to rethink the structure and functioning of the whole food system, and
our relation with the land. This implies working in parallel on the social, economic and
political dimensions of our society. I wish to conclude with the words of Aldo Leopold
(1949, p. 226): ‘Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic
is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than
toward, an intense consciousness of land’.
NOTE
* I wish to thank Professor Guy M. Robinson (University of South Australia) for his comments, which
helped to improve the text. I wish to acknowledge Professor David Pimentel (Cornell University, USA)
and Professor Maurizio G. Paoletti (Padova University, Italy) for enhancing my commitment toward
a more sustainable agriculture. I am also indebted to Professor Mario Giampietro (ICREA Research
Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) for making me aware of the complex nature
of the farming and food systems.
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4. Measuring and managing the global agricultural
footprint of countries’ consumption
Stefan Bringezu, Helmut Schütz and Meghan O’Brien
INTRODUCTION
This contribution will argue that in a globalised world countries will have to control
their consumption of agricultural goods in a way that sustainable supply is possible.
So far, the focus has often been on the production side in order to increase agricultural
productivity and socioeconomic benefit while minimising environmental impacts. Let
us imagine for a moment that each hectare used by agriculture anywhere in the world is
cultivated in a sustainable manner, that is, with optimal yield and side-effects, such as
nutrient leaching, below acceptable thresholds. What would happen, if the demand for
agricultural products – which then directly relates to the number of hectares – were to
grow? Up to what extent could the agricultural area physically expand at the expense
of other types of land use (or non-use) such as settlements, infrastructures, forests, con-
servation areas, and so on, and up to what level would the related land use change be
socially acceptable? Although the methods of agriculture are still suboptimal, the world
and every country and region has to deal with those questions in order to fully address
the challenge of sustainable agriculture. The challenge is twofold: to use each hectare in
the best possible manner, and to control the demand for the number of hectares in a way
that land use change is being kept at a globally and regionally acceptable level.
TRENDS AND FORECASTS
From 1961 to 2009 global production of primary crops almost tripled while cropland
increased only slightly by around 12 per cent. This was primarily achieved with a
technological development that increased yields through increased inputs – irrigation,
improved seeds, fertilisers (mainly nitrogen), machinery and pesticides. As a side-effect,
negative environmental and health impacts of agriculture also increased significantly
in terms of soil erosion, salinisation, eutrophication and agri-chemical contamination
(IAASTD, 2009).
Although absolute production volumes increased worldwide, relative yield increases of
cereals and primary crops in general have been slowing down since the 1960s and most
experts expect a continued decline in comparison with past achievements (Bruinsma,
2011). For instance, Von Witzke et al. (2008) estimated that annual yield growth rates are
currently down to around 1 per cent with a continuing tendency towards further decline.
Bruinsma (2009) projected worldwide annual yield growth rates of 0.8 per cent until 2050.
A UNEP assessment of food security, which considers ecological constraints, concludes
that yield growth could drop to 0.87 per cent per annum by 2030 and to 0.5 per cent per
106
Measuring and managing the global agricultural footprint 107
annum between 2030 and 2050 (Nellemann et al., 2009). Based on a detailed modelling
exercise, Hubert et al. (2010) concluded that yield growth will continue to slow; yield
growth for cereals is expected to drop from an average of 1.96 per cent per annum for
the period 1980–2000 to 1.0 per cent in 2000–2050, with even slower growth rates for
developed countries. All these reports conclude that food prices are set to steadily rise in
response to declining yield growth in the context of rising demand to 2050, thus confirm-
ing the argument that we have passed the era of long-term decline in food prices.
Estimates on future yields are rather uncertain for a number of factors (see Bringezu
et al., 2009a). For instance, climate change is expected to lead to a higher frequency of
extreme weather events increasing yield shocks. This could further exacerbate the pro-
ductivity gap between world regions. Cline (2007) estimated that developing countries
will experience a 9–21 per cent decline in overall agricultural output potential by 2080
due to global warming while industrialised countries will face a 6 per cent decline to an
8 per cent increase. Another uncertainty is the rate and degree of soil degradation versus
its potential for recovery. These uncertainties might have high impacts on yields and
consequently on land as well.
Until 2030, the global population might grow at around the same rate as the world
average of major crops, roughly about 1 per cent per year. Thus, both trends compen-
sate each other. However, the pattern of food consumption is changing significantly.
By 2030, the global meat consumption per capita is projected to increase by about
22 per cent, milk and dairy by 11 per cent and vegetable oils by 45 per cent compared
with the year 2000. This increase means a doubling of the demand for these commodities
in absolute terms. Also, the consumption of cereals, roots and tubers, sugar and pulses is
expected to increase by 2030 in developing countries by more than world average annual
rates, though at lower rates than the animal-based commodities (based on FAO, 2006).
A major factor driving demand is that the combination of rising income and urbani-
sation is changing diets. Rapidly rising incomes in the developing world have led to the
increase in the demand for livestock products (Msangi and Rosegrant, 2009). As animal-
based food requires nearly five times more land per nutrition value than the consumption
of plant-based food (Bringezu et al., 2009a), change to more meat-based diets will result
in a significant increase in the need for agricultural land. Moreover, urbanised popula-
tions consume less basic staples and more processed food (Rosegrant et al., 2001). This
contributes to higher land requirements, since processed and industrially prepared food
requires more agricultural land for a given number of calories than basic home-made
food (Von Witzke and Noleppa, 2010). Dietary change is reinforced by the spreading of
fast-food chains and supermarkets and the global advertisement of Western-style (over-)
consumption. Much of the current structural change in diets is occurring in developing
countries, as diets in developed countries are already high in processed food and live-
stock products.
In recent years, the demand for fuel crops was triggered by policies in a growing
number of countries. Over 2 per cent of total arable land area in the world has been
used to grow energy crops for liquid fuels in recent years (Bringezu et al., 2009a; IEA,
2011). These crops, mainly sugar cane, maize and oilseed rape, are used to produce the
liquid biofuels that in 2009 contributed to around 2 per cent of world transport fuels
(Howarth et al., 2009). This share could rise significantly over the next few decades
(IEA, 2011). There is much variation in the key assumptions for future development of

crops for b iofuels. For example, Fischer (2009) calculated that to meet all current targets
for biofuels by 2030 (including advanced biofuels coming on stream commercially by
around 2015), which would provide around an 8 per cent share of transport fuels, would
require around 20–50 Mha of additional arable land, plus 50 Mha from non-cultivated
land for advanced biofuel crops. By way of contrast, Ravindranath et al. (2009) calcu-
lated that, depending on the feedstocks used, between 118 and 508 Mha of cropland
extension would be needed to provide 10 per cent of liquid transport fuels from first-
generation biofuels in 2030.
Besides biofuels, demand for biomaterials is also growing. Both the USA and EU
regard products based on biomass as one of the most promising future markets, with
a high potential for innovation (BRDI, 2006; EU, 2007). Whereas energy from fossil
fuels can be replaced by other kinds of renewable energy, so far only biogenic raw
materials can replace fossil raw materials in, for instance, the chemical industry (SRU,
2007). A total of 2.27 Mha cropland were cultivated for material use in Europe (EU-25)
compared with 2.8 Mha for biofuels in 2005. According to Carus et al. (2010), about 64
per cent of the biomass used for material purposes in Germany is imported. Bringezu et
al. (2009b) have shown that the ongoing increase of production and material use within
Germany may reach 11 per cent of the country’s global cropland requirements in 2030.
On the global scale, Raschka and Carus (2012) estimated that approximately 100 Mha
of cropland were occupied for biomaterials production in 2008, that is, approximately
6.6 per cent of total cropland. Until 2050 the cropland requirement for biomaterials may
increase substantially. Colwill et al. (2011) estimated consumption of bioplastics use in
2050, based on historic data for world production of plastics from 1950 to 2005, and
leading to increases of consumption as compared with 2010 by 39 per cent (low), 186 per
cent (mid-) and 431 per cent (high).
While the demand for agriculture products and thus cropland is growing, fertile land
is lost to built-up areas and by soil degradation. Around the year 2005, built-up areas
covered by settlements and infrastructure took up only 1–3 per cent of the total land
surface, depending on the definition and method of measurement. Without policy inter-
ventions, however, settlements and infrastructures are expected to expand by 260 to 420
Mha by 2050 (Kemp-Benedict et al., 2002; Electris et al., 2009), covering then about
4–5 per cent of the global land area. Strong policy action may lead to only a 90 Mha (or
30 per cent) increase (Electris et al., 2009). However, the expansion would occur on agri-
cultural land in both scenarios. According to Seto et al. (2010), urban areas alone might
expand altogether by between 40 and 143 Mha from 2007 to 2050. Holmgren (2006)
assumes that 80 per cent of urban expansion occurs on agricultural land.
Soil degradation is intensifying in many parts of the world (FAO, 2008). It may be due
to water erosion, wind erosion, soil fertility decline due to nutrient mining, waterlogging,
salinisation (often caused by irrigation systems), lowering of the water table and overuse
of chemical inputs causing soil pollution. In the 1980s and 1990s, between 5 Mha and 12
Mha of arable land were lost due to degradation per annum (Scherr, 1999). Soil degra-
dation enhances the need to expand cropland to compensate for unproductive degraded
land. If projected cropland expansion follows the patterns observed in the 1990s, it
would primarily replace forest land in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan
Africa, as well as grasslands elsewhere.
Summing up, the combined demand for additional cropland (for growing food, fuel

and fibre) and for compensation of built-up and degraded soils results in 320–849 Mha
(21–55 per cent) gross expansion by 2050 (base year 2005) (UNEP, 2014). This is based
on realistic projections from various sources, including yield increases. It clearly indi-
cates a dramatic increase in the competition for cropland.
GROWING COMPETITION FOR LAND
As a consequence of the growing demand for biomass and for cropland, the prices for
food have been growing since 2000 with heavy fluctuations (FAO, 2015). Countries
such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico have increased their share of agricultural exports
and gained increasing revenue (World Bank, 2014). At the same time, large-scale land
acquisitions, involving foreign investors, have become more frequent. The term ‘land
grabbing’ is commonly used to refer to those acquisitions that are illegal, underhanded
or unfair. Land grabbing is associated with a lack of transparency and well-documented
cases of violations of human rights, exacerbated environmental consequences and cor-
ruption (GRAIN, 2008; Cotula et al., 2009; FIAN, 2010; World Bank, 2011). In the
1990s, worldwide foreign direct investment in agriculture was around USD600 million
annually; between 2005 and 2007 it averaged USD3 billion (UNCTAD, 2009; De
Schutter, 2011). In Africa, the demand for land in 2009 alone was equivalent to the crop-
land expansion of more than the 20 previous years (Deininger, 2011).
All in all, these trends must be expected to drive both the further intensification of
agriculture and the expansion of intensively cultivated area worldwide. Whereas intensi-
fication has been successfully pursued over recent decades, it seems to be coming closer
to its various limits. One may expect that the expansion of cropland and intensive pas-
tures could play a larger role in the future. However, high agricultural productivity under
rainfall conditions can only be realised where natural vegetation is also productive.
Expansion into these areas, grasslands, savannahs and forests conflicts with the conser-
vation of ecosystem services and biodiversity. The expansion of cropland and the nutri-
ent pollution resulting from intensive agriculture have been found to be major drivers
of biodiversity loss (MEA, 2005). Cropland expansion into arid or semi-arid areas that
require irrigation may be limited due to the availability of water, conflicts about water
use or in the case of desalination of sea or brackish water, high costs and material inten-
sity. As long as cheap opportunities exist to expand agriculture into productive natural
areas, global markets will push this development, in particular when demand for crop-
based products continues to grow.
Global demand for crops is mainly driven by net consuming countries with an estab-
lished or growing middle class. Their purchasing power enables them to consume more
meat and dairy products, buy biofuels for their cars and use biomaterials to support their
belief in greening the economy. The rising trend of biomass demand is further driven by
policies – often in an uncoordinated manner – which target the increased use of biofuels
by means of quotas or support the production and use of biomass for material purposes.
The overall demand for domestic consumption can only be supplied by rising imports,
which contributes to the expansion of cropland in the exporting regions and resulting
land use change.
The European Union and Germany in particular have started to also consider the

external effects of their domestic activities and attempt to contribute to a more inclusive
sustainable development. However, so far the approach is limited to mandatory certifi-
cation of selected products such as biofuels, and as we will discuss later, that approach
is insufficient to keep the land use change induced by final consumption within a sus-
tainable range. For that purpose, the global land use for the domestic consumption of
all agricultural goods must be known. This chapter will show how it can be measured
and assessed, and it will discuss how it can be controlled by adjusting policies in a more
concerted manner.
MEASURING THE AGRICULTURAL FOOTPRINT OF

COUNTRIES
Monitoring land use over time allows for the quantification of land use change as a key
driver of environmental degradation. Land use has two dimensions that concern (1) the
country’s own territory, and (2) indirect land use via international trade elsewhere in the
world, both linked to the consumption within the economy. The term ‘consumption’, as
used in economic statistics, comprises domestic production plus imports minus exports
and can be measured in units of mass or units of area.
Global statistics on land use are still in an early stage. Territorial land use and land
use change is reported by so-called Annex I countries in the UNFCCC (Framework
Convention on Climate Change) CRF Tables 5 A–F (EU- 27 countries except
Cyprus, as well as the USA, Japan, Canada, Russia, Australia, Switzerland, Turkey,
Norway, Belarus, Croatia, Iceland, Lichtenstein, Monaco, Ukraine, New Zealand and
Kazakhstan), which – in the best case – enable derivation of a land use change matrix.
Indirect land use change has been studied for selected products such as biofuels with
various models (for a review see, e.g., Edwards et al., 2010). The methodological chal-
lenge lies with the uncertainty of the assumptions about the development of the con-
sumption of the other biomass categories (not specifically modelled) and the overall
land use requirements. So far, hardly any model captures all types of biomass (food,
materials,energy) both on the production and the consumption side.
Global use of agricultural land for domestic consumption has been analysed in several
studies (Schütz, 2003; Erb, 2004; Bringezu and Steger, 2005; Kissinger and Rees, 2010;
Von Witzke and Noleppa, 2010). Schütz (2003) and Bringezu and Steger (2005) followed
in particular the principles of economy-wide material flow accounting (ew-MFA), which
allows comprehensive assessment of all materials associated with domestic consumption
in a consistent framework implemented in official statistical monitoring and reporting
(Eurostat, 2001; OECD, 2008). Based on this framework, global land use caused by the
apparent consumption of an economy is calculated using land equivalents for domestic
production plus imports minus exports of all agricultural goods. Land quantities are
expressed in per capita terms to enable a cross-country comparison.
So far, global land use for the consumption of agricultural goods (GLUA) has been
calculated with the ew-MFA-based method for Germany (Bringezu et al., 2009b), the
European Union (Schütz, 2010) and Switzerland (Zah et al., 2010). According to the
authors, the estimates are rather conservative. In more detail, the following data and
calculations were used: domestic land use statistics for agriculture with differentiation

0.60
0.50
EU-27 Domestic
Hectares per capita
0.40 cropland
EU-27 GLUA
0.30 cropland
World cropland
0.20
0.10
0.00
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
Source: Adapted from Bringezu et al. (2012).
Figure 4.1 Global land use for the consumption of agriculture goods – GLUcropland of
EU-27
for cropland and grassland (permanent meadows and pastures); foreign trade statistics
in kg from the Eurostat Comext online database comprising primary crops and derived
products at the detailed level of 773 commodities for EU countries; yields (in kg/ha) for
primary crops by country and year from the FAO online database to apply weighted
yields for exports and eventually also for imports; and derived yields (in kg/ha) for pro-
cessed goods, in particular animal-based products based on German production, feed
and agricultural statistics. The procedure rather implies an underestimation of the real
area requirement due to the intensive German production systems, but one may assume
that imports largely come from intensively managed agricultural systems. At the least,
this approach provides a lower boundary for consideration.
The results showed that in 2007 the EU-27 required 0.45 ha per capita of global agri-
cultural land. This is almost one-fifth more than the domestic agricultural area within
the EU (Bringezu et al., 2012). Regarding cropland, the EU-27 required 0.31 ha per
capita of cropland worldwide, which is one-fourth more than what is available domesti-
cally (Figure 4.1). This was also one-third more than the globally available per capita
cropland of the world population in 2007. Thus, the EU has already used a higher-than-
average amount of global cropland.
Other studies with a similar research target used somewhat modified methodologies
but either lacked precise method descriptions on how to deal with processed goods or
made simplistic assumptions that are in need of further refinement. For example, Erb
(2004) estimated the global land use for the domestic consumption of biomass products
in Austria based on specific land-use coefficients by product and country. However,
neither coefficients nor information on how exactly they were derived have been pub-
lished. Kissinger and Rees (2010) calculated the global agricultural and forest land
demand for US domestic consumption based on a method with several simplifications,
like pastureland use being estimated from the amount of livestock products consumed.
Von Witzke and Noleppa (2010) traced processed goods back to their primary crops and

arrived at EU-27 global agricultural land use estimates similar to those of Bringezu et al.
(2012) described above.
ASSESSING THE AGRICULTURAL FOOTPRINT OF

CONSUMPTION: WHAT IS THE SAFE OPERATING SPACE?
Rockström et al. (2009) suggested that a further expansion of 400 Mha of cropland
would be within the safe operating space (SOS). This is equivalent to a boundary of
15 per cent of the global ice-free land surface (from ca. 12 per cent in 2005). The authors
(the subgroup dealing with land use led by Lambin) acknowledge that limitations of
this metric are manifold (e.g., crossing boundaries at various scales) and propose imple-
mentation at multiple scales through a fine-grained architecture that reserves the most
productive land for agricultural use, maintains high conservation-value areas, and main-
tains carbon-rich soils and ecosystems.
Lambin and Meyfroidt (2011) estimated worldwide additional land demand in 2030.
They concluded that additional demand might be fulfilled mainly by a combination of
deforestation and the conversion of ‘productive unused’ land. The latter covered about
400 Mha in 2000 and included all savannahs with low tree cover and low population
density. For instance, a significant share of the Brazilian Cerrado belongs to that cat-
egory. Using the area of the ‘unused land’ for the additional demand in 2030 would leave
a maximum of 71 Mha (20 per cent) of the savannahs or lead to its complete conversion.
However, this would not suffice to meet demand, but require 347 Mha more from other
types of land. Thus the authors regard further deforestation as rather likely. Assuming
a business-as-usual rate of deforestation of 152–303 Mha between 2000 and 2030, this
savannah and grassland area would shrink between 37 per cent and 100 per cent, and
may not even suffice and require an additional deforestation of 44 Mha.
However, neither Rockström et al. (2009) nor Lambin and Meyfroidt (2011) consid-
ered the additional demand for cropland caused by the ongoing trends of built-up land
and soil degradation and new demands for biomaterials as explained above. As a result,
they clearly underestimated the additional land demand, and as a consequence their
estimates of gross land use change by cropland expansion, including deforestation, are
also underestimated.
In its recent yearbook, UNEP (2012a) concludes that by 2030, without changes in the
way land is managed, over 20 per cent of terrestrial habitats such as forests, peatlands
and grasslands in developing countries alone could be converted to cropland, aggravat-
ing losses of vital ecosystem services and biodiversity. Thus, the critical question is, up
to what level would the expansion of global cropland be within safe operating limits?
It seems that this question can hardly be answered by purely scientific modelling, but
entails normative questions about the socially acceptable degree of shrinking natural
ecosystems and the degradation of the living environment.
Agricultural expansion and the conversion of natural habitats are known to be key
causes of the worldwide loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Lepers et al., 2005;
MEA, 2005; Haines-Young, 2009). Business-as-usual might lead to a significant further
expansion of cropland and pastureland. As a consequence, the loss of natural habitats,
in particular grasslands, savannahs and forests, might proceed, as is expected also in

the recent UNEP (2012b) global environmental outlook. Underscoring the issue of
large-scale deforestation in the tropics, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological
Diversity (SCBD, 2010, p. 10) points out ‘there is a high risk of dramatic biodiversity
loss and accompanying degradation of a broad range of ecosystem services if ecosystems
are pushed beyond certain thresholds or tipping points’. From an analytical perspective,
it would be extremely difficult to determine thresholds beyond which certain damages
may be conclusively expected. Due to the complex interactions within many cause–effect
networks at different scales the uncertainties are enormous. Meanwhile, however, the
‘reality experiment’ is running, and testing when and where severe and irreversible
consequences will show up might turn out the errors while leaving no further trial.
TEEB (2010) pointed out that in situations of uncertainty and ignorance about poten-
tial tipping points, monetary valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services are ‘less
useful’ and instead policy should ‘invoke safe minimum standards’ or the ‘precautionary
principle’. Thus, instead of uncertain forecasting and risky testing of damage thresholds,
the approach should be to control the known key drivers of global biodiversity loss at a
precautionary safe level.
According to the modelling of Van Vuuren and Faber (2009, p. 13), ‘halting bio-
diversity loss requires agricultural land [cropland 1 permanent pastures] to, at least,
stabilise from 2020’. That insight can be used as a preliminary guideline. Moreover, one
may consider that also a change from permanent pastures to cropland is usually associ-
ated with losses of biodiversity (MEA, 2005; Sala et al., 2009), as well as with carbon
(Fargione et al., 2008) and nutrient release, as cropping usually depends on regular fer-
tilisation (in a range represented, e.g., by Simpson et al., 2009 and Tilman et al., 2006).
Before that background, one can conclude that a cautious global target would be to halt
the expansion of global cropland into grasslands, savannahs and forests by 2020. This
would imply that the global area of cropland could safely increase up to approximately
1.64 billion ha (about 100 Mha more from the level in use in 2005). Assuming that a
stabilisation would be possible at that level and considering that the world popula-
tion is forecasted to reach 8.3 billion by 2030, renders a target value of around 0.20 ha
per capita for 2030.
What does this mean for the European Union? The analysis of the global agricultural
land use of the EU-27 showed that – at current resource use levels and assuming further
yield increases of 1 per cent per annum on average – global cropland use for domestic
consumption may be about 0.24 ha per capita in 2030. This would be beyond the world-
wide business-as-usual average of 0.21 ha per capita, and beyond the approximated SOS
value of 0.20 ha per capita (Bringezu et al., 2012).
Thus, under business-as-usual conditions the consumption of agricultural goods of
the EU might contribute to driving the expansion of global cropland. Considering also
pastureland, although the data is rather uncertain, it seems reasonable to assume that
further intensification of permanent pastures in countries of the South could somehow
buffer for the expansion of cropland within the overall land area used for agriculture
(ibid.). Nevertheless, extensively used grasslands would be converted into intensively
grazed areas with high nutrient turnover and related environmental pressure. Therefore,
EU policy – and countries in a similar situation of ‘overconsumption’ – may be rec-
ommended to adjust their incentive frameworks in a way that the overall demand for
cropland is lowered to a globally more sustainable level.

STEERING CONSUMPTION TOWARDS SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY
Among the options for sustaining agricultural land use, so far the focus has mainly been
on the supply side. Certainly, also in the future the cultivation of crops and animal pro-
duction can and needs to be improved by best management practices. However, while
agricultural and crop sciences and capacity building of farmers, in particular in devel-
oping countries, are progressing, the further increase of agricultural production meets
various limitations. Whereas in certain regions significant potentials may be expected,
such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, those improvements require enormous investments, and
even if realised might not change the worldwide overall trend, as production in devel-
oped countries may not grow as in the past.
At the same time, largely untapped potentials lie in improvement on the demand side.
In particular, the use of biomass can become much more efficient. The general questions
are, how can the demand side contribute to both (1) sustainable production on those
hectares where the consumed produce comes from, and (2) maintaining a consumption
level that keeps the required number of hectares at acceptable levels, that is, within the
safe operating space? Finally, what strategies and policies may effectively contribute to
both ends?
Product-Specific Approaches
It has been widely recognised that policy instruments are needed to manage increasing
competition for land and land encroachment, especially into high-value nature areas.
Efforts to this end have been intensified across the globe. In the EU, for example, where
10 per cent of final energy consumption in the transport sector has been set as a target
to be met with renewables by 2020, the regulation states that ‘fuel crops’ must not be
produced on primary forestry land, highly biodiverse biomes, peatland and other valu-
able areas. Minimum levels of GHG savings must be met, increasing from 35 per cent to
50 per cent in 2017, and methods to account for GHG emissions from indirect land use
change must be developed (EU, 2009).
However, such product-related stipulations alone cannot solve the problem of land
use change induced by biofuel production. First, displacement effects are methodo-
logically difficult to capture. An increasing number of analyses and debate on how to
quantify and assess the direct and indirect land use change induced by biofuels have
recently emerged (e.g., Searchinger et al., 2008; Ravindranath et al., 2009; Al-Riffai
et al., 2010; Hiederer et al., 2010). Edwards et al. (2010) compared different models for
quantifying the scale of land use change, finding that estimates depend heavily on the
model and parameters chosen. Especially assumptions about the future development
of yield increases and substitution effects between crops, products and regions lead to
wide disparities in modelling results. For instance, estimates on total indirect land use
change induced by the expected demand for biodiesel in the EU alone range from 242 to
1928 kha per Mtoe (million tonnes of oil equivalent), depending on the model used. With
the provision of ever more GHG estimates for specific types of biofuels, there is a real
risk of getting lost in the details and losing sight of the big picture.
More importantly, the production of biofuels will increase as long as it makes eco-
nomic sense to produce them. Manufacturers will continue to source their biofuels from

highly productive crop plantations in regions from South America and Southeast Asia
in order to meet legal requirements. As a consequence, the production of food and other
non-food biomass will be driven elsewhere. As shown for the EU, biofuels will add to
the overall demand for land, which already exceeds domestic availability by around
25 per cent. As such, the increasing demand for both food and non-food biomass can
only be met by the net expansion of global arable land. Thus, the risk of indirect effects
depends on the overall demand for land-based products. Globalisation has made it
particularly difficult and complicated for governments to maintain an overview of how
much agricultural land they ‘consume’, as the amount of global land used by national
economies needs to be accounted for. Product-specific approaches such as certification
are still important, but will be only effective in the context of overall land use (Bringezu
et al., 2009a).
It is not only biofuels that demonstrate how in a globalised world decisions in one
country may affect land use in another: around 72 per cent of poultry and 55 per cent
of pigs were raised in global industrialised animal-production systems at the turn of the
twenty-first century (Galloway et al., 2007). The feed for these animals is produced in
other regions and then often consumed far from the point of production. Meat and dairy
products account for about three-quarters of the global land used for producing food
for European consumption (Bringezu and Steger, 2005). In Brazil the growing demand
for feed contributes to the expansion of cropland into natural ecosystems (Morton et al.,
2006; Wassenaar et al., 2007). A model developed by Galloway et al. (2007) suggests that
primary expansion of cropland in Brazil is most sensitive to changes in soy yield and to
the quantity of meat and feed demand from abroad.
One may argue that the market will ‘regulate’ the price and therefore production will
be located in regions optimal for it. The problem, however, is that markets do not func-
tion ideally and do not take into account typically negative externalities. Therefore, the
consumption of agricultural goods in a country or region may lead to cropland expan-
sion in other countries, which altogether may surpass the safe operating space for land
use. Proper monitoring systems and smart regulation are needed to prevent this overex-
ploitation. The regulation does not need to be market inhibiting, but may rather trigger
innovation across the supply chain to foster the most effective use of existing cropland
resources in dynamic and evolving markets.
In a globalised world, national sovereignty has to cope with international interdepend-
encies and principles of equity and burden sharing. Climate change and the degradation
and loss of ecosystems, like forests, are regional, national and global challenges that call
for regional, national and global strategies and cooperation. Responsible use should
therefore become a matter to producers as well as consumers who indirectly use others’
resources, in particular when that resource use may contribute to an overuse of global
capacities. This is especially relevant for regions such as the EU, as a ‘net consumer’ of
global cropland. The need to monitor and control the domestic consumption of global
agricultural goods grows with the increasing globalisation of food, feed, biofuel and
biomaterial markets.
In summary, as long as global cropland expands – as will be the case for the coming
decades to feed the growing world population – product-specific quality standards will
be insufficient for controlling indirect land use change. Product-specific measures at
the micro level (e.g., biofuels certification) must be complemented by demand-specific

measures at the macro level (e.g., addressing net land use) in order to prevent problem
shifting.
From Choice Editing to Reframing of Consumption
Even if safe operating practices were adopted on each hectare of agricultural land, the
overall consumption of agricultural resources could lead to land use changes beyond
globally acceptable levels. This happens when the demand for land-based products
exceeds levels of sustainable supply, causing an expansion of cropland into high-value
nature areas to meet this extra demand. This could be a result of distorted price signals
(e.g., subsidised consumption of non-food biomass) or possibly also a rebound – that is,
consumers may drive more with certified biofuels, thereby increasing demand. For these
reasons, consumption-based approaches are not only necessary to adjust consumption
toward sustainable levels, but may also be an effective way to trigger life-cycle-wide
improvements in the efficiency of food and non-food biomass use.
Governmental interventions deliberately targeting consumption patterns may be
considered unacceptable in liberal market economies. In reality, however, governments
already steer consumption significantly. For instance, tax, tariff, and subsidy policies
increase the desirability of some products while making others unattractive or unavail-
able. Safety and performance standards shape and constrain choice for everything from
food to cars (Maniates, 2010). The government ‘choice edits’ (where governments and/
or businesses influence the choices made by consumers), for example, by banning envi-
ronmentally harmful products like CFCs and, recently in Australia and some EU coun-
tries, incandescent light bulbs. As Maniates (2010) points out, the real worry is that for
decades such activities have been used to encourage a culture of consumerism that makes
mass consumption appear to be both natural and the foundation of ‘healthy’ economies
and human happiness. For this reason, the government, along with business, would have
to play a major role in shifting societies away from systems of mass consumerism. A
starting point could be tackling consumerism of land-based products, but far-reaching
efforts for all natural resources are also needed.
It is not only government’s responsibility to ‘tackle’ consumption. A report published
by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development on sustainable consump-
tion begins with the statement: ‘We recognise the need for business to play a leadership
role in fostering more sustainable levels and patterns of consumption, through current
business processes such as innovation, marketing and communications, and by working
in partnership with consumers, governments and stakeholders to define and achieve
more sustainable lifestyles’ (WBCSD, 2008, p. 5). The report emphasises that business
has a role to play, for instance by choice influencing (using marketing and awareness-
raising campaigns to encourage consumers to make sustainable choices) and through
choice editing (removing unsustainable products and services from the market). It also
highlights that in order for people to be able to change consumption behaviours and
make informed purchasing decisions, they need the support of business, governments
and civil society.
Relying on consumer choice alone is not an effective strategy. Research has shown,
for instance, that consumer awareness of environmental problems does not necessarily
translate into consumer willingness to pay extra for environmentally friendly goods or to

adopt sustainable consumption practices (WBCSD, 2008). Sustainable consumer choices

are hindered by a number of barriers, including availability, affordability, conveni-
ence, product performance, conflicting priorities, scepticism and force of habit (ibid.).
Consumers are also heavily influenced by marketing – global advertising expenditures
hit USD643 billion in 2008 (Assadourian, 2010). They may also be confused by the mul-
titude of product labelling systems that they are confronted with on a daily basis. For
instance, the Ecolabel Index website (www.ecolabelindex.com) has compiled a database
of 432 ecolabels in 246 countries and 25 sectors, with at least 127 of these labels dedicated
to food alone. A study analysing promising transformations in consumer cultures in the
UK concluded that the green consumer has not traditionally been the tipping point for
green innovation, but rather interventions by government and business to edit out less
sustainable products has been the determining factor (SDC and NCC, 2006).
Consumption-targeted strategies may also contribute to large gains. For instance,
Bringezu et al. (2009b) estimated that in Germany it would be feasible to save around
1200 m2 of land per capita with just three demand-side measures: reducing the total
fuel consumption of cars by 26–30 per cent (rebound not considered) and phasing out
first-generation biofuels, reducing the consumption of animal-based food products to a
level recommended by the German Nutrition Society (DGE), and reducing the share of
wasted (or waste) food products in households and retail trade (Table 4.1).
Table 4.1 Estimated effect of alternative scenario elements for biomass use in Germany
on global land use and GHG emissions
Savings Potential for Global Savings Potential for CO2

Land Requirement (2030) Equivalents
Supply side
Biogas replaces biofuels Constanta 15.8–17.9 Mta
100 m2 per capitab n.a.b
Photovoltaic replaces biogas 100 m2 per capita 2.7–3.0 Mt
Reduced domestic animal 1/− at constant consumption 1/− at constant consumption
production
Demand side
Emission mitigation for 500–600 m2 per capita 29.6 Mt
automobiles to 130 g CO2/km 23% diesel, 27% gasoline
Reduced domestic animal- 400–500 m2 per capita n.a. (synergistic)
based diet according to
recommendations of DGE
Reduction of wasted food in ca. 200 m2 per capita n.a. (synergistic)
households
Notes:
a. Biogas produced from biomass on domestic land formerly used for biofuels.
b. Biogas replaces the energy content of biofuels from domestic land.
n.a. No data available.
n.a. (synergistic): No data available; it can be assumed that a synergistic effect takes place leading to
mitigation of global land requirement.
Source: Adapted from Bringezu et al. (2009b).

Wide disparities in food consumption exist across the world. Nearly one billion people
are malnourished, making food access and availability one of the most serious chal-
lenges of the twenty-first century. At the same time, overconsumption of food products,
especially of animal-based products with disproportionally high GHG emissions and
land and water requirements, results in an overproportionate use of agricultural land by
developed countries.
Looking at Europe, North America and Oceania, Wirsenius et al. (2010) found that
around 105 Mha of cropland (or a 6 per cent reduction) and 1062 Mha of permanent
grasslands (or a 29 per cent reduction) could be saved by 2030 if those countries reduced
their meat consumption by around 25 per cent (to a minimum of 70 kg/capita) and
decreased their food wastage by 15–20 per cent in households and retail, which would
contribute to a faster convergence of dietary consumption levels between world regions.
Stehfest et al. (2009) examined the land use saving potential of aligning worldwide
meat consumption levels with the dietary recommendations of the Harvard Medical
School for Public Health. This is a diet with sparing consumption of ruminant meat
and pork – meaning no more than one serving per week – and one to two servings of
fish, poultry and eggs per day. Meeting the requirements of a healthy diet for all world
citizens would require 135 Mha less cropland and 1360 Mha less pasture area than the
reference scenario, with about 10 per cent initial CO2 savings.
Another good opportunity to increase efficiency is to reduce food wastage. Around
one-third of edible food is lost or wasted annually – amounting to roughly 1.3 billion tons
globally. Around 40 per cent of food losses in industrialised countries occur at retail and
consumer levels whereas more than 40 per cent of food losses in developing countries
happen at post-harvest and processing levels (Gustavsson et al., 2011).
For developed regions like the EU, Westhoek et al. (2011) showed that a combination
of a more healthy diet, less food waste and increased efficiency in livestock production
could result in significant reductions of both land requirements and GHG emissions,
mainly in the supplying regions outside the EU. Nevertheless, also at a global level, those
strategies would help to mitigate the expansion of agricultural land.
On the whole, when the overall use of land exceeds the threshold of a safe operating
space, it becomes necessary to limit the overconsumption of land-based products, and
to decouple resource consumption from further growth of wealth and well-being. If
food supply were to be ranked as the highest priority, measures would primarily aim to
reduce consumption of non-food (biofuels and biomaterials) and related land require-
ments. Monitoring and policies need to account for and tackle the global land use for
all consumed biomass products independent from their origin in order to avoid problem
shifting.
The Transition Towards Sustainable Consumption
The transition to sustainable levels of global land use will require a number of iterative
steps (Figure 4.2):
1. Monitor current performance (e.g., apply global land use accounting to determine
how much global land domestic economies require).
2. Set targets and define future objectives (e.g., determine a reference value based on

What works Monitor
Use
Learn from
Account for
Learn from domestic use of
effectiveness global cropland
and evaluation via GLUA
Global
land
use
Address targets based

Implement and on sustainable supply
adjust policies and levels and establish
strategies to steer priorities, e.g. between
Policies
consumption food and non-food

towards targets biomass
Set
Adjust Targets
Source: Adapted from UNEP (2014).
Figure 4.2 Transition cycle for managing global cropland consumption towards levels of
sustainable use
the principles of a safe operating space to establish a ‘land use cap’ and set priorities
between food and non-food biomass consumption).
3. Adjust existing and implement new strategies and policies to steer current perfor-
mance towards future objectives (e.g., adjust targets, subsidies and taxes and estab-
lish a framework for efficiency).
4. Learn from effectiveness and evaluation (e.g., through impact assessments of
policies determine which strategies were particularly effective or ineffective for next
time).
WHAT POLICY CAN DO
The challenge for policy change is enormous. A mix of strategies and measures will be
necessary to reduce global land demand in net-consuming countries and to improve land
management, in particular in developing countries. Key strategies include enhancing

vegetal diets in high-consuming countries, reducing food losses, scaling back biofuel
quotas, controlling biomaterial consumption, improving land-use planning and invest-
ing into the regeneration of degraded soils (Bringezu et al., 2009b; Stehfest et al., 2009;
WRAP, 2009; Bowyer, 2010; Wirsenius et al., 2010; Zah et al., 2010; UNEP, 2014).
Production and product-based approaches, for example, certification, are insufficient
for keeping consumption at levels that can be sustainably supplied. For that purpose,
responsible consumption strategies that lead to a more efficient and equitable use of
land-based resources are needed.
The following major options are important (UNEP, 2014):
● Enhancing efficient use of biomass and its substitutes, in particular a reduction of

food waste and reduced fuel consumption of car fleets could significantly reduce
cropland requirements.
● Delinking the markets for fuels and food by reducing the direct and indirect sub-
sidisation of fuel crops (incl. biofuel quotas) could relieve pressure on land use
change and reflect priorities for ‘food first’.
● Controlling the consumption of biomaterials, in particular to avoid similar side-
effects as those known from biofuels.
● Improving land management and land use planning to minimise expansion of
built-up land on fertile soils and to invest into the restoration of degraded land.
● Monitoring global land use for the total consumption of agricultural goods to
enable countries to measure their fair share of global resource use, and to adjust
sectoral policies if necessary.
CONCLUSIONS
Sustaining global agriculture will not only require improved land management. It will
also require adjusting the consumption of agricultural goods to levels that can sus-
tainably be supplied. For that purpose, countries can monitor the real land footprint
associated with their consumption of agricultural goods, in particular cropland. They
can determine how their current use relates to the world average, and see whether their
consumption is within the fair share of a global safe operating space. In cases where
countries consume beyond the ‘acceptable’ level, policies can be adjusted to enhance a
more efficient use of land-based biomass (e.g., through reduced waste, a more healthy
diet and a reduced biofuel quota).
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AG ETH.

5. Meeting the food security challenge through
sustainable intensification
Noel Russell and Amani Omer*
INTRODUCTION
Providing a secure supply of food to an ever-increasing number of affluent people is one

of the emerging challenges facing global agriculture at the start of the current century.
Responding to this challenge is becoming urgent, with around one billion people suffer-
ing chronic hunger and poverty. At the same time the response of agriculture remains
constrained by limited availability of arable land and increasingly unsustainable agricul-
tural practices. Against this background the notion of sustainable agricultural intensifi-
cation has been suggested as a means of alleviating poverty and sustainably delivering a
secure supply of food.
Building on previous and ongoing research by the authors and others, this chapter
delineates the many interpretations of sustainable intensification and explores the ways
in which it might help in motivating and implementing policy adjustments that could
promote sustainable food security. A stylised model of farmer decision-making is used
to characterise an agricultural production scenario in which increasing input use and
ecological services jointly contribute to food production even as ecological degrada-
tion is balanced by induced conservation. This model is used to illustrate the potential
for sustainable intensification and the basic technological and social characteristics
that would facilitate this process. This sets the scene for considering how sustainable
intensification can be promoted and encouraged, including the possibility of voluntary
implementation motivated by the availability of ecosystem service benefits for agri-
culture. The chapter concludes by considering the potential contribution of policies
that encourage ecosystem conservation, and in particular how government interven-
tions can avoid ‘crowding out’ voluntary implementation of sustainable intensification
processes.
THE CHALLENGE OF SUSTAINABLE FOOD SECURITY IN

THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
While there are many definitions of food security, most authors agree that there are
four conditions that must be fulfilled if the food supply for a given group of people is
to be considered secure. First, there must be sufficient food available from all possible
sources so that everybody can in principle meet minimum physiological needs. Second,
all individuals in the group must have physical and financial access to sufficient supplies
of calories and protein. Third, the conditions for adequate food utilisation must be met,
including availability of balanced diet, access to sufficient clean water, and access to
125
adequate health care and sanitation. The fourth condition is stability of basic production
processes, resource provision and markets for outputs and inputs.
The current challenge is that each of these conditions is not being consistently met for
many regions and countries. Food availability is being impaired by biological and politi-
cal failures in many parts of the world. The problem is further extended and exacerbated
by political and economic failures that leave large groups of people with no means of
accessing food even when physical quantities of food are available. And in many cases
even when access can be protected, the health, sanitation and dietary infrastructures
remain underdeveloped to the point that the ability of the people affected to make the
best use of available nutrients is seriously hindered. These problems are also exacerbated
by an increasing lack of stability in the climatic and biological processes underpinning
food production, and this is often manifested as instability in markets that undermines
the sustainability of livelihoods of those people whose economic and nutritional status
is already vulnerable. Overarching and underpinning these problems is, first, a continu-
ally increasing demand for food and, second, the appearance of potential constraints
on increasing food supplies. The principal drivers of increased food demand are widely
acknowledged as population growth and increasing affluence, leading respectively to
increased volume of food required and changing dietary composition. These latter
changes decrease the efficiency with which food can be provided using current produc-
tion techniques and processes, as meat, dairy products and vegetables are substituted for
cereals, roots and tubers.
Most current estimates see global population increasing at least until the middle of
the current century and beyond depending mainly on assumptions about reductions
in fertility. For example, in the 2010 population projections from the UN (United
Nations, 2011) ‘medium’ assumptions on fertility decline suggest that global popula-
tion will increase from around 7.0 billion in 2011 to 9.3 billion in 2050, reaching 10.1
billion in 2100. Most of this increase is projected for developing countries. Children and
young people in these countries are at an all time high (2.6 billion) and their numbers
are projected to increase to 3.6 billion in 2050 and 3.7 billion by 2100. This cohort poses
particular challenges for food security and will continue to do so. Even more challenging
is the increase in population over 60 years, projected to rise from 510 million in 2011 to
1.6 billion and 2.4 billion in 2050 and 2100 respectively.
The convergence of eating patterns across the globe is well documented (see, e.g.,
Guyomard et al., 2012). This has generally involved a general increase in calorie intake
with no change in nutritional structure, followed by a structural change in relative
consumption of different foods with a reduction in cereals and roots combined with an
increase in sugar, fats and animal products. The increasing demand for various forms of
post-farm processing was also part of this shift. For developed countries this transition
was completed over about 100 years, up to the middle of the twentieth century. More
recently, characterised as ‘Westernisation’ of traditional diets, this transition has been
experienced by developing countries over a much shorter adjustment period of at most a
few decades. These changes have been accompanied by changes in the food chain, includ-
ing an increase in the amount of waste generated. Some estimates suggest that as much as
half the calories produced by farmers never reach consumers (ibid.).
The increasing consumption of animal products, especially the products of ruminant
animals, has been shown to be particularly inefficient, with ruminants requiring up to

Meeting the food security challenge 127
three times as much feed per kg of meat produced as non-ruminant species. Even though
ruminants can meet a large proportion of their nutrient requirements from grazing, very
few countries have been able to meet increases in meat demand from grazing animals
alone, thus having to rely on more intensive methods based on using cereals as animal
feed.
These changes are being driven by the complex interaction of many factors includ-
ing physiological mechanisms that regulate food consumption and metabolism, social
norms and attitudes to food and food consumption, and a range of economic factors.
Historically, the decline in food prices driven by the industrialisation of agricultural
production and the Green Revolution has contributed significantly to the alleviation in
world hunger. At the same time changes in the relative prices of different categories of
food can have a significant influence on diet composition with implications for overall
production. However, the main driver of recent consumption changes has been secular
increases in consumer incomes.
What the previous section has emphasised is that the factors driving increases in the
demand for food and feed production are deeply embedded in global patterns of social
and economic change. Population growth may not be immutable and rates of growth
may indeed be declining but these changes are only slowly having an effect. Most
estimates of population change and the consequent changes in food demand indicate
increases until at least the middle of the current century. Similarly, economic growth and
development, though much more erratic, are expected to trend upwards over the longer
term as they have done for nearly two centuries. This will also contribute to rising food
demand as indicated in the previous section.
At the same time the finite resources of Planet Earth are evident: limited land, limited
ability to increase the input of energy, fertilisers and chemicals for production on this
land, and more importantly eroding and increasingly more critical ecological resources
to support existing as well as the anticipated increases in production. Food produc-
tion has expanded dramatically in the last five decades, estimated by the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO, 2011) to have more than doubled in this time span.
Even in the face of continuing population increase this has implied per capita increases of
nearly 50 per cent. And this has been accomplished without any major expansion in the
amount of land under cultivation. However, the secular yield increases that supported
these changes are already faltering and any significant increase in land area can only be
commanded at the expense of forests and other ecological habitats. In addition, current
practices and rates of use of vital non-biotic inputs such as chemicals and fertilisers are
not sustainable and even the use of water in some regions is focused on mining ground-
water reserves rather than sustainable management of the hydrological cycle. Faced with
these limitations, especially the implied limitation on cultivable land area, meeting the
food security challenge will require that novel approaches are developed to match food
availability to food demands. This must entail management of food demands as well as
food supplies and will inevitably require a sustainable means of achieving increased food
yields on the limited area of cultivable land. This becomes even more urgent when factor-
ing in competing demands for agricultural land for biofuel production.
Ensuring sufficient food availability, however, meets only one of the conditions for
food security as outlined earlier. It is also essential to ensure physical and financial access
through, first, ensuring conservation of infrastructure for food distribution and, second,

alleviation of chronic or transient poverty, including the potential role of food market
price volatility. However, these issues are not of primary concern here since this chapter
focuses on the food production process and how it might evolve to meet increasing
demand for food while sustaining and increasing productivity on limited and possibly
diminishing arable land. In other words it focuses on the potential contribution to global
food security of sustainable intensification.
TECHNOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL UNDERPINNING FOR

SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFICATION
When Sir John Beddington (2009) described the emerging food security crisis arising
from unavoidable changes in population, affluence and ecological damage as a ‘perfect
storm’ the scientific community responded with cautious optimism. One part of their
response to this multifaceted problem was to begin investigating how food production
and availability could be increased safely and sustainability. Many of these proposals
recognised that current production practices and the existing land base would be incapa-
ble of meeting this challenge and that more intensive and more sustainable agricultural
practices were required. This introduced a further dilemma since historical experience
indicated that agricultural intensification was more likely to impair rather than promote
sustainability. Nevertheless, the policy community has adopted the notion of ‘sustain-
able intensification’ and the chapter explores the technological and social underpinnings
in this section. First of all it considers alternative approaches to definition and measure-
ment, and then presents a brief overview of the authors’ efforts to develop a model of a
simple agricultural system that allows for sustainable intensification. A brief review of
the principal policy implications of this analysis and a critical review of its limitations
conclude this section.
Understanding and Measuring Sustainable Intensification: Input and Output Approaches
The concept of sustainable intensification emerged in the economics literature on

sustainable food production in the mid-1990s, although the elements of the idea were
already part of the received wisdom for a number of decades. The principal concerns
were focused on the collective ability to securely and sustainably feed a growing and
increasingly affluent population from a fixed or declining area of land while conserving
or improving the ability of ecosystems to provide the services necessary for sustainable
food production and for the provision of many other regulatory and cultural services to
the wider economy and society. In the short run, and in the absence of any major tech-
nological advance that increased the inherent productivity of land, the only option was
to increase the intensity of input use without compromising sustainable food production.
This is what was originally termed sustainable intensification.
More recently the idea has been expanded to encompass any activities that increase
the productivity of land without impairing the ecological integrity of farming activi-
ties. In particular many regard the increases in yield derived from the development
of new varieties, originally excluded, as the essential component of sustainable
intensification.

Origins and Evolution of the Notion of Sustainable Intensification
In the case of agricultural production some confusion about the meaning and implica-
tions of sustainable intensification has arisen from alternative views about what is meant
by ‘sustainability’ and ‘intensification’ in this context. The many alternative notions of
sustainability may be classified into those that primarily rely on economic concepts and
those that rely on ecological concepts. Those that rely on ‘economic’ concepts are gener-
ally based on some notion of continuity into the future and tend to support definitions
based on constancy or increase over time in production capacity, consumption of goods
and services, or ultimately human well-being. Measures suggested by these definitions
often focus on the economy’s capital base as a reflection of production capacity giving
rise to indicators that refer to ‘genuine investment’ or ‘inclusive investment’. These
suggest that appropriate responses to increasing population and affluence could include:
(1) policies to encourage investment in the capital base including educational investment
to enhance human capital; (2) policies to reduce the ecological impact of production
processes including support for technological changes that increase the productivity of
(and thus reduce the need for) natural resources; and (3) policies to reduce the ecological
impact of consumption.
Definitions based on ‘ecological’ concepts of sustainability focus on the notion of
conserving or enhancing ‘resilience’ of ecological systems so that the ecological services
needed to support economic and human activities can be maintained in the face of unpre-
dictable but inevitable shocks to the underlying physical and biological systems arising
from physical, biological and human processes. The focus here is on the continuing phys-
ical, biological and human activities that threaten to undermine this resilience; the meas-
ures suggested by this approach involve providing a range of indicators for the extent
and ecological impact of these activities while the suggested policy responses are based
on reducing the extent and impact of individual activities using appropriate mechanisms
that can include direct prohibition as well as financial inducements. Particular attention
is recommended for impacts that may be approaching a threshold beyond which ecologi-
cal damage becomes irreversible.
Definitions of ‘intensification’ can similarly be classified into those traditionally used
by economists on the one hand and those that are based more broadly on concepts
used by agriculturalists, geographers and ecologists on the other. The economists’
notion of ‘intensity’ is based on measuring input use per unit of land or other fixed
input such as labour or capital equipment and is distinguished from the notion of ‘pro-
ductivity’ that measures the output generated per unit of fixed or variable input. In this
context ‘agricultural intensification’ involves increasing the use of inputs per hectare
and this may arise as a result of bringing previously uncultivated land into cultivation
or increasing the use of labour, equipment, chemicals or other inputs on land already
being cultivated. Economists tend to focus on changes that are immediately imple-
mentable by pointing to changes in variable inputs, such as chemicals, fertilisers and
use of available equipment, that are feasible in the short run. These are distinguished
from changes that might involve adjustments to the production process that are feasi-
ble only in the longer run, such as introducing novel materials and equipment or new
and more productive crop varieties. This implies that the search for sustainable inten-
sification in the short run becomes a search for ways to increase variable inputs (and

output) per hectare without c ompromising the integrity of the ecosystem within which
production is embedded. It has been pointed out (Licker et al., 2010) that while there
is significant scope for increasing yields using current production systems and crop
varieties in many parts of the world, these increases are unlikely to be achieved without
increases in fertilisers and chemicals that may involve unavoidable ecosystem damage.
In these circumstances sustainable intensification can only be achieved in aggregate,
and only if there are simultaneous compensating increases in conservation investments
in these ecosystems.
Agriculturalists, geographers and ecologists adopt a much broader view of intensi-
fication; any increase in inputs per hectare is regarded as intensification and also any
increase in output per hectare whether or not it is accompanied by an increase in inputs.
This latter will include any increased output per hectare arising from changing the pro-
duction process by introducing novel equipment and/or crop varieties without changing
the level of physical inputs used. In some cases the increase in value of output, arising
from price changes or a reorganisation of production to increase emphasis on more valu-
able products, is also counted as intensification. According to these views, sustainable
intensification can involve increase in material inputs as above, and can also involve a
longer-term process in which yields are increased through the development and introduc-
tion of new crop varieties or through other innovations involving novel equipment and
production processes. In these cases it may also be necessary to consider whether there is
ecosystem damage that needs to be compensated by appropriate increases in ecosystem
investment.
Intensification and Agricultural Decision-making
In the context of meeting the food security challenge it is useful to think of agricul-
tural production as the outcome of a number of distinguishable overlapping decisions.
Agricultural economists typically identify decisions made within any given produc-
tion cycle, generally pertaining to use of fertilisers, chemicals, machinery or labour, as
intraseasonal or short-run decisions. Decisions made within a specific investment cycle,
related to acquisition of breeding livestock, machinery or the use of additional land, are
referred to as interseasonal or long-run decisions. The economists’ notion of intensifi-
cation is most easily explained in terms of these decisions; agricultural intensification
may involve changes at the intensive margin where additional inputs are committed to
production on a fixed area of land; or changes at the extensive margin where additional
inputs are used to bring previously uncultivated land into production.
These farm-level decisions are made in the context of higher-level decisions, within
the policy cycle, that create and adjust incentives through policy interventions, and that
influence the level of R&D activity and the subsequent availability of more produc-
tive varieties of crops and breeds of livestock, and improved agronomic procedures.
These decisions, whether leading to changes in input use at the intensive margin or at
the extensive margin, will inevitably involve more intensive use of land as more and/
or better inputs are deployed in order to increase production. This intensification is
sustainable when undertaken in a way that does not impair the long-run prospects for
productivity.

MODELLING THE SUSTAINABLE INTENSIFICATION

PROCESS
Herewith we undertake more formal analysis of sustainable intensification using a simple

model of the decisions facing a self-interested agricultural producer who is seeking the
highest levels of utility consistent with available resources, technology and ecosystem
quality. We take account of contrasting impacts of using artificial inputs on agricultural
production and on damage to habitats and the agro-ecosystem, recognising that many
of these impacts are not necessarily instantaneous and/or simultaneous, and are best
represented by time dependent processes.
The model therefore focuses on maximising the discounted present value of utility
flows where utility is assumed to depend on a sustained flow of marketable agricultural
output, Y(t), with disutility arising from ecosystem damage,1 D(t), both of which are
related to the use of artificial inputs, X(t). For the decision-maker, the problem becomes
to optimally allocate resources on a given area of land at any period t, between consum-
able agricultural output, Y(t), and environmental conservation effort,2 C(t), in order to
enhance the current stock of the natural capital,3 B(t).
The utility function, U 5 U[Y(t), D(t)], is assumed to be strictly concave with positive
and diminishing marginal utility with respect to Y(t), that is, UY . 0, UYY , 0 and the
marginal utility of D(t) is negative and decreasing; UD , 0, UDD , 0. In addition, the
cross-derivatives are assumed to be negative. This means that the marginal utility of
Y(t), which is specified to be positive, is decreasing in D(t), UYD , 0; and the marginal
utility of D(t), which is specified to be negative, is decreasing in Y(t); UDY , 0. This
implies that the marginal utility of agro-ecosystem damage is decreasing with respect to
increases in agricultural output (consumption), or, equivalently, the marginal disutility
of agro-ecosystem damage is increasing with respect to increases in output. In this way
we represent potential feedbacks on decision-maker utility arising from trade-offs in
the allocation of resources between consumable agricultural output and environmental
conservation.
Agricultural Production and Ecosystem Damage
In this model agricultural production depends on the stock of natural capital, B(t),
and the vector of artificial inputs, X(t), thus assuming that biodiversity is a natural
input favouring crop production. The agricultural production function, F[X(t), B(t)], is
assumed to be strictly concave and twice differentiable, with FB . 0, FBB , 0 and FX . 0,
FXX , 0, and the cross-derivatives are assumed to be positive FXB 5 FBX . 0. This means
that the marginal effect of artificial input use is enhanced by increases in biodiversity
stock, a plausible assumption in intensive agricultural landscapes that are biodiversity
poor, where biodiversity conservation is managed to be ecologically meaningful and
economically sound. Similarly, the marginal effect of biodiversity would be boosted by
increases in artificial input use.
The effect on agro- ecosystem services of intensified agricultural production and
use of artificial inputs, is represented by the ‘damage (or ‘degradation’) function’,
D(t) 5 D[X(t), B(t)], to reflect that ecosystem service degradation is density dependent.
In this case, we assume that increasing the stock of natural capital makes a positive

c ontribution to ecosystem resilience and hence to its ability to better tolerate and over-
come the adverse effects of intensive agricultural activities, hence DB , 0, DBB . 0. In
addition, ecosystem damage due to application of X is assumed to rise at an increasing
rate, that is, DX . 0, DXX . 0. The cross-derivatives in this function are assumed to be
negative, that is, DXB 5 DBX , 0. This is equivalent to assuming that the marginal impact
of artificial input use is decreasing with respect to increases in biodiversity stock so that
an increase in biodiversity stock increases resilience of the agro-ecosystem and also
reduces the damage generated by any given level of X application. The marginal decline
in agro-ecosystem damage due to biodiversity stock is decreasing with increases in X, or,
equivalently, the marginal enhancement in ecosystem quality at any given level of bio-
diversity is increasing with additional units of X; that is, the additional contribution of
biodiversity to reducing ecosystem damage is more significant at higher levels of artificial
input use than at lower levels.
In order to represent time dependence in these relationships, the state variable, B(t), is
assumed to evolve according to a process that reflects (i) the natural dynamics of ecologi-
cal integrity/biodiversity,4 (ii) the positive impacts of environmental conservation activi-
ties, and (iii) the damage caused by conventional agricultural activities carried out in the
agro-ecosystem using conventional inputs such as fertilisers and herbicides. Assuming
that growth in B(t) can be modelled through a typical logistic growth function, this is
now extended to reflect the impact of conservation activities and agricultural input use
giving:
Ḃ 5 aB(t) (1 − B(t)/K) 1 dC(t) − gX(t)(5.1a)
where a . 0 reflects the natural dynamics of B(t), and K stands for the maximum eco-
system quality that can be obtained in the land area under natural evolution without
artificial input application. In highly intensified agricultural systems it is typical to find
relatively low levels of ecological integrity compared with K. This means that the term
B(t)/K is expected to be negligible so equation (5.1a) can be simplified to:
Ḃ 5 aB(t) 1 dC(t) − gX(t)(5.1b)
where a, d and g are all constants. Equation (5.1b) shows that ecosystem integrity is
enhanced proportionally to conservation effort, C(t) (where d is the rate of induced
growth5), and is degraded proportionally to artificial input application. It is also assumed
that no depletion in natural capital occurs as a result of the support that it provides to the
agricultural production process.
Investment in environmental conservation is the only investment activity considered
in this model. In other words the model does not consider other sectors of the economy
including any possible public policy mechanisms.6 To maintain this simplicity we require
that all investment in conservation be financed within the agricultural sector from
current agricultural output.7 Equation 5.2 therefore represents a very simple formula-
tion that imposes this condition while recognising the variety of ways through which this
investment can take place. These would include switching to environmentally friendly
production processes, investment in conservation of habitat and infrastructure, and
direct investment in establishment and promotion of particular species:

C(t) 5 F[X(t), B(t)] − Y(t)(5.2)
We recognise that this is a major simplification of the actual processes involved. In

reality, conservation investment does not need to be financed from current output since
a borrowing/lending mechanism could have been incorporated into the model. Similarly,
conservation investment does not need to be (and arguably should not be) financed
solely from the proceeds of agricultural production; a policy payment mechanism for
ecosystem services could be incorporated. However, the approach adopted here puts the
process of sustainable intensification into sharper focus by highlighting the possibility of
optimal simultaneous increases in input intensity and biodiversity stock.
Optimal Conservation and Input Use
In this stylised model the objective is to choose the time paths for the control variables,
X(t) and C(t), that maximise the value function, W, considering the effect on utility, and
the time-dependent impact on ecosystem quality, B(t). This is in effect a problem of iden-
tifying the trade-off between consumption and environmental conservation that involves
optimising the production process by controlling the scale of agricultural intensification,
X(t). The problem is described by a system of mathematical relationships as follows:
`
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rt U (Y (t) ,D (t)) dt e

Y,X,R (5.3)
t50
where r . 0 is the utility ediscount # #

[ (dFX 2rate, subject
g) UYY 1 dUto (i) the
] equation of motion for B(t),
DY DX Y 1 [ (dFX 2 g) UYD DB 1 dUDD DX DB B f
]
(ii) the non-negativity# constraints, that is, X $ 0 and D $ 0, (iii) the initial condition
X5 e
B(0) 5 B0, (iv) the ecological impact function D(.), and (v) the environmental conserva- 2
e 2
tion investment function C(.). Details of [ dF 2 g ] U
X the solution
YD D X 2 dU
to this F
Y XX 2 dU D
problemD are 2 dU
XX outlined ( D
DD in X ) f
the Appendix to the chapter, which specifies the relationships between the variables
described in the previous section # #
e [ dUDthat
DXX must
1 dUhold as
] the agro- [ ecosystem
Y FXX DB B 2 dFX 2 g DXUYYY f
] evolves along the
optimal trajectory, and # in particular the relationships among input use intensification,
D5 e
conservation activities and ecosystem damage.
e dU
To obtain further insights into the YdynamicFXX 1 dU D
behaviour
D XX 1 dU ( D ) 2
f
ofDDthe Xrelationship between
agriculture and its impact on ecosystem integrity, ` we construct a qualitative analysis
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rtU (Y (t) ,D (t)) dt
that focuses on B(t) and Y(t) for this agro-ecological system (see Appendix). This is
eq
illustrated by a phase Y,X,R
diagram (Figure 5.1) that sets out the relationship between changes
in biodiversity/ecosystem quality (Ḃ) and changes t50 in agricultural output (Ẏ) as the agro-
ecosystem optimally evolves# towards equilibrium.
0H
This system is shown 5 to Bhave
5 aB 1 d [ F (.)
a unique 2 Y] 2
solution thatgXcaneqn5a.3a
be illustrated on a ‘phase
0f
diagram’ where two demarcation curves (Ḃ 5 0 and Ẏ 5 0) divide the ‘phase space’ into
four regions (I to IV), each with a different mix of time derivatives for Y and B consistent
with a ‘saddle-point’ solution for a dynamic resource allocation problem (Figure 5.1).8
0H
In regions I and III these5derivatives
UY 2 df 5 ensure
0 that the variables evolve over time in a way (
that allows convergence0Y to equilibrium since either or both are increasing (region I) or
both are decreasing (region III). In the context of this study, region I would represent
a biodiversity-poor intensively managed agricultural area where adjustment to the
0H
5 UD DX 1 f (dFX 2 g) 5 0 (
0X
# 0H
f 5 2U D 2 f (a 1 dF 2 r) 5 2 1 rf (
IV
Y(t) III
Ḃ = 0
Y∞
E*
II
Ẏ = 0
B∞ B(t)
Figure 5.1 E* as a saddle-point equilibrium in (B, Y) phase space
l ong-run equilibrium requires increased stock of natural capital and agricultural output.
On the other hand adjustment in region III requires reductions in natural capital and
agricultural output and might represent certain types of biodiversity-rich areas endowed
with excess natural capital from an economic point of view. This is in contrast to regions
II and IV where the evolution of variables leads to divergence from equilibrium. These
regions may be seen to represent areas where balanced adjustment is not possible and the
only feasible outcome involves either ‘natural wilderness’ (region II) or ‘intensive arable
desert’ (region IV).
Ecosystem Damage and Intensification
Our analysis focuses on the properties of variables along the converging path for
region I. In particular we look in some detail at the changes over time of agricultural
input use as it adjusts towards equilibrium, Ẋ, and the corresponding adjustment of eco-
system service degradation,` Ḋ.
Max W (Y9 (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rt

The optimal adjustment of Uagricultural
(Y (t) ,D (t)) input
dt use is described by the following
eqn 5.3
expression:
Y,X,R
t50
# #
e [ (dFX 2 g) UYY 1 dUDY DX ] Y 1 [ (dFX 2 g) UYD DB 1 dUDD DX DB ] B f
# (5.4)5.4
X5 eqn
e 2 [ dFX 2 g ] UYD DX 2 dUY FXX 2 dUD DXX 2 dUDD (DX ) 2 f
# #
e [ dUD DXX 1 dUY FXX ] DB B 2 [ dFX 2 g ] DXUYYY f
#
D5 Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821 eqn 5.5
e dUY FXX 1 ( Elgar
XX 1 dUDD DX
dUD DDownloaded from ) 2 f Online at 04/02/2017 03:19:33AM
`
Applying the assumptions we made previously about the signs of the derivatives in the
functions used to construct the model, it can be shown that while the denominator in
(5.4) is positive, the sign of the numerator is ambiguous. As explained in Omer et al.
(2010), the first term in the numerator [(dFX − g)(UYY) 1 dUDYDX]Ẏ ,0, can be rewritten
in terms of a combination of elasticity measures that have interesting interpretations in
the context of input and conservation decisions. In this case an important measure is the
elasticity of the marginal utility of output that indicates the percentage change in mar-
ginal utility UY for a 1 per cent change in output Y. This can be interpreted as a measure
of how tolerant the decision-maker is to reductions in agricultural output, where toler-
ance is being measured by the extent to which the decline in utility levels arising from the
reductions in output are cushioned by offsetting changes in marginal utility of output.
Given the assumptions about the signs of the derivatives this term is negative.
The second term in the numerator ((dFX − g)UYDDB 1 dUDDDXDB)Ḃ can also be rewrit-
ten as a combination of elasticity measures. The elasticity of marginal utility of ecosys-
tem damage measures decision-maker tolerance to ecosystem damage. Following the
analysis above this is a measure of the extent to which reductions in utility arising from
the additional damage is offset by changes in the marginal utility of damage. The damage
elasticity with respect to B is also involved here, showing the percentage reduction in
ecosystem damage for a 1 per cent increase in B. This reflects the impact of changes in the
stock of natural capital in cushioning ecosystem damage. Using the assumptions on the
signs of the derivatives, this term is positive.
The use of artificial inputs will be increasing along the optimal adjustment path (Ẋ
. 0) when the second (positive) term exceeds the first (negative term) making the numer-
ator as a whole positive (since we have already established the denominator is positive).
This is more likely to happen when the decision-maker is less tolerant to reductions in
agricultural output (making the first negative
` term smaller), and more tolerant to eco-
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rt U (Y (t) ,D (t)) dt
system damage (making the second positive term larger). The magnitude of the second
eqn 5.3
term is also increased
Y,X,R where natural capital has a greater cushioning effect on ecosystem
damage. Given a fixed land area, theset50 are the circumstances under which intensification
of agricultural production arises as a result of decision-maker utility maximisation.
We conclude this analysis byginvestigating # volution of intensification and eco- #
e [ (dFX 2 ) UYY 1 dUDYtheDXco-
] Y e1 [ (dFX 2 g) UYD DB 1 dUDD DX DB ] B f
system degradation# along the optimal path to long-run equilibrium. Again, following the
X5 eqn 5.4
analysis in Omer et al. (2010), we obtain the following equation of motion for ecosystem
damage: e 2 [ dFX 2 g ] UYD DX 2 dUY FXX 2 dUD DXX 2 dUDD (DX ) 2 f
# #
#
D5 (5.5) eqn 5.5
e dUY FXX 1 dUD DXX 1 dUDD (DX ) 2 f
`
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rtU (Y (t) ,D (t)) dt

Applying the assumptions about the nature and derivatives of the functions in the model,
eqn 5.a1
Ḋ is unambiguously
Y,X,R negative wherever both Ḃ . 0 and Ẏ . 0, as would be the case for
t50
a biodiversity-poor ecologically degraded agro-ecosystem that could be represented by
region I (see Figure
0H 5.1).
# That is, in region I, Ḋ , 0 and this will be the case even when
Ẋ . 0. Along the optimal
5 B 5 path [ F (.)
aB 1todthe 2Y
long-
run] 2equilibrium,
gX eqn5a.3ain biodiversity-poor agricul-
0f
tural landscapes, ecosystem damage declines even when input use increases. This means
0H
5 UY 2 df 5 0 Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821 (5A.3b
0Y
that along the optimal adjustment path, at relatively low levels of biodiversity, increas-
ing input intensification can be consistent with reductions in ecosystem degradation. In
these circumstances we can see that a process of ‘sustainable intensification’ is a natural
outcome of self-interested managerial decisions.
This result is more likely to arise when biodiversity stock has a strong cushioning effect
on ecosystem damage and when decision-maker preferences show greater tolerance for
ecosystem damage than for reductions in output. The former is a matter of developing
environmentally friendly agricultural production practices, pointing to the possibil-
ity of encouraging research and development activities aimed at enhancing biological
responses and tolerances. And although the latter is less amenable to policy influence,
emerging and increasing concerns for global food security might give rise to the types of
preference changes that would be involved.
POLICY INCENTIVES AND POTENTIAL FOR CROWDING OUT

VOLUNTARY IMPLEMENTATION
A number of studies have addressed the important question of how to provide incentives
to food producers to adopt a ‘sustainable intensification’ approach in responding to the
need to increase food production through increasing yields rather than by increasing
the area devoted to agricultural production. This was addressed in a study of African
agriculture (Reardon et al., 1995) and the recommendations point to the importance
of information availability and financial incentives in the adjustment of agricultural
production processes. This would imply a need for information and advice about appro-
priate production processes for sustainable intensification, and appropriate financial
incentives for their adoption, particularly for those elements that require increases in
ecological conservation.
The research summarised above (Omer et al., 2010) has highlighted an important
distinction in the types of incentive that may be relevant in these circumstances. Noting
that ecosystem conservation can have positive feedback effects on yields through the
contribution of regulatory and supporting ecosystem services to agricultural production,
this on its own can provide an incentive for producers to undertake ecosystem conserva-
tion activities. The research shows that in these circumstances part of the proceeds from
the yield increase achieved through input intensification is used to finance increased con-
servation activities, and in some circumstances this can be sufficient to support sustain-
able intensification so that ecosystem quality, material input use and the level of output
increase simultaneously.
These results relate to intensified farming systems where natural capital has already
been significantly depleted and where conservation activities can make a substantial
contribution to rehabilitating ecosystem quality. The joint impact of ecosystem services
and artificial input use on agricultural productivity is explicitly taken into account and
in addition decision-maker welfare is directly reduced by the ecosystem damage caused
by the use of these inputs. In these circumstances the dynamics of agro-ecosystem adjust-
ment show that self-interest is consistent with an increase in agricultural productivity
that is supported by increased intensification through the use of artificial inputs and by
simultaneous decreases in ecosystem damage.

For the adjustment pathways investigated here, the optimal evolution of the agro-
ecosystem requires reductions in ecosystem damage, whereas increased intensification is
optimal only when certain conditions hold. Under these circumstances the resulting co-
movement of intensification and ecosystem damage corresponds to a type of sustainable
intensification that is more likely in agro-ecological systems where natural capital has
greater impact on the ecosystem so that it is more resilient to damage, indicating higher
ecosystem quality. Sustainable intensification is also encouraged when decision-maker
preferences indicate a greater concern for food security and less concern for ecological
damage.
A fundamental characteristic of this process is the balancing and offsetting of ecosys-
tem damage by voluntary conservation investments. These investments are motivated
in the first instance by increased benefits from ecological impacts on agricultural pro-
ductivity as well as by direct contributions to decision-maker welfare from ecosystem
improvements, a mixture of monetary and non-monetary incentives. However, these
proximate benefits are only part of the contribution of ecological investment, since there
are broader external benefits arising from, for example, ecological impacts on water
quality and/or from impacts on recreation opportunities, so decisions based on these
internal private benefits only will not be socially optimal. Agri-environmental payment
schemes that provide incentives for ecosystem conservation by reimbursing the costs of
adopting farming practices designed to enhance ecosystem quality are currently imple-
mented across the EU and in many other countries worldwide. These schemes are widely
promoted as a means of internalising the external benefits of farm-level decisions relating
to ecosystem conservation.
However, a fundamental question being raised by this study is whether the incentives
provided by these schemes and the conservation investments that they induce, will fully
complement the voluntary investments induced by the private internal benefits. Since it
is also possible that scheme-induced investments might ‘crowd out’ voluntary provision,
it may be that scheme incentives act as substitutes for rather than complements to private
incentives. In fact, much recent research (see, e.g., that reviewed in Frey and Jegen,
2001 and Gneezy et al., 2011) has shown that voluntary contributions can be more than
offset by payment schemes when the intrinsic motivation of participants is undermined
by badly designed and poorly implemented monetary incentives, particularly where
intrinsic motivation of decision-makers is primarily based on non-monetary considera-
tions. The extent to which these problems are likely to arise for conservation investment
supporting sustainable intensification remains to be investigated.
NOTES
* We would like to acknowledge funding from the Petroleum Institute under the RAGS Project 12347,
which facilitated our collaboration in completing the research on which this chapter is based.
1. In the context of this chapter ‘ecosystem damage’ encompasses any change to species or habitat that
reduces biodiversity, change to the climate due to greenhouse gas emissions and/or the ability of the eco-
system to provide services to agriculture. The analysis here focuses on damage resulting from the use of
mechanical and chemical inputs to agriculture.
2. Conservation expenditure is used as indicator of conservation efforts.
3. In this chapter biodiversity is used as an indicator of ecological integrity and hence of natural capital.
4. See note 3.

5. The parameter d can also be interpreted as the marginal degradation in B(t) caused by increase in Y(t) and
thus as the opportunity cost of C(t).
6. However, this investment could be indirectly influenced by public policy mechanisms in other related
sectors of the economy.
7. The conservation expenditure can also be interpreted as the amounts of Y (consumption) foregone rather
than as loss of production.
8. Following Omer et al. (2010) the slope of the natural capital demarcation curve (Ḃ 5 0) is positive, and
while the slope of the agricultural output demarcation curve (Ẏ 5 0) can be either positive or negative a
unique equilibrium will always be defined.
9. This expression is derived from the characteristics of the optimal solution outlined in the Appendix. Details
of the derivation can be found in Omer et al. (2010).
REFERENCES
Beddington, Sir J. (2009), ‘“Perfect storm” poses global threat’, BBC News, 19 May, accessed February 2015
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7952348.stm.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) (2011), The State of Food Insecurity in the
World, Rome: FAO, accessed June 2014 at http://www.fao.org/publications/sofi/2013/en/.
Frey, B.S. and R. Jegen (2001), ‘Motivation crowding theory’, Journal of Economic Surveys, 15(5), 589–611.
Gneezy, U., S. Meier and P. Rey-Biel (2011), ‘When and why incentives (don’t) work to modify behavior’,
Journal of Economic Perspectives, 25(4), 191–209.
Guyomard, H., B. Darcy-Vrillon, C. Esnouf, M. Marin, M. Russel and M. Guillou (2012), ‘Eating patterns
and food systems: critical knowledge requirements for policy design and implementation’, Agriculture and
Food Security, 1, 13, accessed June 2014 at http://www.agricultureandfoodsecurity.com/content/1/1/13.
Licker, R., M. Johnston, J.A. Foley, C. Barford, C.J. Kucharick and C. Monfreda et al. (2010), ‘Mind the
gap: how do climate and agricultural management explain the “yield gap” of croplands around the world?’,
Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19(6), 769–82.
Omer, A., U. Pascual and N. Russell (2010), ‘A theoretical model of agrobiodiversity as a supporting service
for sustainable agricultural intensification’, Ecological Economics, 69(10), 1926–33.
Reardon, T., E. Crawford, V. Kelly and B. Diagana (1995), ‘Promoting farm investment for sustainable inten-
sification of African agriculture’, International Development Paper No. 18, Department of Agricultural
Economics, Michigan State University, accessed June 2014 at http://fsg.afre.msu.edu/polsyn/no3.htm.
United Nations (2011), World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision, New York: United Nations,
Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, accessed June 2014 at http://esa.un.org/
wpp/documentation/pdf/WPP2010_Volume-I_Comprehensive-Tables.pdf.

`
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rt U (Y (t) ,D (t) ) dt

Y,X,R
APPENDIX t50
Optimal Intensification Paths # #

# `
3
For the self-interestedXdecision-
5 maker, the objective in this model is to choose the time e
paths for the controlMax W (Y (tX(t)
variables, )e,D 2and ([tdF
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sidering the instantaneous effect on utility, t50 and the time-d`ependent impact on the state
# (3Y (t)optimising
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effect e# 2rt U (Y (t) ,Dthe
identifying (t) )trade-
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3
consumption and environmental eY,X,R [ dU Max
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# Max [ ( W (2 Y (gt)),D (t)) 5 t50
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process by controlling D 5 e
the dF
scale
Y,X,R
X of agriculturalU YY 1 dU DY Y
intensification,
X 1
t50
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described as: X5 t50
e dUY FXX 1 dUD DXX 1 dUDD# (DX ) 2 f eq
e [ [(dFX 2 g)] UYY 1 dUDY DX ] Y 1 [ (dF # X 2 g ) UYD DB( 1 )dU 2 DD DX DB ] B
# e 2 dF X [( 2 g U YD )XD 2 dU F 2 dU D 2 dU D f
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e dF`X 2 g UYY 1 YdU# XX ] D XX DD X
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Max W # (Y (t)X ,D5(te))25[ dF 2rt ( ( )
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g ]U #YYDt D ,D (t) ) dt FXX 2 dU
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where r . 0 is the utility #
5 B 5 aB 1Y deXX rate, F subject
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1 dU equation
eqn5a.3aD f
of motion for B(t),
D 5e [ dU DY 12dU gX ] X
Y #FXX DB B 2 dFX 2 g # DXUYYY f
DD [ ]
(ii) the non-negativity0fconstraints, # that is, XD$ XX 0 and ] D $ 0,[ (iii) the initial
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# impact D5
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Max C(.),
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t Ddt DXX 1 dU DD DX
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e dUY FXX 1 dU `
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( )2 f
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Y,X,R
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t)) 5 3 e U (Y (t) ,D (t) ) dt
0YH 5Max U(Y,WD) (Y1 (t)f(aB
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5 Y3] e2
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Y,X,R Max W (Y (t) ,D (t50 2rt
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for an interior solution 0Hshows 0Hthat:# t50
5U D 5 B15f aB (dF# 12d [gF) (.) 52 0 Y ] 2 gX eqn5a.3a (
0X 0H0fD X# 0H 5 B X5 aB 1 d [ F (.) 2 Y ] 2 gX eqn5a.3a
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50f UY 2 df 5 0 (5
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0H
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f 50H2U D 2f 5(a UY12dFdf 50
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0X
0H Xij 2 Xi . min
5U 0H D DX 1 f dFX 2 g X5
( ) ijr 05 eq
0H0X 5 UD DX 1 f (dFX 2 g)(5A.3c) X5i . max0 2 Xi . min
5 UD0X DX 1 f (dFX 2 g) 5 0
2j 5 a
# 0X 0H 3
f 5 2UD DB 2 f (a 1 dFB 2 r) 5 F 1X rfr 3 Wij (5
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# 0H
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a
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PART II
GLOBALISATION AND
POLICY REGIMES

6. Agricultural trade
Wyn Grant
INTRODUCTION
Agricultural trade represents both a site of considerable resistance to globalisation in
agriculture and an indication of the progress that it has made. Agricultural markets are
still highly protected relative to those in industry and distorted by domestic agricultural
subsidies. Nevertheless, agriculture has been brought within the scope of the World
Trade Organization (WTO) regime and some progress has been made towards liberalisa-
tion. Moreover, global supply chains have developed between developing countries and
retailers in the developed world.
It is always important to bear in mind that most food is consumed relatively near to
where it is produced and that agricultural trade is a small proportion of all international
trade. Nevertheless, its centrality in the political process is disproportionate to its eco-
nomic weight. It has been a major obstacle to the conclusion of international trade nego-
tiations and continued to be a source of difficulty in the Doha Development Round. At
the risk of some oversimplification we can discern four different types of national interest
that can come into conflict in international trade negotiations:
● Developed countries that have capital-intensive and highly sophisticated agricul-

tures that use a range of inputs from equipment to agri-chemicals, and veterinary
medicine to finance. These agricultural sectors form a small portion of national
output but their political displacement is much greater. The industries are gener-
ally subsidised and protected in different ways. Some commodities may be par-
ticularly sensitive in specific settings, for example dairy products in the European
Union (EU), cotton in the southern United States and rice in Japan and South
Korea. There may be some internal tensions between export-oriented agribusiness
industries and more domestically oriented ‘family farms’, and these can play out
in international negotiating stances. In general, however, these countries want to
retain subsidies and market protection.
● Countries that have highly export-oriented agricultures, largely because they have
favourable climatic conditions and the knowledge base, technical sophistication
and access to capital to take advantage of them. Although smaller enterprises
may survive, these countries are characterised by relatively large-scale agricul-
ture. They include both developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand
and emerging countries such as Brazil and Argentina. Many of them have largely
eliminated subsidies and protection and favour greater liberalisation of agricul-
tural trade.
● Countries that have large sections of their agriculture made up of semi-subsistence
farmers. These farmers may coexist with larger-scale and more modern farm enter-
prises, but they are often oriented primarily to meeting the needs of the domestic
143
markets. These countries want to avoid any combination of circumstances that

would impoverish or displace small-scale farmers, leading them to relocate to
already overcrowded cities. They therefore favour the maintenance of substan-
tial import protection for their domestic agriculture. India and China are classic
examples.
● Least developed countries that may be highly dependent on one primary crop for
which they are largely price takers. The commodity may be vulnerable to fluc-
tuations in its price and affected by subsidies offered by developed countries to
their producers. Examples include the ‘Cotton Club’ countries of Sub-Saharan
Africa and the cocoa producers of West Africa. US cotton subsidies have totalled
USD31 billion over the past ten years, and have been found by the WTO to distort
the global cotton market and damage the livelihoods of millions of poorer cotton
farmers, especially in Africa.
THE DOMESTIC POLITICS OF SUBSIDY
Why do most developed countries, especially those in the EU, continue to pay substan-
tial subsidies to agriculture? These subsidies involve a transfer from the population at
large in the form of consumers and taxpayers to a small minority of citizens, often cor-
porations. Agricultural protection raises the cost of products for consumers. Subsidies
often encourage forms of intensification that are environmentally damaging. They dis-
advantage farmers in the Global South, which runs counter to the efforts of developed
countries to stimulate economic development there. Often the subsidies go largely to
better-off farmers. Given the size of the subsidies, particularly in the EU, the opportunity
cost is high. There are two types of answers to this apparent paradox. One is to look at
the calculus of interest that is involved. The other is to examine the discourses that sur-
round agriculture that lead to the framing of debates about agricultural subsidy and pro-
tection in particular ways. For a long time agricultural interests have been losing ground
in the debate about subsidy and protection, but more recently there has been something
of a reversal in their favour.
The underlying calculus of interest involved in agricultural lobbying has been discussed
in the work of Olson (1965) and others. The benefits of subsidies and protection are con-
centrated on a relatively small number of beneficiaries and it is worth them investing
some time and money to protect them. The costs are diffused much more widely across
taxpayers and consumers. Even if they may be aware of the extent to which agricultural
subsidies increase their taxes and the cost of their purchases of food, and they may well
not be, the impact is unlikely to be so great as to incentivise them to organise to reduce
the level of subsidy and protection.
Institutional arrangements tend to reinforce these biases. Most countries have a gov-
ernment department that is solely concerned with agriculture (or at least with primary
industries). It is unusual for other industries to have such a privilege: there is, for
example, usually no ministry for the motor industry or the steel industry. Such depart-
ments are rarely dispassionate assessors of what might constitute a socially optimal
agricultural policy. They tend to have close links to the lobbies representing the clients
they serve. Moreover, they are often involved in trade policy. For example, the United

Agricultural trade 145
States Department of Agriculture is responsible for the conduct of agricultural trade

negotiations.
There is also a whole series of input industries whose well-being is dependent on the
continued prosperity of agriculture and that therefore have an interest in ensuring that
agricultural incomes are not reduced by the withdrawal of subsidies and protection.
Many of these industries are dominated by a relatively small number of multinational
companies and therefore have considerable resources at their disposal. They include the
seed industry, the fertiliser industry, the agri-chemicals industry, the equipment indus-
try, ranging from milking parlours to tractors and combine harvesters, the veterinary
medicine industry, and specialist providers of agricultural finance. Agricultural traders
benefit considerably from the availability of export subsidies. First-stage processing
industries, such as the dairy sector, also have a considerable interest in the prosperity of
agriculture. All this additional lobbying power can be placed at the disposal of agricul-
tural interests.
It might seem that, given the small proportion of the population engaged in agricul-
ture, even if one includes those employed in allied professions and industries, they are
unlikely to have an influence on electoral outcomes that might prompt politicians to pay
heed to their concerns. However, this may be offset by their propensity to switch their
votes and their concentration in relatively marginal electoral areas. In the United States,
‘[a]gricultural programs often survived because at key moments, legislators from rural
areas were able to leverage continued support for farm subsidies by their votes on other
issues’ (Wilson, 2005, p. 184). In Ireland, ‘[t]he Single Transferable Vote (STV) election
system and local political culture ensure that agricultural issues remain influential in
agricultural politics’ (Greer, 2005, p. 53). Some of these relationships may, however, be
undermined by an erosion of the traditional rural electoral base. Purely agrarian parties
have largely disappeared and have rebadged themselves as broader formations – for
example, the Country Party in Australia became the National Party.
However, discussions about agricultural subsidy and protection have also been influ-
enced by the way in which the debate has been framed. The terms of the debate have
been shaped by a number of discourses that may be summed up in the term ‘agricultural
exceptionalism’. This argues that, for a variety of reasons, agriculture is different from
other industries, cannot be judged by the standards applied to them, and merits special
treatment (see Skogstad, 1998; Daugbjerg and Swinbank, 2008).
Agricultural exceptionalism has a number of different dimensions. Indeed, this very
diversity means that different arguments may be produced to suit particular circum-
stances. The strongest intellectual case for agricultural exceptionalism is rooted in agri-
cultural economics, based on the observation that it is often more difficult than in other
sectors to find a stable equilibrium position between supply and demand, producing phe-
nomena such as ‘cobweb cycles’ where there is a continual rotation around an equilib-
rium position (Hill and Ray, 1987). Even with modern agronomy, variations in weather
conditions and problems with plant and animal diseases and pests can produce unpre-
dictable variations in the supply of commodities. Given the low elasticity of demand for
farm products, market prices may fluctuate sharply. As Daugbjerg and Swinbank (2008)
suggest, ‘[f]urthermore, farmers may collectively over-react to market price movements,
with high prices following a harvest failure inducing farmers to increase their plantings
for the next season, when prices collapse because of over-supply etc’ (p. 633). However,

the existence of these problems does not justify extensive subsidies and protection. It
could be dealt with by comprehensive systems of crop insurance.
Another dimension of agricultural exceptionalism is the notion of the ‘family farm’.
This concept enables the mobilisation of a number of broad societal values given that
the family is regarded as the basic unit of social organisation. Consider the explanatory
statement of the Family Farmers’ Association in Britain:
[The] Family Farmers’ Association has been fighting for the survival of civilised farming
on family farms since 1979. Family farmers produce significant quantities of high quality
food, while caring for the countryside. They enrich rural communities, because family
farming involves a lot of country people. They are an endangered species. (Family Farmers’
Association, 2013)
Consider the number of ‘hurrah’ words in these few sentences: ‘civilised’, ‘high quality’,
‘caring’, ‘enrich’. Yet all these positive qualities are also ‘endangered’. Indeed, it is
argued that family farms are more environmentally friendly because they promote long-
term stewardship of the land. At a certain scale of operation, family farms may be more
economically efficient because family members can contribute to the household income
by working off-farm while making their labour available on a flexible basis when it is
required. They may also be willing to work for well below a living wage. However, it
is not these economic arguments that tend to be emphasised but rather the benefits of
continuity of ownership, personal commitment and an attachment of values that go
beyond profit maximisation. In practice, many family farms function as corporations,
while others are effectively part-time operations. Nevertheless, the imagery is powerful
and has been evoked in sentimental novels and films.
However, an even more powerful discourse is that associated with food security, the
affordability and availability of food. It is argued that a nation’s government has a duty
to ensure that its citizens have sufficient, nutritious and safe food readily available at a
price that they can afford. Food security considerations were an important influence on
the formation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Those formulating the policy
had recent memories of the insufficient availability of food in Europe in the immedi-
ate post-war years. Even though rationing had ensured the fair distribution of food, its
constraints had been deeply resented by citizens, producers and retailers. There was also
a concern that the Cold War might become hot, endangering the shipping lanes that
supplied Western Europe. In one sense the CAP was a great success because it made
Europe more than self-sufficient in temperate foodstuffs, but this was at the expense of
the distortion of agricultural trade.
With growing agricultural productivity, increasing supplies in Europe, abundant
world supplies and the falling real price of food, food security arguments received less
emphasis for many years. However, recently they have been revived following a spike
in world food prices and greater volatility in commodity prices. It is argued that struc-
tural changes in supply and demand pose new challenges that require an interventionist
approach to agricultural policy.
On the demand side, the growth of world population, but in particular the develop-
ment of large middle classes in countries such as China and India, affects the pattern
of demand for food. As people become prosperous they eat more meat, which in turn
increases levels of demand for grain as an animal feedstuff. They also consume more

beer, which also requires more grain to be grown. On the supply side, urbanisation is
often taking away good agricultural land, but more importantly climate change creates
greater uncertainty. It may lead to more frequent extreme weather events that are
destructive of crops and disruptive of livestock production. It may also lead to periods
of drought that exacerbate shortages of water supply that has already been tested by the
increased use of irrigation for crop production.
The often-complex interaction between changing patterns of demand and protection-
ism is illustrated by the case of wine in India. With its rising middle class one might
expect a growing demand in India for quality wines. But the reverse is the case. Wine
volumes fell 15.7 per cent between 2009 and 2010. China offers a stark contrast. It
imports 2.5 million cases of Bordeaux a year. India imports only 100 000 cases of wine a
year. More is sold to the Maldives, which are, of course, a major destination for Western
tourists. The biggest obstacle to more sales in India is price, which is the result of a puni-
tive tariff on imported wines and spirits of at least 150 per cent. On top of that, individual
states apply their own taxes, which range from 30 per cent to 100 per cent. Gujarat, a
state with one of the fastest-growing economies, bans the sale of alcohol altogether.
Labelling requirements are another obstacle to distribution. A bilateral trade agreement
with the EU is supposed to tackle the issue but talks have been dragging on since 2007
and no deal is in prospect.
Given all these considerations, how has any move in the direction of the liberalisa-
tion of agricultural trade ever been possible? The impact of neoliberal ideas was less far
reaching than in the financial services sector or in state-owned industries, but they had an
impact nevertheless. ‘Gradually, some of the core ideas of neo-liberalism were adapted
to the specifics and particularities of agricultural markets’ (Coleman et al., 2004, p. 20).
In particular, the discipline of agricultural economics started to place less emphasis on
the distinctiveness of agricultural production, reflecting changes in agriculture itself as it
became more capital intensive, industrialised and linked into international trade. Thus,
‘the discipline became more anchored in a normative position, consistent with the general
trend toward more neoliberal thinking that promoted the efficacy of markets over state
intervention in realising economic objectives’ (ibid., p. 92). Neoliberal approaches to the
management of the economy might appear to have been discredited by the course and
consequences of the global financial crisis, but what has been noticeable is the resilience
of the neoliberal paradigm and the failure of any new paradigm to emerge from the crisis
(Grant and Wilson, 2012).
A rather different challenge to traditional agricultural policy formulations has come
from the direction of environmental policy. It has been argued that policies of subsidy
encourage the intensification of agriculture, leading to forms of agriculture that are more
polluting, particularly of watercourses, but also emit more gases that contribute to global
climate change. Such forms of agriculture also undermine biodiversity. Consequently,
there has been an increasing emphasis on ‘greening’ agricultural policy, reflected in the
measures taken in the second pillar of the CAP.
However, whereas there was a direct link between neoliberalism and the encourage-
ment of trade liberalisation, the impact of environmental policy has been more ambigu-
ous. It can be used to create new justifications for exceptionalism. Halpin (2005, p. 232)
notes that farm organisations are in many cases ‘responding to contemporary challenges
to agricultural exceptionalism. . .by trying to tap or create new sources (some may say

pretexts) for exceptionalism’, including care of the environment. This might be seen as a
positive development in the sense that subsidies directed at the provision of environmen-
tal benefits are normally detached from production and may even reduce it. However,
some forms of ‘multifunctional’ policy may militate against a level playing field in
international trade. For example, consumers in developed countries may demand higher
standards of animal welfare. This may then be used as a justification for excluding live-
stock products from elsewhere in the world, given that farmers in developing countries
may find it difficult to achieve high animal welfare standards.
Fiscal pressures following the global financial crisis have, however, led to renewed
scrutiny of farm subsidies, for example in the debate surrounding the American Farm
Bill. Given that the prices of most commodities have been increasing, it becomes more
difficult to justify subsidies as a necessary mechanism to maintain profitability. Farmers
would argue that input prices have been rising, but nevertheless farm incomes have gen-
erally been improving. In the USA, where subsidies form a smaller part of total income
than in the EU, farmers may be more willing to relinquish them or at least see them
reduced. This is more challenging in the EU where they make the difference between
making a profit or a loss or are necessary for survival in the case of the many marginal
farmers to be found in Europe. These farmers are often located in peripheral regions with
broader economic problems, which are also either politically competitive between politi-
cal parties or are strongly represented within a ruling party.
Neoliberals, but not just them, would like to see agriculture treated as a sector like any
other, its shape determined by competition and the forces of supply and demand. This
was not going to happen, even before the neoliberal paradigm was partially discredited
by the global financial crisis and a resurgence of and a renewed interest in economic pat-
riotism (Grant, 2010) and nationalism, linked with anti-big-business and anti-free-trade
sentiment.
The rhetoric surrounding agriculture is particularly strong and distinctive in Europe
and affects EU policies. Agriculture is seen as contributing something that is unique and
irreplaceable and has cultural as well as economic value. Regionally distinctive land-
scapes and cuisines have evolved over the centuries as a result of people’s interaction
with the land. It is widely perceived by many that the ‘family farm’ and the countryside
provide a stability and continuity that has real value in an increasingly urbanised and
frenetic society.
However, more than one and quite distinctive policy positions can be derived from this
analysis. It could justify the traditional form of the CAP in which farmers were in effect
encouraged to overproduce to claim their subsidies and the resultant structural surplus
had to be dumped on the world market. CAP subsidies have now largely been decoupled
from production, which is not to say that they have no distorting effect on agricultural
trade because they can have the effect of making marginal production viable. However,
the EU has emphasised an export-oriented strategy for Europe based around high-
quality products (and forms of production), which is why it has been emphasising geo-
graphical indications (GIs) as a means of protecting product and process standards in
international trade negotiations.
What then emerges is a complex picture. Agricultural exceptionalism has been chal-
lenged and to some extent eroded, but has also reappeared in new forms. Intellectual and
economic forces have pressed for greater trade liberalisation in agricultural trade, but

there are also persisting interests in subsidy and protection. How did these contrasting
forces play out in the Uruguay Round and the Doha Development Round of world trade
negotiations?
THE URUGUAY ROUND
Agricultural exceptionalism was built into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT). As pointed out by Daugbjerg and Swinbank (2008), ‘Articles XI and XVI
meant that agriculture was shielded from rules regarding the use of quantitative import
restrictions and export subsidies’ (p. 633). Moreover, ‘[t]he waiver granted to the US in
1956 allowing it to place further restrictions on imports of agricultural goods, led to the
EU’s unchallenged use of variable import levies on agricultural products’ (ibid., p. 634).
In effect there was a tacit agreement between the USA and EU to keep agriculture out
of the GATT as far as possible, even though there were specific disputes such as the
so-called ‘chicken war’ (Swinbank and Tanner, 1996). The USA did not like the CAP,
but in the context of the Cold War and the perceived need to strengthen the economic
and political project of the European Community (EC) as a bulwark against the Soviet
Union, it was prepared to tolerate it.
The position of the USA started to shift in the 1980s for a variety of reasons. One
factor was the wish of the Reagan Administration to exercise greater control over the
federal budget, including spiralling farm subsidies that were being forced up by a fall
in world prices. There were also balance of payments considerations. Until the 1970s,
US farm policy had focused on domestic stabilisation of markets, with exports arising
largely as by-products of the need to dispose of surpluses. However, balance of payments
problems led to a new emphasis on a commercial exports strategy that suited the inter-
ests of large-scale export-oriented producers and the multinationals that provided their
inputs and traded their products. ‘The United States, after a 40-year, inward-looking
policy discovered that it no longer dominated world agricultural markets. . .increased
market competition, lower farm prices and rural depression all succeeded in focusing
American attention on foreign markets as a possible solution to farm distress’ (Hillman,
1994, p. 2).
A major influence on the US approach was the determination of the influential grain
lobby to regain markets lost to the EC in the early and mid-1980s. Family farmers, par-
ticularly dairy farmers, wanted the emphasis to be on the maintenance of protection,
but they lost out to corporate agribusiness. The shift towards a policy that advocated
liberalisation of international trade reflected the considerable displacement of food pro-
cessing and trading policies in the USA, reflecting the dependence of American politi-
cians on donations to fund their lengthy and expensive re-election campaigns. However,
under the Obama administration, much less priority has been given to the liberalisation
of international trade and there has been less pressure from agribusiness interests for
such a policy.
The significance of the Uruguay Round (1986–94) for agricultural trade was one of
process rather than game-changing substantive outcomes. It brought agriculture within
the round in a way that required an agricultural deal if the negotiations as a whole were
to be concluded, creating incentives for other actors such as manufacturing business to

ensure that agriculture did not derail the possibility of a successful conclusion. In that
sense it represented a significant break with the past. The device of a ‘single undertaking’
meant that ‘progress on other dossiers was contingent upon an outcome on agriculture
deemed satisfactory to other GATT signatories. Having signed up to a single undertak-
ing, the EU was “forced” to make concessions if the Uruguay Round was to be con-
cluded’ (Daugbjerg and Swinbank, 2008, p. 632).
However, France was vigilant in ensuring that the EU did not concede too much on
agriculture. The ‘Blair House Accord’ reached between the EU and the US in 1992 had
to be renegotiated and weakened to meet French concerns (even if the official language
referred to ‘clarification’). What quickly became apparent was that the agreement
reached was ‘fairly modest when contrasted with the aspirations. . .held by some partici-
pants in the early stages of the negotiations’ (Swinbank and Tanner, 1996, p. 141).
Under the terms of the agreement, non-tariff barriers such as the EU’s variable import
levies were to be converted into tariffs and cut by 36 per cent. Tariffs were thought to
be more transparent and visible than the EU’s complex variable import levies. Domestic
support was to be reduced by 20 per cent, and the expenditure on export subsidies, which
were particularly harmful to producers in the Global South because they facilitated the
‘dumping’ of cut-price produce into local markets, were cut by 36 per cent. However, ‘the
base from which to cut was an average of the years 1986–88 (1986–90 for export sub-
sidies) in which world market prices were exceptionally low and import protection and
export subsidies correspondingly high’ (Daugbjerg and Swinbank, 2008, p. 634).
What the USA and EU did was to make a mutually acceptable adjustment of their
positions in a bilateral deal that effectively excluded other participants, although they
received side payments to address their concerns, for example on rice for Japan and
Korea. This was exemplified by the creation of the ‘blue box’. Measures were catego-
rised as red, amber and green according to their distorting effect, but the ‘blue box’ was
created to encompass the two main domestic subsidy policy instruments of the USA
and EU, deficiency payments and area and headage payments respectively. These were
exempted from domestic subsidy reduction commitments.
It is therefore not surprising that ‘many in developing countries say they did not get
a good deal out of the Uruguay Round’ (Anderson and Martin, 2006, p. 5). As Clapp
(2007, p. 40) points out:
[Their] share of agricultural trade has remained steady at around 36 per cent since the
agreement was implemented, and their share of agricultural exports to industrialised
countries. . .remained at 22.4 per cent between 1990–91 and 2000–01. Because the tariff reduc-
tions were averaged, industrialised countries were able to continue to discriminate against
products exported by developing countries.
Apart from making greater tariff cuts than high-income countries, they were also faced
with the costly obligations embodied in the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement. All
too often, trade liberalisation produced a surge in food imports in developing countries,
particularly of milk powder and poultry, but no compensatory increase in exports. At
the outset of the Doha Round, ‘[f]ood and agricultural policies [were] responsible for
more than three-fifths of the global gain forgone because of merchandise trade distor-
tions, even though agriculture and food processing account for less than 10 per cent of
world trade and less than 4 per cent of global GDP’ (Anderson and Martin, 2006, p. 12).

However, it would be wrong to assume that no progress was made in the Uruguay
Round. In some respect the most important step forward was the creation of the dispute
settlement mechanism (DSM). This provides an effective procedure for challenging
trade-distorting arrangements. The EU sugar regime had been unreformed since the
1960s and it effectively privileged beet sugar producers in Europe over cane sugar pro-
ducers in developing countries. The case brought in the DSM by Australia, Brazil and
Thailand led to a reform of the sugar regime and significant commercial changes in
European production.
THE DOHA DEVELOPMENT ROUND
The political landscape of trade negotiations had changed considerably both domesti-
cally and internationally by the time the Doha Development Round was initiated in
2001. In the EU, non-governmental organisations concerned with the Global South such
as Oxfam developed a critical stance towards the way in which the CAP impacted on
developing countries. On the international level, developing countries, and particularly
emerging countries, were determined not to see a repetition of a US–EU deal from which
they were effectively excluded.
The EU and the USA did succeed in August 2003 in reconciling their mutual dif-
ferences in the hope of imposing another ‘Blair House’-style accord on other WTO
members. The basis of the compromise between the EU and USA was that the EU,
having reformed the CAP, could give ground on trade-distorting domestic support,
while the USA would give ground on market access. However, from being a bipolar
system dominated by the EU and USA, the agricultural trade negotiations had become
more multilateral in character.
What was significant at the ministerial meeting held in Cancún in September 2003 was
the emergence of a new coalition of emerging countries led by Brazil and known as the
G20. This grouping contained both agricultural exporters like Argentina, net importers
such as Egypt, and countries with a protectionist orientation like India. However, the
countries were united around an opposition to the protectionist agricultural stance of
the EU and USA.
Following the disappointments of Cancún, it took some time for progress to be made
in resuming negotiations. They were revived by an offer by the EU in May 2004 to
abolish all of its agricultural export refunds, subject to parallel concessions on export
credits, food aid and state trading enterprises. This offer involved political costs for the
EU, provoking a split within the Farm Council and also carrying long-term policy risks
for the Union. Without export subsidies, it will be difficult to offload surplus EU pro-
duction, itself the result of domestic subsidy regimes, on the world market. In any event,
the EU’s concession on export subsidies was sufficient to kickstart the negotiations and
allow the WTO to come close to meeting its self-imposed end of July deadline for a draft
framework agreement on reducing agricultural subsidies.
In the face of strong opposition from France, which had had language inserted in the
original Doha Round declaration that it thought would protect export subsidies, the EU
agreed to phase out all export subsidies by a date that was set in Hong Kong at 2013.
In return more binding language was inserted in the text to ensure that export subsidy

elements within the USA’s export credit and food aid programmes, and within ‘single
desk’ export selling bodies such as the Canadian Wheat Board (CWB), are also subject to
WTO disciplines. These draft agreements on export subsidies represented a substantial
step forward given the size of the subsidies (almost EUR4 billion for the EU in 2004) and
their damaging impact on farmers in the Global South.
Import tariffs would be reduced in accordance with a ‘tiered’ formula, with higher
tariffs being subject to bigger cuts. The crucial issues of the number of bands, the
thresholds for defining the bands and the type of tariff reduction in each band were left
for further negotiation and not surprisingly these discussions have proved to be very
difficult. However, the role of a ‘tariff cap’ (a maximum tariff for each product) was
left on the table for further evaluation, that is, an attempt was made to remove it from
the active agenda although it was subsequently revived by the G20 to the chagrin of
Japan.
A significant and potentially difficult innovation was the idea that countries would be
able to nominate certain products as ‘sensitive’. These products would be subject to less
exacting tariff reductions, although there would have to be some improvement in market
access through a combination of tariff cuts and tariff quota increases. The actual lan-
guage on ‘sensitive’ products says that countries may ‘designate an appropriate number,
to be negotiated, of tariff lines to be treated as sensitive’ (WTO, 2004, A-6). What the
appropriate number should be is itself a highly controversial issue, given that for sensi-
tive one can substitute ‘politically sensitive’. Given the admission of the Trojan horse
of sensitive tariffs to the negotiations, this seems to be more like a hopeful aspiration
than an achievable objective. As was rightly predicted, ‘[t]his clause has the potential –
probably more than any of the others – to derail the whole trade liberalising thrust of the
trade negotiations, should the definition of a “sensitive product” be drawn too broadly’
(Agra Europe, 2004, p. A2).
Market access has undoubtedly been the most intractable issue in the negotiations
and it is important to understand why this is the case. For the agricultural exporting
countries, this is the key issue in the negotiations so that they can boost markets for their
price-competitive products, whereas for the EU, how tariff reductions are implemented
could make the difference between survival and extinction for many of the EU’s less
competitive producers. These uncompetitive producers are often situated in politically
sensitive areas, for example dairy farmers in Bavaria or Brittany. They have been facing
prices for their products that have been at best flat in real terms, while key input prices
such as fuel, electricity, fertilisers and feed have risen sharply. What appear to be (and
are) highly technical issues become very politically charged, and this mixture of real tech-
nical complexity and political passion is very difficult for even the most skilled negotiator
to handle.
Agricultural tariffs average 60 per cent across the OECD area, with most OECD coun-
tries having peak tariffs of at least 200 per cent and Japan having a 500 per cent tariff
for rice. ‘More than 7% of the fixed-rate tariffs currently applied by the EU to protect
European agricultural markets against imports are set at an equivalent level of 100% or
more’ (Agra Europe, 2005, p. EP1). Most of the very high tariffs are in the dairy sector.
This is not surprising, given that, despite the introduction of dairy quotas, the EU has a
structural surplus of milk and many dairy farmers are both economically marginal and
politically vocal. Even so, it is surprising to find water in a number of tariffs; that is, the

applied tariff is higher than the gap between domestic and world prices. Many of the
tariff lines for dairy products have three-figure values.
The story of negotiations in the Doha Round has been one of false hopes, one step
forward and two steps backward, and windows of opportunity that have closed as soon
as they opened. Interventions by higher-level decision-makers, such as the G8 or the
US President and the President of the European Commission, have failed to stimulate
progress. Not only has the gap between participants in the negotiation been difficult to
bridge, high-level commitment to success has been more lukewarm than in the Uruguay
Round, notably from US Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In part this
reflects the fact that American agribusiness has become less unreservedly enthusiastic
about trade liberalisation.
The round had to be suspended in July 2006. The USA was blamed for the breakdown
by most of the participants because of intransigence over the reform of its domestic
support programme. It was felt that the USA would not bring about real cuts in subsi-
dies and that what was being offered involved little more than shuffling support from
one box to another, moving a great deal of its amber box measures to a revised blue
box. It appeared that President George W. Bush was not prepared to offer further cuts
before the Congressional elections in the fall, but also wanted more market access for US
products in return. Subsequent hopes that there might be a window of opportunity for
renegotiation between the Congressional elections and the debate on the US Farm Bill,
which would have to be in place by mid-2007, proved to be ill-founded. This was in spite
of the fact that the EU indicated that it was prepared to increase its offer of an average
cut in farm tariffs of 39 per cent to 50 per cent.
There were hopes that the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos in January
2007 might provide a setting for useful informal discussions and this led to an initial
flurry of hope, but little substantive progress. ‘Quiet conversations’ continued and in
February top business executives wrote an open letter to the Financial Times urging the
political leaders to grasp the final chance to conclude a Doha deal. They argued that
national differences over agriculture should not be allowed to dominate the outcome.
The chairman of the agriculture negotiations, Crawford Falconer from New Zealand,
announced that he would draft a new paper to refocus the negotiations. In April, minis-
ters from the so-called G4 countries (the EU, USA, Brazil and India) met in New Delhi
and called for a new deadline at the end of 2007 to complete negotiations. It was felt that
with 2008 being an election year in the USA no progress would be possible then.
When Falconer’s paper appeared in May 2007 he called for the EU to make tariff cuts
for its most sensitive farm products of more than 60 per cent, reduce its overall trade-
distorting farm subsidies by as much as 80 per cent, and agree to phase out its export
subsidies over just five years. He also delivered a slap across the wrist to the USA, stating
that it was ‘frankly inconceivable that the US will come out of this negotiation with an
entitlement to spend more on overall distorting domestic support than it had when it
came in’ (Agra Europe, 2007, p. EP2).
Falconer’s proposals were at least not shot down immediately, but five days of G4
talks in Potsdam in July 2007 ended in acrimony and mutual recriminations. As far as
agriculture was concerned, there were some signs of flexibility on the part of the USA
on the vexed issue of domestic support, with the possibility raised that it might be pos-
sible to move from its usual offer of a USD22 billion limit to USD17 billion. The EU

denied reports that it would be prepared to increase its offer of a reduction in tariffs on
products in the highest band (over 90 per cent) from 60 per cent to 70 per cent. The EU
was focused on questions relating to the combination of tariff cuts and rules for sensitive
products.
Crawford Falconer submitted a revised version of his paper in August 2007 in which
he tried to narrow the range of numbers under discussion for various commitments.
For example, he suggested that the limits for US domestic support might be set at
USD13–16.4 billion compared with the USD10–11 billion demanded by India and
Brazil and the USD17–18 billion offered by the USA. Market access remained the most
difficult area, in particular because of a lack of precision on how the sensitive product
rules would work in practice. This lack of precision reflected the importance of this
issue to the EU.
Falconer produced yet another revised text in July 2008, but a nine-day mini-ministerial
meeting in Geneva collapsed with no agreement in sight. This was in spite of progress
on some of the issues that had bedevilled the negotiations. The talks were given a boost
by a unilateral offer by the USA to cut the level of overall trade distorting support to
USD15 billion, which brought it within the ‘landing zone’ identified by Falconer in 2007.
However, sceptics pointed out those support levels had been just USD9 billion in 2007,
and that the continued use of anti-cyclical payments meant that the new ceiling could
easily be breached if market prices for key commodities fell below the trigger levels. The
USA did eventually agree to a figure of USD14.4 billion, the equivalent figure for the EU
being EUR24 billion, which would not require further reforms to the CAP.
On sensitive products it was proposed that these would be limited to 4 per cent of
tariff lines for developed countries. France sent its farm minister Michel Barnier to the
talks along with the junior trade minister Anne-Marie Idrac. President Sarkozy had
complained that Peter Mandelson as trade commissioner had signed up to a text that
would see a 20 per cent reduction in EU agricultural production, a charge denied by
Commission officials. As the talks progressed, discontent built up among some member
states with France claiming that nine out of 27 member states would not sign up to the
draft deal that was emerging, although Germany was not among their number, which,
apart from Ireland, was made up of Southern and Eastern European member states.
What brought about the collapse of the talks was a failure to agree on safeguard
arrangements for farmers in developing countries. India and China wanted a stricter
trigger for the special safeguard mechanism, while the USA insisted that the trigger
should not be too easy and that protection should not revert to higher levels than those
bound in the Uruguay Round. The idea that developing countries could temporarily
increase tariffs to protect their farmers from import surges and price decline had been an
element of the talks from the very start. But it had not been identified as a potential deal
breaker. The proposal on the table was that if imports exceeded the average volume for
the past three years by more than 5 per cent, and domestic prices fell, then developing
countries would have the right to introduce an additional tariff up to 15 per cent above
the bound tariff for up to 2.5 per cent of tariff lines per year. For the importers the fear
is that a trigger at a 40 per cent increase in volume is far too late to protect small-scale
farmers from competition from highly efficient exporters from developed countries.
In the wake of the financial crisis, there was considerable political pressure to secure
a Doha deal to assist the recovery of the world economy, but WTO Director-General

Pascal Lamy felt that the risk of failure was too high. Crawford Falconer circulated a
new version of his text in December 2008, but it was evident that there were large divi-
sions on the questions of the special safeguard mechanism and on cotton. Despite hopes
that were expressed about the existence of a ‘window of opportunity’ in 2011, no real
progress was made. It was evident by the end of 2011 that the Doha Round was dead but
no one would sign the death certificate because ‘the first country to suggest burying the
round risks losing the decade-long blame game’ (Beattie, 2011, paragraph 4).
Although there was talk of agreements outside the round between a more limited
range of parties in areas such as services and government procurement, such agreements
were unlikely in agriculture given the deep divisions that had been revealed. In the EU,
more volatile and higher food prices and concerns about a structural shift in the supply
and demand balance in global agriculture had given a new set of food security arguments
that could be deployed by advocates of subsidies and protection.
CONCLUSIONS
Much of the impetus has gone from international negotiations to liberalise international
trade and it may never return. The USA is no longer as enthusiastic as it was about the
liberalisation agenda, resistance has grown in the EU, and the developing countries have
become more effective in mounting their opposition. This leaves advocacy for liberalisa-
tion to Cairns Group countries such as Australia. The DSM remains intact, of course,
and may be used in the future to mount significant challenges such as to the claim made
by the EU that the subsidies it places in the green box are not trade distorting.
The slowdown in agricultural trade negotiations does not mean that globalisation
has also been halted in the food sector. Large multinational companies continue to
dominate input industries. Direct commercial relationships developed between retailers
in developed countries and suppliers in developing countries may well become more sig-
nificant. Standards developed by private organisations such as GlobalGAP are acquir-
ing a greater significance. Nevertheless, ‘world trade is dominated by a small number
of products with highly specific trade flows’ (Marsden et al., 2010, p. 295). The political
heat that agricultural trade generates is often out of all proportion to its economic sig-
nificance, but in politics symbolism is often everything and agriculture and food touch
on questions of national identity that transcend the prosaic and arcane language of trade
negotiations.
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and W. Martin (eds), Agriculture Reform and the Doha Development Agenda, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave
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ddadraft_31jul04_e.pdf.

7. US agricultural policy and the globalization of
world agriculture
Bill Winders
INTRODUCTION
For most of the twentieth century, US agricultural policy aimed to regulate prices and
production with the goals of improving farm incomes, stabilizing the market in agri-
culture, and preventing overproduction in agricultural commodities. This policy of
supply management centered on three principal programs: price supports, which pro-
vided farmers minimum prices for particular commodities; production controls, which
restricted how much land could be put into producing those commodities; and export
subsidies, which helped to secure markets abroad for various commodities. This exten-
sive state involvement in the market economy – regulating prices, production, and trade
for a significant sector of the economy – began in 1933 with the Agricultural Adjustment
Act (AAA) and ended in 1996 with the Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform
(FAIR) Act. In between these legislative acts bookending the life of supply management,
this policy expanded and contracted a number of times. And still today, the US gov-
ernment is deeply involved in agriculture, including by providing subsidies to farmers,
but the goal of US agricultural policy is no longer to manage the supply of agricultural
commodities.
Notably, agricultural policies and trade regulations in the world economy mirrored
the timing of these shifts in US policy: agriculture in the world economy became more
regulated in the middle of the century, but it was increasingly liberalized in the last few
decades of the century. In fact, agricultural policies in countries across the globe tended
to reflect these trends: national regulation and support for agriculture expanded in
the mid-twentieth century only to contract significantly toward the century’s end. The
similar timing of shifts in agricultural policy in the USA, many other countries, and the
world economy itself intimates important relationships.
The influence of the world economy on US agricultural policy took a number of
forms, but one of the most notable is how the world economy has shaped the economic
interests of segments of agriculture in the USA. When world prices and demand for US
agricultural commodities were high, for example, farmers and farm organizations often
pushed the national government for free trade and market-oriented policies. When world
prices were low and supply was high, farmers and their organizations often demanded
protection from the world economy. Of course, prices and the supply and demand of
commodities were not the only world economic factors shaping US agricultural policy
in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, the world economy’s influence on the economic
interests and policy preferences of farmers and farm organizations was one central
source of influence on US agricultural policy.
At the same time, US agricultural policy was a central influence on agriculture
157
throughout the world. As the dominant country in the world economy between 1945 and
1970, the USA shaped the international rules guiding trade in agricultural commodities,
as well as their prices and production. For example, the USA shaped the trade regula-
tions in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which exempted agricul-
ture from the overall push to liberalize trade policies across the globe from 1947 to the
1990s. This exemption reflected a US agricultural policy that involved extensive regula-
tion of the market economy, including the use of high tariffs for a variety of agricultural
commodities. The USA shaped international institutions and regulations to support its
agricultural policy of supply management, and nations around the globe adopted this
same policy along with an intensive and industrial approach to agricultural production.
Thus, agriculture and agricultural policy in countries throughout the world came to
reflect that of the USA to a significant degree.
The reciprocal nature of the relationship between US agriculture and the world
economy is most intriguing. Each reshaped the other. Each is central to understand-
ing the other. And, they consequently moved in tandem. This intertwined nature of US
agricultural policy and the world economy reveals the complexity and layered analysis
necessary to explain the development of agriculture and agricultural policy. How can we
untangle this complex relationship to reveal the central factors shaping the development
of US agricultural policy? And, at the same, what were the pathways by which the USA
shaped agriculture throughout the globe? And, finally, what are the implications of this
relationship for food and agriculture moving forward?
This chapter aims to address these issues by exploring the development of US agricul-
tural policy in the twentieth century, emphasizing its complex relationship to the world
economy. The chapter begins with a brief theoretical discussion of the factors shaping
agricultural policy and international food regimes. The next section outlines the emer-
gence of supply management policy in the USA, demonstrating how both national and
world economic forces shaped this development. Then, the third section of the chapter
focuses on the creation of the US food regime and how it facilitated the spread of supply
management principles across the globe. The fourth section shows how this food regime
contributed to changes in US agricultural policy, including toward the end of the twen-
tieth century when supply management policy ended as well as some of the more recent
policy directions. Finally, the chapter ends with a brief look at some of the international
consequences of the shift away from supply management in the USA as well as in the
international food regime – most notably, unstable commodity prices and the threat of
food crises.
US AGRICULTURAL POLICY AND INTERNATIONAL FOOD

REGIMES
Understanding the history, development, and current state of US agricultural policy

requires that we consider both domestic and international factors, as well as how these
sets of factors interact. I focus on the relations between class, state, and market (i.e., class
structure, national policy, and the world economy) in explaining the long-term trajectory
of US agricultural policy.
In terms of the relationship between class and state, US agricultural policy is shaped

US agricultural policy 159
by segments of agriculture.1 By approaching agricultural policy from the perspective

of class, we can see that rarely do farmers or others in the USA act as a class, or as a
cohesive group. Instead, segments or factions of agriculture frequently emerge, often
forming around various potential divisions: regional class structures, the production of
particular commodities, and position in the world economy.2 This was clearly the case in
US agriculture in the mid-1900s, and it continues to be the case today.
Three segments of agriculture are key for understanding the ebb and flow of supply
management policy in the USA during the twentieth century: corn, wheat, and cotton.
The corn segment was concentrated in the Corn Belt, producing corn, soybeans,
and hogs.3 The corn segment found voice in the American Farm Bureau Federation
(AFBF) and the Republican Party. Beginning in the late 1940s, as we will see, the corn
segment tended to prefer market-oriented policies rather than supply management. The
wheat segment was concentrated in the Wheat Belt, producing primarily wheat.4 The
wheat segment was represented by the National Farmers Union (NFU) and both the
Democratic and Republican Parties. The cotton segment was concentrated in the South,
producing cotton, as well as tobacco, rice, and peanuts.5 Given the regional political dom-
inance of southern planters (large landowners), the Democratic Party was the primary
representative of the cotton segment. For much of the twentieth century, the cotton and
wheat segments tended to favor national regulation of agriculture, in the form of supply
management. Explaining the contours of twentieth-century agricultural policy, then, is
at least partly based on understanding the coalitions and conflicts between these seg-
ments of agriculture.
The connection between the dynamics of US agricultural politics and the world
economy is clearly apparent through the lens of international food regimes. Based in
part on Polanyi’s (1957) analysis of shifts between economic regimes of free trade and
regulation, international regimes are based on the rules, regulations, and normative
frameworks set forth in bilateral or multilateral agreements that guide trade and state
intervention in particular sectors of the world economy (e.g., Lipson, 1982). The shape
of a regime, as well as its efficacy in guiding a sector of the world economy, rests largely
on the power of the hegemon (Kindleberger, 1973; Wallerstein, 1974).
An international food regime is ‘a stable set of complementary state policies whose
implicit coordination creates specific prices relative to other prices, a specific pattern
of specialization, and resulting patterns of consumption and trade’ (Friedmann, 1982,
p. S248). The food regime sets the market, which then structures the production and dis-
tribution of agricultural commodities throughout the world economy, thereby shaping
the agricultural division of labor within the world economy. Two of the fundamental
aspects of a food regime include the extent of state intervention into the market (such
as tariffs and subsidies), and the direction of trade flows (e.g., from colonies to the
hegemon). At different moments in history, the contours of the food regime vary: some-
times free trade predominates, but at other times trade barriers protect nations’ agricul-
ture; at times basic foodstuffs flow from poorer areas of the world to richer areas, but
in other periods agricultural commodities flow in the opposite direction. The politics of
agriculture within and between nations influences the shape of the food regime. In par-
ticular, we must look at the dominant nation in the world economy – the world economic
hegemon – because this nation largely sets the food regime.
These two aspects of food regimes – the extent of state regulation and direction of

gricultural trade flows – also constitute the basic contradictions held within food
a
regimes that can burst them asunder and lead to changes in the regime. Polanyi’s (1957)
discussion of shifts between international regimes of free trade and state regulation
helps to shed light on the process through which regimes take shape and change. First,
the extent of state intervention – whether assuming the form of national regulation or
laissez-faire market self-regulation – calls forth forces that push in the opposite direction.
On the one hand, Polanyi notes that attempts to achieve the utopian ‘orthodox’ free
market eventually wreak havoc on society as well as on nature. As a result, movements
opposing free market forces attempt to protect people and land to contain the destruc-
tion created by the market. On the other hand, ‘self-protection against the market limits
the maneuver and, therefore, short-term profitability of capital’ (Friedmann, 1995,
p. 15). This likewise creates opposition that seeks a change in the extent of state inter-
vention. Therefore, opposition emerges within food regimes regardless of whether the
regimes are oriented toward markets or regulation. Polanyi referred to this as the double
movement between state and market.
Second, the direction of trade shapes the production, consumption, and distribu-
tion of food throughout the world economy. In this regard, each food regime rests on
a particular international division of labor. Of central importance is the flow of basic
foodstuffs, such as grains, which can create dependency and fundamentally alter the
basis of national economies. In other words, this aspect of the food regime influences
the extent to which various nations maintain food security. For example, Mintz (1985)
outlines how the nineteenth-century international sugar trade helped to fuel Britain’s
industrialization by changing the diets of British workers, but this trade also reconfig-
ured Caribbean economies to make them dependent on British imports. By reorienting
the international division of labor for agriculture, a food regime creates new patterns of
economic competition that ultimately alter the balance of international trade.
The relationships between class, state, and market undergird food regimes, including
in the twentieth century. Because the USA was the world economic hegemon from 1945
to 1975, it set the food regime. Consequently, the relationship between class and state
in the USA helped to determine the shape of the food regime in the twentieth century.
Nonetheless, the world economy and the food regime ultimately influenced US agri-
cultural politics. To begin teasing out this complex set of reciprocal relations, we can
examine the influence of class segments and of the world economy in the creation of
supply management policy.
THE WORLD ECONOMY AND THE EMERGENCE OF SUPPLY

MANAGEMENT POLICY
Supply management policy emerged in the USA during the 1930s amidst the Great
Depression that had enveloped the world economy. While the start of the depression
in the USA is generally linked to the stock market crash in October 1929, agriculture
showed signs of entering a depression in the mid-1920s. Agricultural prices began a
continuous decline in 1927 that would not end for about six years. Still, prices for agri-
cultural commodities and farm income hit bottom in the early 1930s with the rest of the
economy. For example, wheat prices fell by more than 70 percent between 1925 and

1932. And between 1924 and 1932, cotton prices declined by about 75 percent, and corn
prices fell by about 70 percent (Winders, 2009a). From 1926 to 1932, gross per farm
income fell by about 54 percent, from USD2051 to USD953 (USDA, 1958).
Overproduction was at the root of this economic turmoil for agriculture. During
World War I, the USA and other nations increased their agricultural production as
demand expanded due to the war. Once European agriculture was re-established after
the war, however, a surplus of various agricultural commodities began to destabilize the
world economy. For example, agricultural prices collapsed from 1920 to 1921, when
market prices for cotton, wheat, and corn fell by more than 50 percent. Likewise, gross
farm income fell by more than 40 percent in two years. Thereafter, agricultural prices
fluctuated significantly for a few years, and then declined for the remainder of the decade
(see Winders, 2009a).
This market instability led to the emergence of the Farm Bloc, composed of senators
and representatives from the Corn Belt, Wheat Belt, and the South. Along with farm
organizations, such as the AFBF, the Farm Bloc pushed for the creation of supply man-
agement policy. In 1927 and 1928, the Senate and the House each passed the McNary-
Haugen Farm Relief Bill, which would have created price supports and raised tariffs
and trade barriers to protect the domestic market. In 1931, political and farm leaders
in southern states called for restrictions on cotton production. Arkansas, Louisiana,
Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas each enacted production controls for cotton.
Thus, corn, cotton, and wheat farmers and their political representatives favored supply
management policy before the New Deal. This was all a response to the vagaries of the
market in the 1920s.
Regardless of this instability and the depression in agriculture in the 1920s and 1930s,
supply management policy did not emerge automatically. Just because segments of agri-
culture favored supply management policy did not guarantee that the policy would be
put into place. For example, although the Farm Bloc supported the McNary-Haugen
bill, President Coolidge (a Republican) vetoed the bill each time. Similarly, production
controls ultimately were not put into place in the South.6 The creation of supply man-
agement policy was not simply the result of economic interests or policy preferences.
Instead, price supports and production controls resulted from political conflicts in the
mid-1920s to the early 1930s, when groups favoring state intervention into the economy
won the battle of policy formation. Once Franklin Roosevelt was elected president and
Democrats won dominant majorities in Congress in 1932, the Farm Bloc finally won
supply management as the core of US agricultural policy.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) of 1933 created price supports and produc-
tion controls for several commodities: corn, cotton, peanuts, rice, tobacco, and wheat.
Two agencies administered these programs: the Agricultural Adjustment Administration
and the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).7 When market prices fell below price
support levels, the CCC purchased basic commodities from farmers at the price support
level as a means of pulling the commodities off the market, controlling supply and
raising farm income. Production controls required farmers to adhere to acreage allot-
ments, which limited the acres they could plant of particular crops. Farmers who did not
adhere to production controls would not receive price supports. The AAA also created
set-aside programs that paid farmers to leave land idle. The Agricultural Adjustment
Administration administered production controls as a means of limiting supply. In the

1930s, this policy had some success at controlling production, but its greatest achieve-
ment was in stabilizing market prices and supporting farm income.
Supply management policy expanded through the early 1950s as price support
levels were raised significantly and many more commodities became eligi-
ble for supports and production controls. This policy boosted farm income
between 1938 and 1952, as gross annual per farm income in the USA increased by
330 percent, from USD1543 to USD6656 (Winders, 2005). Supply management was
less successful at controlling supply, however, and CCC-held stocks grew as surpluses
continued to mount. Export subsidies in the form of international food aid were
created in 1954 to help draw down CCC stocks of basic commodities, particularly
wheat and cotton.
Supply management policy, then, emerged in the USA when the political coalition in
agriculture supporting the policy gained adequate power. The inclusion of wheat, corn,
and especially cotton segments in the New Deal coalition allowed for the creation of
supply management policy. Importantly, however, the world economy clearly shaped
the economic interests and policy preferences of the segments constituting this coalition.
The overproduction in world agriculture, decline and instability in agricultural prices,
and the collapse of farm income created a shared interest among the corn, cotton, and
wheat segments in state intervention into the market economy and prompted them to act
together on that policy preference. As the USA emerged from World War II as the world
economic hegemon, supply management policy became the basis of the international
food regime.
THE SPREAD OF SUPPLY MANAGEMENT POLICY

THROUGHOUT THE WORLD ECONOMY
The US food regime rested squarely on supply management policy, which spread across
the globe on two levels: national agricultural policies, and regulations in the world
economy. At both levels, the politics of agriculture in the USA shaped the rest of the
world because the forces behind the US policy of supply management also molded the
food regime, and therefore the world economy, from 1945 to 1970.
After World War II, the USA aimed to construct a liberal world economy that was
free of the economic barriers that arose during the Great Depression and the war. To
this end, the USA led the creation of several international institutions to serve as the
foundation of a more liberal world economy between 1944 and 1947: the World Bank,
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT). Of particular note for our purposes, GATT provided the format for liberal-
izing the world economy by setting forth rules for trade in the world economy through
multilateral agreements. GATT was quite effective at reducing trade barriers, as the
average tariff rate on dutiable imports fell from about 40 percent when GATT was
formed to 5 percent by 1990. GATT had one important caveat, however – it exempted
agriculture from liberalization.
Several other nations consequently began to regulate agricultural production, prices,
and trade: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Mexico among numerous
others. These nations adopted supply management not simply because GATT allowed

it, but also because they faced competition from US agriculture, which was subsidized
and extensively regulated. That is, with subsidies, US agriculture was competitive in
other nations’ home markets. So, these nations often used a combination of subsidies
and tariffs to compete with US commodities in their domestic market. Perhaps the best
example of how US policy spread via GATT is Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP). The Treaty of Rome of 1957 created the CAP with the objective of increasing
agricultural productivity, raising farm income, stabilizing markets and creating ‘rea-
sonable’ food prices (Grant, 1997). The CAP employed several familiar policy devices
to achieve these ends: purchases of surplus commodities, target prices, and import
levies. US agricultural policy, then, encouraged other nations to extensively regulate
agriculture.8
This widespread use of national regulations for agriculture generated chronic sur-
pluses throughout the world economy. This was especially true in the USA, Canada,
Australia, and Europe. This overproduction, however, was not necessarily new. We have
already seen that the USA had confronted the problem of agricultural surplus for many
years, but other countries did as well: ‘Countries like South Africa and Australia [had
been] burdened with surpluses since WWI’ (Matusow, 1967, p. 84). And Europe, which
had long been a net importer of wheat, became a net exporter (McMichael, 2000). Even
Britain, which was the world’s largest importer of grain in the early 1950s (Farnsworth,
1956), became a ‘major net exporter’ by 1985 (Insel, 1985). One solution to this increased
production was the spread of export subsidies.
The same process that led to the diffusion of price supports and production con-
trols can also be seen in the case of export subsidies and food aid. In the USA, the
Agriculture Trade and Development Act of 1954, also known as Public Law 480 (or
PL 480), created food aid and export subsidies for a few commodities, but it was
primarily used for wheat exports. The basic premise of PL 480 was to supply inex-
pensive food to aid in the economic development of nations. Administered by the
US Department of Agriculture (USDA), PL 480 provided for ‘concessional sales’ of
surplus agricultural commodities to ‘friendly’ nations. As Friedmann (1990, p. 18)
explains, the US government paid ‘private grain companies to ship the grain. The
recipient countries in turn placed an equivalent amount of their national currencies
at the disposal of the US government’. US agencies within these nations could then
use this non-controvertible currency for ‘a range of development activities such as
infrastructural projects, supplies for military bases, loans to US companies (especially
local agribusiness operations), locally produced goods and services, and trade fairs’
(McMichael, 2000, p. 62). These concessional sales closely resembled dumping and
sometimes displaced the products of other nations, such as Australia and Canada
(Peterson, 1979).
PL 480 used food aid to help establish new markets for US agriculture, especially for
wheat since US wheat exporters had lost their traditional market in Europe in the early
1950s. Recovering from this loss required new markets, and PL 480 was successful in
this endeavor as wheat exports more than doubled between 1950 and 1965. Of course,
this expansion of US wheat exports led other nations – including Argentina, Australia,
Canada, Japan, the Soviet Union, Sweden, and several European countries – to begin
distributing food aid and using export subsidies to compete for markets and dispose
of surpluses (Hopkins, 1992). Thus, supply management – including price supports,

production controls, and export subsidies – became a widespread national policy in the
world economy.
Beyond the GATT exemption allowing for national policies regulating agriculture,
a variety of international organizations and agreements were created to oversee exten-
sive regulations of agriculture, in effect instituting supply management policy at the
level of the world economy. Several international commodity agreements regulated
prices, production and trade for particular agricultural commodities. For example, the
International Wheat Agreement (IWA) brought wheat-exporting and wheat-importing
nations together to coordinate the wheat market to ensure supply and prices. The first
IWA went into effect in 1949 and was ‘a long-term, multilateral commodity contract,
which specifies the basic maximum and minimum prices at which “guaranteed quan-
tities” of wheat will be offered by designated exporting countries or purchased by
designated importing countries’ (Farnsworth, 1956, p. 217). IWA exporting countries
included the US, Canada, and Australia, which combined to account for more than
75 percent of world wheat exports at the time. The International Wheat Council oversaw
the terms of the IWA, which was renegotiated seven times over the next two decades.
While not all world wheat exports went through the IWA, the agreement nonetheless
offered significant stability in terms of world wheat prices and production between 1949
and 1970 (Harbury, 1954; McCreary, 2011).
Coffee, sugar, cocoa, wool, cotton, and rubber also had international a greements
and organizations that helped to stabilize prices, production, and trade. Of
course, not all agricultural commodities had international agreements regulating
trade, production, and prices. The world corn market, for instance, did not have
such regulation. Nonetheless, the international commodity agreements are note-
worthy for a world economy that was otherwise liberalizing. Most importantly,
wheat was the major agricultural commodity in the world economy, and to have
supply m anagement at the level of both national policy and the world economy was
significant.
So, why did all of this – the exemption in GATT, the spread of supply manage-
ment policy, and international commodity agreements – exist in the context of a world
economy that was liberalizing? The basic answer is that the cotton–wheat coalition was
strong enough to protect its preferred policy of supply management. I emphasize the
cotton–wheat coalition because, as the next section details, the corn segment came to
oppose supply management policy in the late 1940s. During the mid-1900s, southern
Democrats were powerful in Congress and the Democratic Party, and the wheat segment
held significant influence with Congressional Republicans. Consequently, the cotton–
wheat coalition could protect supply management policy as the US food regime devel-
oped. This coalition influenced the shape of GATT, the creation of export subsidies, and
a variety of US trade policies and international regulations that served as the foundation
of the food regime.
The essence of the US food regime was a system of trade protections and farm sub-
sidies that resulted in agricultural surpluses that were largely dumped in the periphery
as food aid. Yet, we might ask how this organization of world agriculture shaped US
agricultural policy and production.

THE WORLD ECONOMY AND CHANGES IN US

AGRICULTURAL POLICY
This food regime created a world economic context that prompted gradual retrenchment
in US agricultural policy, slowly eroding and ultimately ending supply management
policy. In the last half of the twentieth century, there were four key instances of retrench-
ment in agricultural policy: the Agricultural Act of 1954, the Cotton-Wheat Act of 1964,
the Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act of 1973, and the Federal Agriculture
Improvement and Reform (FAIR) Act of 1996. First, in 1954, price supports were
reduced and made more flexible. Second, in 1964, production controls became more flex-
ible. Third, in 1973, the basis of price supports was changed, production controls were
temporarily suspended, and food aid was reduced and replaced with commercial exports.
And finally, production controls were eliminated and price supports were changed in
1996. In each instance, the world economy influenced US agricultural policy by shaping
the economic interests and policy preferences of the cotton, wheat, and corn segments.
Of course, the world economy did not determine the trajectory of US agricultural policy
because the political power of these competing segments also played a fundamental role
in the direction of supply management. Nonetheless, examining how the world economy
shaped class interests and national policy is important.
This period began with the corn, wheat, and cotton segments each favoring the price
supports and production controls that formed during the New Deal and expanded
during the war. By the late 1940s, however, the corn segment had dropped out of this
coalition by opposing high, rigid price supports and mandatory production controls
(Winders, 2009a). The corn segment, through the AFBF and the Republican Party,
supported the Agricultural Act of 1954, which weakened supply management policy.
The corn segment’s opposition to supply management and the cotton–wheat coalition’s
support of the policy can each be partially traced to dynamics in the world economy.
First, the corn segment’s opposition to high supports for corn was partly tied to hog
production. Between 1945 and 1975, the Corn Belt accounted for between 64 percent and
70 percent of all US hog production. This reliance on hog production created an inter-
est in maintaining low prices for corn, which was the basis of livestock feed. Meat con-
sumption increased enough to prevent corn surpluses on the scale that cotton and wheat
experienced. Second, at the level of the world economy, other nations were not creating
trade barriers to US corn exports. To the contrary, US corn exports helped to rebuild
the foundation of the meat industry in Europe. Thus, corn markets were expanding both
within the USA and in the world economy, leading the corn segment to favor expanding
production rather than restricting it, as supply management aimed to do.
By contrast, the wheat and cotton segments continued to favor price supports and
production controls during the 1950s. For the wheat segment, this policy preference was
rooted in a decline in demand in the world economy.9 First, the end of the Marshall Plan
in Europe and then of the Korean War both led to reduced international demand for
US wheat (Gilmore, 1982). As Figure 7.1 shows, US wheat exports fell from 10 MMT
(million metric tons) in 1948 to 5 MMT in 1953. This decline in exports contributed to a
surplus of wheat. Annual carryover of wheat in the US averaged only about 16 percent
of annual production between 1945 and 1949, but jumped to an average of about
50 percent of annual production from 1950 to 1954 (Winders, 2009a). Notably, US

60
50
Million Metric Tons
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30
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Wheat Exports 3-yr avg
Source: Data for 1945 to 1959 from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA, 1962). Data for 1960
to 2010 from Foreign Agriculture Service, PSD online database (USDA, 2014).
Figure 7.1 US wheat exports, 1945–2010
wheat production was relatively stable at about 30 MMT from 1945 to 1954. Therefore,
the jump in wheat carryover was likely due to declining exports. Consequently, the
wheat surplus resulting from decreased world demand contributed to lower prices, and
this encouraged the wheat segment to continue favoring price supports and production
controls.
The world economy likewise played a role in the cotton segment’s support for supply
management policy. US cotton exports declined from 6.0 million bales in 1949 to
2.3 million bales in 1955 (USDA, 1974). Following World War II, several nations began
to increase their cotton exports, including Egypt, Mexico, and Brazil. At the same time,
cotton was facing increasing competition from synthetic fibers in the 1950s (Mann, 1987).
Annual cotton carryover increased in the early 1950s, from about 2.3 million bales in
1951 to 9.7 million bales in 1954 (US Census Bureau, 1956).10 Each of these factors – the
growing surplus of cotton and greater competition in the world economy and from syn-
thetic fibers – prompted the cotton segment to continue to support price supports and
production controls.
The markets for corn, cotton, and wheat in the world economy shaped the interests
of these segments of US agriculture. The higher levels of competition and weaker
export markets for cotton and wheat, coupled with issues related to US agricultural
policy and production, helped to push producers of these commodities to support
supply management policy. In 1954, just as the cotton–wheat coalition worked
to support supply management programs, this coalition also won an important

e xpansion of this policy: international food aid, or PL 480. Given the world economic
context just described, the cotton–wheat coalition’s support for this policy is easy to
understand.
As we have seen, the addition of export subsidies to supply management, then, helped
to increase US exports and alleviate problems of surplus. By contrast, export subsidies
through PL 480 were less necessary for corn, largely because Europe exempted corn and
soy products from the CAP’s import controls (Friedmann, 1993). Therefore, the US lost
the European wheat market but became the principal supplier of feedstuffs, namely corn
and soybeans. This reinforced the US corn segment’s support for free trade and market
mechanisms, and its increasing opposition to the extensive state intervention found in
supply management policy.
This expansion of US agricultural policy and broadening of the food regime, however,
changed the world economy in ways that would reshape the economic interests of the
cotton–wheat coalition. In 1964, the cotton–wheat coalition supported legislation to
weaken production controls. While the corn segment had long favored weakening pro-
duction controls, this was a new policy preference for cotton and wheat producers. What
led to this change? To a great extent, changes in the world economy helped to prompt
this shift in economic interests.
After ten years of PL 480, food aid was one of the cornerstones of US agricultural
policy, helping to reduce the surpluses of wheat by creating markets for US exports.
Wheat exports more than doubled between 1950 and 1965, increasing from 10 MMT
to 22 MMT (see Figure 7.1). This change strongly influenced the wheat segment’s view
of production controls. With exports expanding, US wheat growers could increase pro-
duction rather than trying to control it. Consequently, the wheat segment increasingly
favored exports and flexible production controls (Winders, 2009a).11
While greater success in the world economy prompted wheat producers to favor
weakening supply management policy, the cotton segment came to this same policy
position because of increased difficulties in the world economy. Although PL 480 may
have helped initially, US cotton exports began to fall in 1960, as Figure 7.2 shows. For
the 1960s, cotton exports had a downward trajectory. In a context of declining cotton
exports and increasing competition from synthetic fibers, southern agriculture continued
a change that began in the 1950s. Soybean production increased in the South, displac-
ing cotton as the crop covering the most acres in the South in the 1960s. Part of the
expansion of soybeans in the South was due to increased US soybean exports, which
rose steadily from about 0.5 MMT in 1951 to almost 7 MMT in 1965. Coupled with
the increased demand for soybeans due to increasing meat consumption, this increase
in exports made soybeans an attractive alternative to cotton, which saw its exports
decline from 7.4 million bales in 1959 to 3 million bales in 1965. This shift from cotton to
soybeans altered the planters’ views of production controls and allotments. Even while
favoring production controls for cotton, this segment worried that controls on soybeans
and grains might affect their ability to expand production and move away from their reli-
ance on traditional southern crops (Hansen, 1991). With both the cotton and wheat seg-
ments favoring more flexible production controls, the Cotton-Wheat Act of 1964 passed
and weakened this element of supply management policy. Importantly, the changing
world economy clearly influenced the economic interests and policy preferences of these
segments of agriculture.

10
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Year
Cotton Exports (3-year average)
Source: USDA, Agricultural Statistics (various years).
Figure 7.2 US cotton exports, 1945–99
In 1973, one more instance of retrenchment occurred, as the Agriculture and Consumer
Protection Act reduced price supports and dropped acreage reduction requirements. The
influence of the world economy can be seen in a similar fashion with this policy shift. An
important reason for the corn segment favoring the end of price supports and production
controls was the tremendous expansion in corn exports that occurred in just a few short
years. US corn exports increased from 16 MMT in 1970 to 39 MMT in 1972 to 52 MMT
in 1975. Beginning in the late 1960s, the volume of corn exports overtook and increased
far beyond that of wheat exports. This increase in exports was spurred on by shortfalls
in world grain production, especially in Russia and China, leading grain stocks in the
USA to fall dramatically (Morgan, 1980; Gilmore, 1982). All of this led corn prices to
rise significantly, thereby negating the need for price supports. In this context, the corn
segment continued to oppose state intervention in agricultural production and prices,
seeking instead to expand exports further by supporting the Nixon Administration’s
push for freer international trade (Winders, 2004, 2009a).
Wheat exports also increased, from an average of 15.75 MMT per year between 1968
and 1971, to 30.5 MMT per year from 1972 to 1975 (see Figure 7.1). Consequently,
wheat prices rose from USD1.33 a bushel in 1970 to USD3.95 a bushel in 1973 (Gilmore,
1982). This was a historic high for wheat prices, which made income and price supports
appear less necessary to many observers (Morgan, 1980). Although the wheat segment
continued to view the favorable export situation critically, the dramatic increase in wheat
exports reduced the need for production controls and high price supports based on
parity, at least in the short run.

The world economic context also shaped southern interests. First, the cotton segment
still faced increasing competition from other nations, and US cotton exports began to
increase in 1968, rising from about two million bales that year to more than five million
bales in 1973. Second, and perhaps even more importantly, soybeans continued to grow
in importance in southern agriculture: the value of southern soybean production jumped
from USD860 million in 1970 to USD2.1 billion in 1975, surpassing the value of cotton
and tobacco production (Winders, 2004). This expansion in soybean production in the
South was, again, partly spurred by the increased global demand for soybeans.
Over the next two decades, US agricultural policy expanded and contracted as the
world economic context changed. In the 1980s, world wheat exports increased, leading
to an expansion of supply management with the creation of the Export Enhancement
Program (EEP), which increased export subsidies. The EEP was meant to help expand
markets for US wheat exports. Other nations, especially in Europe, also increased their
export subsidies, and competition in the global wheat market intensified. Production
controls were increased as well in an attempt to control surpluses. In addition, this
expansion in supply management occurred as US farmers experienced a financial crisis
in the mid-1980s.12 The broader political-economic context, then, prompted this brief
policy expansion.
In 1996, however, the FAIR Act was passed in a context of high prices and expand-
ing markets. The FAIR Act ended production controls, allowing farmers to grow ‘fence
row to fence row’. This legislation changed price supports, which had varied according
to market prices, to fixed and declining payments with the goal of phasing out subsidies.
The FAIR Act also reduced export subsidies. With these changes, US agricultural policy
no longer aimed to regulate agricultural prices and production. This legislation, then,
effectively ended the 60-year-old policy of supply management. Why did supply manage-
ment end at this historical moment?
The same interaction and dynamics between class, state and market that shaped earlier
shifts in agricultural policy also led to the FAIR Act. Most importantly, two trends in the
world economy led the corn segment to favor liberalization. First, the world economy
became more liberalized in the last two decades of the twentieth century. The ratifica-
tion of several trade agreements, including the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) (1994) and the Uruguay Round of GATT (1994), and the creation of the
World Trade Organization in 1995, signaled a fundamental structural change in the
international food regime – the reduction of state influence in agricultural production
and trade. This liberalization in the world economy brought the potential for expand-
ing US exports. Second, greater liberalization in the agricultural sector of the world
economy led to increased competition over expanding markets. Notably, this compe-
tition occurred not only between agricultural producers in different nations but also
between different segments of US agriculture. These two trends of increased liberaliza-
tion and heightened competition created tensions and opportunities that influenced the
economic interests and policy preferences of segments of agriculture in the United States.
Export markets were expanding, especially for US corn exports. Three markets for US
corn exports expanded in the 1990s: former socialist nations, including Cuba and those
in Eastern Europe; China and other nations in East Asia; and Mexico. Various agricul-
tural organizations and agribusiness corporations called for reopening economic rela-
tions with Cuba, strengthening trade relations with China, and supporting NAFTA. The

liberalization of agriculture across the globe helped to create these potential markets for
US exports. Under NAFTA, for example, Mexico was required to reduce or eliminate
its long-standing protections and subsidies for corn. This policy shift opened Mexico to
US corn exports. Just as wheat producers became less supportive of production controls
when exports increased in the 1960s, the new opportunities for exporting corn, soybeans,
and other feed grains during the 1990s strengthened the opposition of the corn segment
to production controls (Winders, 2009a).
By contrast, the export market shrank for US corn in Europe. Before the 1980s, US
corn and soybean exports had a relatively secure market in Europe. However, trade
barriers emerged on corn and soybean imports into Europe during the 1980s (Josling,
1993). Consequently, US corn exports to Europe fell dramatically: 42 percent of all US
corn exports went to Europe in 1975, but only 5 percent went there in 1986 (World Food
Institute, 1988). Export subsidies would not necessarily help the corn segment win back
the European market, even if they might help the wheat segment increase its share of the
world market. Liberalizing trade and reducing barriers were more appealing to the corn
segment.
One other factor shaped the corn segment’s economic interest: competition with US
wheat exports receiving subsidies through the EEP. Export subsidies sometimes put US
corn in unfair competition with US wheat exports. There was concern that subsidized
wheat might be used as a feed substitute instead of corn in some countries (Winders,
2009a). There was also concern that export subsidies for wheat would depress prices
and thereby encourage producers in other nations to grow corn, soybeans, or other feed
grains instead of wheat. Thus, the EEP put the wheat and corn segments at odds with one
another as they each tried to capture greater shares of the world market. The EEP also
posed the danger of encouraging an increase in the world supply of corn. Consequently,
the corn segment favored ending such national regulation and support.
As with the creation of supply management policy in the 1930s, policy shifts are not
simply the consequence of economic interests. Political power also plays a role. The par-
ticular configuration of agricultural coalitions in the mid-1990s significantly influenced
the shape of the FAIR Act (Winders, 2009a). The surge of the Republican Party in the
1990s gave the corn–agribusiness–livestock coalition much more influence over agricul-
tural policy. This agricultural coalition favored reducing state regulation and ending
supply management policy, particularly production controls.
Since the FAIR Act, US agricultural policy has continued to move away from supply
management policy. The 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment (FSRI) Act brought
back a form of price supports – referred to as ‘cyclical payments’ – and retained fixed
income supports. Importantly, however, this legislation did not reinstate production
controls. So although US agricultural policy continues to support farmers’ incomes, it no
longer manages supply through production controls. In 2008, the Food, Conservation,
and Energy (FCE) Act continued the path set out by the FSRI Act by including both
fixed and cyclical payments but leaving out production controls. Though the FCE Act
included income supports, it made a clear move toward more market-oriented supports
and away from traditional payments tied to target prices. The 2008 legislation also
included expanded programs for crop insurance, biofuels production, and conserva-
tion efforts. And finally, the Agricultural Act of 2014 ended fixed income supports for
farmers and put greater emphasis on crop insurance. But, the Agricultural Act of 2014

created the ‘Price Loss Coverage’ program, which functions similarly to price supports
by tying income supports to market prices. The production controls and export subsidies
that were so central to supply management policy are no longer a part of US agricultural
policy. As the USA shifted away from supply management policy, so too did the world
economy and many other nations.
SHIFTING AWAY FROM SUPPLY MANAGEMENT POLICY:

IMPLICATIONS FOR WORLD AGRICULTURE
World agriculture and US agricultural policy have tended to move together since the
early twentieth century, including the liberalization over the past 40 years. The US food
regime was gradually dismantled during this period. First, national agricultural poli-
cies centered on supply management experienced retrenchment. The US ended supply
management policy in 1996, though farm subsidies continue. A number of other coun-
tries have also reduced or eliminated supply management, including Brazil, Mexico,
New Zealand, South Korea, and many others. Second, international commodity agree-
ments that regulated production, prices, and trade broke down. These agreements
regulated several important commodities, including wheat, coffee, cocoa, cotton, sugar
and wool, among others. Third, after decades of being exempt from the global drive for
liberalization, agriculture was included in GATT in 1994. The WTO replaced GATT as
the locus of trade rule negotiations, implementation, and dispute settlement, including
for agriculture. The WTO increased the pressure on nations to reduce regulations in
agriculture, leading several ministerial meetings to collapse as many nations resisted lib-
eralizing agriculture. What has the recent period of liberalization of agricultural policy
meant? How has this policy shift affected agricultural markets?
The fundamental consequence of this liberalization has been to make world agricul-
ture more vulnerable to market vagaries. In particular, this deregulation destabilized
production and prices. For example, after the FAIR Act, between 1996 and 2005, US
corn production increased by about 20 percent while wheat production fell slightly by
about 5 percent. Without regulations on production, farmers could more easily shift
between crops, resulting in less stable supplies of various commodities.
The collapse of international agreements had similar effects on production. When the
International Coffee Agreement (ICA) broke down in 1989, for example, coffee produc-
tion shifted dramatically. Vietnam went from being a minor producer of Robusta coffee
to being the dominant producer by 2000, increasing total world production by about
50 percent in less than ten years. This dramatic shift in production would not have been
possible under the stricter arrangements of the mid-twentieth-century ICA. With the
collapse of the ICA, however, a nation could emerge as a top coffee producer and add
enough coffee to flood the market.
Such dramatic shifts in production have been accompanied by greater instability in
agricultural prices. On the one hand, when prices collapse, as they did for coffee in the
early 1990s, farmers suffer as their incomes drop. On the other hand, sharp increases in
agricultural prices can lead to food crises, such as seen in 2008 when wheat and rice prices
rose by more than 300 percent. Supply management policy helped to stabilize the market
for agriculture, while liberalization has brought greater instability and fluctuations.

This process of liberalization has not been uncontested, however. A number of politi-
cal struggles have occurred during the last few decades around issues related to attempts
to liberalize agriculture: mobilization by farmers and farm organizations to protect
subsidies in the USA and elsewhere, peasant mobilizing to resist liberalizing land tenure,
protests at ministerial meetings of the World Trade Organization around issues of agri-
cultural trade, consumer movements calling for increased regulations to guard food
safety, and so forth. Whether such movements can influence US agricultural policy or
the shape of the international food regime will depend, of course, on the constellation of
political power in agriculture.
Because the USA was the world economic hegemon from 1947 to 1975, it set the food
regime during that period to reflect its agricultural policy. Doing so, however, led to
the spread of supply management policy to nations around the globe. Consequently,
competition became more intense, the problem of overproduction spread, and trade
barriers increased. By the early 1970s, the US food regime based on supply management
policy began to break down – surpluses mounted, state expenditures increased, access to
export markets decreased, and a global food crisis struck. The internal contradictions of
the food regime and of supply management policy led to a movement aimed at greater
liberalization and less national regulation. This is Polanyi’s double movement, which
ebbs and flows between regulation and the free market. Movement toward regulation in
agriculture ultimately led to calls for greater liberalization, and the shift toward a more
liberal world economy over the past 40 years has already prompted calls for greater regu-
lation and protection from market forces. Beneath the timing of these ebbs and flows
is the political power of coalitions within agriculture. This is one key to understanding
shifts in US agricultural policy and world agriculture over the past century.
NOTES
1. There are, of course, many more factors or variables that influence agricultural policies, including culture,
partisan politics, state budget issues, state structures, social movements, advances in agricultural tech-
nology, and so forth (see Orden et al., 1999; Sheingate, 2001; Friedmann, 2005; Gardner, 2006; Lehrer,
2010). Nonetheless, my emphasis here is the role of different segments in agriculture, particularly those
forming around important commodities like corn, wheat, and cotton. For a clear demonstration of the
analytical power and basis of this perspective, see Winders (2004, 2005, and 2009a).
2. See Winders (2009a) for a more complete discussion of this perspective.
3. The Corn Belt includes Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
4. The Wheat Belt includes Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Oregon,
Idaho, and Washington.
5. The South includes Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
6. Louisiana’s governor rescinded that state’s legislation. In other states (e.g., Mississippi and South
Carolina), legislation expired because of sunset clauses that rested on other southern states passing reduc-
tion laws, which did not happen. And in Texas, state courts declared the state’s reduction legislation
unconstitutional (see Snyder, 1984).
7. To avoid confusion, I use ‘AAA’ only to refer to the legislation (i.e., the Agricultural Adjustment Act) not
to the bureaucracy (i.e., the Agricultural Adjustment Administration).
8. For a more extensive discussion of agriculture in GATT, see Winders (2009b).
9. Another factor in this policy preference was how wheat was used (i.e., as food rather than livestock feed).
Unlike corn, most wheat was not used as feed but rather was sold directly as food products (especially
flour and bread) that were less elastic in price than was meat (Matusow, 1967).
10. At the same, the structure of price supports for corn, which was also an important crop in the South,

encouraged southern planters to oppose cuts in supply management. A two-tiered system existed for
price supports for corn. A ‘commercial corn zone’, which was essentially the Corn Belt, received full price
supports, but corn grown outside of this area (e.g., in the South) was supported at only 75 percent of full
price supports (see Winders, 2009a).
11. PL 480 also strengthened another important segment in agriculture: agribusiness corporations. Food
aid infused agribusiness (e.g., Cargill, Continental, ADM) with millions of dollars and brought it into
the policy formation process (Morgan, 1980; Gilmore, 1982; Friedmann, 1993). Portions of agribusiness
opposed supply management policies and gained increasing influence over agricultural policy during the
1960s and 1970s (Winders, 2009a).
12. After prices increased in the early 1970s, many US farmers expanded operations, for example by renting
more land or buying more equipment. When prices fell in the 1980s, many farmers found it difficult to
pay off their debts (see Barlett, 1993).
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8. Contributions of trade reforms to agriculture’s
globalisation
Kym Anderson*
INTRODUCTION
Agricultural protection and subsidies in high-income (and some middle-income) coun-

tries have been depressing international prices of farm products for many decades,
thereby lowering the earnings of farmers and associated rural businesses in developing
countries (Johnson, 1991; Tyers and Anderson, 1992). Those policies almost certainly
add to inequality and poverty, since three-quarters of the world’s poorest people depend
directly or indirectly on agriculture for their main income (World Bank, 2007). Currently
less than 15 million relatively wealthy farmers in developed countries, with an average of
almost 80 hectares per worker, are being helped at the expense of not only consumers,
taxpayers, and producers of other tradables in those rich countries but also the majority
of the 1.3 billion relatively impoverished farmers and their large families in developing
countries who, on average, have to earn a living from just 2.5 hectares per worker.
As well as this external policy influence on rural poverty, the governments of many
developing countries have directly taxed their farmers over the past half-century. A
well-known and often-cited example is the taxing of exports of plantation crops in post-
colonial Africa (Bates, 1981). Furthermore, many developing countries in the 1960s and
1970s chose also to pursue an import-substituting industrialisation strategy, predomi-
nantly by restricting imports of manufactures and overvaluing their exchange rates. As
Krueger et al. (1988, 1991) show in their seminal multicountry study, this indirectly taxed
other tradable sectors in those developing economies, including agriculture.
The price incentives facing farmers in many developing countries thereby have been
depressed by both own-country and other countries’ farm, food and trade policies. By
drawing on a recently compiled dataset, this chapter surveys the extent to which govern-
ment policies at home and abroad have distorted prices faced by developing country
farmers over the past half-century. It begins with a brief discussion of indicators used to
measure the extent of own-country distortions to farmer incentives. It then summarises
analyses of the effects of those agricultural and trade policies on incentives over time,
focusing on the worsening of that situation between the 1950s and early 1980s and on the
reform progress that has been made over the most-recent three decades.
Despite recent reforms, many price distortions remain in the agricultural sector of
both developing and high-income countries. A summary of new empirical estimates
from a global economy-wide model shows how much could be gained by removing the
interventions remaining. The chapter concludes by pointing to the scope and prospects
for further pro-poor policy reform in both developing and high-income countries.
175
INDICATORS OF NATIONAL DISTORTIONS TO FARMER

INCENTIVES
To gauge how farmer incentives in high-income and developing countries have evolved
since the 1950s, we draw on time series evidence from a recent World Bank study that
covers 75 countries and five decades of policy experience (Anderson and Valenzuela,
2008, summarised in Anderson, 2009). That database reports nominal rates of assistance
(NRAs), defined as the percentage by which government policies have raised gross
returns to farmers above what they would be without the government’s intervention (or
lowered them, if NRA , 0). If a trade measure is the sole source of government inter-
vention for a particular product, then the measured NRA will also be the consumer tax
equivalent (CTE) rate at that same point in the value chain for that product. But where
there are also domestic producer or consumer taxes or subsidies, the NRA and CTE will
no longer be equal and at least one of them will be different from the price distortion at
the border due to trade measures. Both are expressed as a percentage of the undistorted
price. Each industry is classified either as import competing, or a producer of exporta-
bles, or as producing a non-tradable (with its status sometimes changing over the years),
so as to generate for each year the weighted average NRAs for the two different groups
of tradables. Any non-product-specific distortions, including distortions to farm input
prices, are also added into the estimate for the overall sectoral NRA for agriculture as a
whole.
The coverage of products for NRA estimates averages around 70 per cent of the gross
value of farm production in each country. Authors of the country case studies also
provide ‘guesstimates’ of the NRAs for non-covered farm products. Weighted averages
for all agricultural products are then generated, using the gross values of production at
unassisted prices as weights. For countries that also provide non-product-specific agri-
cultural subsidies or taxes (assumed to be shared on a pro-rata basis between tradables
and non-tradables), such net assistance is then added to product-specific assistance to get
an NRA for total agriculture (and also for tradable agriculture for use in generating the
relative rate of assistance, defined below).
Farmers are affected not just by prices of their own outputs but also by the incentives
non-agricultural producers face. That is, it is relative prices and hence relative rates of
government assistance that affect producer incentives. More than 70 years ago Lerner
(1936) provided his symmetry theorem to show that in a two-sector economy an import
tax has a similar effect to an export tax. This carries over to a model that also includes a
third sector producing only non-tradables, to a model with imperfect competition, and
regardless of the economy’s size (Vousden, 1990, pp. 46–7). If one assumes that there are
no distortions in the markets for non-tradables and that the value shares of agricultural
and non-agricultural non-tradable products remain constant, then the economy-wide
effect of distortions to agricultural incentives can be captured by the extent to which the
tradable parts of agricultural production are assisted or taxed relative to producers of
non-farm tradables. By generating estimates of the average NRA for non-agricultural
tradables, it is then possible to calculate a relative rate of assistance, RRA, defined in
percentage terms as:
RRA 5 100[(1 1 NRAagt/100)/(1 1 NRAnonagt/100) − 1]

Contributions of trade reforms 177
where NRAagt and NRAnonagt are the weighted average percentage NRAs for the trad-
able parts of the agricultural and non-agricultural sectors, respectively. Since the NRA
cannot be less than −100 per cent if producers are to earn anything, neither can the RRA
(assuming NRAnonagt is positive). And if both of those sectors are equally assisted, the
RRA is zero. This measure is useful in that if it is below (above) zero, it provides an inter-
nationally comparable indication of the extent to which a country’s policy regime has an
anti-(pro-) agricultural bias (Anderson et al., 2008).1
In summarising pertinent empirical findings from that World Bank study, it is helpful
to begin with NRA estimates for the farm sector and then turn to RRA estimates.
THE EVOLUTION OF POLICIES DISTORTING FARMER

INCENTIVES: A BRIEF HISTORY
The first country to have an Industrial Revolution was Britain. Prior to that revolution –
from the late 1100s to the 1660s – Britain used export taxes and licences to prevent
domestic food prices from rising excessively. But during 1660–90 a series of acts gradu-
ally raised food import duties (making imports prohibitive under most circumstances)
and reduced export restrictions on grain. The Corn Laws of 1815 made these provisions
even more protective of British farmers. True, the famous repeal of the Corn Laws in the
mid-1840s heralded a period of relatively unrestricted food trade for Britain,2 but then
agricultural protection returned in the 1930s and steadily increased over the next five
decades.
Similar tendencies have been observed in many other West European countries,
although on the Continent the period of free trade in the nineteenth century was con-
siderably shorter, and agricultural protection levels there during the past 150 years have
been somewhat higher on average than in Britain. Kindleberger (1975) describes how
the nineteenth-century free-trade movements in Europe reflected the national economic,
political and sociological conditions of the time. Agricultural trade reform was less
difficult for countries such as Britain with overseas territories that could provide the
metropolis with a ready supply of farm products. The fall in the price of grain imports
from America in the 1870s and 1880s provided a challenge for all, however. Denmark
coped well by moving more into livestock production to take advantage of cheaper
grain. Italians coped by sending many of their relatives to the New World. Farmers in
France and Germany successfully sought protection from imports, however, and so
began the post-Industrial Revolution growth of agricultural protectionism in densely
populated countries. Meanwhile, tariffs on West European imports of manufactures
were progressively reduced after the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
came into force in the late 1940s, thereby adding to the encouragement of agricultural
relative to manufacturing production (Lindert, 1991; Findlay and O’Rourke, 2007).
Japan provides an even more striking example of the tendency to switch from taxing
to increasingly assisting agriculture relative to other industries. Its industrialisation
began later than in Europe, after the opening up of the economy following the Meiji
Restoration in 1868. By 1900 Japan had switched from being a small net exporter of food
to becoming increasingly dependent on imports of rice (its main staple food and respon-
sible for more than half the value of domestic food production). This was followed by

calls from farmers and their supporters for rice import controls. Their calls were matched
by equally vigorous calls from manufacturing and commercial groups for unrestricted
food trade, since the price of rice at that time was a major determinant of real wages in
the non-farm sector. The heated debates were not unlike those that led to the repeal of
the Corn Laws in Britain six decades earlier. In Japan, however, the forces of protection
triumphed, and a tariff was imposed on rice imports from 1904. That tariff then gradu-
ally rose over time, raising the domestic price of rice to more than 30 per cent above the
import price during World War I. Even when there were food riots because of shortages
and high rice prices just after that war, the Japanese government’s response was not to
reduce protection but instead to extend it to its colonies and to shift from a national to an
imperial policy of rice self-sufficiency. That involved accelerated investments in agricul-
tural development in the colonies of Korea and Taiwan behind an ever-higher external
tariff wall that by the latter 1930s had driven imperial rice prices to more than 60 per cent
above those in international markets (Anderson and Tyers, 1992). After the Pacific War
ended and Japan lost its colonies, its agricultural protection growth resumed and spread
from rice to an ever-wider range of farm products.
The other high-income countries were settled by Europeans relatively recently and
are far less densely populated. They therefore have had a strong comparative advantage
in farm products for most of their history following Caucasian settlement, and so have
felt less need to protect their farmers than Europe or Northeast Asia. Indeed Australia
and New Zealand until the late twentieth century tended – like developing countries – to
adopt policies that discriminated against their farmers (Anderson et al., 2007).
Korea and Taiwan in the 1950s, as in many newly independent developing countries,
initially adopted an import-substituting industrialisation strategy that harmed agricul-
ture. But in those two economies that policy was replaced in the early 1960s with a more
neutral trade policy that resulted in very rapid export-oriented industrialisation. That
development strategy in those densely populated economies imposed competitive pres-
sure on the farm sector, which, just as in Japan in earlier decades, prompted farmers
to lobby (successfully, as it happened) for ever-higher levels of protection from import
protection (Anderson and Hayami, 1986).
Many less advanced and less rapidly growing developing countries not only adopted
import-substituting industrialisation strategies in the late 1950s or early 1960s (Little
et al., 1970; Balassa and Associates, 1971) but also imposed direct taxes on their exports
of farm products. The latter practice was especially rife in Africa (Bates, 1981). It was
common in the 1950s and 1960s, and in some cases even in the 1970s and 1980s, also to
use dual or multiple exchange rates so as to tax indirectly both exporters and importers
(Bhagwati, 1978; Krueger, 1978). This added to the anti-trade bias of developing coun-
tries’ trade policies. That policy history is now well known, and has been documented
extensively in previous surveys (e.g., Krueger, 1984).
Less well known is the extent to which many emerging economies have belatedly
followed the examples of Korea and Taiwan in abandoning industrial import substitu-
tion and opening their economies. Some (e.g., Chile) started in the 1970s, while others
(e.g., India) did not do so in a sustained way until the 1990s. Some have adopted a very
gradual pace of reform, with occasional reversals, while others have moved rapidly
to open markets. Some have reduced export taxes but simultaneously raised import
barriers.And some have adopted the rhetoric of reform but in practice have done little

to free up their economies. To get a clear sense of the overall impact of these reform
attempts, there is no substitute for empirical analysis that quantifies over time the types
of indicators noted in the section above. A World Bank project recently undertook such
analysis, to which we now turn.
NATIONAL DISTORTIONS TO FARMER INCENTIVES:

EMPIRICAL ESTIMATES SINCE THE 1950s
Japan continued to raise its agricultural protection following post-World War II recon-
struction, just as had been happening in Western Europe but to even higher levels.
Domestic prices exceeded international market prices for grains and livestock prod-
ucts in both Japan and the European Community in the 1950s, although by less than
40 per cent. However, by the early 1980s the difference was more than 80 per cent for
Japan but was still around 40 per cent for the EC – and was still close to zero for the
agricultural-exporting rich countries of Australasia and North America (Anderson and
Hayami, 1986, Table 2.5). Virtually all of that assistance to Japanese and European
farmers in that period was due to restrictions on imports of farm products.
Since 1986 the OECD has been computing annual producer and consumer support
estimates by member countries. For member countries as a whole (see OECD, 2008),
producer support rose between 1986–88 and 2005–07 from USD239 billion to USD263
billion, but when expressed as a share of support-inclusive returns to farmers, it has come
down (from 37 per cent to 26 per cent). Because of some switching of support instru-
ments, including switching to measures that are based on non-current production or on
long-term resource retirement, the share of that assistance provided via market price
support measures has fallen from three-quarters to one-half. When the PSE (producer
support estimate) payment is expressed as a percentage of undistorted prices to make it
an NRA, the NRA fall is from 59 per cent to 35 per cent between 1986–88 and 2005–07
(ibid.). This indicator suggests high-income country policies have become considerably
less trade distorting, at least in proportional terms, even though farmer support in high-
income countries has continued to grow in dollar terms because of growth in the value
of their farm output.
As for developing countries outside Northeast Asia, the main comprehensive set of
pertinent estimates over time is for the period just prior to when reforms became wide-
spread. They were generated as part of a major study of 18 developing countries from the
1960s to the mid-1980s by Krueger et al. (1988, 1991). That study by the World Bank,
whose estimates are summarised in Schiff and Valdés (1992), shows that the depression of
incentives facing farmers has been due only partly to various forms of agricultural price
and trade policies, including subsidies to food imports. Much more important in many
cases have been those developing countries’ non-agricultural policies that hurt their
farmers indirectly. The two key ones have been manufacturing protectionism (which
attracts resources from agriculture to the industrial sector) and overvalued exchange
rates (which attract resources to sectors producing non-tradables, such as services). That
indirect impact was negative for all four groups of countries shown in Table 8.1, whereas
the impact of direct agricultural policies was negative only for the two lowest-income
country groups. In addition to the total assistance being more negative the poorer the

Table 8.1 Direct and indirect nominal rates of assistance to farmers in 18 developing

countries, 1960 to mid-1980s (%)
Country Group Direct Indirect Total Assistance to Assistance to

Assistance Assistance Assistancea Agric. Export Agric. Import-
Subsectora competing
Subsectora
Very low income −23 −29 −52 −49 −11
Low income −12 −24 −36 −40 −13
Lower middle income 0 −16 −16 −14 −2
Upper middle income 24 −14 10 −1 15
Unweighted sample −8 −22 −30 −35 −9
average
Note: a. Total assistance is the weighted average of assistance to the agricultural subsectors producing
exportables, importables and non-tradables (the latter not shown above).
Source: Anderson (2010a), summarised from estimates reported in Schiff and Valdés (1992, Tables 2.1
and 2.2).
country group, Table 8.1 also reveals that it is lower for producers of exportables than
for the subsector focused on import-competing farm products, suggesting a strong anti-
trade bias for the sector as a whole.
The more recent World Bank study covers 41 developing countries but also 14
European transition economies as well as 20 high-income countries. The results from
that study3 do indeed reveal that there has been a substantial reduction in distortions to
agricultural incentives in developing countries over the past two to three decades. They
also reveal that progress has not been uniform across countries and regions, and that –
contrary to some earlier claims (e.g., from Jensen et al., 2002) – the reform process is far
from complete. In particular, many countries still have a wide dispersion in NRAs for
different farm industries and in particular have a strong anti-trade bias in the structure
of assistance within their agricultural sector; and some countries have ‘overshot’ in the
sense that they have moved from having an average rate of assistance to farmers that
was negative to one that is positive, rather than stopping at the welfare-maximising rate
of zero. Moreover, the variance in rates of assistance across commodities within each
country, and in aggregate rates across countries, remains substantial; and the beggar-
thy-neighbour practice of insulating domestic markets from international food price
fluctuations continues, thereby exacerbating that volatility (Anderson and Nelgen,
2011).
The global summary of those new results is provided in Figure 8.1. It reveals that
the nominal rate of assistance (NRA) to farmers in high-income countries rose stead-
ily over the post-World War II period through to the end of the 1980s, apart from
a small dip when international food prices spiked around 1973–74. After peaking at
more than 50 per cent in the mid-1980s, the average NRA for high-income countries
has fallen a little, depending on the extent to which one believes some new farm pro-
grammes are ‘decoupled’ in the sense of no longer influencing production decisions. For

70
60
50
40
30
Percent
20
10
0
1955–59 1960–64 1965–69 1970–74 1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995–99 2000–04
–10
–20
–30
HIC & ECA HIC & ECA, incl. developed payments Developing countries
Source: Adapted from Anderson (2009).
Figure 8.1 Nominal rates of assistance to agriculture in high-income and Eastern

European and Central Asian transition economies (HIC & ECA) and in
developing countries, 1955 to 2004 (%, weighted averages, with ‘decoupled’
payments included in the dashed HIC line)
eveloping countries, too, the average NRA for agriculture has been rising, but from a
d
level of around −25 per cent between the mid-1950s and early 1980s to a level of nearly
10 per cent in the first half of the present decade.
When expressed on a per farmer basis, the gross subsidy equivalent (GSE) varies
enormously between high-income and developing countries. In 1980–84 the GSE in
high-income countries was already around USD8000 and by 2000–04 it had risen
to USD10 000 on average (and USD25 000 in Norway, Switzerland and Japan), or
USD13 500 when ‘decoupled’ payments are included. By contrast, the GSE in develop-
ing economies was –USD140 per farmer in the first half of the 1980s, which is a non-
trivial tax when one recalls that at that time the majority of these people’s households
were surviving on less than USD1 a day per capita. By 2000–04 they received on average
around USD50 per farmer (Anderson, 2009). While this represents a major improve-
ment, it is less than 1 per cent of the support received by the average farmer in high-
income countries.
The developing country average NRA also conceals the fact that the exporting and
import-competing subsectors of agriculture have very different NRAs. Figure 8.2a,b
reveals that while the average NRA for exporters in developing countries has been nega-
tive throughout (coming back from −50 per cent to almost zero in 2000–04), the NRA
for import-competing farmers in developing countries has fluctuated around a trend

90 (a)
70
50
Percent
30
10
–10 1965–69 1970–74 1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995–99 2000–04
–30
–50
Import-competing Exportables Total
90 (b)
70
50
30
Percent
10
–10 1955–59 1960–64 1965–69 1970–74 1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995–99 2000–04
–30
–50
Import-competing Exportables Total
Note: a. Covered products only. The total also includes non-tradable goods. The sloped straight line is an
ordinary least squares regression trend line over the period shown.
Figure 8.2a,b Nominal rates of assistance to exportable, import-competing, and all

covered agricultural products,a (a) developing and (b) high-income
countries, 1955 to 2004 (%)

rise from 10 per cent and 30 per cent (and it even reached 40 per cent in the years of
low international prices in the mid-1980s). Having increased in the 1960s and 1970s, the
anti-trade bias within agriculture for developing countries has diminished considerably
since the mid-1980s, but the NRA gap between the two subsectors still averages around
20 percentage points.
That anti-trade bias means that the rates of assistance are not uniform across com-
modities, which indicates that the resources that are being used within the farm sector
are not being put to their best use. The extent of that extra inefficiency, over and above
that due to too many or too few resources in aggregate in the sector, is indicated by the
standard deviation of NRAs among covered products in each focus country. This disper-
sion index has fluctuated between 43 per cent and 60 per cent throughout the past five
decades, with no discernible trend (Anderson, 2009, Table 1.6).
A further decomposition of the developing countries’ NRAs worth commenting on is
the contribution to them from trade policy measures at each country’s border as distinct
from domestic output or input subsidies or taxes. Often, political attention is focused
much more on direct domestic subsidies or taxes than on trade measures, because
those fiscal measures are made so transparent through the annual budgetary scrutiny
process, whereas trade measures are reviewed only infrequently and are far less trans-
parent, especially if they are not in the simple form of ad valorem tariffs. That attention
would appear to be misplaced, however, because between 80 and 90 per cent of the
NRA for developing country agriculture (not including non-product-specific support,
which is very minor) comes from border measures such as import tariffs or export taxes
(Anderson, 2009).
The improvement in farmers’ incentives in developing countries is understated by the
above NRAag estimates, because those countries have also reduced their assistance to
producers of non-agricultural tradable goods, most notably manufacturers. The decline
in the weighted average NRA for the latter, depicted in Figure 8.3, was clearly much
greater than the increase in the average NRA for tradable agricultural sectors for the
period to the mid-1980s, consistent with the finding of Krueger et al. (1988, 1991). For
the period since the mid-1980s, changes in both sectors’ NRAs have contributed almost
equally to the improvement in farmer incentives. The relative rate of assistance, defined
above, provides a useful indicator of relative price change: the RRA for developing
countries as a group went from −46 per cent in the second half of the 1970s to 1 per cent
in the first half of the present decade. This increase (from a coefficient of 0.54 to 1.01) is
equivalent to an almost doubling in the relative price of farm products, which is a huge
change in the fortunes of developing country farmers in just a generation.
MARKET AND WELFARE EFFECTS OF REMAINING TRADE-

DISTORTING POLICIES
Even though the developing country average agricultural NRA and RRA are now close
to zero, and those for high-income countries have been moving towards zero since the late
1980s, there remains a huge spectrum of national averages (Anderson and Valenzuela,
2008). This suggests there is still a great deal to be gained through international reloca-
tion of farm production between countries. That possibility, together with the possibility

90
70
50
30
Percent
10
1965–69 1970–74 1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995–99 2000–04
–10
–30
–50
RRA NRA non-ag tradables NRA ag tradables
Figure 8.3 Nominal rates of assistance to agricultural and non-agricultural sectors and

relative rate of assistance, developing countries, 1965–2004 (%, weighted
averages)
of gains from reducing the dispersion between product NRAs within countries, can best
be explored with the use of a global economy-wide model.
Attention thus now turns to estimates of the market, welfare and distributional effects
of the distortions to agricultural incentives that remain in both high-income and poorer
countries. This is done using a global model calibrated to 2004, which is used to address
two questions. To what extent are government trade and subsidy policies still reducing
farm incomes in developing countries and thereby prolonging inequality across countries
in farm household incomes? And are those policy-induced price distortions depressing
value-added more in primary agriculture than in the rest of the economy of developing
countries, thereby potentially raising inequality and poverty within those countries?
With farm incomes well below non-farm incomes in most developing countries, and
with agriculture there being intensive in the use of unskilled labour, policies that lower
agricultural relative to non-agricultural value-added, and wages for the unskilled relative
to skilled wages and capital earnings, would tend to exacerbate inequality and poverty.
Answers to these two questions are provided in Valenzuela et al. (2009). They first
draw on the above-mentioned new database of distortions to agricultural markets in
developing countries to amend the latest Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) pro-
tection database (Version 7.5, which refers to 2004). They then employ that amended
database in a global computable general equilibrium model (Linkage – see Van der
Mensbrugghe, 2005) to assess how agricultural markets, factor prices and value-added
in agriculture versus non-farm sectors would change if all such distortionary policies

were removed (holding aggregate government taxes and spending constant by use of a
lump-sum consumption tax). The comparative static results (assuming full adjustment)
are presented first for the key regions of the world, beginning with national economic
welfare where the impact of agricultural versus non-farm policies is highlighted. While no
one anticipates a move to completely free markets in the near future, the analysis serves
as a benchmark to suggest what is at stake in terms of further reforms, either unilaterally
or via World Trade Organization (WTO) rounds of multilateral trade negotiations.
According to the amended dataset, the average import-weighted applied tariff for
agriculture and lightly processed food in 2004 was 11 per cent for high-income countries
and 14 per cent for developing countries, while for non-farm goods it was 7 per cent for
developing countries and just 1 per cent for high-income countries. Export subsidies for
farm products exist for a few high-income regions, and export taxes were still in place in
a few developing countries in 2004 (notably Argentina).
The Linkage model’s 2004 baseline of the world economy is first compared with a
simulation in which all agricultural subsidies or taxes plus import tariffs on other mer-
chandise are removed. That removal would lead to a global gain of USD192 billion per
year. The distribution across regions of that economic welfare (or equivalent variation
in income) gain, reported in Table 8.2, suggests two-thirds of those dollars would accrue
to high-income countries. However, as a share of national income, developing countries
would gain more, with an average increase of 0.8 per cent compared with 0.5 per cent
for high-income countries. The results vary widely across developing countries, ranging
from slight losses in the case of some South Asian and Sub-Saharan African countries
that suffer exceptionally large adverse terms of trade changes, to several percentage point
gains in other cases.
Table 8.2 Impact on real income from full liberalisation of global merchandise trade, by
region, 2004 (relative to the benchmark data, in 2004 USD and %)
Total Real Change in Income Total Real Income

Income Gain Due Just to Change Gain as % of
(USD billion) in Terms of Trade Benchmarka
(USD billion)
Developing countries 67.8 −17.8 0.8 (−0.2)
North Africa 7.5 −3.2 3.4 (−1.4)
Sub-Saharan Africa −0.1 −2.5 0.0 (−0.6)
East Asia 30.5 −5.2 0.9 (−0.2)
South Asia −4.9 −3.5 −0.7 (−0.5)
Latin America 16.0 0.1 0.9 (0.0)
Middle East 4.8 −0.5 0.7 (−0.1)
E. Europe and Central Asia (ECA) 14.2 −3.1 1.0 (−0.2)
High-income countries 124.7 16.9 0.5 (0.1)
High-income plus ECA 138.9 13.8 0.5 (0.1)
World total 192.5 −0.9 0.6 (0.0)
Note: a. Numbers in parentheses refer to that due to terms of trade effects.
Source: Valenzuela et al. (2009).

The second column of numbers and those in parentheses in Table 8.2 show the amount
of that welfare gain due to changes in the international terms of trade for each country.
For developing countries as a group, the effect of the terms of trade change on their
welfare is negative, reducing somewhat the gains from improved efficiency of domestic
resource use.
There are several ways to decompose the real income gains from full removal of price
distortions globally so as to better understand the sources for each region. One way is
to assess the impacts of developing country liberalisation versus high-income country
liberalisation in different economic sectors. That decomposition suggests global liberali-
sation of agriculture and food markets contributes 66 per cent of the total global gains
from merchandise reform. This is the same as Hertel and Keeney (2006) found for 2001
using the GTAP model, and similar to the 63 per cent found for 2015 by Anderson et al.
(2006) using the Linkage model. This robust ‘two-thirds’ result is due to the high tariffs
in agriculture and food versus other sectors, but is nonetheless remarkable given the low
shares of agriculture and food in global GDP and global merchandise trade (less than
9 per cent). For developing countries, the importance of agricultural policies is even
greater at 70 per cent, compared with 64 per cent for high-income countries.
The full liberalisation results suggest there would be little change in the developing
countries’ aggregate shares of global output and exports of non-farm products other
than textiles. Their shares in agricultural and food markets, however, change noticeably:
the export share rises from 54 per cent to 64 per cent and the output share rises from
50 per cent to 53 per cent. As a result, the share of global production of farm products
that is exported rises dramatically, from 7 per cent to 12 per cent excluding intra-EU
trade (Table 8.3). That ‘thickening’ of international food markets would have a substan-
tial dampening effect on the instability of prices in those markets.
The impact of full trade reform on global farm trade is to enhance it by more than one-
third, whereas the global value of output is virtually unchanged, dropping just 2 per cent.
Table 8.3 Impact of full global liberalisation on shares of global output exported, and
developing country shares of global output and exportsa, by product, 2004 (%)
Share of Global Output Developing Countries’ Developing Countries’

Exporteda Share of Global Output Share of Global Exportsa
Benchmark Full global Benchmark Full global Benchmark Full global
liberalisation liberalisation liberalisation
Agriculture and food 7 12 50 53 54 64
Other primary products 30 32 64 64 77 78
Textile and wearing 27 34 55 58 75 76
apparel
Other manufacturing 24 26 37 37 49 50
Services 3 3 21 21 30 29
Note: a. Excluding intra-EU-15 trade.

Table 8.4 Impacts of full global merchandise trade liberalisation on real factor pricesa,
2004 (relative to the benchmark data, %)
Unskilled Skilled Capitalb Landb Aggregate Food

Wages Wages User User CPI CPI
Cost Cost
Developing countries 3.8 3.5 3.1 1.6 −1.0 −2.7
North Africa 10.7 13.7 9.9 0.3 −9.0 −16.5
Sub-Saharan Africa 3.3 3.3 3.9 −0.2 −3.9 −5.4
East Asia 4.6 4.1 4.0 2.0 0.0 −2.8
South Asia −0.7 2.4 0.6 −5.4 −0.9 1.6
Latin America 4.6 2.3 1.4 16.3 0.6 1.6
Middle East 6.9 2.8 4.7 37.4 −2.8 −9.9
E. Europe and Central Asia (ECA) 1.7 3.1 2.4 −3.6 −2.0 −3.7
High-income countries 0.3 1.0 0.6 −21.3 −0.9 −4.1
High-income plus ECA 0.3 1.1 0.7 −15.8 −1.0 −4.1
World total 1.0 1.4 1.4 −3.4 −0.9 −3.5
Notes:
a. Nominal factor prices deflated by the consumer price index (CPI).
b. The user cost of capital and land represents the subsidy inclusive rental cost.
This suggests that, in aggregate, the pro-agricultural policies of high-income countries in

2004 were not quite fully offset by the anti-agricultural policies of developing countries –
whereas the anti-trade biases in policies of both groups of countries reinforced each
other. The increase in exports of those goods from developing countries would be a
huge USD158 billion per year. Latin America accounts for nearly half of that projected
increase, but all developing regions’ exports would expand. The share of production
exported would increase for almost all major developing countries, rising in aggregate
from 8 per cent to 15 per cent.
The relatively small percentage changes in net national economic welfare, reported in
Table 8.2, hide the fact that redistributions of welfare among groups within each country
following trade reform can be much larger. This is clear from the impacts on real rewards
to labour, capital and land that are reported in Table 8.4, where factor rewards are
deflated by the overall consumer price index (CPI). It happens that food prices would fall
more than the overall CPI index; so insofar as unskilled workers spend a higher share of
their income on food than others, these results understate the extent of their gain. The
results also support the expectation from trade theory that returns to unskilled labour in
developing countries rise most, followed by wages of skilled workers, which in turn rise
more than the earnings from produced capital. Returns to immobile agricultural land
also rise in developing countries, but by less than for more mobile factors. That suggests
it is necessary to drill down more to see what happens to returns from farming in aggre-
gate to get a clearer idea of whether full reform would be likely to improve equity and
reduce poverty in developing countries (bearing in mind that the vast majority of their
poor earn income as farmers and unskilled labourers).

Table 8.5 Effects on agricultural and non-agricultural sectoral value-added of full

global liberalisation and own-liberalisation of agricultural and all sectors’
merchandise trade reform, 2004 (relative to benchmark data, %)
Global Liberalisation
Agricultural policies All sectors’ policies
Agric. Non-ag. Agric. Non-ag.
value-added value-added value-added value-added
Developing countries 5.1 1.0 5.2 2.1
North Africa −0.8 1.8 −5.0 1.4
Sub-Saharan Africa 0.2 0.3 −0.9 −0.5
East Asia 2.9 0.6 5.2 4.2
South Asia −4.1 0.8 −5.4 0.0
Latin America 28.4 2.8 29.1 1.7
Middle East 23.8 0.4 21.9 1.2
E. Europe & Central Asia (ECA) −3.3 0.4 −4.1 0.5
High-income countries −13.9 0.2 −15.3 −0.2
High-income plus ECA −11.2 0.2 −12.4 −0.1
World total −1.0 0.4 −1.3 0.3
Of crucial interest in terms of these policies’ impact on inequality and poverty is how
they affect value-added in agriculture, in other words net farm income or gross income
minus purchased farm inputs. For poverty it matters how much that indicator changes
in absolute terms, while for inequality it matters also how much it changes relative to
value-added in non-farm sectors (which is a proxy for incomes of non-farm house-
holds). These results for full global reform, reported in Table 8.5, show that for devel-
oping countries as a group, real value-added in agriculture (net farm income) would
rise by 5.2 per cent, compared with 2.1 per cent for non-agriculture. Latin America
is where net farm income expands most, averaging 29 per cent. In East Asia it also
expands considerably, and twice as much as non-agricultural value-added. However,
in Africa net farm incomes would increase substantially only in Mozambique, Zambia
and Zimbabwe, and for the continent as a whole they would fall very slightly (by less
than 1 per cent). Partly that fall is because non-agricultural primary sectors – in which
numerous African countries have a strong comparative advantage – would expand
(raising self-sufficiency in that sector from 182 per cent to 191 per cent), and that in
turn would boost non-tradables production and employment. Net farm incomes are
estimated to fall also in South Asia (by 5 per cent), but there it is textiles and apparel
that expand (raising self-sufficiency from 144 per cent to 153 per cent) and, in India
where the skilled or unskilled wage differential rises, skill-intensive goods and service
sectors also expand.

PROSPECTS FOR FURTHER REDUCTIONS IN DISTORTIONS
How future policies might develop is not obvious. A quick glance at the above policy
indicators could lead one to view developments from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s as
an aberrant period of welfare-reducing policy divergence (negative and declining RRAs
in low-income countries, positive and rising RRAs in most high-income countries) that
has given way to welfare-improving and poverty-reducing reforms during which the
two country groups’ RRAs are now converging. But on inspection of the NRAs for
exporting and import-competing subsectors of agriculture (Figure 8.2), it is clear that
the convergence of NRAs to near zero is mainly with respect to the exporting subsec-
tor, while NRAs for import-competing farmers are positive and trending upwards over
time at the same rate in both developing and high-income countries – notwithstanding
the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture that was aimed at tariffing and reduc-
ing import protection. True, applied tariffs have been lowered or suspended as a way
of dealing with the international food price spike in 2008 and 2010–11, but this, and
the food export taxes or quantitative restrictions imposed recently by numerous food-
exporting developing countries, may be only until international prices return to trend
(as happened after the price hike of 1973–74 and the price dip of 1986 – see Anderson
and Nelgen, 2012).
The indications are very mixed as to why some countries appear to have reformed
their price-distorting agricultural and trade policies more than others in recent decades,
and why some have stubbornly resisted reform (see Anderson, 2010b). Some reforming
countries have acted unilaterally, apparently having become convinced that it is in their
own national interest to do so. China is the most dramatic and significant example of the
past three decades among developing countries, while among the high-income countries
only Australia and New Zealand are in that category. Others may have done so partly to
secure bigger and better loans from international financial institutions and then, having
taken that first step, they have continued the process, even if somewhat intermittently.
India is one example, but there are numerous others in Africa and Latin America. Few
have gone backwards in terms of increasing their anti-agricultural bias, but Zimbabwe
and perhaps Argentina qualify during the past decade – and numerous others have
joined them since 2008, at least temporarily, in response to the sudden upward spike
in international food prices. And some have reduced their agricultural subsidies and
import barriers at least partly in response to the GATT’s multilateral Uruguay Round
Agreement on Agriculture, the European Union (EU) being the most important example
(helped by its desire also for otherwise costly preferential trade agreements, including its
recent expansion eastwards).
The EU reforms suggest agricultural protection growth can be slowed and even
reversed if accompanied by re-instrumentation away from price supports to decou-
pled measures or more direct forms of farm income support. The starker examples of
Australia and New Zealand show that one-off buyouts can bring faster and even com-
plete reform. But in the developing countries, where levels of agricultural protection are
generally below high-income levels, there are fewer signs of a slowdown of the upward
trend in agricultural protection from import competition over the past half-century.
Indeed, there are numerous signs that developing-country governments want to keep
open their options to raise agricultural NRAs in the future, particularly via import

restrictions. One indicator is the high tariff bindings developing countries committed
themselves to following the Uruguay Round: as of 2001, actual applied tariffs on agri-
cultural products averaged less than half the corresponding bound tariffs for developing
countries of 48 per cent, and less than one-sixth in the case of least-developed countries
(Anderson and Martin, 2006, Table 1.2).
Another indicator of reluctance in agricultural trade reform is the unwillingness of
many developing countries to agree to major cuts in bound agricultural tariffs in the
WTO’s ongoing Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations. Indeed, many of them
believe high-income countries should commit to reducing their remaining farm tariffs
and subsidies before developing countries should offer further reform commitments of
their own. Yet modelling results reported in Anderson et al. (2010) suggest that if high-
income countries alone were to liberalise their agricultural markets, such a sub-global
reform would provide less than two-thirds of the potential gains to developing countries
that could come from global agricultural policy reform.
More than that, the current negotiations have brought to prominence a new proposal
for agricultural protectionism in developing countries. This is based on the notion that
agricultural protection is helpful and needed for food security, livelihood security and
rural development. This view has succeeded in bringing ‘special products’ and a ‘special
safeguard mechanism’ into the multilateral trading system’s agricultural negotiations,
despite the fact that such policies, which would raise domestic food prices in developing
countries, may worsen poverty and the food security of the poor (Ivanic and Martin,
2008).
To wait for reform in high-income countries before liberalising the farm trade of
developing countries is unwise as a poverty alleviating strategy, not least because the
past history revealed in the NRAs summarised above suggests that such reform will be
at best slow in coming. In the United States, for example, the most recent two five-year
farm bills were steps backwards from the previous regime, which at least sought to re-
instrument protection toward less trade-distorting measures (Gardner, 2009). Nor have
the world’s large number of new regional integration agreements of recent years been
very successful in reducing farm protection. Furthermore, for developing countries to
postpone their own reform would be to forego a major opportunity to boost theirs and
(given the size and growth in South–South trade of late) their neighbours’ economies.
As Anderson and Winters (2009) argue, it would be doubly wasteful if, by being willing
to commit to reform in that way, they would be able to convince high-income countries
to reciprocate by signing on to a more ambitious Doha agreement, the potential global
benefits from which are very considerable.
Developing countries that continue to free up domestic markets and practise good
macroeconomic governance will keep growing, and typically the growth will be more
rapid in manufacturing and service activities than in agriculture, especially in the more
densely populated countries where agricultural comparative advantage is likely to
decline. Whether such economies become more dependent on imports of farm prod-
ucts partly depends, however, on what happens to their RRAs. The first wave of Asian
industrialisers (Japan, and then Korea and Taiwan) chose to slow the growth of food
import dependence by raising their NRA for agriculture even as they were bringing down
their NRA for non-farm tradables, such that their RRA became increasingly above the
neutral zero level. A key question is: will later industrialisers follow suit, given the past

close association of RRAs with rising per capita income and falling agricultural com-
parative advantage? Figure 8.2 suggests developing countries’ trends of the past three
decades have been on the same upward trajectory as the high-income countries prior to
the 1990s. So unless new forces affect their polities, the governments of later industrialis-
ing economies may well follow suit.
One potential new force is disciplines on farm subsidies and protection policies of
WTO member countries following the Uruguay Round. Earlier industrialisers were
not bound under GATT to keep down their agricultural protection, and the legal con-
straints on developing countries have been even less constraining. For India, Pakistan
and Bangladesh, for example, their estimated NRAs for agricultural importables in
2000–04 are 34 per cent, 4 per cent, and 6 per cent, respectively, whereas the average
bound tariffs on their agricultural imports are 114 per cent, 96 per cent and 189 per cent,
respectively (WTO, ITC and UNCTAD, 2007). Also, like other developing countries,
they have high bindings on product-specific domestic supports of 10 per cent and
another 10 per cent for non-product specific assistance, a total of 20 more percentage
points of NRA (17 per cent in China’s case) than legally could come from domestic
support measures – compared with currently 10 per cent in India and less than 3 per cent
in the rest of South Asia.
Hopefully, developing countries will choose not to make use of the legal wiggle room
they have allowed themselves in their WTO bindings to follow Japan, Korea and Taiwan
into high agricultural protection. A much more efficient and equitable strategy would be
instead to treat agriculture in the same way they have been treating non-farm tradable
sectors. That would involve opening the sector to international competition and relying
on more efficient domestic policy measures for raising government revenue (e.g., income
and consumption or value-added taxes in lieu of trade taxes) and assisting farm families
(e.g., public investment in rural education and health, rural infrastructure and agricul-
tural research and development). Investments in public agricultural R&D in developing
countries as a group are currently equivalent to less than 1 per cent of the gross value of
farm production (about half the intensity of high-income countries). Given the extremely
high rates of return at the margin to such investments (see, e.g., Fan, 2008), expenditure
on that would be far wiser than providing farm price supports as middle-income econo-
mies develop.
As for high-income countries, the above distortion estimates show that they have all
lowered the price supports for their farmers since the 1980s. In some countries that has
been partly replaced by assistance that is at least somewhat decoupled from production.
If that trend continues at the pace of the past quarter-century, and if there is no growth
of agricultural protection in developing countries, then before the middle of this century
most of the disarray in world food markets will have been removed. However, if the
WTO’s Doha Development Agenda collapses, and governments thereby find it more
difficult to ward off agricultural protection lobbies, it is all the more likely that develop-
ing countries will follow the same agricultural protection path this century as that taken
by high-income countries last century. Using the GTAP global economy-wide model,
Anderson and Nelgen (2011) find that this could add very substantially to the cost to
developing countries of their protectionist policies.

NOTES
* My thanks are due to Anna Strutt and Ernesto Valenzuela for invaluable help with GTAP data and
projections, and to the Australian Research Council, the Rural Industries Research and Development
Corporation and the World Bank for financial assistance. Views expressed are the author’s alone.
1. In calculating the NRA for producers of agricultural and non-agricultural tradables, the methodology also
included the implicit trade tax distortions generated by dual or multiple exchange rates, drawing on Dervis
et al. (1981).
2. Exceptions were high specific taxes on wine imports from France and high excises on some other exotic
imported food items (Nye, 2007).
3. A global overview of the results is provided in Anderson (2009) and the detailed country case studies
are reported in four regional volumes covering Africa (Anderson and Masters, 2009), Asia (Anderson
and Martin, 2009), Latin American (Anderson and Valdés, 2008), and Europe’s transition economies
(Anderson and Swinnen, 2008). Background papers and databases are freely available at www.worldbank.
org/agdistortions.
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cultural incentives, revisited’, World Trade Review, 7(3), 675–704.
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9. Heroes, villains and victims: agricultural subsidies
and their impacts on food security and poverty
reduction
Andrew Dorward and Jamie Morrison*
INTRODUCTION
This chapter reviews evidence on the food security and poverty impacts of different
agricultural subsidies in developed and developing countries. The two main parts of
the chapter examine historical experience and theoretical analysis of impacts on food
security and poverty in developing countries. These impacts are addressed first by con-
sidering subsidies in developed countries and second, subsidies in developing countries.
The chapter concludes by considering possible implications of current and emerging
issues for agricultural subsidies in the future. First, though, there is clarification of what
agricultural subsidies are, including distinctions between different types of agricultural
subsidy, and an outline of their basic impacts.
Building on McCulloch et al. (2001) World Bank (2007) and Meyer (2011) agricultural
subsidies can be defined as:
payments by governments to (or reduction in payments from) private individuals or organisa-

tions to offset agricultural costs or raise or lower agricultural prices in the stated pursuit of the
public interest (such as overcoming a market failure, increasing productivity and/or transfer-
ring resources to a particular economic, social or political group).
Key elements of this are the transfer of resources from government to private individuals
or organisations (as compared with the situation without subsidies) and (at least stated)
pursuit of the public interest.
Agricultural subsidies are, however, only part of a wider set of support measures that
governments may use to pursue the same ends without the direct transfer of resources
from government (and indirectly taxpayers) to beneficiaries. Other forms of support
normally involve transfer of resources from buyers to sellers as a result of price changes
caused by regulations or market interventions. Prices may be raised by import restric-
tions or export promotion. However, the distinction between subsidies and other forms
of support is often blurred, as subsidies commonly affect suppliers and buyers through
price changes as well as by direct expenditure transfers from government.
The focus of this chapter is therefore broadened to consider other forms of agricul-
tural support alongside subsidies, to identify three types of basic agricultural producer
support:1
● Output price support, where intervention prices, import restrictions (quotas, or

tariffs), or export promotion (subsidies) raise prices, with a transfer from con-
sumers to producers, welfare losses for consumers (who pay a higher price and
194
Agricultural subsidies and their impacts 195
consume less) and welfare gains for producers (who receive a higher price for a
greater amount of production). The cost to government is the loss on disposal of
surplus production plus administration costs.
● Output price subsidies to producers or consumers, which raise prices received by
producers and/or lower prices paid by consumers. Both consumers and producers
gain from increased quantity consumed and produced, while consumers benefit
from paying lower prices and producers benefit from receiving higher prices.
Government cost is the difference between consumer and producer price for the
entire quantity traded, and it must maintain differential consumer and producer
prices. Unless the subsidy overcomes some market failure inhibiting supply, total
consumer and producer gains are less than total cost to government, the difference
being the ‘deadweight loss’ (Siamwalla and Valdés, 1986). Relative impacts on
producers and consumers depend on commodity and market characteristics and
context, principally demand and supply elasticity and global market engagement,
with the import parity (plus import taxes or less subsidies) a maximum price, and
export parity (plus export subsidies or less taxes) a minimum.
● Production subsidies, for example credit or input subsidies that lower production
cost with impacts analogous to those of producer price subsidies (see Dorward,
2009 for further elaboration).
The impacts discussed above are the static effects of subsidies. Dynamic effects (e.g., in
changing productivity, behaviour or the structure of markets and economies) are of
much greater interest in development for their effects on wider growth. These are dis-
cussed later.
Agricultural support to producers may also take many forms. Apart from output price
interventions, common distinctions are made between public investments (investments in
public goods such as infrastructure, research, or market development, services or regu-
lation and standards), private investment subsidies (grants for private infrastructure,
research or extension facilities), and private subsidies (such as for inputs or credit). The
distinctions between these are often blurred.
IMPACTS OF DEVELOPED ECONOMY SUBSIDIES ON

DEVELOPMENT, FOOD SECURITY AND POVERTY IN
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The relationship of developed country agricultural support with economic, food security
and poverty indicators in developing countries is complex. This complexity has contrib-
uted to a highly divisive and often unsubstantiated debate on the implications of the
continued use of these policy instruments.
In simplistic terms, subsidies, to the extent that they provide incentives to producers to
increase production, impact on agricultural trade balances, either by reducing the import
requirements of, or by increasing levels of exports from, the subsidising country. This
results in an increase in excess supply on global markets and, where there are no demand
shifters and there is a substantial increase in excess supply from one or more subsidising
countries, reduced global prices. These reduced global prices have potential impacts on

import and/or export prices for all countries, affecting domestic market prices and the
returns to producers and expenditure of consumers. This in turn impacts development-
related indicators.
This section proceeds by breaking down the relationship along the components high-
lighted above. First it considers evidence on the extent to which agricultural subsidies
provide production incentives and then on ways that resulting increases in production
might translate into reductions in global market prices. These components, although by
no means simple, are probably the easiest components of the relationship to assess.
It is then necessary to determine the implications of changes to global prices on, for
example, food security indicators in developing countries. Here one must consider ques-
tions such as the following:
● The extent to which global market prices are relevant to the country in q uestion
– are these the prices at which the country imports, or is paid for its exports?
What are the implications of international market structures (e.g., multinational
corporations, contractual arrangements between governments, the significance of
futures markets)?
● Is the magnitude of the negative impact of a fall in the price of an exportable
commodity on export revenues the same as the magnitude of the positive impact
of a rise in the commodity’s price? (That is, will current market access conditions
allow the development of new market opportunities for increased production?)
● How does a change in transmitted domestic price play out for different segments
of the population? (For example for a food commodity, how are urban consum-
ers, rural net producers and rural net consumers affected, when each of these
groups is highly heterogeneous with differential expenditure patterns and supply
responsiveness?)
● How do market price impacts play out in terms of household food security?
The fourth part of this section touches on a number of these issues, highlighting the
increasingly tenuous and context-specific nature of the relationship. It also draws these
questions together to demonstrate that in some cases there appears to be a direct and
negative causal relationship between agricultural subsidies in developed countries and
indicators of interest in developing countries (e.g., cotton), in other cases food security
and poverty impacts are likely to be small (e.g., dairy), but developed country subsidies
for some food staples may produce significant but variable short and long-run develop-
ment and welfare impacts.
The Production and Trade-distortive Effects of Agricultural Subsidies
Changing roles and perceptions of agricultural subsidies

In eras of depressed global prices, subsidies provided to the agriculture sector in many
OECD countries were often attacked as causing excess production and reduced global
prices, which reduced incentives to agricultural production in non-subsidising countries,
undermining poor producer incomes and both public and private sector investments
required to facilitate the adoption of productivity-enhancing technology. The post-2008
context of higher global food prices (with associated demand shifters such as biofuel

mandates) requires a rethinking of these arguments of the roles agricultural subsidies

might play in a scenario where attention is now increasingly about the ability of global
agriculture to achieve a 60 per cent increase in production by 2050 (Alexandratos and
Bruinsma, 2012).
Changing patterns of agricultural support also require some rethinking of these issues.
In the past, agricultural subsidies were responsible for a relatively small proportion of
overall agricultural support in OECD countries (in 1986, for example, 80 per cent of
total OECD support was provided through market price support mechanisms). Since
then radical changes in agricultural policies and significantly higher global prices (reduc-
ing the gap between target prices and global prices and hence the need for market price
support) have together led to dramatic increases in the importance of subsidies as a pro-
portion of total support.
Changes in the form of support are illustrated well by trends in the EU from 1986–88
to 2009 (Figure 9.1). Total support in this period remained relatively stable at EUR80–90
billion per annum. However, so-called ‘amber box’ support (measures that are defined
as trade distorting under the WTO Agreement on Agriculture [AoA]) fell to EUR11.8
billion in 2008, less than half the value in 2006–07 and only 20 per cent of the proportion
in 1986/88. Similarly, ‘blue box’ payments (support that requires producers to limit their
EU domestic support
120.0
100.0
80.0
Support (in bn EUR)
60.0
40.0
20.0
0
8
95
96
97
98
99
00
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
/8
19
19
19
19
19
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
86
19
AMS Amber box Total de minimis Blue box Green box
Source: Adapted from ICTSD (2012).
Figure 9.1 Shifts in support to EU producers

production) have also fallen significantly. ‘Minimally trade distorting’ payments (defined
as ‘green box’ payments under the WTO AoA) increased significantly to EUR63 billion
(of which EUR32 billion is provided as decoupled support, EUR7.7 billion in investment
aids and EUR5.7 billion in environmental payments etc.). The shift towards greater use
of ‘decoupled payments’ has been associated with a shift towards mechanisms of support
that are perceived to be less trade distorting (although in theory all domestic support
policies are to some extent production and hence potentially trade distorting).
Changes in the scale of support occurred most markedly after 2008, typically the result
of countercyclical payments declining as a consequence of high world prices or from
shrinking disaster payments. Thus, actual budgetary support payments of OECD coun-
tries fell from 2008 to 2010, with total OECD member states spending of USD227 billion
in 2010, down 6 per cent from 2009 and 13 per cent from 2008 (Blas, 2011).
There have therefore been significant changes in the ways in which many developed
countries provide support to their agriculture sectors, with a reduction in the use of sub-
sidies coupled to the production of specific crops and an increase in the use of policies
that are deemed to be less production and hence trade distorting.
Production impacts
Despite these changes in support provided to OECD agricultural producers, limited falls
in its value and debate about the extent to which new forms of subsidy payments are less
distortionary of production and trade lead to questions about the overall production and
trade impacts of these policy reforms.2
The OECD secretariat has made substantive contributions to the literature on decou-
pling, both in terms of the development of conceptual frameworks and in empirical
analysis of the degree of decoupling of various support measures (OECD, 2004). Its
hierarchy of distortiveness is based on the price effects of the different policies, that is,
how the expenditures on policies affect the relative prices of inputs or outputs and how
this in turn is projected to impact on production levels. In general, the conclusion is that
payments to inputs are most distortive, followed by payments to output, payments based
on crop area and finally payments based on historical entitlements.
There are, however, also a number of non-price effects that could potentially affect the
hierarchy. These include the effect of these policies on the level of risk facing producers
and on the incentives and constraints to taking resources out of production, the ease
of policy enforcement and its propensity to change, and the effect of individual policy
instruments when implemented in combination with other policy instruments. These are
considered in turn.
Risk affects decisions on land allocation and input use intensity in production. Fixed
payments reduce risk by acting as a form of insurance that affects the distribution of
possible prices facing the producer, ensuring that producers cannot receive returns
below a certain level. With reduced levels of risk and increased wealth, producers may be
prepared to invest more resources in the production of crops for which the uncertainty
in relation to future price, revenue and/or yields would otherwise be greater (Hennessy,
2004). Crop insurance schemes can also distort relative incentives for the production of
different crops and they are also production distorting in the sense that they encourage
increases in aggregate production. There are related questions and considerable uncer-
tainty over what happens to marginal areas with decoupled payments. It is possible that

in some situations decoupling may not impact the average net revenue facing all produc-
ers, but could impact the distribution of net revenue if such policies result in reallocation
of support away from larger, more efficient farms towards smaller and more marginal
enterprises. This could result in relative increases in returns to the latter set of farmers,
with possibly more marginal land being drawn into production as a result of increases in
net revenue of these smaller producers.
Furthermore, while replacement of ‘production-enhancing’ subsidies by decoupled
support may encourage some producers to exit farming, the land that they farm, with
few uses outside agricultural production, is likely to continue to stay in production, but
be transferred to other producers. Thus, although the number of farmers in the OECD
countries is falling, the level of resources committed to farming is not: production levels
in the OECD continue to increase despite the greater use of ‘decoupled’ support.
One difficulty in ranking policy categories with respect to their trade distortiveness is
that actual impacts depend not only on the type of policy in place, but also on the way
in which it is designed and enforced or implemented in practice. Impact is often highly
policy specific and so it is difficult to know in advance how this affects the ranking of
measures as regards the degree of decoupling. Key dimensions include enforcement, and
expectations of future assistance and of updating of base payment parameters.
The distortive nature of a policy is also affected by the whole policy set that it is a part
of. Analysts generally hold that production impacts can be very different when a com-
bination of policies work together as compared with the effects of separate individual
policies. Unfortunately, however, there is little empirical work on individual farmer reac-
tions to different types of payments when multiple policy effects are taken into account.3
Overall, a review of contemporary literature by Skully (2009) suggests that, given
the above determinants of production distortiveness, production impacts of changes
in support tend to be observed where recipient households have low incomes or cannot
obtain credit. Production impacts in OECD countries are therefore relatively low, given
that the share of OECD output by such households is small – indeed, most farmers are
wealthier than the average household. He suggests, however, that decoupled policies
could have substantial production effects where credit markets and supply chains are
underdeveloped – for example, had they been used in the 1950s, or in contemporary
developing countries.
Implications for Global Market Indicators
The discussion above suggests that alternative support measures, and hence policies
emphasising these, may have had limited impacts on production. Where there have been
impacts, however, then the extent to which this affects global prices is also uncertain,
depending upon a number of factors, such as the size of the production increase relative
to market size and the elasticity of demand.
Methodological approaches to estimating the impact of subsidies (or their reform)
on global market prices often struggle to find estimates of these effects. FAO (2006b)
provide a critique of alternative trade policy simulation models, concluding that
although most approaches do not adequately distinguish between subsidies and support
in general, commodity-based partial equilibrium models are probably most useful for
the determination of price impacts. Even so, studies using apparently similar approaches

often generate widely divergent results and the assumptions made significantly affect
the results, even for relatively straightforward scenarios such as the reduction of OECD
subsidies on cotton production, for example. Here contemporary studies unambiguously
demonstrate that the removal of domestic subsidies in industrialised countries would
reduce cotton production in, and exports from, these countries, but there is significant
divergence in the estimated magnitude of this impact on global prices, with studies esti-
mating increases of between 2 and 35 per cent as a result of the removal of subsidies.
Similar divergences are found in studies of the reform of rice policies (10–29 per cent)
(FAO, 2006a) and dairy policies (10–20 per cent for skimmed milk products) (FAO,
2005a). Such estimates are also time bound, given significant shifts in the structure of
trade. According to Matthews (2012), for example, world cotton prices are now more
distorted by subsidies in China and Turkey than by support provided by the EU or the
USA.
Translating Global Market Impacts to the National-level Impacts on Developing

Countries
Linking global market impacts to impacts at the national level is more problematic
still. For trade balances, the extent of short-term impacts from an increase in the global
market price can be considered in terms of changes in net export revenues or food import
bills. If a country is an exporter of food and/or non-food agricultural commodities, it is
assumed to benefit but if it is a net food importer it is assumed to be negatively impacted.
In the longer term, the impact will also be affected by the country’s capacity to increase
levels of agricultural production in response to higher domestic prices.
Konandreas (2012) provides an interesting analysis of the drivers of recent increases
in food import bills across different least developed countries by separating the effects
of increases in unit import prices from the effects of increases in volumes of net imports.
Whilst in some countries the price effect dominates, increased volumes of imports have
been as (if not more) important than price increases in the majority. Changes in trade
balances also have wider macroeconomic impacts, and these interact with the effects of
import/export prices on domestic prices, mediated by fiscal and other effects of domes-
tic policy responses (Dorward, 2012). For net food importers high food prices tend to
increase import bills, adversely affecting the balance of payments and putting downward
pressure on domestic currency, restricting availability of foreign exchange for other
imports or depressing the value of the local currency, which then raises the local price of
imports (leading to a further increase in domestic prices of imports) with wide-ranging
impacts in the domestic economy. The opposite effects are experienced by food exporters
or by food importers experiencing food price falls. Fiscal impacts of food price changes
are then associated with existing taxes or subsidies on imports or exports, the nature of
these (whether they are fixed per tonne or ad valorem) and any changes in response to
political or fiscal pressures (which often pull in opposite directions). Any transmission of
changes in international prices to consumers also affects inflationary pressures, which in
turn affect income distribution between and costs for different sectors and social groups,
with further impacts on foreign exchange rates, interest rates and other macroeconomic
variables.
At the household level, the patterns of impacts are more varied still. FAO (2003) and

Thomas (2006) proposed a methodology for examining the impacts of trade and related
policy reform, which provides a basis for considering the implications of border price
changes that might result from a reduction in OECD subsidies on food security indica-
tors. In a first stage, a set of factors determines the extent to which increase in global
prices are transmitted to domestic producers and the extent to which they respond.
These factors include, inter alia, the level of institutional development, the functionality
of markets, access to productive assets, and taxes and subsidies.4 A second set of factors
determines the extent to which any increase in production of a given commodity impacts
at the local economy and household levels. At the household level, these factors include
household dependency structure, location, asset structure, food expenditure patterns
and sensitivity to price and other non-price information, food/consumption decisions.
The multitude of factors and the context specificity in which they are found makes
it all but impossible to delineate a straightforward generic relationship between global
market impacts and the indicators of relevance to a country. Trade simulation models
have been found wanting in shedding light on the question. While partial equilibrium
models provide some indication on global market price effects, the models tend not to be
sufficiently disaggregated to adequately capture the vast heterogeneity in the character-
istics of developing countries.
Differences in the estimated impacts and implications of changes in global market indi-
cators vary significantly across commodity types. Traditionally, the white c ommodities –
cotton, dairy, rice and sugar – have received the most significant levels of support, albeit
provided through quite different regimes. Trade simulation models demonstrate that the
impacts of these policies have been distortive of world market prices, but the implica-
tions of these distortions for developing countries are likely to differ markedly across
commodities.
For cotton, an export commodity for most producers, particularly those in poorer
developing countries, the implications are relatively clear. A reduction in the global price
reduces export revenue for the exporting country, and to the extent that prices are trans-
mitted to producers, reduces both incentives for production and producer incomes, with
large negative impacts on poor cotton-producing communities in low-income countries.
For dairy, it is the more competitive exporting countries (including New Zealand and
the Southern Cone countries of Latin America) that have been penalised by depressed
prices. The positive impacts of increased prices following a reduction in support would
be likely to be concentrated in these countries, with importing countries facing increased
milk import bills. However, the global dairy market is very much a residual market,
with most countries close to self-sufficiency, so impacts on poor consumers and on food
security are small.
For food staples such as rice, the implications of a reduction in developed country
support are less clear. On the basis of results from trade simulation models, it was often
argued that the estimated price increases resulting from policy reforms in developed
countries would incentivise producers in developing countries, offsetting any consumer
losses resulting from increased domestic prices. The net effect for food-importing devel-
oping countries was generally ambiguous in these models depending very much on the
assumed responsiveness of producers to increased prices.
Episodes of rapid price increases over recent years provide some clues as to the
potential implications of an increase in global prices that could result from a reduction

in OECD support. Higher food prices have had significant short-term negative implica-
tions for consumers in many developing countries, but have not generated a noticeable
supply response from developing country producers.5 Arias et al. (2013) argue that the
mismatch between expectations of positive supply response and the actual response has
much to do with a limited understanding of the propensity of smallholder producers
to respond. Smallholders are a very heterogeneous group and the determinants of, and
constraints to, their responsiveness vary greatly across households and the contexts in
which they operate. Debates about the impacts of more recent high food prices both
question earlier arguments about the benefits of policies reducing support and raising
prices, and illustrate the complexity of determining winners and losers from higher food
prices (Swinnen, 2011; Dorward, 2012, 2013).
IMPACTS OF AGRICULTURAL SUBSIDIES IN DEVELOPING

COUNTRIES6
As with developed country subsidy impacts, examination of the impacts of developing

countries’ agricultural subsidies on food security and poverty reduction is complex,
contested and context specific. This is unpicked herewith in three different contexts and
phases: ‘successful Asian Green Revolutions’, ‘post-Green Revolution Asian situations’,
and ‘current pre-Green Revolution Sub-Saharan Africa situations’. This includes an
examination of subsidy implementation and its context and evidence on subsidy impacts
for each case, followed by a theoretical and analytical understanding of subsidy impacts.
Policy and Practice
Emerging understanding of the contribution of agriculture to wider development in the

1960s (e.g., Johnston and Mellor, 1961; Mellor, 1966) fed into and was fed by promo-
tion of and successes with the ‘Green Revolution’ in Mexico and in parts of Asia. This
involved national government commitments to increasing agricultural production with a
range of investments in irrigation, agricultural research and extension, agricultural credit
services, agricultural input subsidies and price subsidies or price support, all of which
were intended to increase production from irrigation and increased use of inorganic
fertiliser on new high-yielding rice and wheat varieties (Dorward et al., 2004b; Djurfeldt
et al., 2005; Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008; Hazell, 2009).
The effects of the Green Revolution in Mexico and Asia are much debated (Lipton
and Longhurst, 1989). Increases in production of staple cereals (wheat and rice) are not
generally disputed. However, initial reports that larger farmers were benefiting more
than smaller farmers were superseded by later studies that showed that small-farm
adoption rates often caught up, and they also adopted on a greater proportion of their
land. Nevertheless, large farmers did gain innovators’ (first adopter) benefits, and uptake
was restricted to particular crops (wheat, maize, rice) in more favourable conditions
(irrigated or good rainfall areas with good soils). Continuing concerns that wealthier,
male, owner-occupiers tended to benefit at the expense of the poor, tenant farmers,
women and the landless were partly explained by increasing uptake of mechanisation.
This was supported by widespread machinery subsidies as some types of mechanisation

clearly replaced labour and benefited more wealthy landowners at the expense of often
poorer often female landless labourers (although other types, such as groundwater
pumps, expanded labour demand in crop production, harvesting and processing). Lipton
and Longhurst (1989) distinguish between the labour-displacing effects of machinery
subsidies, and increased labour demand and productivity as a result of Green Revolution
technologies. These, they argue, clearly benefited poor rural people, and rising incomes
stimulated demand for non-farm employment. As a result Hazell (2009) reports that
between 1976 and 1995 poverty incidence in Asia roughly halved and the number of poor
people fell by roughly 30 per cent although population increased by 60 per cent.
Figure 9.2b shows estimates of poverty reduction in India directly attributable to
Green Revolution investments (Fan et al., 2007). As regards food security, Rosegrant
and Hazell (2000) estimate that Asian cereal yields grew by 3.13 per cent per year from
1967 to 1982, and production grew by nearly 3.6 per cent per year, with an overall pro-
duction increase of nearly 70 per cent in the 15-year period and lower cereal prices, and
an increase of nearly 30 per cent in per capita food and calorie availability from 1970 to
1995. There are, however, concerns about the effects of intensive water, fertiliser and pes-
ticide use on water availability, on soils, and on pest build ups. While technologies that
address these problems exist, their uptake is partly inhibited by subsidies to fertiliser and
irrigation (power). Hazell (2009) also notes that these environmental concerns need to be
considered in the context of major environmental benefits from increased food produc-
tion from much smaller areas of land, reducing agricultural pressure on forests and on
more marginal and fragile land.
The immediate impacts of ‘successful Asian Green Revolutions’ on poverty and food
security appear to be clear, but isolation of the particular contribution of credit, fertiliser
and irrigation subsidies is difficult, as argued by Hazell (2009, p. 25):
[A]ttempts have been made to assess separately the contributions of the different components
of the Green Revolution package, but in practice it was the powerful interactions among these
individual components that made the difference. Only with all of these components in place did
farmers – particularly small farmers – have the economic incentive to adopt the new packages.
Fan et al. (2007), however, use empirical evidence from India to estimate, across differ-
ent states and decades, the returns in agricultural GDP from government expenditures.
They divide these expenditures between investments (separating roads, education, irriga-
tion infrastructure and agricultural research and development) and subsidies (separating
fertiliser, credit, irrigation and power). The results are shown graphically in Figure 9.2a.
Dorward et al. (2004a) use these results to test hypotheses regarding positive and nega-
tive returns to different investments and subsidies. Overall there is strong evidence of very
favourable agricultural GDP returns7 to investments in roads and education in the 1960s
and (for education) in the 1970s, whereas returns to investments in agricultural research
and development in the 1980s and 1990s were very high, with lower returns to 1960s and
(to a lesser extent) 1970s investments. Returns to irrigation investments are lower and
vary between decades but are still significant. Returns to spending on operational subsi-
dies are generally lower than on investments in roads, education and agricultural research
and development. However, for subsidies on fertiliser these were positive in the earlier
years of the Green Revolution but then declined, whereas returns to subsidies on irriga-
tion and credit in the 1970s and particularly 1990s were low but returns were higher to

(a) Agricultural GDP returns Rp/Rp (b) Poverty reduction people/million Rp

10 1400
Roads
9 Agricultural R&D
1200
Education
8
Irrigation Investment
7 1000
Irrigation subsidies
6 Credit Subsidies
800
Fertiliser Subsidies
5
600 Power Subsidies
4
3 400
2
200
1
0 0
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s
Note: Not significant – ‘n.s.’ – plotted as 0.
Source: Plotted with data from Fan et al. (2007, Table 6).
Figure 9.2a,b Agricultural GDP (a) and poverty reduction (b) returns to Indian
government spending, 1960s to 1990s (rupees)
1960s and 1980s spending (with particularly high returns to credit subsidies in the 1980s).
Returns to spending on all subsidies are very low in the 1990s. Similar patterns are
observed in analysis of impacts of different investments and subsidies on poverty reduc-
tion except that the poverty benefits from road investments are much higher than returns
to any other investments or spending in the 1960s and 1970s (Figure 9.2b).
Despite the success of the state- led Asian Green Revolutions in the 1960s and
1970s, the 1980s saw international development policy turn away from these models
to ‘Washington Consensus’ reliance on liberalised markets and specific redirection of
public spending away from subsidies (Williamson, 1989). This may be attributed to
three main influences: the ascendance of neoliberalism with pursuit of market solutions
and rolling back of the state, particularly in the USA and UK; increasing recognition of
problems with state intervention in growing economies in Asia; and widespread recog-
nition of problems with ineffective, unsustainable and indeed often counterproductive
state intervention in Africa.
Washington Consensus scepticism of agricultural subsidies is supported by analysis
of the efficiency and effectiveness of continuing agricultural subsidies in post-Green
Revolution Asian countries (see, e.g., Rashid et al., 2008; Wiggins and Brooks, 2012;
and the declining returns to subsidies in India reported by Fan et al., 2007). Apart from
environmental problems with intensive use of water and fertiliser encouraged by power
and fertiliser subsidies, subsidies were seen to either offer negative economic returns or
lower returns than public investments in agriculture.
These arguments were perhaps developed most strongly with regard to agricultural
credit subsidies, with subsidies provided through agricultural banks and other state
organisations widely considered to have been ineffective, expensive and unsustain-
able (Von Pischke et al., 1983; Adams et al., 1984). Recognition of these failings led to
them being largely discredited8 and ‘(a) new financial systems paradigm emerged that
shifted the emphasis from dispersing cheap credit to creating sustainable institutions’

(Meyer, 2011, p. 5). Interest then turned to microfinance approaches, emphasising insti-
tutional sustainability and investment in institutional development rather than subsidies
on operations. However, microfinance programmes have faced increasing criticism of
lack of evidence of benefits to the poor (Helmes and Lensink, 2011; Bateman, 2012),
alongside long- standing concerns about limited engagement in agricultural finance
(Meyer, 2011), with many of microfinance’s features being unsuitable for supporting
intensification of staple crop production in poor areas (Morduch, 1999; Poulton et al.,
2010) despite the critical role this plays in food security and poverty reduction.
With regard to Africa, agricultural subsidies were identified as a major element in
inefficient and fiscally and economically unsustainable policies undermining growth of
private sector services, distorting market incentives and blunting competitiveness and
farmer incentives (World Bank, 1981): inherent subsidy inefficiencies, inefficient imple-
mentation and diversion led to very limited benefits to farmers and indeed net costs. It
should be noted, however, that there were African countries (e.g., Zimbabwe, Zambia,
Kenya and Malawi) that implemented subsidy systems that, with other interventions,
had initial success in raising productivity but for varying political and economic reasons
(amongst them inefficient implementation and the withdrawal of donor support) failed
to either maintain the fiscal investment and market systems needed for sustained ben-
efits, or develop unsubsidised alternatives (Smale and Jayne, 2009).
Dorward et al. (2009) note that across these Asian and African experiences there are
major examples of both failures and successes of subsidies within state-led approaches
to smallholder staple crop development – but there are very few examples of success in
private market-led approaches (Kenya’s mid-2000s growth of smallholder fertiliser use
is a notable exception [Ariga et al., 2008]). Here, however, the failures have been less
obvious – a failure to invest rather than investment failures – and resultant continued
food insecurity and poverty are less easy to attribute and less obvious than macro-
economic and parastatal problems from failed government investments. It can also be
argued that private market-led approaches have not been tried properly as for political
reasons it has been very difficult to consistently implement liberalisation of staple food
chain markets. This, however, may itself be seen as a major challenge to private market-
led approaches (Tschirley and Jayne, 2010).
Turning now to consider ‘current pre-Green Revolution Saharan Africa situations’,
apparent failures of liberalised policies in promoting sustainable staple food crop inten-
sification in the 1980s and 1990s led to increasing concern among African politicians,
NGOs and some policy analysts. This was accompanied by continuing political demands
for fertiliser subsidies (which had continued to some extent in a few countries), donor
tensions in responding to these demands (with differing views on the merits of subsidies
and on growing democratic legitimacy among African governments), concerns about
soil fertility and rural stagnation and poverty in Africa, and consideration of input
subsidies as potential social protection instruments. These concerns led to consideration
of potential new roles for input subsidies in promoting short-term private input market
development, replenishment of soil fertility, social protection for poor subsidy recipients,
and national and household food security (Morris et al., 2007).
Consideration of these potential new roles was accompanied by interest in new
approaches and instruments for delivering input subsidies, so called ‘smart subsidies’.
Like earlier alternative approaches to development of credit systems, these emphasised

the development of sustainable input supply systems, as shown by ten features of smart
subsidies described by Morris et al. (2007, pp. 103–5): promoting fertiliser as part of
a wider strategy and market-based solutions and competition in input supply; paying
attention to demand and economic efficiency; empowering farmers; and pursuing
regional integration, sustainability, pro-poor economic growth and an exit strategy; with
precedence for poverty reduction or food security over efficiency and sustainability goals
only in exceptional circumstances. Smart subsidy instruments include vouchers, target-
ing, rationing, loan guarantees, demonstration packs and matching grants.
Reviews of the limited number of studies on input subsidies adopted in Sub-Saharan
Africa countries after 2005 suggest that interest in getting input subsidies to serve new
functions and objectives, and their cost effectiveness in this, continues to be controversial
(Druilhe and Barreiro-Hurlé, 2012; Chirwa and Dorward, 2013). Despite substantial
variation in some aspects of the programmes reviewed, they exhibit the following:
● They address important social, economic and political issues.

● There is relatively limited available information on the implementation and out-
comes of most programmes.
● There is a strong prevalence of heavy subsidy rates (50 per cent or more), of ration-
ing and of often problematic targeting.
● Most focus is on production, food availability and producer welfare objectives,
with less attention to food security, consumer welfare and wider pro-poor growth.
● There is limited integration with complementary public investments or promotion
of soil fertility.
● Many programmes have mixed impacts on private-sector suppliers, with limited
attention to private-sector input supply development.
● Effective programme implementation (with better entitlement systems, targeting,
and evaluation) and ‘exits’ or ‘graduation’ also receive limited attention.
Chirwa and Dorward (2013) conclude that the mixed record of input subsidies contin-
ues, with some programmes leading to clear increases in food production but a general
lack of sufficient evidence to make robust judgements about clear food security and
poverty reduction benefits. Their examination of the Malawi input subsidy programme
from 2005, for example, concludes that there is strong evidence for increased production
and positive economic returns, but mixed evidence on food security and poverty reduc-
tion gains: some analysis suggests clear gains from the programme while other data show
little or no gains. They note, however, considerable scope for improving impacts through
better implementation and integration with complementary policies.
Changing Thinking on Subsidies in Agricultural Development
Following Chirwa and Dorward’s (2013) observation of the ‘mixed record’ of input sub-
sidies the chapter now considers how theoretical analysis and thinking on agricultural
development subsidies have evolved since the 1960s. Initial analysis focused on ways in
which these could make adoption of new technologies more attractive to smallholder
farmers (Ellis, 1992). Producer subsidies increased returns or reduced input costs and
thus increased profitability and reduced farmers’ perceptions of risks (from their limited

knowledge of technology use and/or benefits). Complementary input, credit and exten-
sion services were supposed to help farmers adopt new technologies and quick learning
of benefits and skills would mean that subsidies could be quickly phased out.
This rationale drew on standard economic analysis of producer subsidies shifting
farmers’ supply curves for agricultural produce, addressing market failures caused by
differences between farmers’ and societies’ perceptions of the benefits, costs and risks of
adopting new technologies. Specific examples of these divergences include farmers’ lack
of knowledge about the benefits of technical change, their need to learn how to imple-
ment it effectively (Ellis, 1992; Crawford et al., 2006; Morris et al., 2007), high private
costs of working capital, or high risk perception and aversion in investing in production.
The first two divergences (between farmers’ and society’s costs, benefits and perceptions)
effectively provide an infant industry argument for subsidies as the divergences should
decline with experience. The latter two divergences may decline with increasing farm
productivity, wealth and market development. Either way, the benefits from subsidies
should be relatively short-lived.
Arguments for subsidies’ temporary role were, in effect, temporary arguments. As
subsidies tended to persist after the Green Revolution had ‘taken off’, so analysts became
increasingly critical of them: both theory and empirical observation suggested that the
effective implementation of subsidies faced a number of difficulties, and these difficulties
became increasingly obvious.
First, simple economic theory suggests that if subsidies are not addressing and over-
coming significant market failures then they incur deadweight losses that actually reduce
welfare. One cause of this is that once farmers recognise the true value of a technology
and of productive inputs then subsidies lead to overproduction and overuse of inputs
(beyond economic optima). Subsidies also incur costs with little benefit if the subsidy
does not lead to increased production by target beneficiaries, because they are poorly
implemented if beneficiaries face other critical constraints that are not being addressed.
Second, transfers to producers can be analysed in terms of inefficiencies associated
with economic ‘rents’. These arise in three ways. First, part of a general subsidy goes
to production that would occur even in the absence of a subsidy. Second, producer
transfers often bid up demand for agricultural land and labour, and may then be passed
back to owners of these factors of production.9 Finally, official or unofficial rationing
of subsidies may give opportunities for politicians, government officials, fertiliser sup-
pliers, farmer organisation office bearers or others controlling subsidy access to divert
subsidies from their intended beneficiaries for a side payment or to demand payments
from beneficiaries.
Another difficulty with subsidies concerns leakages and diversion away from their
intended use. This arises in three main ways: diversion from intended (targeted) ben-
eficiaries because it is often difficult to channel subsidies to particular types of farmers;
diversion across agricultural products away from those yielding the highest social
returns; and cross-border leakages, when subsidy benefits are captured outside the
country.
Recognition of these theoretical and practical difficulties with subsidies led to increas-
ing emphasis of economists and Northern policy analysts on difficulties with input
subsidy programmes. This also emphasised problems with cost control, inefficiency and
sustainability due to:

● political pressures for the expansion of subsidies, and only weak pressures for their
control;
● political resistance to scaling down or termination of subsidies;
● regressive benefits favouring larger farmers;
● market distortions that crowd out and inhibit private sector investment and hence
impede sustainable development.
These concerns led to conventional wisdom among economists and international donors
in the 1980s and 1990s that agricultural subsidies were largely ineffective and inefficient
policy instruments that contributed to government overspending and fiscal and macro-
economic problems.
From the mid-1990s, however, this conventional wisdom was increasingly challenged.
Resurgent interest in agricultural input subsidies, in particular in Africa as discussed
earlier, together with reappraisal of the historical roles of subsidies in Asian Green
Revolutions led to new thinking about their potential roles. Dorward et al. (2004b),
for example, postulated that there are necessary conditions for intensive cereal-based
transformations: appropriate, high-yielding agricultural technologies; local markets with
stable output prices that provide reasonable returns to investment in ‘improved’ technol-
ogies; seasonal finance for purchased inputs; reasonably secure and equitable access to
land; and infrastructure to support input, output and financial markets. They observed
that these conditions (which might be more easily achieved in areas with moderate to
high population density and irrigation) were necessary but not sufficient for poverty
reduction and food security enhancing growth. As summarised by Djurfeldt et al. (2005),
government intervention was needed to promote markets giving smallholder access to
and use of available resources and technologies.
Dorward et al. (2004b) therefore proposed a schematic showing the contributions
of financial, input and output market interventions in different phases of development
(Figure 9.3). Phase 1 involves basic investments to establish conditions for new technolo-
gies. Uptake is then likely to be limited to a small number of farmers with access to seasonal
finance and markets and rapid agricultural transformation needs to be ‘kickstarted’ by
government interventions (in phase 2) enabling larger numbers of farmers to access sea-
sonal finance and seasonal input and output markets at low cost and low risk. Once farmers
have become used to the new technologies and when volumes of credit and input demand
and of produce supply have built up, transaction costs per unit fall, and are also reduced by
growing volumes of non-farm activity arising from growth linkages. Governments can then
withdraw from market activities and let the private sector take over (phase 3).
Major difficulties have to be overcome in managing these interventions effectively
and efficiently and in resisting political pressures to expand and continue with market
interventions and subsidies when they are no longer necessary (and are indeed harmful).
There are particular difficulties with timing: the deadweight costs of such interventions
are high if they are introduced too early, or continued too long. On the other hand, since
they may only yield benefits during a critical but possibly short period in the initial trans-
formation, they may easily be overlooked by analysts.
This analysis, originally put forward in Dorward et al. (2004b), was later supported
by evidence reported in Fan et al. (2007). The changing pattern of returns to government
investment and subsidies presented in Figure 9.2 (with initial high returns to investment,

Source: Adapted from Dorward et al. (2004b).
Figure 9.3 Processes and conditions for agricultural transformations
and returns to subsidies rising and then falling) is remarkably consistent with the phasing
of intervention needs and opportunities in Figure 9.3.
The situation in many rain-fed areas may be more complicated and challenging than
in irrigated areas, and market interventions in the ‘kickstart phase’ may be needed for
a longer period at greater expense (Dorward et al., 2004b). This then increases risks of
more entrenched patronage and greater fiscal expenditures. Costs are therefore likely to
be higher and implementation more difficult than in irrigated areas in the past.
This analysis leads onto a richer consideration of the possible outcomes from
subsidy use. Dorward (2009) drawing on analysis of change in successful Asian Green
Revolutions (Rosegrant and Hazell, 2000) suggests these outcomes might include:
● long-term ‘thickening’ of supply chains and rural input and output markets;
● lower staple food prices and higher wages;
● increased real incomes and food security for both recipients and non-recipients as
a result of food price and wage changes; and
● long-term economic structural changes, with increased demand for higher-value
farm and non-farm goods and services, together with expanded supply capacity by
land and labour released by higher staple crop productivity.

These augment subsidy benefits identified in more conventional analysis (encouraging

farmers’ adoption of new technologies) and in arguments for smart subsidies (e.g., social
protection and soil fertility benefits).10 They do not, however, negate continuing risks
and difficulties – in political diversion, targeting, rationing, control, rent seeking, inef-
ficient management, market distortions, and so on.
HEROES, VILLAINS OR VICTIMS?

This chapter yields a complex picture of the impacts of agricultural subsidies and other
forms of agricultural support on food security and poverty reduction. It appears that
in their contribution to successful Green Revolutions in Asia, agricultural subsidies
have had hugely beneficial impacts on food security and poverty reduction for billions
of people in Asia and, through their impact on global food supplies and prices, around
the world. There is, however, also a dark side to agricultural subsidies. This arises with
those subsidies in developed economies that depress the earnings and welfare of poor
producers and societies in low-income countries (cotton subsidies have been perhaps the
clearest example). Subsidies can also be used by elites and opportunists in developing
countries as channels for stealing government resources – through rents and different
forms of ‘diversion’. Even well-intentioned programmes may be counterproductive if
they are implemented without necessary prior and complementary investments and are
consequently ineffective, inefficient and a waste of scarce resources. This may also occur
if initially successful subsidies are then maintained, and indeed increased, after their
usefulness has ended.
The complexity of the history and characteristics of subsidies and conflicting political,
economic and poverty reduction and food security impacts means, however, that sub-
sidies for the poor and food insecure can also be considered as ‘victims’ – of their dark
side, of their own success (if they are continued after they have become unnecessary and
unhelpful), of policy prescriptions where the best is the enemy of the good,11 and of our
lack of understanding of their strengths and weaknesses in different contexts. The results
of this are both failures when subsidies are implemented, and failures to implement them
when they are needed. This may be an increasingly important issue in the next 50 years as
current poverty and food insecurity challenges are exacerbated by dramatically increas-
ing demands for food but increasing threats to its production – from climate change
impacts on yields and their stability, and from the need to reduce environmentally dam-
aging but yield enhancing agronomic practices. In this context (and with complementary
investments in technology, infrastructure and socioeconomic change), judicious, differ-
entiated and new uses of subsidies for food production in both developed and developing
countries may be crucial in promoting sustainable food security and poverty reduction.
NOTES
* The views expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
1. See Skully (2009) for a more detailed classification of subsidies and explanation of their relative produc-
tion impacts.

2. Similarly, although the negotiation of multilateral, regional and bilateral trade agreements has also
resulted in significant reductions in the average levels of applied agricultural tariffs by both developing
and developed countries, averages hide the true picture, with several significant product groups still pro-
tected by high, often prohibitive tariffs, preventing access of more competitive imports.
3. One interesting example of the impact of changing maize prices on returns to producers who have access
to a package of policy support measures is illustrated in FAO (2005b).
4. Rakotoarisoa et al. (2011) argue that although the incidence of import surges is high, and the impact can
be significant, such surges are often the result of factors internal to a country, which limit the capacity
of domestic producers to increase production, rather than due to the use of export subsidies by OECD
countries.
5. It is also argued that low agricultural prices have reduced investment in agricultural research, contribut-
ing to the slowdown in agricultural productivity growth from the mid-1990s (Piesse and Thirtle, 2009;
Timmer, 2010).
6. In this review we focus on large-scale subsidies on staple food crops as they offer wider food security and
poverty reduction benefits as compared with agricultural export subsidies (Dorward, 2009). This is not to
suggest, however, that the latter cannot offer important but narrower benefits in specific situations.
7. It should be noted that the estimates of returns to government spending reported by Fan et al. (2007) are
not the same as estimates of economic benefit–cost ratios.
8. It is instructive to contrast the focus and findings of these writings with those of Fan et al. (2007) and
others who mention state support in the provision of seasonal finance as an important and widespread
ingredient in successful agricultural modernisation (e.g., Kirsten and van Zyl, 1996; Eicher and Kupfuma,
1998; Morris and Byerlee, 1998), although some critics did recognise that subsidised credit had worked in
some situations (e.g., Braverman and Guasch, 1986).
9. This may not be a problem if the providers of land and labour are poor: subsidies may be a way to
promote pro-poor growth among poor labourers and landholders. However, one may still question if this
is an efficient or least-cost way of making such transfers.
10. These arguments apply particularly to input subsidies, not price support, price subsidies or credit sub-
sidies: price support can harm poor consumers, depress potential increases in real wages, food security
and incomes for poor food buyers, and inhibit growth linkages; price subsidies on staple foods provide
benefits to poor food buyers but not to subsistence producers; and particular transaction difficulties with
credit for staple food production mean that affordability problems may perhaps be addressed more effec-
tively by high subsidy rates.
11. This arises where the potential food security and pro-poor growth benefits of subsidies are recognised but
their implementation is inhibited by fears that as in much of post-Green Revolution Asia they will later
become a major drain on resources. The Asian experience suggests that such fears may be overblown – it
may be better to have the earlier benefits of successful subsidies despite the burden of persistent subsidies
than not to be growing.
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10. Agricultural production in China under
globalisation
Hualou Long, Yansui Liu and Tingting Li
INTRODUCTION
China is a nation with a huge population of 1.3 billion. Despite rampant urbanisation,
about half (49 per cent in 2011) of its population still live in rural areas (NBSC, 2012),
and the national economy has been built on agricultural foundations since ancient times
(Long et al., 2011). According to a recent report (Spector and Lubin, 2012), China feeds
19 per cent of the world’s population using only 8 per cent of the world’s arable land, and
China’s planted area has increased only by 7.5 per cent since 1975. Arable land accounts
for about 11 per cent of China’s total landmass compared with that of 17 per cent in
the United States. Recently, however, the amount of land suitable for growing crops
in China has shrunk due to increasing industrialisation and environmental degrada-
tion (Liu, 2011; Long, 2012). In order to increase productivity without increases in
planted area, China ramped up its usage of fertilisers, the consumption of which grew
741 per cent between 1975 and 2010, driving a 124 per cent increase in grain production
(Spector and Lubin, 2012). Land reserved for corn and vegetables has made less land
available for producing staples, but although China’s staple production in 2011 already
hit 2020 targets, the policy in the 12th Five-Year Plan is to limit the expansion of planted
area for other crops to ensure grain security.
The development of China’s agriculture and rural economy experienced four major
stages during the period from 1949 to the early 1980s (Zeng, 2008): (1) the stage of rapid
agricultural regeneration (1949–55); (2) the stage of relative agricultural stagnation
(1956–62); (3) the stage of slow agricultural resurgence (1963–80); and (4) the stage of
rapid agricultural development (the early 1980s). China has experienced rapid and far-
reaching transitions since Deng Xiaoping launched economic reforms in 1978. The tradi-
tional central planning economy was changed into a market-based one and the primarily
agricultural economy is being transformed into an urban, industrial economy (Long et
al., 2011). The implementation of economic reform since 1978 and open-door policy since
1979 has set China on a new path of economic boom. These processes, accompanied by
the intrusion of the new forces of globalisation and marketisation, have had a significant
influence on agricultural production (Long and Woods, 2011). With the completed estab-
lishment of basic rural management institutions, agricultural production has entered an
important stage trying to develop market reforms, involving agricultural freight trans-
portation and allocations, improving the market for agricultural produce, the strategic
adjustment of rural industry and the promotion of non-agricultural enterprises (Long
et al., 2010). This chapter deals with the key challenges and recent changes affecting
Chinese agricultural production due to globalisation. The changes mainly focus on farm-
land use and grain production (see Long and Zou, 2010), as well as related policies.
214
Agricultural production in China 215
CHANGES IN THE USE OF FARMLAND AND GRAIN

PRODUCTION
Use of Farmland, Grain Production and Food Security
China’s farmland has been greatly changed following rapid socioeconomic develop-
ment. On the one hand, much farmland has been lost due to rapid industrialisation and
urbanisation (Tan et al., 2005; Xie et al., 2005; Liu et al., 2005, 2008, 2010; Long et al.,
2007, 2009), and many rural workers have been forced to find a job in the cities. This
has left large areas of farmland uncultivated (Zhang et al., 2001; Long et al., 2010; Liu
et al., 2011). On the other hand, rapid economic development has guaranteed improve-
ments in agricultural productivity and an increase in intensity of farm-based production.
Food security has long been of major concern because of population growth, farmland
loss due to urbanisation and industrialisation, land use changes and water scarcity,
increasing income levels and nutritional changes, turbulence in global food markets,
climate change and poor land administration. All these factors have influenced grain
production and food security by driving the variations in farmland use in regard to both
quantity and quality. Correlation analysis between farmland area and grain production
indicates that farmland loss directly caused a decrease in national grain production (Fu
et al., 2001). However, increases in multi-cropping mitigated the negative influence on
grain production to some extent (Yao et al., 2007). Yet, food security cannot be guar-
anteed simply by protecting the area of available farmland. Appropriate adjustment of
the agricultural production structure and means of increasing human investments in
farmland, to improve quality, are also effective ways to ensure food security (Chen and
Zhou, 2004).
While there are numerous studies analysing the impact of farmland loss on China’s
grain production and food security (Yang and Li, 2000; Yu and Lu, 2006; Tao et al.,
2009), due to difficulties in quantifying farmland quality the analysis of grain production
variation driven by change in use of farmland both in quantity and quality at a national
scale has been given much less attention. Our aims are to analyse the changes of China’s
level of use of farmland, and to develop a ‘farmland–grain elasticity coefficient’ (FGEC)
in order to reveal the interaction between changes in use of farmland and security of
grain production (Long and Zou, 2010).
Materials and Methods
Data sources and processing

Due to data deficiency and the complex change of farmland use on a large scale, it is
difficult to use traditional methods to classify and assess the quality of farmland over a
large area. Grain productivity is determined not only by the physical conditions, but also
by human investments, such as artificial materials, technology and capital. Currently, the
latter is more important than the former. To a large extent, the farmland use level (FUL)
may be used to replace the role of farmland quality for measuring grain production.
Considering the diversity of the factors affecting use of farmland, to assess the FUL
completely and systematically needs an indicator system that takes the characteristics
of the use of farmland into account (Liu, 2005; Li et al., 2008). We chose nine indicators

Table 10.1 Indicator system for assessment of use of farmland
Rule Layer Factors Indicator Layer Factors Definition

Weight Weight
Investment intensity Power investment (0.361) Gross power of farming
(0.329) machinery per ha
Labour investment (0.329) Gross farming labour per ha
Fertiliser investment (0.310) Gross fertiliser utilisation per ha
Management level Multi-cropping index (0.436) Dividing the crop area by the area
(0.293) of farmland
Irrigation index (0.328) Dividing the irrigated farmland
area by the area of farmland
Grain-farmland index (0.236) The proportion of grain-crop area
in the total crop area
Production effect Grain yield (0.357) Grain yield per ha
(0.378) Farming output value per ha (0.386) –
Grain output per capita (0.257) –
reflecting the FUL to establish an assessment system at the provincial level (Table 10.1).
The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method1 developed by Saaty (1990) is a struc-
tured technique for organising and analysing complex decisions, and is frequently used
to evaluate the decision-making parameters (Thapa and Murayama, 2008). The Delphi
method is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic,
interactive forecasting method that relies on a panel of experts, and is widely used to
evaluate the weights of decision-making parameters (Kuo et al., 2005; Naddeo et al.,
2013). Here AHP was used to establish the FUL indicator system with a target layer,
a rule layer and an indicator layer. The target layer is the level of use of farmland, and
the rule layer involves three factors: (1) investment intensity, (2) management level and
(3) production effect. In addition, there are nine indicators in the indicator layer. Then
we used the AHP and the Delphi method to evaluate the weights to the rule layer and
the indicator layer.
To describe the 31 provinces for the whole country (excluding Taiwan Province) more
consistently, the territory is divided into six regions according to geographic location
and similar physical conditions (Figure 10.1). To assess the FUL, data for 1978, 1985,
1995, 2004 and 2012 are selected. Data for farming output values are converted as con-
stant prices in 1990. However, some data are lacking, that is, data for 1985 in Jiangxi
and Anhui Provinces, for 1978 in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and for 1978 and 1985
in Guizhou Province. Considering the integrity of the data and analysis, data for 1985
in Jiangxi, Anhui and Guizhou Provinces are substituted by data for 1987 in the same
three provinces. Data for 1978 in Guizhou and Xinjiang are treated as deficient. The
latest official data for the area of farmland pertain to 2008, so we used the method of
trend extrapolation to estimate the area of farmland in 2012, based on the data in 2004
and 2008.

`
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rt U (Y (t) ,D (t)) dt eqn 5.3

Y,X,R
t50
# #
#
X5 eqn 5.4
e 2 [ dFX 2 g ] UYD DX 2 dUY FXX 2 dUD DXX 2 dUDD (DX ) 2 f
# #
#
D5 eqn 5.5
e dUY FXX 1 dUD DXX 1 dUDD (DX ) 2 f
`
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e2rtU (Y (t) ,D (t)) dt eqn 5.a1

Y,X,R
t50
0H #
5 B 5 aB 1 d [ F (.) 2 Y ] 2 gX eqn5a.3a
0f
0H
5 UData
Source: 5 0China’s statistical yearbooks and all provincial statistical yearbooks.
df from
Y 2 are (5A.3b)
0Y
Figure 10.1 Regionalisation of China’s agricultural production
0H
5 UD DX 1 f (dFX 2 g) 5 0 (5A.3c)
0X
Methods
Data normalising Since the socioeconomic data for the various indicators in Table 10.1
0H these data they need to be transformed into
# in different dimensions, to compare
are
f 5 2UD DB 2 f (a 1 dFB 2 r) 5 2 1 rf (5A.3d)
common units by normalising all measures,
0B according to equation (10.1):
Xij 2 Xi . min
X ijr 5 eqn 10.1
(10.1)
Xi . max 2 Xi . min
Fj 5 a X rij 3 Wij
3
where X9ij is the standardised value of the indicator; ij means the No. i indicator in the No.
(10.2)
j rule layer; Xij is the value of the indicatori51ij; Xi.max is the maximum value of indicator ij of
all provinces; Xi.min is the minimum value of the indicator ij of all provinces.
F 5 a F j 3 W j eqn 10.3
3
To compare the FUL among all the provinces, the same type of data from different
provinces
j 51
is normalised by the same maximum value and minimum value. This guaran-
tees that the final FUL of different provinces are comparable.
(Qi11 2 Qi ) /Qi
C
Level
j 5 of use of farmland (FUL) We used the weight and the normalised values to(10.5
cal-
(S 2 S ) /Si
culate thei11FUL iof each province in each year according to equations (10.2) and (10.3):

# 0H 0H
f 5 2UD DB 2 f (a 1 dFB 2 r) 5f# 25 2U 1 rf (5A.3d)
0B D DB 2 f (a 1 dFB 2 r) 5 2 0B 1 rf
`
Max W (Y (t) ,D (t)) 5 3 e U (Y (t) ,D (t) ) dt

2rt
Y,X,R Xij 2 Xi . min t50 Xij eqn
2 X10.1
X ijr 5 X ijr 5
i . min
Xi . max 2 Xi . min
218 Handbook on the globalisation of agriculture Xi . max 2 Xi . min
0H #
5 B35 aB 1 d [ F (.) 2 Y ] 2 gX eqn5a.3a
Fj 5 a X rij 3 Wij Fj 5 a X rij 3
0f 3
(10.2)
Wij
i51 (10.2) i51
F 5 a Fj 3 Wj
0YF 5 aY F j 3 W j eqn 10.3
3 0H
eqn 10.3 5 U3 2 df 5 0
j 51
j 51 (10.3)
where(Q
F i11 2Q
is the i ) /Qiof rule layer j; X9
score 0H ij is the standardised
(Qi11 2 Qi ) /Qi value of the indicator; Wij is the
Cj 5 j Cj5 5U D f (dFfor g ) 5 0 (10.5
weight(Sfor indicator
2 S ) /S ij; F is the FUL; W j is the weight
1
(Si11 2 Si ) /Si
D X X 2rule layer j.
i11 i i 0X
FUL changes To reflect the FUL changes, we calculate the direct change between
comparative years. This reflects the change of human investment in use of farmland, to
provide more intuitive information# explaining the relationship between0HFUL changes
B 2 f (a according
5 2UD D(FGEC),
and the farmland–grain elasticityfcoefficient ) 5
1 dFB 2 rto equation
2 rf
1(10.4).
0B
ΔFij 5 (F j − F i) 3 100% Xij 2 X(10.4)
i . min
X ijr 5
X 2 X
where ΔFij is the FUL change of a specific province from year i to year j; F i and F arei .the
i . max j min
Fj 5 a X rij 3 Wij
specific province’s FUL in year i and year j, respectively. 3
Farmland–grain elasticity coefficient (FGEC) To analyse the relationship i51

between
5 a Findex
change in the area of farmland and variation
3 of grain output or the impact of farmland
change on grain production, theFFGEC j 3 Wwas
j eqn 10.3
established according to equation
(10.5): j 51
(Qi11 2 Qi ) /Qi
Cj 5 (10.5)
(Si11 2 Si ) /Si
where j represents a province; Qi and Qi11 are j province’s grain output in year i and year
i 1 1, respectively; Si and Si11 are j province’s farmland area in year i and year i 1 1,
respectively; Cj is the FGEC, which means the relationship between the farmland change
and variation of grain output of j province from year i to year i 1 1. Before we analyse
this index, it is necessary to understand the trend in farmland change, in order to make
clear the meaning of the index.
When Cj . 0, this indicates that grain output shows the same change in the trend as
that of available farmland area. Grain production is strongly influenced by the changes
in farmland area. When the area of farmland increases, the higher the value of Cj, the
less the influence of farmland change on grain production and the more the influence of
change in the quality of farmland or the changes of FUL on grain production. When the
area of farmland decreases, the higher the value of Cj, the more serious is the reduction
in grain production, and the more negative is the influence of decreases in the area of
farmland on grain production.
When Cj , 0, this indicates that grain output shows the opposite change in the
trend as that of available farmland area. Grain production is strongly influenced by
non-farmland factors. The higher the absolute value of Cj, the greater the influence of
non-farmland area factors on grain production: if farmland increases, it means that the
decrease in FUL has more negative influence on grain production than the positive influ-

ence from an increase in farmland; if the area of farmland decreases, this means that the
FUL improvements have a more positive influence on grain production than the nega-
tive influence of farmland decrease. Thus, when Cj , 0 and the higher of the absolute
value of Cj, the greater the influence of FUL or change in the quality of farmland on
grain production than that of change in the area of farmland.
RESULTS
Spatio-temporal Pattern of FUL
FUL of 1978
The industrial ‘catch-up’ strategy adopted by the Chinese central government when
the PRC was founded decreased capital investments in agriculture in order to guaran-
tee capital accumulation in heavy industry and in the chemical industry. This strategy
resulted in a weak capital accumulation in agricultural production. Capital and technical
investments in agriculture had been at a standstill for a long time, and this resulted in a
lag in agricultural productivity before 1978 (Lin et al., 1999). Poor production conditions
led to agricultural production strongly determined by natural conditions, and the FULs
of all provinces were generally low. Since better water and heat conditions in south-
ern provinces of China can sustain higher rates of multiple cropping and higher grain
yields, that is, better output values, than those in the northern provinces, the southern
provinces had higher FULs than those in the north. With increasing latitude, the FUL
index decreases from over 0.3 in the southern provinces to below 0.2 in the northern
provinces (Figure 10.2). In general, all provinces had similar levels of human investment
in farmland use, and the differences in FUL for the different provinces were determined
to a great extent by physical conditions. Therefore, the spatial patterns of China’s FUL
showed a descending trend from south to north.
FUL of 1985
Since the socioeconomic reform policy implemented in 1978, the household responsi-
bility system has been gradually established in rural areas, and the rural workers have
become strongly motivated. The downturn in the national industrial catch-up strategy
has resulted in more technology and capital being invested in farm production. All of
these changes have promoted rapid development in the agricultural sector. The FUL at
the national level has risen universally (Figure 10.3). In the area of South China, Central
China and North China, the low topography facilitated extensive increases in mechani-
sation, especially in coastal areas, and the open-door policy helped the economies for
these regions to develop rapidly. This led to the establishment of a good economic basis
for increased capital and technological investments in farm production, promoting the
swift rise of FUL in these areas. FUL in South and Central China generally exceeded 0.4,
and that of North China exceeded 0.3. However, limited by the small farming population
and weak economic development, farming in the northwest and Heilongjiang Province
developed slowly, resulting in most of their FULs being under 0.2. Constrained by an
upland topography, it is difficult for the southwestern area of China to increase farm
mechanisation, and together with extremely weak economic development, the FUL for

Figure 10.2 Farmland use level (FUL) in 1978
this area increased less than that in 1978, with the exception of Sichuan Province, which
has a relatively well-developed economy.
FUL of 1995
With the successful implementation of the market-economy system, China’s economy
has been developing at high speed. Great progress has been made in socioeconomic and
technological development, farm mechanisation has been extended, and fertiliser use has
increased. All of these have led to large increases in the FUL (Figure 10.4). The eastern
coastal provinces have developed at the fastest rate, their FULs exceeding 0.6. In Central
China, Northern China and the northeast, increased mechanisation, extensive invest-
ments in fertilisers, the establishment of irrigation, and an increasing farming population
with no shift to industry, have all promoted the effective increase of the FUL. The pro-
gressive development of the southwestern region has guaranteed an increase in human
investment, and FULs exceeded 0.4. This has made the region a growth motor for FUL.
In the Loess Plateau, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Northwestern China, because of slow
economic development and inferior physical conditions, the development of agriculture
has been generally impeded and the FUL shows less improvement, most of which in
these areas was between only 0.2 and 0.3.

FUL of 2004
During the period 1995 to 2004, there were obvious improvements in each province’s
economy. However, the impacts of this economic development on the FUL differed.
In some regions with a rapid speed of development, for example, Beijing and Tianjin,
the Yangtze River Delta and the southeast coastal provinces, that is, regions where
rapid non-agricultural conversion of farmland and transfer of farm labour, together
with a decreasing grain output and agricultural structural adjustments, mitigated the
positive influence of FUL improvements by the persistent increase of investment in
machinery and fertiliser. In these areas, an increase in FUL was no longer possible
(Figure 10.5). The FUL for Beijing, Tianjing and Shanghai municipalities was only 0.5,
that is, almost the same level as that for 1995. The FUL of the southeastern provinces
increased only slightly, even with the obvious increase in fertiliser investments and
value of grain output, and it was still at 0.6 to 0.7. The FULs of Zhejiang and Jiangsu
Provinces had changed very little, because improvements in agricultural production
coexisted with rapid shifts of farm workers to non-agricultural jobs and an increasing
loss of farmland. On the other hand, the inland economy had also developed rapidly
over the previous decade. Farming investments and multiple cropping had increased,
and the non-agricultural shift of farm workers had been halted, all of which resulted in
improved FULs.

FUL of 2012
During the period 2004 to 2012, the FULs showed a universal decreasing trend from
southeast coastal China to the inland provinces, but there was an increasing trend in
the major grain-producing areas, for example, the Pearl River Delta, Hebei Province
and Heilongjiang Province (Figure 10.6). Advanced scientific and technological levels,
an abundant workforce and availability of funds ensured the increase of FUL in the
Pearl River Delta by enhancing the investment intensity of farmland. In Heilongjiang
Province, improved water conservancy facilities and the multi-cropping index with an
increase of 10 per cent caused the increase of its FUL. In addition, improved water
conservancy facilities and increased irrigated farmland area were helpful to enhance the
FUL of Heibei Province. But the low benefits from planting grain crops affected the
FUL at national level, a substantial increase of which will not occur in the future without
further stimulus to planting grain crops.
In general, at the national level, FUL has increased due to rapid economic develop-
ment since 1978. However, FUL may not increase persistently with the sustainable devel-
opment of the Chinese economy. On the one hand, conversion of farmland and transfer
of farm workers together with other agricultural structural adjustments have depressed
the FULs. On the other hand, the growth potential of investment in farming machinery
and fertilisers has kept the FUL at a high and stable level.

Variations in FGEC
Variations in FGEC between 1978 and 1985

Although large areas of farmland were lost to other uses, driven by economic devel-
opments during 1978–85, this did not cause a general decline in grain production. On
the contrary, most provinces increased their grain production, with the exception of
Liaoning and Heilongjiang Provinces and Shanghai municipality. As can be seen from
Figure 10.7, the value of most FGECs was negative and their absolute values were
mostly below 5. The provinces with a high FGEC absolute value were concentrated in
North and Central China, where there was a rapid increase in grain production.
The introduction of the household responsibility system that transformed the agri-
cultural sector from collective management to private production (Tilt, 2008) motivated
farm workers, which in turn guaranteed the base for effective farmland use. Farmland
decrease versus FUL increase indicates the growth of grain production at the national
level (Figure 10.7 and Figure 10.8). Of the three provinces with decreasing grain pro-
duction, farming in Liaoning Province was seriously affected by floods in 1985, which
reduced grain production by 4.5 million metric tons (MMT). However, this was only
a 1.41 MMT loss compared with that of 1978, and provides robust proof of how the
increase in FUL strengthened grain productivity. There was only a 0.02 per cent decrease
from the level of 0.144 in Heilongjiang Province’s FUL from 1978 to 1985, but a weak

agricultural foundation caused a grain reduction of 0.73 MMT. The FUL of Shanghai
decreased by 6 per cent and caused a grain reduction of 0.47 MMT. Therefore, due to the
initial weak agricultural base, it can be assumed that the rise of FUL largely promoted
grain production and guaranteed grain production security under the conditions of
general farmland loss.

There was a sharp contrast between farmland protection and arable land reclamation
in the western provinces of China and rapid farmland loss in the eastern provinces
between 1985 and 1995. However, the general growth of grain production in the whole
country showed that the FGEC varied over the different regions. FGECs of the western
provinces were almost all positive while those of the eastern and central provinces were
almost all negative. Compared with the previous period, the absolute value of FGECs of
the western provinces and the northeastern provinces increased, and their grain produc-
tion increased greatly. However, that of the central and eastern provinces changed only
slightly and showed a stable growth level for grain production (Figure 10.9).
The upgraded FUL in the northeastern and western provinces and the increase in
farmland in the western provinces led to large increases in grain production. However,
rapid farmland loss occurred in some developed provinces in the eastern and central
regions, but their increasing FUL driven by rapid economic development still g uaranteed

Figure 10.7 Variations in FGEC between 1978 and 1985
stable grain production (Figure 10.9 and Figure 10.10). Especially in the eastern and
coastal areas, the decreasing marginal effects of increasing investment in machinery and
fertiliser led to a situation where the rapidly increasing FUL did not result in substantial
growth in grain production, and even led to the reduction of grain production in some
provinces. Zhejiang Province is an example. Its farmland decreased by 8.9 per cent, and
the FGEC was 1.313 during this period. In 1985, the FUL for Zhejiang was 0.54, while
it increased by 0.13, to 0.67 in 1995. This was due to a comparatively high FUL, but
massive farmland loss cut down grain production by 11.7 per cent with low marginal
effect of the increase in FUL.

During 1995–2004, it appears that the regions with increased area of farmland areas
experienced growth in grain production while the ones with decreases in farmland area
experienced reductions in grain production, which resulted in generally positive FGECs
(Figure 10.11).
Rapid industrialisation and urbanisation caused serious farmland losses (Liu et al.,
2008) with the implementation of the ‘Grain for Green’ programme, and large areas
of farmland were shifted to other land use types (Feng et al., 2005; Long et al., 2006).
The growth of FUL in eastern coastal China threatened grain production security when
FUL was relatively high, and in the central provinces a similar situation of stable grain

Figure 10.8 Variations in FUL between 1978 and 1985
roduction or even reduction existed when the FUL was increased (Figure 10.12).
p
Adjustments to the farming structure also depressed growth of grain production. In this
decade, increased grain production mainly occurred in those regions with increasing
farmland.

There were general increases of grain output and decrease of farmland area in China
during 2004–12. The increase of FUL brought about the growth of total grain output,
though total farmland area decreased during this period. In Western China, the dual
drivers of increased farmland and improved FUL sustained a high FGEC, for example,
the FGECs in Qinghai and Ningxia amounted to 59.6 and 42.2, respectively (Figure 10.13
and Figure 10.14). As for the FGEC of Eastern China, there was an obvious spatial
differentiation due to differentiated FULs (Figure 10.13 and Figure 10.14). During this
period, the grain output of Heilongjiang Province and Henan Province increased by
26.27 and 13.79 MMT, respectively, as a result of increased farmland area and FUL, and
the two provinces maintained a high FGEC. Although the area of farmland decreased in
both Anhui and Jilin Provinces, the grain output of the two provinces increased and the
FGECs amounted to –73.69 and –32.49, respectively (Figure 10.13). Therefore, under
conditions of high FUL, it is more important to protect farmland areas for grain pro-
duction security than to increase the FUL. This could also provide a practical scientific
basis that would constitute a strict farmland protection objective and strategy in China.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The serious losses of farmland since 1978 have led to great pressure on grain produc-
tion security, but increasing investments in farmland quality and human incentives have
mitigated this pressure to some extent. Farmland protection, in terms of both quantity
and quality, is one of the most important measures if national food security is to be guar-
anteed (Yang and Li, 2000). FULs at the national level have increased due to the rapid
economic development since 1978. The path of this rapid improvement shows a gradient
decline from southeast coastal China to inland China with further economic develop-
ment. However, the increases to the FUL may not be maintained as part of sustainable
economic development, because of the ongoing conversions of farmland and transfers
of farm workers to non-agricultural activities. Agricultural structural adjustments and
ongoing improvements of FUL may not always bring about sustainable and steady
growth in grain output.
In general, the area of farmland and human investment interact with each other to
influence grain production. At the beginning of the major economic reforms in the 1970s,
due to the weak agricultural base, improvements to the quality of farmland had great
positive effects on maintaining food security. Along with economic development and
improvements in the agricultural base, adding more labour will play only a weak role
in increasing grain production and in maintaining food security, without technological

breakthroughs in all aspects of agricultural production. Accordingly, the role of farm-

land will become more and more important in maintaining food security. Therefore,
considering the law of diminishing marginal utility, the available area of farmland will
play a key role in maintaining the security of grain production. This will also provide a
practical scientific basis for constituting strict farmland protection objectives and strate-
gies. The central government has considered maintaining the total cultivated land area
at no less than 1.8 billion mu (1 ha 5 15 mu) until 2020, but in 2008 the area was only
1.826 billion mu.
There is a dilemma in relation to farmland protection. Recently, some highly produc-
tive farmland was abandoned for two major reasons. On the one hand, the users of the
abandoned farmlands left to seek work in the city where better paid employment was
plentiful. Few people are willing to manage farmland with a low economic incentive and/
or low profit margin from grain production (Li and Wang, 2003). On the other hand,
many rural workers have left for urban areas, while those who remain in the rural areas
are old people, women, sick and disabled men, and children (Long et al., 2010). This
workforce is unable to manage large areas of farmland. Thus, to some extent, prevent-
ing further farmland decreases may not ensure food security. We suggest that the central
government invests in the construction of a grain production base, improves infrastruc-
ture, and develops modern agriculture and scale management, in order to increase the
profitability and productivity of farming. In addition, more attention needs to be paid to

providing job opportunities for the surplus rural labourers. Therefore, both protecting
farmland from a transformation to other land use types, and ensuring its effective man-
agement constitute key solutions for maintaining grain production security.
Changing Agricultural Production Policies
Since economic reform and an open-door policy was adopted in 1978, China’s traditional
communal agricultural production system in the central planning economic system has
been gradually replaced by a household responsibility system, which transformed the
previous agricultural sector from collective management to private production (Tilt,
2008). The household responsibility system contracted land to individual households for
a period of 15 years, with relative autonomy over land use decisions and crop selection.
In 1995 this was extended to 30 years, with a continuation of 15-year terms confirmed
in 2009. After fulfilling procurement quota obligations, farmers are entitled to sell their
surplus on the market or retain it for their own use. By linking rewards directly to effort,
the contracting system enhanced incentives and promoted efficient production. In 2006,
policies favourable to agricultural production were introduced: the most important
component being the termination of the agricultural tax, which had a 2600-year history.
With the rapid development of industrialisation and urbanisation, the gap between
incomes in urban and rural areas has increasingly widened, and problems concerning

agriculture, farmers and rural development are growing more serious. The central gov-
ernment has recognised the importance of agricultural production since 2004, and subse-
quently all top priority policy documents have been devoted to agricultural production
issues. These documents, which set out the key policy tasks of the central government
for the coming year, successively addressed increasing farmers’ incomes (2004); improv-
ing agricultural production capacity (2005); advancing the ‘building a new countryside’
scheme (2006); developing modern agriculture (2007); resolving rural problems (2008);
stabilizing agricultural prices and increasing farmers’ incomes (2009); coordinating
urban–rural development and consolidating the basis of agricultural development
(2010); developing water conservancy projects (2011); carrying forward agricultural
science and technology innovation and increasing the capacity of ensuring food security
(2012); and speeding up the development of modern agriculture by encouraging scale
management (2013).
Together, these stated actions were encompassed in the overarching agenda of
‘building a new countryside’, which targeted five major objectives (Long et al.,
2010). Three of the five objectives are closely related to agricultural production:
(1) advanced production, that is, developing modern agriculture and strengthening
the productive forces of the countryside; (2) improved livelihoods, that is, increas-
ing the living standards and incomes of farmers; and (3) efficient management,
that is, promoting the establishment of new primary organisations, strengthening

their service function, and implementing democratic management and more open
government.
Trends in China’s Agricultural Production
Drawing on the work of Liu and Long (2010) the future directions of China’s agricultural
production policies can be summarised as follows: (1) to focus on advancing production
and enhancing benefits; (2) to pay more attention to clean agricultural production and
food security and to protect the ecology of the rural environment; (3) to participate in
international trade, making full use of comparative advantages and quicken interna-
tional development of agriculture; and (4) to develop characteristic rural economies
based on regional differentiation. With the development of urbanisation and industri-
alisation, the relationships between cities and the countryside, and between industries
and agriculture, will be totally changed, and China’s agricultural and rural economy will
enter a stage of transition development with the aim of transformation from a state of
‘being deprived’ to one of ‘being supported’.
The future trends of the country’s agricultural production include the following:
(1) agriculture will be exposed to the intensified competition of global market forces;
(2) strategic adjustment of agricultural structures; (3) implementation of an agricultural
development strategy focusing on regionalisation, construction/land engineering and

modernisation; (4) systemic reforms aimed at marketisation and scale management will
inevitably be carried out; and (5) a new distribution pattern of advantaged regions and
industrial belts will be formed, and sustainable highly efficient modern agriculture will
be the mainstream of Chinese agriculture.
Challenges
To some extent, economic globalisation has incorporated a process of reallocating

resources worldwide. However, the optimisation and allocation of three major ele-
ments influencing China’s agricultural production, that is, land, labour and capital,
have been constrained by competing demands, which will continue to impede the
further development of its agricultural modernisation. Restrictions from the rural land
use system include: (1) unclear rural land property rights causing farmland protection
issues; (2) unstable contract rights affecting farmers’ anticipated investments, produc-
ing too much reliance on short-term behaviour with respect to rural land use; and
(3) irregular land transfers resulting in low efficiency of farmland allocation. Lower
comparative benefit from agricultural production has resulted in the transformation
of massive agricultural production elements to non- agricultural industries, which
has reduced farmers’ enthusiasm for expanding agricultural production. Relatively
low levels of education amongst farmers and tremendous pressures on resources and

employment will become major obstacles for future agricultural production, whilst
future trends will be influenced by rural depopulation, counter-
urbanisation and
reforms to the rural land use system.
NOTE
1. The analytic hierarchy process is a technique for organising and analysing complex decisions. It operates
by breaking down a problem into a hierarchy of more easily comprehended sub-problems, each analysed
independently. The elements of the hierarchy are then systematically evaluated using weightings, with
evaluations converted into numerical values that can be compared across the entire range of the problem.
Numerical priorities can be calculated for each of the decision alternatives.
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PART III
GLOBALISATION AND
TRANSNATIONAL
CORPORATIONS

11. Geographies and histories of the Green
Revolution: from global flows to place-based
experiences
Pratyusha Basu and James Klepek
INTRODUCTION
Beginning in the 1960s, agriculture across the developing world was transformed
through a bundle of new technologies and policies that are collectively designated as the
‘Green Revolution’. A key element in this transformation was improved seeds – high
yielding varieties (HYVs) produced scientifically through a process of hybrid breeding
that promised to substantially increase crop yields, especially yields of staple food crops.
HYV seeds, however, could not perform their miracles alone but had to be supported by
a variety of chemical inputs so that HYVs also required increased utilization of chemi-
cal fertilizers and pesticides. Further, to ensure plant uptake of these large quantities of
chemicals, it was necessary to have access to regular irrigation. The Green Revolution
thus utilized already present, or led to the construction of new water control projects,
mainly large dams and their associated canals. Besides the inputs of seeds, chemicals,
and irrigation, Green Revolution practices were accompanied by radical changes in the
social and political landscapes of agriculture. For instance, access to expensive inputs
was often facilitated by government subsidies, making the state an important institution
in the Green Revolution. Larger crop yields had variable impacts on agricultural labor
demands. In some cases, higher production increased employment for waged labor while
reducing dependence on family labor; in other cases, higher production led to increased
mechanization thus displacing agricultural labor.
The Green Revolution, however, was not just a change in the materialities of agri-
culture. It also denoted a new ideology of agriculture, one that shifted the development
of agricultural innovations from farmers’ fields to scientific laboratories and argued
that scientific innovations could be universally applied (Kloppenburg, 2005; Harwood,
2012). The globalization of science and development was thus a central component of the
Green Revolution and this chapter seeks to understand the Green Revolution through
the lens of these global flows. More specifically, it traces three aspects of the Green
Revolution’s geographies and histories: (1) links between geopolitical imperatives and
the transfer of new agricultural technologies; (2) importance of place and environment
in shaping agricultural development outcomes using Mexico and India as case studies;
and (3) consequences of the increasing corporatization of the agricultural sector for the
future of farming.
The first section of this chapter examines how the globalization of agricultural
science conducted under the aegis of the Green Revolution was a reflection of global
geopolitics. Agricultural development therefore could not be separated from the wider
context of competition for global hegemony, which during the Green Revolution was
237
shaped by Cold War tensions (Perkins, 1997). The political instrumentality of the Green
Revolution becomes an integral element in explaining its rise to prominence. A second
aspect of the globalization of the Green Revolution was the contrast between the univer-
sal outcomes attributed to new technological inputs and the shaping of actual outcomes
by contexts of implementation. From local consequences of increases in chemical usage
to the relationship between size of farms and ability to benefit from new technologies,
context-specific social and environmental characteristics placed limits on the unfolding
of the Green Revolution’s global ambitions. However, global agendas have not been
tempered in contemporary agricultural policies. The continued relevance of under-
standing agricultural change through the lens of globalization is the third aspect of this
chapter’s discussion of the Green Revolution. Crucial here is the changing role of the
state as the new Green Revolution is increasingly being undertaken through the linking
of corporate and governmental agendas.
The geographies and histories of the Green Revolution are examined in this chapter
through two approaches to the study of agricultural systems. The first is science and
technology studies (STS), which seeks to situate scientific advances in their wider social
and historical contexts. Within this framework, the goals of the Green Revolution are
viewed not just as resulting in improvements in scientific knowledge of agriculture, but
also as articulating desired social goals through the medium of science-based agricul-
ture policies. Thus, the Green Revolution’s focus on productivity emanated in part
from the wider capitalist context that sought to industrialize and globalize agriculture
and within which yield-enhancing breeding techniques could be unequivocally desig-
nated as improvements (Yapa, 1993). Second, this chapter draws on political economy
frameworks to examine the link between economic productivity, class inequalities, and
political activism in agriculture (Goodman and Watts, 1994; Magdoff et al., 2000; Patel,
2013). Green Revolution technologies have become the basis for new identities of food
production and consumption, which have shaped state-level agricultural policies as well
as become catalysts for social movements questioning the economic, social and envi-
ronmental costs of these technologies. Together, science studies and political economy
approaches provide a critical lens through which to understand the globalization of the
Green Revolution.
ESTABLISHING THE GREEN REVOLUTION THROUGH

SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
The scientific principles and technologies of the Green Revolution were diffused across
the globe through the institutions of international development. In the aftermath of
World War II, the USA was consolidating its role as global hegemon. However, the US
model of capitalist, market-led development was being challenged by newly independent
nations in Asia and Africa that were often seeking to embark on a path of state-led
socialist development modeled on the USSR. International development institutions,
especially the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank, sought to intervene in this
divided world (Cowen and Shenton, 1996). The term ‘Green Revolution’ was reportedly
first used by William Gaud of the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
in 1968. In the terminology of the Cold War, the Green Revolution was viewed as an

Geographies and histories of the Green Revolution 239
antidote to the ‘Red (communist) Revolution’ (Gaud, 1968). Thus, higher agricultural
productivity would quell rural resistance by reducing the poverty of peasant communi-
ties. Resultant food surpluses would also become available for feeding growing urban
populations, thus averting a Malthusian crisis. Writing at the time of Britain’s Industrial
Revolution in the late 1700s, Malthus had argued that population growth tended to
outstrip growth in food production ultimately leading to social catastrophes, such as
famines and wars (Ehrlich, 1968). Green Revolution agricultural policies countered the
Malthusian argument by showing how technological fixes enabled food supply to match
population growth.
Even as the Green Revolution emerged in full view on the global scale in the 1960s, the
scientific and institutional mechanisms underpinning it were already being established
during the period of colonialism (Arnold and Guha, 1995; Hodge, 2007; Saha, 2013).
For instance, the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) of India, established
by the British in 1905, was charged with improving wheat varieties and increasing food
supplies to legitimize an increasingly untenable colonial administration (Perkins, 1997).
The early beginnings of the Green Revolution can also be traced to high-yielding semi-
dwarf varieties of rice, which had originated in China around 1000 CE and been adopted
in Japan in the 1800s. In an effort to meet growing domestic food demands, Japan pro-
moted new technologies of rice production in Korea and Taiwan using HYVs, especially
during the period of Japanese colonialism in the interlude between the World Wars. The
HYVs being utilized by Japan soon attracted the attention of other countries. Thus,
the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) carried out 50 global expeditions to collect
maize and wheat germplasm between 1900 and 1930 (Kloppenburg, 2005). The new vari-
eties gathered led to a ‘revolution’ in productivity in Western Europe and the USA that
became most visible in the 1930s and set the stage for further research into HYVs and
their eventual transfer to the Global South (Harwood, 2012).
Agricultural development within the USA also provided the blueprint for subsequent
Green Revolution policies. Hybrid maize varieties, which exhibited higher yields with
the application of nitrogen-based fertilizers, became readily available to US farmers by
the end of World War II. Hybrid maize traits like stronger stalks and sturdier root struc-
tures allowed greater application of synthetic fertilizers while preventing felling by wind
(or lodging) of taller plants (Kloppenburg, 2005). During the 1930s, US scientists also
began developing shorter varieties of wheat to reduce plant lodging (Perkins, 1997). The
private sector became increasingly involved in this transformation of US agriculture with
the establishment of major seed and agri-chemical companies such as Pioneer Hi-Bred
and Monsanto (Kloppenburg, 2005). The growing uniformity of wheat and maize pro-
duction with the adoption of select hybrid varieties facilitated mechanized harvesting
and necessitated increased pesticide and herbicide usage. In addition to seeds and agri-
chemicals, the US government implemented irrigation and electricity projects such as the
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to support agricultural growth (Perkins, 1997). By
the mid-twentieth century, rural development in the USA was organized around a com-
bination of state-sponsored agricultural research and private-sector expansion to supply
agro-inputs, as well as public funding for large-scale infrastructural growth. This trajec-
tory profoundly shaped the technical knowledge and policy recommendations of US
institutions responsible for the international development and promotion of the Green
Revolution, the most visible of which were the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.

The Rockefeller Foundation, established in 1913 by oil magnate John D. Rockefeller,

was the first to expand US-based philanthropy abroad. Beginning with the establish-
ment of an International Health Commission (IHC) and a Central American pilot
program based on recommendations from the United Fruit Company (UFCO) in 1914,
the Rockefeller Foundation embarked on global health initiatives including disease pre-
vention and reproductive health (Palmer, 1998). During the 1920s and 1930s, it funded
agricultural education programs in the US South while sending technical experts to
China for plant improvement projects (Fitzgerald, 1986; Harwood, 2009). The Ford
Foundation, established in 1936 by the estate of Henry Ford, the automobile magnate,
had a similar history of international philanthropy, fully embracing a global humanitar-
ian vision in 1949.
In the realm of international development, the establishment of the World Bank
and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1944 and the UN Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) in 1945 helped define development as a coherent and vital Western-
led project for South America, Asia, and Africa (Escobar, 1995; Cowen and Shenton,
1996). The emergence of social science disciplines, such as area studies and development
studies, provided the intellectual framework to define and quantify hunger, poverty, and
inequality in developing countries, and solutions were proposed based on the economic
experiences of the US and Western Europe. Of particular importance was modernization
theory, which described a linear transformation of ‘traditional’ agrarian-based societies
to industrial economies through adoption of policies based on comparative advantage
and free market capitalism. Equally important in explaining the trajectory of philan-
thropic work during the 1940s was the emergence of demographic science that, together
with a series of global famines, fueled neo-Malthusian arguments linking overpopula-
tion, resource degradation, and political unrest. With the initiation of the Cold War,
the US government, academia, and private foundations increasingly framed efforts to
reduce poverty and feed a growing global population as vital to prevent the spread of
communism in the newly defined ‘Third World’ (Perkins, 1997).
The Rockefeller Foundation initiated the first concerted effort to develop and
promote the technologies comprising the Green Revolution. In 1943, it founded the
Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) in coordination with the Mexican government
with the goal of increasing wheat and maize production. While maize was the most
widely consumed food crop in Mexico and an essential component of rural subsistence
livelihoods, wheat was linked to an increasingly urbanized population and viewed by
the Mexican government as a potentially lucrative export crop (Cotter, 2003). From the
1940s through the 1960s, Rockefeller researchers led by Norman Borlaug, popularly
considered the father of the Green Revolution, released numerous hybrid wheat varieties
in Mexico with higher yield responsiveness to fertilizer, higher resistance to stem rust,
and semi-dwarf traits that allowed greater fertilizer application. With new seeds and
agri-chemicals as well as the state expansion of irrigation and increased mechanization,
farmers tripled wheat production and Mexico shifted from importing wheat in the 1940s
to exporting wheat by the late 1950s (Harwood, 2009).
By the 1960s, US philanthropic groups and development institutions turned to public
research centers to disseminate Green Revolution technologies globally (Hardin, 2008;
Unger, 2011). The Ford and Rockefeller Foundation created the International Rice
Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines in 1960 and the International Maize and

Wheat Improvement Center (Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo,

CIMMYT) in Mexico in 1966. In 1971, this ‘center model’ was expanded through the
creation of the CGIAR (Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research,
reorganized in 2010 as the CGIAR Consortium of International Agricultural Research
Centers). Initially, the CGIAR linked four research centers – besides the CIMMYT
and the IRRI, these were the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Centro
Internacional de Agricultura Tropical, CIAT) in Colombia, and the International
Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria. The CGIAR currently consists of 15
research centers and all but two of these are located in developing countries. An institu-
tional framework for the globalization of the Green Revolution has been established in
the process (Jiggins, 1986; Jennings 1988; Lele and Goldsmith, 1989).
PRODUCTIVITY AND ITS ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL

DISCONTENTS
Understanding the outcomes of the Green Revolution requires a focus both on broader
transformations at the national level, and local experiences in rural contexts where the
new technologies were adopted and adapted by a diverse range of farmers. Once intro-
duced into the countries of South America and Asia, Green Revolution agriculture
produced dramatic yield increases in basic food crops (wheat, maize, and rice), with
new breeding techniques soon being extended to invigorate other crops (e.g., soybean,
cotton). From the 1960s to the 1980s, this enabled developing economies across South
America and Asia to become self-sufficient in food and improved the economic condi-
tion of their agricultural sector (Brown, 1970; Conway, 1999; Evenson and Gollin, 2003;
Hazell, 2009). Intensification of agricultural production was also a land-saving measure,
as higher yields reduced the need to bring new and possibly marginal areas into agricul-
tural production.
The celebratory narrative of the Green Revolution has stressed its ability to fulfill
both economic productivity and social welfare objectives. These claims, however, have
been somewhat tempered as the environmental and social implications of the Green
Revolution have become more visible (Cleaver, 1972; Shiva, 1991; Yapa, 1993; Jerven,
2012; Basu and Scholten, 2013). One of the central criticisms of the Green Revolution
has been its environmental consequences, especially related to increased use of chemicals
and irrigation. A key measure of the success of the Green Revolution has been quantity
of fertilizer application. Though the cost of fertilizers has often been a deterrent to adop-
tion, especially where subsidized prices or assured supplies could not be guaranteed by
the state, the Green Revolution registered a marked increase in chemical fertilizer use.
This fertilizer application has often produced less than optimum results due to imbal-
ances in the NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) ratio or the desired application
rates for nitrogenous, phosphatic and potassic fertilizers. Greater quantities of nitrog-
enous fertilizers have often been applied with insufficient application of phosphatic and
potassic elements. A second major issue is chemical runoff as excessive fertilizer use has
lead to pollution of ground and surface water. Nitrogenous fertilizers, especially when
applied at rates exceeding the ability of plant uptake, have reduced water quality and led
to eutrophication of water bodies. A third aspect of increased chemical fertilizer use is its

possible effects on organic fertilizer consumption. To the extent that organic fertilizers,
including crop residues and livestock manure, are often available within households in
mixed farming systems, the shift to chemical fertilizers has increased market dependence
and reduced more environmentally friendly ways of improving soil texture and fertility.
Increased use of pesticides is another aspect of the Green Revolution that has raised
significant environmental concerns. Since Green Revolution agriculture often substi-
tutes mixed cropping with monocultures that are more susceptible to pests, it becomes
imperative to protect crops. Poisons, however, do not restrict their effects only to crop
pests but also destroy beneficial insect and bird species, reducing biological diversity.
Pesticide application also poisons farmers and laborers, especially where precautions
against inhalation or ingestion are not mandatory. To the extent that such poisons enter
harvested grains, they become part of consumed food. The effects of agricultural chemi-
cals are only recently being recognized, such as in the state of Punjab in Northern India
(Shiva, 1991; Singh, 2000).
The Green Revolution is highly dependent on access to irrigation since HYVs need
access to large and assured quantities of water without which chemicals cannot be
properly absorbed or excess flushed away. This both depletes water supplies, and redi-
rects them toward agriculture away from other uses. Large-scale water control projects
have, however, become a major site of contention due to the human and environmental
displacements associated with them (Biswas and Tortajada, 2001). The harnessing of
river water has enabled particular regions and social classes to benefit from new agri-
cultural technologies. Other social groups have borne the costs of the submergence of
homes, agricultural land, and forests in the vicinity of dams and canals, compensations
for which have mostly been inadequate. Irrigation has also led to waterlogging and
salinity around dams, canals, and intensively irrigated fields. Reduced water flows in
downstream areas have irrevocably modified the ecology of rivers and the livelihoods of
communities dependent on fisheries. The dominant Green Revolution narrative connect-
ing dams and agricultural prosperity therefore is not sustained in terms of actual local
experiences in sites facing displacement due to dams. To the extent that construction of
large dams continues across the Global South, such displacements and struggles against
them remain an ever-present feature of rural landscapes.
Green Revolution technologies have often disproportionately benefitted specific
social groups and have rarely been class or gender neutral (Bernstein, 2010). Thus, exist-
ing social inequalities are reflected in the ability to adopt Green Revolution technologies
(Pearse, 1980; Bayliss-Smith and Wanmali, 1984; Glaeser, 1987; Basu and Scholten,
2013). On the small farms that characterize much of the Asian rural economy, the
economies of scale required to justify investment in Green Revolution technologies often
remains out of reach. The use of a mix of technologies, including organic and chemical
inputs, and mechanical and animal power, thus remains a feature of smallholder agricul-
ture even in Green Revolution regions. In extreme cases, smallholder farmers have been
pushed off the land, leading to further concentrations of land ownership.
The gendered dimensions of the Green Revolution become visible in terms of labor
contributions and local knowledge. Women’s work has been crucial to enabling agri-
cultural intensification. However, unpaid work within the family has rarely translated
into more control over agricultural land and income by women (Agarwal, 1994). There
is also a class dimension to women’s work. In more wealthy households, women’s labor

has often been withdrawn from agriculture, thus restricting upper-class women to the
domestic realm. In contrast, women from poorer households are often laboring for
longer hours, both on their own farms and the farms of larger landowners (Ramamurthy,
1997). The economic and social gains of the Green Revolution thus reflect existing pat-
terns of gender inequality.
In terms of knowledge, Green Revolution technologies have often replaced local
ways of farming. This has reduced the place-specific diversity of plant varieties, prac-
tices of seed selection and saving, natural fertilization and pest control techniques, and
local forms of water harvesting. Such knowledge is often differentially held by men and
women, so that new forms of farming have gendered consequences that have remained
unrecognized (Shiva, 1988).
Another serious consideration in the context of the Green Revolution is that hunger
and malnutrition have remained entrenched in both rural and urban contexts despite
increased food production (Patel, 2013). This is partly due to shortcomings in food dis-
tribution mechanisms, but also arises from the emphasis on market-oriented and export-
led agriculture that privileges cash crops providing the highest returns over less lucrative
food crops. To the extent that food insecurity continues to be a matter of concern, it
remains clear that the Green Revolution by itself is not sufficient in terms of food policy.
Case Study: Mexico
As the country where international efforts to increase global food production began,
Mexico is an important place to understand the economic logic and uneven impacts
of the Green Revolution. During the early twentieth century, the USA had significant
political and economic interests throughout South America and resorted to military
interventions in the so-called ‘banana republics’ of Central America and the Caribbean
(Grandin, 2006). Given Mexico’s geographic proximity, the US was particularly wary of
reforms under the government of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–40), including the nationali-
zation of oil production (which directly impacted Rockefeller’s Standard Oil) and land
reform that transferred 45 million acres from the country’s large estates to small-scale
farmers in the form of 11 000 communally owned properties called ejidos (Perkins, 1997).
Land reform represented the culmination of state efforts to redress the colonial legacy
of political and economic exclusion of the country’s peasant and indigenous population.
From the perspective of the US and Mexican governments after 1940, the technologi-
cal innovations underpinning the Green Revolution would promote rural development
and agricultural modernization while stemming the impetus for continued structural
reform (Jennings, 1988). The Mexico Agricultural Program (MAP) did grapple with
the issue of harnessing scientific breeding and technical expertise to support small-scale
maize farmers, initially recognizing that the industrialized US model may not be appro-
priate for the rural landscapes of Mexico. Scientists carried out research to identify and
distribute productive native and ‘synthetic’ maize varieties, leading to significant initial
yield increases. Nonetheless, by the 1950s, the MAP placed near complete emphasis
on high-yielding, input-dependent seed varieties, particularly wheat (Harwood, 2009).
By 1968, HYVs accounted for 80 percent of the total area planted in wheat and only
20 percent of maize production (Cotter, 2003).
The emphasis on HYVs reflected changing national and international visions for

agricultural modernization in the Mexican countryside. From the 1940s through early
1970s, Mexico invested in irrigation projects concentrated in the northwestern regions
of Sonora and Sinaloa that became the center of Mexico’s wheat boom. In addition, the
government created supporting infrastructure with new roads and rails as well as fiscal
policies including agricultural credit, guaranteed prices, and subsidized shipping. From
the perspective of the Mexican state, agricultural modernization was key to supplying
food for an increasingly urbanized population and fueling a shift from an agrarian to an
industrialized economy. For the US, public research in HYVs offered new markets for
inputs, with imported agri-chemicals and tractor usage skyrocketing throughout Mexico
(Sonnenfeld, 1992; Cotter, 2003).
However, the Green Revolution had contradictory results for the majority of Mexico’s
farmers (Zazueta, 1989). While some ejidos initially benefited from state agricultural
investment in the northwest, rising land prices and dwindling state support led to the
abandonment of community farms and pronounced land concentration during the 1960s
(Hewitt de Alcántara, 1976). Throughout the country, some small-scale farmers experi-
mented with and selectively adopted HYVs and agri-chemicals while others actively
resisted state efforts to introduce these technologies (Cotter, 2003). The overwhelming
trend of the 1960s and 1970s was to exacerbate the dualism between Mexico’s large and
small-scale farms and solidify the geographic division between the industrialized north
and the south where traditional agrarian practices persisted. Thus, while the Green
Revolution sought to strengthen small-scale farmers, its technical inputs mainly served
the interests of larger, commercial farmers (Otero, 2008).
During the 1970s and 1980s, national yields began to hold steady or show a declining
trend associated partly with the environmental consequences of Green Revolution agri-
culture. On the large-scale farms of the north, major problems included the exhaustion of
wells due to intensive irrigation, the erosion of topsoil caused by mechanized production,
and the overuse of agri-chemicals (Sonnenfeld, 1992).
The Green Revolution in Mexico cannot be evaluated only in terms of productiv-
ity, but has to be situated within the broader context of the liberalization of trade,
privatization of rural land ownership, and changes in diet within Mexico and across
North America. In 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) opened
Mexican markets to subsidized US corn, essentially reducing the economic viability of
small-scale corn production (Fitting, 2011). Also, during the 1990s, ejido ownership
rules were relaxed and rural land became available to be bought and sold privately. This
removed the protection, however minimal, that enabled small farmers to gain and retain
access to land (ibid.). Combined with the elimination of state support mechanisms for
small-scale farmers, these market-based reforms sought to fully transform Mexico’s agri-
cultural economy from subsistence to industrialized commercial agricultural production.
The Green Revolution in Mexico thus turned out to be less about food self-sufficiency
in national contexts and more about serving lucrative global markets. The commer-
cialization of Mexican agriculture has seen its maize and wheat production serving as
animal feed for urban livestock consumption rather than as direct food source, and
hunger continues to be present in rural Mexico (Pechlaner and Otero, 2010). In fact,
Mexico’s agriculture is now more competitive when it focuses on growing fruits and
vegetables for export to North American markets, and this is also true of the Central and
South American agricultural economy in general.

Nonetheless, subsistence maize production and traditional seeds continue to have

strong material and cultural importance throughout Mexico. During the 1970s,
researchers noted that some rural communities rejected hybrid seed varieties because
of the built-in advantages of traditional seeds adapted to diverse growing conditions
and which provided stable yields with less reliance on external inputs (Clawson and
Hoy, 1979). Most recently, concerns over the protection of traditional corn varieties
and subsistence-based farmer livelihoods have spurred broad national opposition to the
import and commercialization of genetically modified (GM) corn (McAfee, 2003a, 2008;
Fitting, 2011).
Case Study: India
Much cited as an exemplar of the success of the Green Revolution, India depicts the
contradictions and complexities of Green Revolution outcomes (Gulati and Ganguly,
2010). Food production was a major concern of India’s national development in the
1960s and the advent of Green Revolution technologies enabled the country to become
self-sufficient in food. However, food insecurity also continues to remain rampant, so
that regionally and socially differentiated experiences of the Green Revolution cannot
be ignored.
After independence from British colonial rule in 1947, the Indian government was
faced with an economy ravaged by colonialism and dominated by small-scale peasants.
In the 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, embarked on a policy of
state-led industrialization modeled partly on the USSR. The construction of large dams
for hydroelectricity and irrigation was part of this policy of industrialization and Nehru
designated such dams as the ‘temples’ of modern India. The Bhakra Nangal project
on the tributaries of the Indus River in Northern India and the Damodar river dams
under the Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) in Eastern India (which emulated the
Tennessee Valley Authority) were among the large dam projects of the 1950s to 1960s.
By the early 1960s, India was facing a food shortage. The Rockefeller Foundation
had been supporting development activities in India since the 1950s, and in 1963,
Norman Borlaug, the principal scientist of the Green Revolution, was deputed to India
to establish a program to adapt hybrid wheat varieties from CIMMYT, Mexico, to
Indian conditions (Lele and Goldsmith, 1989). Later, hybrid rice varieties from IRRI
were introduced. Borlaug’s Indian counterpart was M.S. Swaminathan, who headed
the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) from 1972 to 1979, and then IRRI
from 1982 to 1988.
The Green Revolution period in India is considered to have lasted from 1968 to 1981,
with wider diffusion of Green Revolution technologies continuing into 1991. Hybrid
wheat and rice, however, were not uniformly adopted and region-specific factors shaped
Green Revolution outcomes (Frankel, 1971; Dasgupta, 1977; Parayil, 1992; Das, 1999).
The center of hybrid wheat cultivation was Northern India, especially the states of
Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh (Gupta, 1998; Erenstein, 2010). This
region had access to irrigation, through the Bhakra Nangal project as well as canals
established during British colonial rule. Hybrid wheat was introduced here in the late
1960s, and by the 1970s wheat yields had begun to increase. In Southern and Eastern
India, where rice was the staple crop, improvements in yields began to be registered in

the 1980s (Harriss, 1982; Farmer, 1986). The lag in the rice revolution in India relative to
the wheat revolution has been attributed to the unwillingness of farmers to adopt hybrid
rice varieties partly due to concerns about taste.
A significant obstacle to the spread of the Green Revolution was, and continues to be,
the size of farms (Yapa and Mayfield, 1978; Das, 2002). In the 1950s, around half of all
landholders held less than one hectare of land and this number increased to more than
70 percent by the 1980s (Sharma, 1994). While land reforms had been attempted since
the 1950s, these did not produce appreciable results because the formulation of land
reform policies and the pace of their implementation were uneven across the country
(Vakulabharanam and Motiram, 2011). Large landholders continued to wield power in
rural contexts as political parties were reluctant to interfere with them (Bardhan, 1970;
Byres, 1981). The Green Revolution thus often exacerbated existing rural inequalities.
Besides smallholders, women have been another constituency of concern with regard
to the Green Revolution. In Northern India, the heartland of India’s Green Revolution,
women’s work has played an important role in the Green Revolution, as labor-intensive
tasks continue to be performed by women. Yet, their labor has not been remunerated
either in economic or social terms (Chowdhury, 1992). Rural women lack title to land
and are paid lower wages for agricultural work (Agarwal, 1994). This combination of
economic advancement and gender inequity remains one of the recalcitrant features
of India’s Green Revolution.
The increasing political clout of Green Revolution regions is reflected in the rise of
new farmers’ movements that claim to represent the interests of rural India and chal-
lenge the power of urban elites. However, they are dominated by larger landowners and
this dominance is reflected in the campaigns undertaken by them (Brass, 1994; Gupta,
1998; Varshney, 1998). These movements seek to raise support prices for agricultural
produce and ensure that agricultural income is untaxed, while remaining silent on the
issue of wages paid to agricultural laborers. Since the 1990s, some of the new farmers’
movements have become vocal proponents of economic liberalization, without regard
to the inability of many smallholders to be competitive in the global agricultural
marketplace.
Social movements have also arisen that question the Green Revolution in terms of
its social and environmental impacts. The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Movement to
Save the Narmada River), which came together in 1985 to protest against the human
displacements associated with the construction of a series of dams on the Narmada River
in Central India, is a prominent example of such movements. As mentioned earlier, the
construction of dams was a major component of the Green Revolution. In 2000, there
were around 4000 large dams in India, out of which 2539 have been constructed between
1971 and 1990 (Duflo and Pande, 2007). The Andolan has successfully raised doubts
about the benefits of these large dams given their disruptions of human settlements and
river ecologies. The Andolan is also noteworthy for its transnational links, being one
node in a global campaign against large dams.
The Indian economy was liberalized in the 1990s and the privatization of agricul-
tural research, inputs, and marketing characterizes the liberalized agrarian economy
(Vakulabharanam and Motiram, 2011). One major controversy in India revolves around
genetically modified (GM) crops (Scoones, 2008). Cotton yields have dramatically
increased in India through the spread of Bt cotton, even as farmers’ suicides in Central

India have been linked to the costs of these new technologies. Proponents of GM crops
argue that the next leap in productivity will be made possible through genetic technolo-
gies. Yet, the institutional regime within which these new technologies will be commer-
cialized has is a matter of concern. The feasibility of commercialized inputs in agrarian
economies dominated by small farmers thus remains a matter of contention in India.
BIOTECHNOLOGIES AS THE ‘NEW GREEN REVOLUTION’

The next round of innovations in agricultural development is being led by genetic tech-
nologies, so that the Green Revolution is being replaced by the ‘Gene Revolution’. New
scientific techniques devised in the 1980s and 1990s, including the micropropagation of
plants, DNA marker identification, and the engineering of genetically modified (GM)
seeds, has for the first time enabled plant breeding at the molecular level (Schurman and
Kelso, 2003; McAfee, 2008). Beginning with the first year of commercialization in 1996,
the US emerged as the leader in research, development and production of GM agricul-
ture. With vast areas dedicated to GM soy in Brazil and Argentina and the emerging
adoption of the technology in China and India for cotton, GM agriculture is visibly
shaping agrarian landscapes in developing countries (Herring, 2007; Glover, 2010).
The development and deployment of transgenic agriculture represented the culmi-
nation of longstanding efforts to incorporate US farmers into private seed markets.
During the 1980s, the US established the legal architecture for the rapid expansion of the
agricultural biotechnology industry through key Supreme Court cases that allowed the
patenting of seeds and genetic material and prevented US farmers from replanting seeds
(Kloppenburg, 2005). This legal architecture triggered the transformation of companies
like Monsanto, Dow, and DuPont from chemical to ‘life science’ corporations during the
1990s and 2000s. This involved a process of vertical integration through the acquisition
of seed companies and biotech firms that would form a value chain of research, develop-
ment and distribution of GM seeds as well as accompanying agri-chemical inputs.
Corporate efforts for seed patent enforcement most visibly center on the extension of
a global system of seed proprietary rights promoted by the World Trade Organization
(WTO) and US trade interests (Moss, 2011). The WTO, formally created in 1994,
focused on opening global markets to trade and investment in industries where the US is
relatively strong, including agricultural biotechnology (McAfee, 2003b). The Agreement
on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) within the WTO,
passed by a coalition of industrialized countries, promotes the enforcement of intel-
lectual property rights (IPRs) in products ranging from pharmaceuticals to agricultural
inputs. A further agreement created by the European Union and supported by the USA
is the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV), which
specifically focuses on enforcing corporate seed proprietary rights in new agricultural
markets (ibid.).
Aside from WTO pressure, the US has directly focused on including IPR agreements
in recent free trade agreements (FTAs), particularly in South America. The now defunct
Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), proposed during the formation of the WTO,
would extend the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and
Mexico throughout the Western hemisphere. Besides opening South America to US

agricultural commodity exports like transgenic corn and soybean, the US has pushed for
strong IPR provisions including ‘damage payment’ requirements for patent violations
by farmers (McAfee, 2003a). Disagreements over IPR enforcement with regional power-
houses, like Brazil, sidelined FTAA negotiations, and the USA is now focused on similar
efforts through bilateral and multilateral agreements. The largest multilateral effort is
the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), ratified in the US in 2005. As
noted by McCarthy (2004), these agreements are for the first time extending a global
genetic patent regime to include crops developed through a variety of social institutions,
including local farmers and public research.
GM technology has sparked tremendous global controversy over potential health,
environmental, and socioeconomic impacts. The European Union (EU), though lifting
a moratorium on GM agriculture in 2004, has adopted strict regulations on the import
of GM foods and is responsible for only a fraction of global biotech crop area (Levidow
and Boschert, 2008). Much of the debate in Europe and, to a lesser extent, the US, has
focused on issues of consumer choice, such as the potential negative health implications
of GMOs and whether to label GM seeds and food products (Jasanoff, 2005).
Proponents view agricultural biotechnology as the new Green Revolution, in
essence reinitiating the technologically driven project to feed a growing global popu-
lation while at the same time addressing the environmental shortcomings and social
inequalities of the first. They argue that the current generation of GM crops (the
two most commercially utilized traits are herbicide tolerance and insect resistance)
are reducing the need for expensive and environmentally harmful pesticides. In addi-
tion, proponents point to Vitamin A rice and drought-tolerant maize as particularly
promising examples of the future benefits of agricultural biotechnology for small-scale
farmers in developing countries. The task is to allow farmer access to GM technol-
ogy through free trade and the establishment of market-friendly regulations. Other
proponents recognize agricultural biotechnology as key for promoting sustainable
agriculture in developing countries while also calling for renewed support from insti-
tutions, such as the CGIAR, private foundations, and corporations, in a new era of
public–private partnerships.
Critics assert that agricultural biotechnology poses unique environmental threats to
biodiversity concentrated outside the US and Europe. Most of the world’s food crops
originated in developing countries, particularly maize and potato in Latin America, and
rice, wheat, and barley in Asia (Kloppenburg, 2005). These regions remain important
centers of crop biodiversity, which reflect the persistence of small-scale, subsistence-
based agricultural systems and the continued reliance on traditional farmer variety seeds
(Soleri et al., 2005; Klepek, 2012). A major source of controversy is that GM crops will
cross-pollinate with and potentially degrade traditional seeds (Cleveland and Soleri,
2005; Altieri and Toledo, 2011).
In developing countries, new scientific and legal mechanisms are encouraging the global
extension of commodity relations to agricultural biodiversity. The creation of genetic use
restriction technologies (GURTs), including the sterility producing ‘Terminator’ gene,
became a symbol of public opposition to GM agriculture in the 1990s and so far have
not been used in commercial GM seeds (Scoones, 2008). Although framed as a means to
reduce potential environmental risks in local ecosystems by preventing cross-pollination
of GM and non-GM varieties (Pendleton, 2004), critics are concerned that seed sterility

could be passed onto traditional crops and wild relatives through the ‘silencing’ and ‘re-
expression’ of this gene, with destructive consequences for agricultural biodiversity and
subsistence livelihoods (McAfee, 2008).
International concerns over the protection of biodiversity, seed patents, and the cor-
porate control of agricultural biotechnology have spurred an international agreement
known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (CPB). Ratified in 2003 by a coalition
of European and developing countries, the Cartagena Protocol is intended to support
countries in the creation of regulations that prevent potential environmental and socio-
economic risks of GM agriculture in developing countries. As a sub-agreement to the
Convention on Biological Diversity, the Cartagena Protocol offers a potential counter-
weight to WTO efforts to promote free exchange and commercialization of biotechnol-
ogy products. Thus, the primary goals of the Cartagena Protocol reflect the broader
mandate of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established during the 1992
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which called for equitable sharing of benefits of genetic
resources.
The US opposes the implementation of the Cartagena Protocol for three major
reasons. One reason is related to the protocol’s language, which adopts a ‘precautionary
principle’ approach, potentially allowing developing countries to postpone or refuse
biotech imports based on a stricter set of health and environmental standards than in
US regulations. Second, while the US regulatory stance emphasizes the environmental
safety of GMOs, the Cartagena Protocol allows regulatory agencies to monitor and
control the commercial release of GMOs into the environment to prevent any potential
risks to biodiversity. Finally, the US criticized the Cartagena Protocol for emphasizing
socioeconomic considerations as a significant component of risk determination along
with the incorporation of ‘non-expert’ social movement voices in regulatory discussions.
From the perspective of environmental and social justice organizations, there is a fear
that US commercial interests are increasingly shaping scientific knowledge and regula-
tions now being established in developing countries through the Cartagena Protocol
(McAfee, 2008). Despite US refusal to join the Cartagena Protocol and continued resist-
ance, current membership totals 164 countries including major biotech-crop-growing
countries like Brazil, India, and South Africa.
GM crops thus remain a site of contention and a final verdict on their value has yet to
arrive. New fears of food shortages due to a shift towards biofuels, uncertainties related
to climate change, and growing urbanization have spurred calls for greater investment
and adoption of GM crops. In contrast, grassroots social movements, most notably
the international peasant network, La Via Campesina, are putting forth alternative
models to GM agriculture and the continued industrialization of agriculture (Borras,
2010; Martínez-Torres and Rosset, 2010). These include an agro-ecology approach
that promotes farmer practices that reduce reliance on expensive external inputs and
encourage agricultural diversity, for instance through seed saving, soil conservation
and use of organic fertilizers (Altieri and Toledo, 2011; Horlings and Marsden, 2011;
Holt-Giménez and Altieri, 2013). Alternative approaches are viewed as vital to food
sovereignty which seeks to transform national and global institutions to address major
structural factors (such as free trade and land inequality) behind the present global food
crisis (Holt-Giménez and Shattuck, 2011). Alternative food movements thus reveal the
political stakes in the struggle over GM crops as corporate-controlled technologies

could further exacerbate technological and economic trends now threatening small-scale
farming systems.
These issues become particularly urgent with the most recent push to usher in a new
Green Revolution for Africa, a continent whose countries were often left out of the
ambit of the 1960s–80s Green Revolution (Djurfeldt et al., 2005). The lack of a Green
Revolution in Africa has been traced to various causes including the presence of diverse
agro-ecologies into which uniform Green Revolution technologies could not be fitted,
lack of irrigation and other infrastructure, and lack of strong governmental institutions.
The structural adjustment programs (SAPs) of the 1980s imposed on African countries
in the form of conditionalities attached to international development aid also affected
the ability of governments to play a leading role in agriculture, as the public sector was
dismantled and privatized (Gibbon et al., 1993).
Recognition of Africa’s absence from the Green Revolution and an attempt to rectify
this absence was signaled by the establishment of the Alliance for a Green Revolution
in Africa (AGRA) in 2006, an initiative mainly funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation and supported by the African Union. AGRA seeks to popularize new
agricultural technologies across African countries, thus increasing food production
and agricultural commercialization (Otsuka and Kalirajan, 2005; Holt-Giménez, 2008).
Given this technocentric focus, the new Green Revolution as embodied by AGRA is
reminiscent of the previous one. The difference lies in the institutional regime within
which new technologies will be formulated, as governments are increasingly being asked
to collaborate with private entities or privatize agricultural research in its entirety. The
Gates Foundation stands firmly behind GM technologies as evidenced by the prominent
role being played by Monsanto, the corporation that currently controls a large share of
the knowledge and market for GM technologies, in AGRA (Thompson, 2012; Patel,
2013). Thus, Africa has become part of debates over the advisability of GM crops.
From a critical development perspective, it has been pointed out that Africa is playing
the role of a new terrain for accumulation to counter the recessionary tendencies of con-
temporary capitalism (Moore, 2010). Agricultural land grabs by foreign governments
and corporations, of which Africa has been a special target (McMichael, 2012; Pearce,
2012), seem to add credence to the belief that a new Green Revolution here is an attempt
to ensure that African resources serve the needs of the global economy rather than the
other way round. Also worth noting is the rise of new powers in international develop-
ment, including the so-called BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) coun-
tries, who are seeking to play a major role in the future of African agriculture (Dano,
2007; Cheru and Modi, 2013). Overall, a possible shift in global hegemony away from
the US, the growing dominance of private corporations in the agricultural sector, and an
increasing focus on Africa as a site for new agricultural experimentation are features that
distinguish the new Green Revolution from its predecessor.
CONCLUSION
The Green Revolution is a significant aspect of global agricultural history and in its
unfolding has brought together, in terms of hegemonic centers, the US as the main
driver of the old Green Revolution and a continuing player in the expanded field of

donors related to the new Green Revolution, and in terms of sites of implementation,
South America and Asia as arenas for the old and Africa as a potential site for a new
Green Revolution. While major increases in food production can be traced to Green
Revolution technologies, their environmental and social outcomes are matters of
concern. Food insecurity remains a major problem, new forms of environmental pollu-
tion and species and habitat loss have been introduced, and class and gender inequalities
are reflected in Green Revolution practices and outcomes. Biotechnological advances
now seek to unleash another Green Revolution and whether this new round of agri-
cultural development will avoid or repeat the problems associated with the 1960s–80s
Green Revolution is an unresolved question. Understanding the global imperatives and
local experiences of agricultural transformations through a critical lens thus remains a
task worth pursuing.
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12. Biotechnology and the global food riots: why
genetically modified foods will not end world
hunger
Simon Nicholson
Perhaps it is always hard to see the bigger impact while you are in the vortex of a change.
Failing to understand the consequences of our inventions while we are in the rapture of dis-
covery and innovation seems to be a common fault of scientists and technologists; we have
long been driven by the overarching desire to know that is the nature of science’s quest, not
stopping to notice that the progress to newer and more powerful technologies can take on a
life of its own. (Bill Joy, 2000, p. 4)
INTRODUCTION
The last few years have been volatile ones for the global food system. Dramatic fluctua-
tions in staple food prices, coupled with a global economic downturn, have led to higher
levels of poverty and have sparked widespread political unrest. Globally, the number of
people chronically hungry remains unacceptably high. After some decades of progress
in the fight to eradicate hunger, the downward trend has leveled off (FAO, 2012). As a
result hunger is once again, after a period of relative inattention, back on the interna-
tional agenda (Nicholson, 2009).
Some proponents of genetically modified (GM) foods have offered a straightforward
diagnosis for the current challenges facing the global food system. The problem, they
say, is first and foremost about the insufficiency of food production, a problem that
can be surmounted through the widespread acceptance and utilization of the furthest-
reaching techniques of food biotechnology. As one well-known tagline from a Monsanto
advertising campaign put it, ‘Worrying about starving generations won’t feed them –
food biotechnology will’ (quoted in Zerbe, 2005, p. 76). At times a blunter, more moral-
istic tone has been struck: to question the spread of genetic modification technologies is
to condemn millions to suffering and starvation (Lynas, 2013).
This chapter offers a different, more cautious perspective. Here, I make the case that
while GM crops should be considered an essential tool in the long-term fight to end
hunger and to build sustainable and just food systems, there are features that adhere
to the technology that should give pause. GM crops are a potentially transformative
technology. They also, though, entrench some troubling and destructive dynamics –
underlying forces that must themselves be understood and grappled with if hunger is ever
truly to be consigned to history.
The argument of the chapter is, most basically, that the industrial genetic modifica-
tion project consolidates power in disruptive and harmful ways within the global food
system, while at the same time directing attention away from some of the most important
roots of global hunger. GM seeds as a technological form are uniquely geared towards
255
the consolidation of corporate power. Features innate to genetic modification technolo-

gies additionally mean that food biotechnologies are a powerful driver of further large-
scale industrialization within the food system. These features include the extraordinary
costs associated with producing a genetically modified line of seeds, and the potential for
willfully or inadvertently destructive uses of the advanced techniques of genetic manipu-
lation. The first of these features is a driver of corporate secrecy and impels the focus by
food biotechnology companies on particularly lucrative lines of seed development. The
second feature means that onerous public oversight must always exist alongside develop-
ment of biotechnologies, further adding to costs and the production of fewer and larger
corporate players.
These are propensities that are reinforced by a global patents system increasingly
friendly to the commodification of life, corporate actors intent on wringing ever-higher
profits from all pieces of crop ‘value chains’, and international political actors deeply
enamored of one-shot technological or policy solutions to complex social problems.
Given these powerful tendencies, it will take significant, extraordinary efforts if GM
foods are to be used in the service of truly sustainable and just food production or to the
benefit of those currently most fully excluded from the workings of the global industrial
food system.
The chapter begins by casting back in time a handful of years, to unpack the drivers
and effects of the global food riots of 2008. The chapter then goes on to consider the
(bio)technological bias in international responses to hunger, examines the gap between
the promises and outcomes of present-day biotechnological manipulation of the food
supply, and compares competing explanations for endemic hunger and malnutrition.
This is a crucial moment. Given demographic patterns and the mounting threat of
widespread climate disruption, the 2008 food riots, driven by hunger-related depriva-
tion and suffering, may well be a sign of further hardship to come. Alternatively, current
instability in the global food system may yet prompt an overdue re-evaluation and
renewal of the ways in which food is produced and procured. This chapter contends,
ultimately, that such re-evaluation and renewal are only possible if, collectively, we move
away from an overly technologized view of food-related challenges, and instead pay
more attention to their deeply political nature.
REMEMBERING THE GLOBAL FOOD RIOTS
A fair number of events with global import occurred during 2008. There were record
high oil prices followed by an unprecedented energy-price slump. People everywhere
were captivated by a hard-fought and historic presidential race in the United States.
The world saw the beginnings of a devastating worldwide economic recession; witnessed
the political and sporting highs and lows of the Beijing Olympics; observed the (to that
point) second-lowest concentration of Arctic ice in recorded history; and much else
besides. Each of these developments and occasions has meaning that will resonate long
into the future. Yet for all of the history made in 2008, many people will remember the
year best for just one set of events – tragic happenings that tore apart millions of lives
and livelihoods, and that exposed severe contradictions in the operations of some of the
most essential parts of the global economy. This was the year in which the costs of basic

Biotechnology and the global food riots 257
foods as much as tripled in some places within a handful of weeks, in which the number
of chronically hungry people around the globe climbed to record levels, and in which the
world witnessed the first truly global food riots.
The food riots and the rapid food price increases that sparked them were front-
page news worldwide during the early months of 2008. During that time, people took
to the streets in dozens of countries from Central America to Sub-Saharan Africa
(Holt-Giménez and Patel, 2009). It is worth noting that, for the most part, ‘protests’ is
a better term than ‘riots’ for these actions, since the majority were peaceful, resulting in
little harm to people or damage to property. A few demonstrations, though, did take
dramatic, violent turns. In February 2008, for instance, around 100 people in Cameroon
were killed in clashes between protestors and police. There, a large-scale protest over
rising food prices morphed out of a small rally by taxi drivers over the escalating costs of
fuel. A week prior, a group protesting food price increases in the West African nation of
Burkina Faso had looted stores and set fire to government buildings. To the north, and a
few months later, police in riot gear used rubber bullets and live ammunition to disperse
a group protesting high food prices and low wages in the Egyptian city of El Mahalla al-
Kubra. The police actions there left a child dead and dozens of people injured (Human
Rights Watch, 2008). In the same month at least five people lost their lives during wide-
spread food-related riots in Haiti – riots that were ultimately used as ammunition by
opposition politicians to unseat the incumbent government (Tenenbaum, 2008; Singh,
2009). From Mexico to Pakistan spiraling food prices spawned angry crowds, while
national governments, international organizations, and aid agencies were left scrambling
in the wake of a fast-evolving crisis.
This, of course, was hardly the first time in human history that food shortages or
sudden food price spikes have led to social and political upheaval. Food price fluc-
tuations have routinely produced large-scale civil unrest at least as far back as the time
marked by the Roman Empire.1 In less distant times, food riots were quite common in
Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as a form of reactionary protest
to the social and economic distress produced by the Industrial Revolution (Taylor, 1996;
Pilcher, 2006). In the so-called ‘rice riots’ that rocked Japan immediately after World
War I, rapid food price inflation gave rise to an estimated 623 civil disturbances in 38
cities. Neighborhoods were burned to the ground and the sitting government was forced
to disband (Balaam, 1984). And food riots in response to oppressive national policies
or to austerity measures imposed by international financial institutions have occurred
sporadically in developing countries since World War II.
The phenomenon of global food riots, though, is an entirely new thing. Never before
has the world seen such a large number of near-concurrent demonstrations, driven by a
common set of triggering events, occurring in such geographically dispersed locations.
The very possibility of such riots calls attention to a set of radical transformations that
the system of food provisioning has undergone in the 200 years or so since the Industrial
Revolution. The trends have been towards ever-longer production chains on the one
hand and tighter integration of key aspects of the world’s food supply on the other. Prior
to such developments, food shortages or food price spikes and associated political unrest
were local or at most regional phenomena.
The 2008 riots also lay bare some of the troubling vulnerabilities that the industri-
alization of the global food system has produced. Consider, for example, that in the

contemporary food system a very small number of internationally traded commodity

crops have come to dominate diets on every continent. The Food and Agricultural
Organization (FAO) estimated around the time of the riots that just three crops – wheat,
corn, and rice – accounted that year for around 43 percent of all food calories produced
worldwide (FAOSTAT, 2008). These crops are basic not just to regional diets but also
to the operations of globe-spanning markets and industrial arrangements. As a result,
problems affecting any one part of the food system can have wide, even world-spanning
implications.
The food riots were sparked when during 2007 and 2008 each of these most basic of the
world’s crops saw dramatic leaps in their global market prices. The price of wheat, for
example, as determined by the most important of the world’s food trading institutions,
the Chicago Board of Trade, rose an extraordinary 77 percent in 2007. The other major
grains followed suit. This volatility, though, was just a taste of things to come in 2008.
Between January and April of that year, rice prices jumped 141 percent, with corn and
wheat running close behind (The Economist, 2008).
These worldwide food price increases affected people from all walks of life. For
instance, the rising cost of food was one of the key factors driving general price infla-
tion in North America and Western Europe in 2007 and the early part of 2008. During
this period, complaints from middle class families about hefty increases in the prices of
staple food items, not to mention grain-fed beef and poultry, were a leading news item
on both continents. In response to concerns about rice hoarding by business customers,
large chain stores in the United States put restrictions on the purchase of rice, limiting
the amounts that individuals could buy each day (Bradsher and Martin, 2008). In other
countries even more extreme measures were taken to limit hoarding and other related
responses to the food price spikes. The governments of Argentina and India imposed
trade tariffs early in 2008 to reduce the export of food from their countries, much to the
chagrin of global trading partners. In Vietnam, the higher prices that could be fetched
for crops meant that the government was forced to respond to the new crime of ‘rice rus-
tling’, in which fields are stripped clean of their harvest by night. All harvesting machines
were banned from the roads after sunset and some farmers took to camping in their fields
with shotguns (MacKinnon, 2008).
Despite the wide distribution of economic pain felt from the increase in food prices,
the worst impacts were ultimately felt by those who were already most vulnerable. In the
United States, for instance, 2008 saw a massive upsurge in demand at food banks and
for federal food stamp programs, as struggling families were hit first by food and energy
price increases and later by an economic recession triggered by the collapse of the sub-
prime mortgage industry. The situation was even more devastating in the Global South.
There, food price increases pushed already marginalized people into deeper impoverish-
ment. An individual or family living in conditions of extreme economic poverty must
spend a substantial portion of yearly income on food – on average 60–80 percent, by one
established measure – during even the best of times (Leathers and Foster, 2004). Changes
in the cost or availability of food hit these populations especially hard, with the poorest
urban populations faring worst (Wakeman-Lynn and Drummond, 2008). Urban popu-
lations are typically unable to grow significant amounts of food for their own use, and
so are dependent on stable wage labor and stable food prices for their well-being. Poor
urban populations, in other words, are particularly sensitive to economic shocks, and

typically have few available coping strategies when economic conditions change. Indeed,
in some rural areas in the Global South, increasing food prices brought about a short-
term boost to incomes from cash-cropping, though as the price of processed foods rose
higher and more quickly than raw commodities, any real windfall profits went to large
corporate actors rather than small-scale farmers. All told, it is easy to see why sudden
food price surges drove people to the streets in many of the developing world’s major
cities. The only real response available to many of the world’s urban poor was to demand
that their governments and those watching from afar take note of their plight.
The food price hikes, in other words, followed immediately by the global economic
downturn that took firm hold in 2009, made the already demanding and often tenuous
lives of tens of millions of people a good deal more difficult. Those already most vulner-
able have experienced the worst effects of the global food system’s recent volatility. One
World Bank report released during the height of 2008’s ‘global food crisis’, as it came to
be called, suggested that food price increases served to virtually eradicate any gains made
in reducing global poverty over the prior decade (Human Development Network, 2008).
MEETING TO ERADICATE HUNGER
So what, then, was done? One aspect of the international community’s immediate
response to the 2008 food riots was easy to predict – the holding of meetings and the
promise of aid. The most notable of the early round of meetings was a major conference
hosted by the FAO in Rome in June 2008. There, representatives from 180 countries
and the European Union gathered to discuss ways to alleviate global food price pres-
sures and to consider other food security challenges affecting the world’s most vulner-
able peoples (Conference on World Food Security, 2008). By one measure – promised
financial support – the Rome meeting was a considerable success. The United Nations
itself pledged some USD1.2 billion in additional food aid funding to provide short-term
relief to those areas and peoples hardest hit by the food price increases. A number of
individual countries and regional development banks stepped up with their own pledges,
totaling USD12.3 billion (ETC Group, 2008).
Agreement on just how to tackle hunger and other food-related issues over the longer
term, though, proved much more difficult to reach. This is not really a surprise. After
all, hunger is hardly a new thing, and the Rome gathering was hardly the first interna-
tional meeting concerned with it. The final conference declaration that emerged from
Rome was a typical compromise document, long on aspiration and formulaic recita-
tions of concern. The most that can be said about the document is that it promised, in
broad language, a renewed international commitment to reducing hunger and improv-
ing food security. In this, the declaration echoed statements from international meet-
ings concerned with global hunger stretching back more than 45 years, to the World
Food Congress held in Washington DC in 1963 – a summit at which US President
John F. Kennedy famously declared, ‘We have the means, we have the capacity to wipe
hunger and poverty from the face of the earth in our lifetime. We need only the will’
(quoted in Hough, 2013, p. 92).
Kennedy’s call to action has since been followed by many others. In November 1974,
at the United Nations World Food Summit, the parties to the conference made the

f ollowing pledge: ‘within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, no family will fear for
its next day’s bread, and no human being’s future and capacities will be stunted by mal-
nutrition’ (quoted in Shetty, 2006, p. 8). This worthy goal, though, quickly faded from
reach. And as the goal of the swift eradication of hunger has receded into the distance, so
the targets proposed by the international community have become less lofty. The FAO’s
World Food Summit in 1996, for instance, established the goal of halving the absolute
number of hungry people by the year 2015, from 800 million to 400 million people. Close
to a decade and a half later, the United Nations’ Millennium Summit in New York chose
the same year, 2015, as the target date for another global hunger initiative. The chief
product of that meeting, the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, calls for a
halving of the proportion of people facing hunger by 2015. That proportion decreased by
3 percent between 1990 and 2006. At last reckoning, though, progress towards the goal
appears to have stalled, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania, and Western Asia
(United Nations, 2013).
RESPONDING WITH (BIO)TECHNOLOGY
The Rome meeting ended, then, as so many have done before, without real concrete
answers, but rather with the reciting of a series of familiar promises. The only claims
that received widespread acceptance from the conference delegates were among the most
well-worn. These were, first, the notion that the elimination of hunger will require a dra-
matic boost in world food production, and, second, that large-scale investment by both
the public and private sectors in new and improved science and technology is basic to this
endeavor.2 Such claims are generally considered uncontroversial to the point of b anality.
In the age of global food riots, however, they are claims that deserve to be carefully
examined, particularly when ‘improved science and technology’ is equated increasingly
with ‘more biotechnology’ (see, for instance, IAASTD, 2009). It will be argued below
that unpacking and making sense of these assertions is, in fact, a particularly urgent
task, since they dominate conversations about the international response to hunger, even
while they are based on a particular and incomplete view of hunger’s causes and drivers.
In the wake of the food riots, then, GM crops were propelled to the top of the inter-
national food agenda. This happened after a period of quite muted growth and consoli-
dation by the food biotechnology industry. At the outset of the ‘Gene Revolution’, as
some call it, key players in the industry – representatives of companies like Monsanto,
Syngenta, Dupont, and Bayer Crop Science – forecast a complete transformation of
global food systems within a very short period of time. Yet by 2008, just 25 countries
were growing any GM crops, and only a dozen or so of these countries devote what
might be called significant cropland to their production (ISAAA, 2009). The United
States, in fact, with about 64 million hectares of commercial plantings in 2008, devotes
more cropland to GM plantings than all other countries combined. The upshot is that
the present global market for GM technologies is just a small fraction of the size that was
projected during its formative days in the early 1990s.
In large part, this is because the technology has been dogged throughout its short
history by heated controversy. There is no denying that the ability to manipulate the
very genetic material of a food crop is a remarkable technical achievement. Yet while

for some this newfound power is a source of profound hope and wonder, for others
it is viewed as misplaced hubris. These two poles have dominated in a far-reaching
global debate about the benefits, risks, meaning, and social implications of GM crops
(Nicholson, 2008).
Some proponents of GM foods say that in the wake of the global food riots, this
debate must now come to an end. One of the problems GM crops are purportedly poised
to solve, after all, is global hunger. In fact, from the earliest introduction of GM foods,
the technology has been sold as a tool for global humanitarianism. Present rhetoric in
support of genetic modification is actually an extension of the optimistic statements
made at the birth of the age of biotechnology, when miracles seemed just a moment
away. The prevailing mood was captured in 1984 by Mary-Dell Chilton, at that time
the newly minted head of Swiss chemical giant Ciba-Geigy’s biotechnology unit in the
United States, in an interview with Business Week: ‘The solutions are coming very fast
now. In three years, we’ll be able to do anything that our imaginations will get us to’
(quoted in Charles, 2001, p. 31).
Though Chilton’s own imagination proved to be far ahead of the reality of the tech-
nology, still this strand of techno-optimism remains strong. More than that, the opti-
mistic vision has not just endured, but has changed through time from an argument in
favor of greater devotion to GM crops into something like a moral imperative. In 1998,
for instance, Robert Shapiro, then president of agricultural chemical and seed giant
Monsanto, gave a well-received speech at the State of the World Forum. He began by
suggesting that as people and societies become more affluent, they will inevitably ‘move
up the protein ladder’ (that is, demand more meat in their diets). If this is truly an unas-
sailable fact, then we can expect the food system to come under greater and greater
stress in the future. Around half of all grains produced on the planet are presently fed to
animals, and by eating meat people receive only a small fraction of the calories and nutri-
ents required to produce it. To meet the rising demand for grains that this shift entails,
Shapiro argued that the world must turn to the widespread use of genetically engineered
crops. He contended that the spread of this new technology would allow for creation of a
‘sustainable’ and ‘equitable’ alternative to the dominant crop-growing methods of today
(see Belasco, 2006, p. 12).
This stronger message – that GM crops are essential if the world is to meet the food
challenges of the future – found its way quickly into corporate advertising. In this it
served a dual purpose: to try to persuade a wary public of the good intentions of bio-
technology companies, on the one hand, and to offer a way to condemn critics of food
biotechnology as standing in the way of crucial progress, on the other. Monsanto led
the way on both fronts, most overtly with a famous 1998 advertising campaign designed
to pry open recalcitrant European markets. The campaign was titled ‘Let the Harvest
Begin’. Here is a sampling of slogans from that campaign:
● ‘Food biotechnology is a matter of opinions. Monsanto believes you should hear

all of them’ (quoted in Finegold et al., 2005, p. 278);
● ‘[A]gricultural biotechnology will play a major role in realizing the hope we all
share. Accepting this science can make a dramatic difference to millions of lives’
(quoted in Douthwaite, 2002, p. 190);
● ‘Biotechnology is one of tomorrow’s tools in our hands today. Slowing its

a cceptance is a luxury our hungry world cannot afford’ (quoted in Suzuki and
Bressel, 2004, p. 155).
Fast-forward to 2008. At a side event to the 2008 Rome Conference, Hugh Grant,
Monsanto’s present CEO, picked up the strident call of his predecessors. Grant pledged
that his company would use biotechnology to double the yields of cotton, corn, and
soybeans by 2030, all while using 30 percent less land, water, and energy. He anticipated
some pushback against the announcement, but suggested ‘skepticism is a commodity
the world can’t afford right now’ (Gardner, 2008, paragraph 11). Grant’s appeal for a
renewed focus on food biotechnology was itself echoed at the conference by other influ-
ential figures, who similarly asserted that the time for skepticism about GM foods has
passed. Most notably, Robert Ziegler, director general of the influential International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI), said in an interview with Reuters, ‘If we consider the
challenges that face us, I think we would be very foolish and actually irresponsible to
not invest in the development of GM crops’. He continued, ‘I think that governments
will take a hard look and say why again are we dragging our feet in adopting GM
technology?’ (quoted in Crimmins, 2008, paragraph 3, emphasis added).
Other figures from the corporate and political worlds made the case even more
strongly that antipathy towards GM crops must be abolished: ‘You cannot today feed
the world without genetically modified organisms’, Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé,
argued in the Financial Times. He went on to say, ‘It is one of the safest technologies that
we have ever seen – much safer than bio or organic or whatever else is fashionable in
Europe’ (quoted in Minder et al., 2008, paragraph 13). Sir David King, former holder of
the position of chief scientist in the British government, has suggested that the growing
focus on organic farming – a ‘lifestyle choice for a community with surplus food’, as he
puts it – is having a devastating impact on the world’s hungry (quoted in Sample, 2008,
paragraph 3). GM foods, by contrast, should be developed and spread, for the benefit
of all. The implication is that while eating a diet based on organically grown foods is ‘a
nice treat for those who can afford it’ (see Minder et al., 2008, paragraph 14), GM crop
varieties and the agricultural systems upon which they depend will be at the heart of the
food system of the future.
Taken in sum, the message and framing that these various statements and advertise-
ments is trying to drive home is clear, and twofold. First, there are two options going
forward: an ‘organic’ option that is dismissed as a fad among some rich-country consum-
ers and elites, and a ‘genetic modification’ option that represents the cutting edge of sci-
entific development. Second, as political scientist Noah Zerbe has put it, ‘Biotechnology
is necessary because only biotechnology will solve human health and nutritional needs’
(Zerbe, 2005, p. 76, original emphasis). Indeed, the promises made by biotechnologists
extend far beyond yield increases. For water-scarce regions, biotechnology enthusiasts
promise that new low-water crop varietals are just over the horizon. If the consumption
of highly fatty or sodium-rich foods, for instance, is leading to ill health, then we are
promised that genetic engineering will, in the future, render the culprit foods benign,
or even healthful. And so on. By this reckoning, for every problem that faces the food
system there is a technical fix. While other technologies and practices – low external
input agricultural forms, for instance, focused on the livelihoods of small-scale farmers –
may provide part of the answer, the message is that only GM foods can produce the

massive boosts in food production that the world needs to overcome its present and
looming hunger crises.
However, there are two glaring challenges inherent in this contention. The first is that
GM crops have so far failed to live up to many of the claims made on their behalf, and
the second is that the techno-optimistic notion that GM crops will resolve a complex
social problem like global hunger is itself a highly questionable proposition. Each of
these problems will now be examined in turn.
DO GM CROPS LIVE UP TO THE HYPE?
At a press conference given during the Rome conference, US Agriculture Secretary Ed

Schafer made the following comment in response to a question about the US govern-
ment’s firm commitment to food biotechnology: ‘We’ve been using them [GM crops]
for 10 years in the United States and they have a proven effectiveness in increasing
yields, in lowering the use of fertilizer, in providing better water and soil management
and also increasing taste and appearance. So those are all good things’ (USDA, 2008,
paragraph 21). Such claims are routinely made on behalf of GM crops. This statement
should not be taken at face value, though, since few of the claims made by Secretary
Schafer, beyond the fact that GM crops had been in use by that time for only a decade
or so, are unequivocally true.
It is imperative to recognize that very few of the oft-repeated promises of GM foods
have come to pass. There are, for instance, no crops on the market that have been engi-
neered for better taste or appearance, as Schafer claims. While in fact the very first GM
crop that was sold in the United States, the Flavr Savr tomato, was engineered to last
longer on the shelf and to look good while there, the project was a commercial disaster.
The modified tomato cost more and tasted worse than its counterparts, to the extent
that it was quickly withdrawn from the marketplace. The company that developed the
project, Calgene, was bankrupted and was ultimately bought by Monsanto (Martineau,
2001). No other foods with similar characteristics have arisen to take the tomato’s place.
There is also just a single GM crop released to market that claims drought-resistance
(released after Schafer’s speech) (USDA, 2011), and none that thrive in saline-saturated
soils, or that enhance nitrogen fixation. While research is certainly being undertaken on
such innovations, trial results have been mixed at best, and dates for potential market
release keep being pushed back. And to be clear, there are currently no GM crops on
the market that are engineered to boost intrinsic yield. Coaxing a plant to produce more
food is something that is governed by many genes working together in complex ways.
Biotechnologists do not yet have the tools required to undertake genetic manipulation
on so dramatic a level.
That said, there have been clear technical successes. Some of the crops currently on
the market have led to indirect yield increases by reducing harvest lost to pests, in some
cases and in some conditions (see, for instance, Qaim and Zilberman, 2003, for a much-
cited study on yield increases in India). In other cases, though, a dependence on GM
technologies actually seems to have backfired, with crop yields falling (see, for instance,
Dowd-Uribe and Bingen, 2011). Some crops have led to decreased use of agricultural
chemicals and therefore can be said to have aided the water and soil management

ractices of mainstream rich-country farmers, though in other cases the use of GM seeds
p
has led to more intensive chemical application. The actual record of the technology, in
other words, is far from wholly positive (see Kinchy, 2012).
Supporters of GM crops claim that their widespread adoption in the United States
can be attributed to the clear economic benefits they offer farmers, and that if only the
technology was made more widely available to farmers in other countries they would
jump on board. Yet the US Department of Agriculture has suggested, in a review of the
GM crop industry in the United States, ‘Perhaps the biggest issue raised by these results
is how to explain the rapid adoption of [GM] crops when farm financial impacts appear
to be mixed or even negative’ (quoted in Rowell, 2004, p. 6). In a less flattering light, the
record of GM crops has, to quote Margaret Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists,
been ‘perennially overstated’ (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2008, paragraph 2).
This is a contentious and complex debate. It is made even more complex by the finding
that psychosocial and cultural factors work, in this as in other scientific debates, to shape
perceived benefits and risks (Finucane and Holup, 2005). The fact that the measurable
benefits and costs of GM crops are built on mere conjecture does nothing to stop the
blind repetition of a host of extraordinary claims on behalf of the technology as it exists
today. British linguist Guy Cook, in his book Genetically Modified Language, describes a
study he conducted of press coverage of GM foods in the United Kingdom. His research
uncovered numerous stories heralding possible solutions to pressing, often intractable
challenges. These stories were for the most part reported in ways that made it easy for a
casual reader to, as Cook put it, ‘conflate speculation with fact’ (Cook, 2004, p. 52). That
is, instead of making it clear that the modifications being reported were merely specula-
tive, the stories made it appear that GM crops were already ‘solving’ a host of problems.
This tone was prevalent even in newspapers with editorial lines generally skeptical of
GM technologies. The biotechnology industry and its political boosters do little to try to
correct these misconceptions.
This techno- optimistic approach to describing and discussing GM crops is used
to rationalize ever more expenditure on the technology, promote the development of
institutions of agriculture and food provisioning that better support their use, produce
international food and monetary aid arrangements that promote their spread, and so
forth. Yet the value of this technology in boosting crop yields, for instance, or in produc-
ing foods with higher micronutrient concentrations, lies very much in the future, if it can
ever be realized. Whatever the case, the growth of the biotechnology industry depends on
a stream of speculative capital, which itself depends on the endless spinning of promise
for future profit.
DO GM CROPS REPRESENT THE BEST RESPONSE TO GLOBAL

HUNGER?
The fact that GM crops have to date been over-hyped might give one pause. For this
reason alone it pays to be skeptical of the furthest-reaching claims of industry executives
who claim now (or in the near future) to have a solution for hunger. There is a second
concern, though, and it has less to do with the success of any particular technological
innovation and more to do with the understanding of food-related challenges that

underlies it. What is the real nature of the problem that GM crops are ostensibly being
designed to combat? Here, I will try to make sense of these tensions by parsing out
three schools of thinking on hunger: a Malthusian explanation, the entitlements failures
explanation developed by economist Amartya Sen, and a systemic explanation of hunger
neatly articulated in the work of political economist Jenny Edkins.3
The classical Malthusian view of hunger, which takes its name from the work of
English clergyman Thomas Robert Malthus, is that hunger is a function of food scarcity,
produced by the innate capacity of human population growth to outstrip the productive
potential of the global food supply. When this occurs, the theory goes that famine will
inevitably follow, righting the balance between the supply of food and the appetites of
those who demand it. The best-known treatment of Malthus’s argument comes from
the first edition of his treatise An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), where
he claimed that ‘the power of the population is indefinitely greater than the power in
the earth to produce subsistence for man’ and further, that ‘this natural inequality. . .
appears insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society’ (quoted in Smil, 2001,
p. xxvii).
From this perspective, hunger is a direct product of food scarcity. The solutions that
follow from such an analysis of the problem of endemic hunger are those that have
recurred in discussion of famine throughout history. Demographer Joel Cohen has
described them in this way: (1) grow the pie; (2) remove some of the forks; or (3) teach
better table manners (Belasco, 2006, pp. viii–ix). The first option is the one routinely
seized on by biotechnology companies. Greater levels of reliance on GM technologies
will, they say, lead to higher crop yields. More food would seem to inevitably mean fewer
hungry people.
This position, though, that hunger and malnutrition are strictly products of food
shortage, is not well supported by the available data. Perhaps the most remarkable thing
about global hunger is that it persists in the present day even though the global food
system currently produces truly staggering amounts of food. For most of our shared
history food scarcity has certainly been a constant concern. Now, in rich countries at
least, people tend to live longer and have access to better and more diverse foods than
at any time in human history. Even more impressively, in technical terms there is more
than enough food to feed every person on the planet. The world’s farms now produce
roughly two pounds of grain per person each day. This is 3000 calories of food for each
individual on the planet – more than enough to meet every person’s energy requirements,
even before taking into account all of the nuts, fruits and vegetables that the food system
also provides (Lappé and Lappé, 2003). This incredible feat must be considered one of
humanity’s most remarkable achievements.
All of this is to say that current human generations live in an age of abundance, in
food terms. Yet this abundance is clearly rife with contradictions. Millions go hungry,
even while millions of others are overweight (Patel, 2007). The higher levels of farm
mechanization and dependence on industrial inputs upon which much of this abundance
currently depends are both a source of freedom for some and a destroyer of treasured
traditions and communal life for others. In rich countries cheap, plentiful food does not
always provide people with the diet that their bodies require, such that diet-related illness
is rife. The list goes on. To point out these contradictions is not to offer a blanket indict-
ment of the contemporary food system, so much as it is to say that it is a long way from

being entirely equitable, healthful, and sustainable. New technologies that boost food
yields will always be needed, but if these new technologies at the same time perpetuate
existing structural inequalities then they are unlikely to get the job done.
So if the problem is not simply food scarcity, what else then could explain endemic
hunger? A second explanation comes from the work of Amartya Sen (e.g., Sen, 1981,
1999). Sen has famously made the case that people starve not because of a lack of food,
but rather because of a lack of access to food. This inability to gain access to food is,
in Sen’s work, termed an entitlements failure. The notion is that each person or family
has entitlements to food that are functions of economic and political power. More con-
cretely, an entitlement is determined by three things. The first thing to consider is a per-
son’s food endowment. This is land that a person can use to grow his or her own food, or
labor or something else of value that can be sold in exchange for food. The second con-
sideration for Sen is what he calls production possibilities, by which he means long-term
development conditions, themselves functions of education and technology. And finally,
Sen calls attention to exchange conditions, or the relative prices for goods and labor. If
any of these entitlements breaks down or fails in a particular setting, then hunger or mal-
nutrition is the result. The startling implication is that hunger is never simply a function
of scarcity. In fact, large-scale hunger or famine can be experienced even in the presence
of local food surpluses. Take the Bengal famine of 1943 – a staple point of analysis in
Sen’s body of work. One of the worst affected groups during this period was the Bengali
fishermen. These fishermen had a food endowment, in the sense that fish itself provides
nourishment. However, fish is a high-quality food source. The relative economic posi-
tion of Bengali fishermen meant that they typically had to sell their fish to earn enough
money to buy sufficient quantities of staple foods for survival. During the period of the
famine the price of fish rose, but the price of staple grains rose a good deal more. This
shift in the relative prices of fish and food grains meant that the fishermen were unable
to afford to buy enough to eat, and suffered the effects of malnutrition and hunger as a
consequence. It is estimated that around four million people died in British-administered
Bengal during this period. Here is the important thing to note – all of this happened even
though there was very little decline in regional food production or in aggregate food
supply (Sen, 1999, pp. 193–4).4
Sen’s central insight, then, is that famine tends to have political roots, with the impli-
cation that power disparities underpin hunger. In his more recent work Sen stresses
the deeply political nature of hunger even more explicitly, moving beyond entitlements
failures to reference considerations like cultural alienation, foreign domination and the
legacies of colonialism, and the mentality of ‘us’ and ‘them’ as directly involved in how
hunger comes to be (Sen, 1999). Since these are systemic problems they demand systemic
solutions.
This notion can be pushed still further. Sen has himself been criticized for not making
enough of these kinds of connections on the back of his profoundly important analysis
of hunger. A third explanation for chronic hunger extends Sen’s central insights towards
a different set of understandings. For political economist Jenny Edkins, for instance,
Sen’s insights are profoundly important but his conclusions insufficient, because, in her
words, Sen ‘did not consider the possibility that famines could be a product of the social
or economic system rather than its failure’ (Edkins, 2002, p. 13, original emphasis). This
is a crucially important distinction. Basically, Edkins is saying that the global industrial

food system gives rise to large-scale hunger as a matter of its normal operation. Hunger
is not a sign that the system is broken; hunger is a sign that the system is operating just
as it has been established to operate. Said differently, framing hunger as something tech-
nical, as the Malthusian and entitlements failures explanations tend to do, obscures the
politicized operations of the global industrial food system, drawing attention away from
the means by which the food system operates to produce hunger. Through the dominant
techno-optimistic lens, it is easy to view hunger as something short term and inadvert-
ent. This, say writers like Edkins, is a mistake. From Edkins’s perspective it makes more
analytical sense to see hunger as something that is a natural product of the organization
of food production (Edkins, 2000). These are points that will be picked up and developed
in the remainder of the chapter.
To make her case, Edkins draws a distinction between what she calls ‘technologized,
managerial responses’ to endemic hunger and responses that have been ‘fully politicized’
(Edkins, 2002, p. 13). A fully politicized response is one that acknowledges that hunger
need not represent a failure or an accident, but rather comes about as a matter of course
as the food system works for the benefit of some and to the detriment of others. Through
this structural analysis, Edkins is indicating that the technological ‘progressions’ that
have driven changes in food provisioning from the birth of agriculture forward do not
necessarily bring about good for all. Social change on the back of technological innova-
tion has always brought threats as well as opportunities, and has created losers as well as
winners. For the GM foods project, this means that it is essential to rigorously question
who will benefit from the widespread adoption of patented, corporate-owned GM seeds,
and who will suffer, and make a societal decision based on those factors. To imagine that
the world is otherwise, and to assume that both the rich and the poor will benefit more
than either group will lose from biotechnology is to engage in a particularly dangerous
type of fantasizing.
GETTING TO THE ROOTS OF THE FOOD RIOTS
With these competing explanations for hunger in mind, let us now consider the argu-
ments made for GM foods in the wake of the 2008 food riots. Remember, the basic
moralistic argument is that only biotechnology can feed the world and slow the envi-
ronmental degradation caused by ‘conventional’ industrial farming. The implication is
that the few multinational companies that largely control the development of GM seeds
and the chemicals that they require are best situated to lead the world out of its current
predicament, and that hunger is at base a technical problem to be resolved by the deploy-
ment of technological fixes.
What is to be made of these claims? It is worth circling back to the story of the 2008
food riots, and to an examination of the many explanations that have been advanced
for the food price spikes that gave rise to them. The proximate causes of this recent food
price volatility have been exhaustively canvassed elsewhere (see, for instance, Clapp and
Cohen, 2009; Holt-Giménez and Patel, 2009), and need only be recited briefly here. First,
contemporary farming practices tie crop prices closely to oil prices. In part this is because
much of the world’s food is now transported over long distances. More importantly,
though, many modern-day agricultural chemicals are derived from fossil fuel sources

and/or require high amounts of fossil fuel energy in their production. The price of a
barrel of oil fluctuated between around USD40 to close to USD150 per barrel during
2008. The original surge in fossil fuel prices placed significant upward pressure on food
costs. By the time oil prices started to head back downwards, a slowing global economy
had created a new set of problems for food producers and consumers alike.
A second factor contributing to food price spikes was the near-drought conditions
seen in Australia and much of Europe during that period. These abnormal weather pat-
terns dramatically suppressed global aggregate crop yields, particularly for wheat and
rice. Third, increased demand for grain-fed meat in China and a handful of other rapidly
expanding economies drove up worldwide demand for cereal crops, while, fourth, the
collapse of home equity and other investment markets in the United States and elsewhere
pushed speculative capital into food commodities markets, inflating the value of food on
futures exchanges. And fifth, biofuels policies in Europe and the United States, in par-
ticular, played a significant part in food price hikes, by siphoning off increasing amounts
of corn and other food crops for use in gas tanks.
GM foods are supposed to help alleviate all of these pressures, principally by raising
grain yields. If GM crops could consistently produce increased grain yields (which we
have seen is itself a questionable assumption), then this, by Malthusian logic, would help
the world overcome the relative food shortages produced by the drought, demand for
meat, corn-hungry biofuels mandates, and other factors outlined above.
Yet something is missing from this analysis: any real sense of historical context. The
hunger situation worsened in 2008, certainly. But even in the middle part of this decade,
prior to the 2008 food price hikes, when food was cheap and the global food system was
widely thought to be functioning ‘normally’, there were an estimated 850 million people
who were chronically hungry. This translates, according to the FAO, to some 14 percent
of people worldwide undernourished during the period 2002–04. Or, to put it in yet
starker terms, during this period some 16,000 children were dying daily from hunger-
related causes (Black et al., 2003).
This is something that tends to be lost and forgotten in contemporary coverage of ‘food
crises’. It is something that is forgotten when hunger or any of the other myriad challenges
facing our food system are framed, to use Edkins’s language, as managerial problems.
To push this argument further, believing hunger to be fundamentally an issue of scarcity
or short-term entitlements failures obscures the hidden workings of the global industrial
food system, drawing attention away from the means by which the food system operates
to produce hunger in its daily operation. Through the dominant techno-optimist lens,
the tendency is to view hunger as something short term and inadvertent. However, when
almost a sixth of the global population is suffering from hunger in even the boom years, it
is impossible to view the problem as an aberration. Rather, it is the norm.
This is not to say that the people and organizations that have the most power in the
contemporary food system go out of their way to create hunger and suffering. Yet in
the push for profit and control that the global industrial food system demands, some
people win big and some people lose. Viewing the food crisis as an inevitable product of
the global food system raises big questions about the claim that spreading biotechnol-
ogy will feed the hungry and spur development in the world’s poorest region. Instead,
this analysis suggests that the more widespread use of GM foods may actually make
things worse. Even should GM foods raise levels of food production, the structures and

dynamics of food production and consumption that are currently producing hunger go
unchecked, and will in fact receive a boost from biotechnology. How will GM foods
tackle the political roots of hunger and underdevelopment, if through their development
and deployment they serve to perpetuate the logic of the very industrial food system
that is giving rise to these problems? Even if GM crops were perfected to the extent that
they could relieve some of the short-term pressures that sparked the global food riots,
still that innovation itself would do nothing, alone, to give economic and political power
to those who currently lack it. Instead, GM technologies are already leading to greater
consolidation of power in a small number of companies and large growers in the Global
North (Paul and Steinbrecher, 2003).
Tacit recognition of this fact comes even, at times, from biotechnology industry rep-
resentatives. In 2008, a number of large agricultural companies, including Monsanto,
DuPont, and the giant food processing and transportation company Archer Daniels
Midland, established a new (and short-lived) lobbying group called the ‘Alliance for
Abundant Food and Energy’ (Cameron, 2008). The primary purpose of this group was
to lobby against any moves by the US federal government to reduce support for corn-
based ethanol. As such, the group has been making the argument that food shortage
is not an issue, and that directing surplus food toward the production of fuel makes
complete sense. In a press briefing, Monsanto’s chief technology officer Rob Fraley
said, ‘From a production perspective, we have abundance [of food]’ (Cameron, 2008,
paragraph 8). This means that the real challenges we face, Fraley went on to say, are in
providing access to food via the overcoming of distribution issues and poverty.
So much for increased yields as a moral imperative. In making his argument for a
focus on distribution over yields, Fraley ends up sounding much like some of biotech-
nology’s fiercest critics, including Africa correspondent for the British newspaper The
Independent, Daniel Howden. Writing at the height of the 2008 food crisis, Howden
suggested:
The root of the problem in almost every case is political, not scientific. For agriculture in
Africa, the real problems stem from a global trade system that favours richer countries and
large corporations, chronic under-investment by corrupt governments, and the gross distortion
of food prices caused in large part by the explosion of biofuels. . . The agribusiness giants who
have developed and patented genetically modified crops have long argued that their mission is
to feed the world, rarely missing an opportunity to mention starving Africans. Their mission is,
in fact, to make a profit. Land rights for small farmers, political stability, fairer markets, educa-
tion and investment hold the key to feeding Africa but offer little prospect of increased profits.
(Howden, 2008, paragraphs 1–2, 4)
While it is possible to imagine a world in which GM technologies are used in ways that
are broadly sustaining and just, it will take significant work to bring such a world into
being. That is certainly not the world of today.
FAIR, JUST AND ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE GM CROPS?
What does all this mean for claims that biotechnology will feed the world? To utilize
Edkins’s insights is ultimately to say that the problem is not with any particular or
potential application of GM technologies. The problem, rather, is with the system of

agriculture that the corporate deployment of biotechnologies is serving to hold in place.

GM foods could provide great benefit. However, to sell the technology as a kind of cure-
all for a problem that is systemic rather than discrete limits creativity in the search for
real solutions. This, ultimately, is one of the most insidious effects of techno-optimism.
It has a kind of disciplining power. Focusing on genetic modification to the exclusion of
other technological forms has the effect of ‘eclipsing alternatives’ (Shiva, 2001, p. 41). It
would have us believe that there are no alternative options available to us, technological
or otherwise.
The analysis above also has implications for our reading of future food crises. Some
officials and commentators have described the 2008 food price hikes as a ‘silent tsunami’.
There is some truth in this description. For one thing, the manner in which rising food
costs have decimated lives and livelihoods calls to mind a marauding natural disaster.
And, like the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, the tragedy of global food riots has tem-
porarily refocused attention on some of the world’s poorest regions. After that, though,
the metaphor breaks down. The global hunger and economic inequality that the food
price crisis has exacerbated are not new things, brought on by a sudden catastrophe.
Rather, they are old things made worse by new circumstances. Further, these recent food
price increases are not any kind of force majeure. Instead, they represent a human-made
tragedy. Blame for the food price crisis lies not with ‘nature’ or with other forces beyond
our control, but ultimately with the constitution of our political and economic systems.
Through political choices, institutional development, and technological design, a global
food system has been produced that provides bountiful food to some while condemning
others to lives of suffering and deprivation. In this sense hunger is not natural; hunger is
always political (see, for instance, De Waal, 1997). GM foods, in their present form, and
in their present systemic arrangement, ultimately do little to address these political roots
of our food crisis, and may in fact exacerbate them.
While new technologies clearly have the potential to offer some solutions to agricul-
tural challenges, the way that GM foods are currently being developed and deployed
fails to offer this revolutionary change. They instead lead us further down our present,
profoundly problematic path. At the same time it is worth remembering that the world
does not face an ‘either/or’ food future. Various forms of biotechnological manipula-
tion must become a part of a truly revolutionized food system. However, a revolution in
thought and action is needed before GM foods can make such a difference. Those con-
cerned about the future of food must begin by overturning the widespread and ultimately
naive faith that presently exists in the ability of technological innovation to alone resolve
complex social challenges, while at the same time exposing and challenging the rampant
corporate takeover of global agriculture. Only then might the transformative aspects of
food biotechnology – an exciting, potentially game-changing technical development if
ever there was one – be allowed to emerge.
NOTES
1. During the last days of the Roman Empire, Egyptian wheat was imported in large quantities into Rome.
This change to food provisioning, along with increased wealth in the region, prompted a rural exodus
during the first and second centuries BCE. This meant that fewer farmers were available to feed a

growing urban population. Out of concern for the political effects of rising food prices, Gaius Sempronius
Gracchus passed, in 123 BCE, a ‘wheat distribution law’ that kept a certain amount of the state’s wheat
production at a low price for purchase by citizens. Expansion of the Roman Empire, though, meant that
commodities had to travel further and further to feed the homeland. Between 294 and 344, Egyptian wheat
increased in value by 6700 percent, straining state coffers and the patience of the citizenry. Many historians
consider that this was one of the key factors behind Rome’s ultimate decline (see, for instance, Mazoyer
and Roudart, 2006, pp. 251–7).
2. See Article 7(d), Conference on World Food Security (2008, p. 3): ‘We urge the international community,
including the private sector, to decisively step up investment in science and technology for food and
agriculture. Increased efforts in international cooperation should be directed to researching, developing,
applying, transferring and disseminating improved technologies and policy approaches’.
3. The three-part distinction between schools of hunger is drawn from Edkins (2002).
4. For figures on the Bengal famine, and a provocative analysis of how such famines arose in the context of
the colonial system, see Davis (2001).
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13. Private agri-food governance and the challenges
for sustainability
Agni Kalfagianni and Doris Fuchs
INTRODUCTION
Today, non-state actors, particularly transnational corporations (TNCs), play a pivotal

role in global governance (Cutler et al., 1999; Fuchs, 2005; Grande and Pauly, 2005).
Going far beyond their traditional political role as lobbyists, TNCs are creating institu-
tions to ‘govern – that is, . . .enable and constrain – a broad range of activities in the
world economy’ (Büthe, 2010, p. 1), in which state authority is either not present at
all, or not the predominant form of political authority (Falkner, 2003; Dingwerth and
Pattberg, 2009). Simultaneously, their remarkable growth in number and size as well
as their global reach, has made TNCs particularly attractive partners for civil society
organisations and governments aiming to foster environmental and social goals. As a
result, a proliferation of private governance institutions featuring the involvement of
TNCs can be identified. Examples include quality assurance schemes, certification and
labelling programmes, product and process standards, or codes of conduct address-
ing profound global environmental and socioeconomic (i.e., sustainability) challenges
ranging from deforestation, fisheries depletion, climate change, to labour and human
rights concerns.
Private governance, however, has received ambivalent evaluations in politics and
science. Some observers interpret it as a signal of business taking responsibility and
argue that it provides a particularly effective and efficient contribution to the creation of
public goods in a globalised world (Bäckstrand, 2006; Glasbergen, 2010). They empha-
sise missing public regulatory resources and political will, as well as win-win situations
arising from business’s interest in creating and maintaining functioning markets and in
reducing the risk of scandals. Others, however, argue that private governance primarily
consists of window dressing activities motivated by the wish to forestall or undermine
more stringent public regulation (Clapp, 1998; Gibson, 1999; King and Lenox, 2000;
Quilliam et al., 2011). They link the trust placed in private governance to the larger
Zeitgeist with its emphasis on market mechanisms and voluntary activities rather than
regulation, and a functionalist approach to governance focused on problem-solving that
ignores questions of democratic legitimacy and equity.
This chapter contributes to this debate by exploring the effects of TNC involvement
in private governance for the sustainability of the agri-food system. Agri-food govern-
ance is an area in which the need for the creation of public goods related to sustainable
development, that is, to the environmental, social and economic well-being of societies
(Brundtland, 1987), is particularly pronounced. Today’s global agri-food system is char-
acterised by enormous social and environmental challenges, ranging from the threats
to food security and food safety, to horrendous working conditions, climate change,
274
275
Private agri-food governance
iodiversity loss, water pollution, or deforestation. Not surprisingly, agri-food govern-

b
ance is also an area in which the controversy regarding the implications of private gov-
ernance for the provision of public goods is particularly fervent (Burch and Lawrence,
2007; Fuchs et al., 2009).
The chapter pursues its objectives by examining four types of effects identified in
the literature as closely related to TNC involvement in private (agri-food) governance,
specifically uptake boost, regulatory capture, weakening of standards, and barriers for
small-scale capital. Involvement is conceptualised both in terms of TNCs developing
their own rules and standards as well as of TNC endorsement of private governance
institutions initiated by civil society organisations. The chapter illustrates its argu-
ment with an examination of TNC involvement in three prominent institutions aiming
to address global sustainability challenges in agri-food: the GlobalGAP, the Marine
Stewardship Council and Fairtrade. While our empirical sample is not sufficiently
large to draw definite conclusions, our analysis indicates some interesting correlations.
Specifically, the analysis shows that while some positive consequences can be identified,
for example, a larger penetration of the mainstream market, TNC involvement in agri-
food governance will likely also lead to the development of less stringent, comprehensive
and inclusive standards. This, in turn, presents a real obstacle to making the agri-food
system more sustainable.
The chapter is organised as follows: the next section briefly presents the involvement
of TNCs in agri-food governance. Then, we discuss the four types of effects associated
with TNCs in the three cases. The fourth section concludes the analysis and discusses the
implications for global agri-food governance and beyond.
TNC INVOLVEMENT IN AGRI-FOOD GOVERNANCE:

BACKGROUND
TNCs play an increasingly important role in the shaping of the norms and rules of global
governance. Today, there are some 82 000 TNCs worldwide, with 810 000 foreign affili-
ates playing a major and growing role in the world economy (UNCTAD, 2009). Exports
by foreign affiliates of TNCs, for instance, are estimated to account for about a third of
total world exports of goods and services, and the number of people employed by them
worldwide totalled about 77 million in 2008 – more than double the total labour force of
Germany. TNCs have always been an integral part of agri-food governance but became
central actors as a result of the liberalisation of trade over the past 50 years and the
growth of foreign direct investment (Clapp, 2012). These processes allowed private firms
particularly from developed countries to expand their operations in a multitude of loca-
tions across the globe. Thus, while at the turn of the 1990s world FDI flows in agriculture
remained less than USD1 billion per year, by 2005–07 they had tripled to USD3 billion
annually (UNCTAD, 2009).
Three main segments of the world food economy feature TNCs as dominant players:
the agricultural inputs sector, such as farms and plantations, the trade and process-
ing sector, and the distribution and retail sector (Clapp, 2012). TNCs in these three
sectors differ both in size and location. Trade and retail TNCs are much larger in rela-
tion to agricultural ones (UNCTAD, 2009). For example, the world’s largest food and

everages TNC, Nestlé (Switzerland), controls USD66 billion in foreign assets, and the
b
largest food retailer, Wal-Mart (United States), controls USD63 billion. In contrast,
the largest agricultural TNC, Sime Darby (Malaysia), has only USD5 billion of foreign
assets. Moreover, the majority of TNCs belonging to the trade/processing and retail seg-
ments is situated in developed countries. In food processing, for instance, 39 of the top 50
firms are headquartered in developed countries. Likewise, the majority of the 25 largest
TNCs in the retail industry (22) is again from developed countries. In contrast, many
agricultural TNCs are also situated in the developing world.
TNCs are increasingly engaged in agri-food governance (Clapp and Fuchs, 2009).
Traditionally the domain of governmental and intergovernmental actors, the govern-
ance of food and agriculture is increasingly being not just influenced, but also ‘created’
by TNCs. Food retailers, in particular, are emerging as key players shaping the agri-food
sector on the basis of private standards and the creation of own brand products (Burch
and Lawrence, 2007). Accordingly, retailers have been described as the ‘new food and
lifestyle authorities’ next to the traditional authorities of government, church and pro-
fessional bodies (Dixon, 2007, p. 30). Likewise, processors, producers and their associa-
tions are also engaged in governance activities in the agri-food sector, albeit to a smaller
extent. Examples of producer-led governance efforts include the creation of alternative
food initiatives, roundtables for sustainable biofuels, palm oil, sugar and cotton, and
organisations dedicated to the promotion of organic agriculture, for instance (Morgan
et al., 2006). Further, many of the private governance initiatives developed by retailers,
producers or cooperative arrangements between the two also include the participation
of civil society organisations. Examples of civil society organisations participating in the
governance of agri-food include Oxfam, with a special focus on development issues and
the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), a leading environmental conservation organisation, as
well as Consumers International.
Private governance institutions may use different mechanisms to achieve their goals.
We can currently identify three distinct types of private governance mechanisms in
the agri-food sector: corporate social responsibility reporting (CSR), codes of conduct
(CoC), and private standards (see also Fuchs et al., 2011).1 Corporate social responsi-
bility efforts include measures to raise corporate awareness as well as reporting of busi-
ness activities that touch on social, human rights and environmental themes. The idea
is that such reporting will foster transparency, and ultimately improve firms’ perfor-
mance on these fronts (Gupta, 2010). Codes of conduct can be understood as written
guidelines on the basis of which companies deal with their workforce, suppliers, state
authorities and external stakeholders in their host country (Greven, 2004). Standards
are agreed criteria by which a product or a service’s performance, its technical and
physical characteristics, and/or the process, and conditions, under which it has been
produced or delivered, can be assessed (Nadvi and Wältring, 2002). Standards usually
represent the strictest form of private governance as they typically require regular inter-
nal and external auditing processes and include disciplinary penalties and/or rewards.
However, some codes of conduct are also certifiable. In sum, with these private govern-
ance mechanisms, TNCs are increasingly involved in the design, implementation and
enforcement of rules and principles governing the global food system, from inputs to
production to sale.

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EFFECTS OF TNC INVOLVEMENT IN AGRI-FOOD

GOVERNANCE
The effects of TNC involvement in sustainability governance in general, and agri-food

in particular, have been fiercely debated in the literature. Four types of effects have been
closely associated with TNCs: uptake boost, regulatory capture, weakening of standards
and barriers for small-scale capital.
Uptake, defined as membership size (the number of rule-takers adopting the initiative)
and spatial coverage (the geographic areas rule-takers are active in), signifies the poten-
tial of a private governance institution to foster large transformations in the market
towards sustainability objectives. Market transformations, for instance, are more
likely if a sufficiently large number of the intended target group with an appropriate
geographic coverage adopts the relevant private governance institution (Kalfagianni
and Pattberg, 2013a). In this context, Mayer and Gereffi (2010) argue that the pres-
ence of large lead firms with economic leverage over smaller suppliers in a given supply
chain will improve the uptake of the rules and standards supported by the governance
institution.2 Specifically, in cases where small suppliers have little option other than
doing business with the lead firm due to market concentration, the lead firm can use its
leverage to press suppliers for better labour practices or greener production methods on
the basis of sustainability rules and standards.3
Simultaneously, however, TNC involvement in sustainability governance has been
associated with corporate co-optation of sustainability standards, or else the absorp-
tion of these standards into the leadership or policy-determining structure of TNCs as
a means of averting threat to their stability or existence (see Selznick, 1949). According
to Jaffee and Howard (2010), co-optation occurs in two forms: regulatory capture and
weakening of standards. Regulatory capture takes place when parties with a strong
interest in the outcome of regulatory decisions attempt to influence the bodies making
such decisions to serve the commercial or special interests rather than the public interest.
In global governance we generally observe a growing link between private standards
and public regulation. Indeed, while a number of private rules and principles originate
in intergovernmental agreements and decisions (e.g., corporate labour standards are
anchored in ILO conventions), today the opposite phenomenon is also observable:
private governance institutions increasingly influence governmental regulation (Clapp,
2001; Dingwerth and Pattberg, 2007). Importantly, regulatory capture can also occur
inside the private governance institution, for example via the exclusion of specific inter-
ests, such as those of smallholders and civil society organisations, from decision-making
structures and procedures.
The weakening of standards can take a variety of forms. We are specifically inter-
ested in the lowering of the stringency of sustainability objectives, in other words the
extent to which the standards entail strict prescriptions for environmental and social
conduct. Without strict prescriptions we expect that behavioural changes by the targeted
actors tend to be weak (on average) and, accordingly, the overall impact of the private
governance institution lower than desired (Fuchs, 2006). Such prescriptions can be
reflected in verifiable/measurable targets, ambitious targets, monitoring and sanctioning
mechanisms (including the aspects of third-party auditing and the public accessibility of
reports), and the comprehensiveness of the sustainability dimensions addressed by the

standards. Sustainability dimensions include different types of environmental (input,

output and preservation), social (farmer incomes, labour standards, gender) issues, and
animal welfare aspects.
Further, standards can create barriers for small-scale capital to endorse the relevant
private governance institution, thus deflecting changes to the status quo in favour of
TNCs (Jaffee and Howard, 2010). Barriers include the erosion of price premiums,
soliciting the assistance of the state, for example in the form of subsidies, or requiring
large investment and other costs that cannot be incurred by smallholders. Barriers affect
primarily (though not exclusively) actors situated in the Global South, due to additional
structural constraints facing these groups, such as lack of available resources, absence of
supporting public regulatory frameworks, and so on.
In the following we explore these effects in three prominent private governance institu-
tions aiming to address global sustainability challenges in the agri-food system, namely
the GlobalGAP, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and Fairtrade. The data for the
analysis are derived from an extensive literature review and publicly available informa-
tion on the websites of the relevant institutions.
GlobalGAP
The GlobalGAP is a private sector body that sets voluntary standards for the cer-
tification of agricultural products around the globe. The standard (first known as
EurepGAP) was initiated in 1997 by retailers belonging to the Euro Retailer Produce
Working Group (EUREP). It aims to establish one standard for Good Agricultural
Practice (GAP) with different product applications capable of fitting to the whole
range of global conventional agricultural products. The GlobalGAP is a p re-farm-gate
standard, which means that the certificate covers the processing of the certified product
from farm inputs like feed or seedlings and all the farming activities until the product
leaves the farm. Moreover, it is a business-to-business label not directly visible to
consumers.
Uptake boost
GlobalGAP membership consists of three groups: retailers and food service members,
suppliers, and associate members. Membership has varied during the years, with new
members joining in and some dropping out (see also Van der Grijp, 2010). At the
moment of the study, the geographic coverage of the standard was universal. Europe,
however, is clearly dominant in all three categories. Especially in the retail sector, it rep-
resents almost 93 per cent of the members. In the other two categories, the percentage
of European members is slightly lower, with 72 per cent of the supplier members and
63 per cent of the associate members. In total, Europe represents 72 per cent of the total
GlobalGAP membership (Kalfagianni and Fuchs, 2012).
These numbers are important especially considering the economic leverage of retail
corporations in agri-food. In Western Europe, for instance, 85 per cent of all retailers
require GlobalGAP certification (Casey, 2009). Globally, leading global retailers and
food outlets with large turnovers, store numbers and workforces, also have adopted the
GlobalGAP. Examples (drawn from 2009 annual reports of various global retailers)
include Walmart with USD405 billion net sales in 2009 and 8400 stores in 15 countries

279
around the world; Ahold with total sales of EUR28 billion in 2009, 2909 stores, 206 000
employees; Carrefour group with net sales EUR86 billion in 2009, 15 661 stores and the
seventh largest employer worldwide in the private sector in 2009; and, Tesco with GBP59
billion group sales (including value-added tax) in 2009. It is the third largest grocery
retailer in the world with 4331 stores and employing 470 000 people. Moreover, Marks
and Spencer and the McDonald’s corporation are members of the GlobalGAP. From
the supply side, some of the biggest agricultural companies, for example, Del Monte,
Cargill, Frosta, participate in the initiative.
The significance of retail TNC participation in the GlobalGAP as an uptake booster
can be illustrated with an example from aquaculture. Aquaculture was introduced in the
GlobalGAP module relatively recently, in 2009. At the moment 144 farms, representing
500 000 metric tons of aquaculture products, are GlobalGAP certified (Kalfagianni and
Pattberg, 2013a). Other certification programmes for aquaculture exist much longer.
The most prominent is the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) created in 1997 as an
international, non- profit trade association aiming to advance environmentally and
socially responsible aquaculture. While itself a business organisation, but not created by
large corporations, GAA currently certifies 245 farms representing 585 000 metric tons
of aquaculture products, and is thus only slightly bigger than the GlobalGAP in terms
of uptake.
Regulatory capture
The GlobalGAP was created by European retailers and is currently highly business
dominated, shared equally by suppliers and retailers. Decisions are taken by the board
with elected representatives from both groups while civil society organisations are
excluded from decision-making. While the latter can participate in consultative roles in
the annual meetings, scholars have expressed concerns whether this constitutes adequate
representation of societal interests (Fuchs et al., 2011). The GlobalGAP also provides
the opportunity to interested parties to participate freely in public consultations regard-
ing revisions of the standard on the web. These mechanisms are important in that they
provide opportunities for voicing concerns or expressing excluded perspectives. We
cannot easily judge, however, the extent to which the GlobalGAP Board makes use of the
views exchanged in such forums in practice (Kalfagianni and Fuchs, 2012). Accordingly,
business interests, including those of TNCs, currently dominate while broader societal
interests, albeit present, are marginal.
Does the GlobalGAP shape, replace or prevent more stringent public regulation from
developing? The literature does not provide a clear response to this question. One of the
few studies in this context observes an influence of the GlobalGAP on the reconfigura-
tion of governance space in the area of food safety and quality in the discussions within
the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD). The study argues that intergovernmental agreements and organisations
fare less prominently, as the GlobalGAP and other private food safety and quality stand-
ards organisations become the primary market gatekeepers. However, the study empha-
sises that although the GlobalGAP illustrates a decentring of the state in relation to food
safety and quality, it has not rendered state systems of governance in this field obsolete.
Indeed, public regulation remains the foundation of the GlobalGAP’s protocols and

compliance with state regulations in both the country of origin and country of destina-
tion is a necessary requirement for GlobalGAP certification (Casey, 2009).
Weakening of standards
The GlobalGAP is one of the few private global food standards that pay attention
to environmental, social and health-related aspects of food. Today, the standard sets
very detailed qualitative targets and has institutionalised compliance and sanctioning
mechanisms. However, the relevance of the different sustainability dimensions differs.
While hygiene as well as animal-related aspects such as stocking density are ‘major
musts’, most environmental and social issues are relegated to the status of ‘minor musts’
if not ‘shoulds’.4 Moreover, fundamental social sustainability challenges such as farmer
incomes and gender issues are excluded.5 Importantly, previous research tracing develop-
ments in the standard underlines a shift in the weights among the different criteria repre-
sented in the GlobalGAP towards less stringent sustainability targets (Kalfagianni and
Fuchs, 2012). Specifically, while issues related to record keeping, internal self-inspection
and hygiene have been strengthened in the new versions of the standard, others, such as
recycling and reuse, impact of farming on the environment and wildlife and conservation
policies, have been reduced to ‘recommendations’.6
Barriers for small-scale capital

The GlobalGAP has been heavily criticised for creating barriers for small farmers in
developing countries due to the high costs of implementation and certification (Hatanaka
et al., 2005; FAO, 2006). Without such certification, however, these smaller farmers
have little chance of selling their products in the global market, as the global food retail
market is highly oligopolistic and most major retail chains demand GlobalGAP certi-
fication (or similar standards) (Fuchs et al., 2009). Numerous studies have shown the
devastating effects of GlobalGAP certification requirements for farmer livelihoods in
Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere, affecting in particular the most vulnerable members
of the population, including women farmers (ActionAid International, 2005).
To address these concerns, the GlobalGAP has recently initiated a project to foster
group certification for smallholders. The aim is to reduce external certification costs,
such as inspection charges. This aim is to be reached via the centralisation of audits
(e.g., for pesticide controls), for instance, which would help groups of farmers to benefit
from scale effects. Based on this possibility of suppliers to obtain group certification,
the GlobalGAP increasingly emphasises its relevance particularly for smallholders. In
addition, the GlobalGAP’s initiation of the Smallholder Ambassador and Observer for
Africa programme aiming to improve representation of smallholders in standard-setting
processes is a significant step in acknowledging the latter’s concerns. Despite these
efforts, however, smallholder involvement remains strictly consultative at the moment
(see Hachez and Wouters, 2011). In addition, the alleviation of pressure on smallholders
as a result of these initiatives has yet to be shown.
Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)
The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is a label for sustainable fisheries, created in
1997 as a result of an agreement between Unilever, one of the largest consumer product

281
companies and, at that time, the world’s largest buyer of frozen fish, and the World
Wildlife Fund (WWF), one of the leading international conservation organisations. It
is currently a multi-stakeholder organisation aiming to address the worldwide decline in
fish stocks by awarding sustainably managed fisheries with a label that could be affixed
to retail products after successful certification (Ponte, 2008). It can be applied to a wide
range of marine and freshwater fisheries across the world (Leadbitter et al., 2006). In its
current form, the MSC aims at specific fisheries rather than species that could come from
multiple fisheries and does not cover aquaculture (Iles, 2007).
Uptake boost
As of 2011, 104 fisheries were MSC certified, representing 12 per cent of the worldwide
catch and 118 were undergoing assessment to enter the MSC programme7 (see also
Kalfagianni and Pattberg, 2013b). Experts observe that uptake has improved dramati-
cally compared with the first ten years of MSC’s operation and continues to grow rapidly
(Jacquet et al., 2010). While in 2007 there were approximately 608 MSC certified prod-
ucts available in 29 countries (Sexsmith and Potts, 2009), currently the MSC claims to
have more than 14 000 certified products in 80 countries with an estimated retail value of
more than USD3 billion under its certification (MSC, 2011a, 2012a). In some countries,
the MSC has a particularly strong presence. Specifically, more than 60 per cent of fish
from US fisheries, 75 per cent of Norwegian seafood exports and roughly one-third of
all New Zealand fisheries are either certified or in assessment, according to the organi-
sation (Kalfagianni and Pattberg, 2013b). MSC is currently one of the fastest-growing
fisheries certification schemes (Bush et al., 2012) and holds a quasi-monopoly regarding
the number and coverage of certified fisheries in relation to competing schemes (Ponte,
2012).
According to some observers the endorsement of the MSC by major retailers and
branded processors was a major force behind its expansion (Foley, 2012; Ponte, 2012).
Indicatively, Wal- Mart (Owens, 2008), Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Lidl
(Goyert et al., 2010), have all pledged to endorse the MSC label as an exclusive source
of their frozen fish product range. There is also evidence that other actors from the food
service sector have an interest in the MSC, like the caterer giant Sodexo, which com-
pletely switched to MSC-certified products in the UK in 2010 (Stamford, 2010).
Despite this impressive uptake, the vast majority of MSC certified fisheries is situated
in the North. This is a serious shortcoming from a sustainability perspective, as nine
out of the top ten global fish producers are developing countries that contain some of
the most vulnerable marine ecosystems (Oosterveer, 2008; FAO, 2011). Moreover, the
demand for certified fish and seafood products is currently concentrated in Europe and
North America. As the leading transnational retailers extend their global reach, however,
buying strategies may progressively influence retail markets in East Asia, Africa, Eastern
Europe and Latin America, thus potentially boosting the uptake of the MSC label in a
global scale (FAO, 2011).
Regulatory capture
The MSC is a multistakeholder organisation comprising different interest groups.
Its highest decision-making body, the Board of Trustees, comprises five trustees from
science, four from the seafood industry, three from environmental NGOs and one from

retail (Carrefour) (MSC, 2011b). Trustees, however, come almost exclusively from
Europe and North America with one representative from Japan and no trustees from
developing countries. Next to the board, the MSC has a Stakeholder Council includ-
ing two chambers with one seat each in the board. The Commercial Chamber with
18 members comprises interests from the catch, processing, supply, retail, food service
sectors and other relevant commercial interests. Importantly, 17 out of the 18 members
represent the Global North. The Public Interest Chamber with 14 members comprises
interests from academia, science, management, the marine conservation community and
other relevant public interests, and is the only body with an almost equal North–South
representation (eight members from the North and six members from the South). In
sum, while TNC interests are underrepresented in the MSC, Northern interests clearly
dominate the initiative.
In terms of the interrelationship between the MSC and public regulation, we gener-
ally observe a growing link between the MSC standard and intergovernmental processes
(see also Kalfagianni and Pattberg, 2013b). More specifically, the MSC has an appeal
on national governments, particularly in the North. For example, in a European Union
consultation on minimum criteria for fishery ecolabels, the German government rec-
ommended consistency with the MSC’s Principles and Criteria for sustainable fishing
(MSC, 2011c). Moreover, in some cases, certification with the MSC has proven pivotal
in pre-empting more stringent public regulation. Examples include the prevention of
marine reserves by fishery managers using the achievement of MSC certification in
several locations including Western Australia’s rock lobster fishery (Sutton, 2003),
the zander (pike perch) fishery in Lake Hjalmaren, Sweden (Lopuch, 2008), and the
South African hake industry (Ponte, 2008; Pérez-Ramirez and Salvador, 2010). As
with GlobalGAP, however, the MSC has been developed on the basis of existing public
regulation. Specifically, it is consistent with the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) Ecolabelling Guidelines including 151 specifications with recommended princi-
ples, minimum substantive criteria assessment, certification and governance (California
Ocean Protection Council, 2012).
The MSC is strictly an environmental standard. Labour and socioeconomic aspects, such
as working hours, wage levels and income for fisheries, are excluded from the standard.
According to some observers, the exclusion of labour and socioeconomic elements under
the MSC certification scheme is related to uptake concerns. Specifically, it is feared that
the more complicated certification processes associated with social aspects will result in
slowing down the uptake by clients (Ponte, 2012). Despite its lack of comprehensive-
ness, the MSC’s long and detailed list of management and performance requirements
makes it the most stringent private fisheries standard with a global scope at the moment
(Kalfagianni and Pattberg, 2013b).

As noted earlier, the low levels of MSC uptake in wild capture fisheries in developing
countries has been one of the MSC’s most criticised aspects. This is related, in most
cases, to the high certification costs and the lack or unavailability of the required data to
carry out the assessment of fisheries. While the assessment and certification prices can

283
vary widely depending on, for instance, the size and complexity of the fishery, prices are
still high for the financially weak. For a small fishery to become MSC certified can cost
around USD10 000 while for a large fishery it can cost more than USD250 000 (FAO,
2011). Similar to GlobalGAP, small-scale fisheries from developing countries encoun-
ter problems accessing certification, thus limiting their access to the global market
(Constance and Bonanno, 2000; Bush et al., 2012; Ponte, 2012).
Originally a price premium was envisaged by the MSC. However, experiences with the
price premium have so far been inconsistent. For instance, the British Thames herring
producers and the New Zealand hoki fishery respectively obtained a price premium of
50 per cent and 10 per cent during the first year of MSC certification. However, for the
former fishery the price premium did not continue after this year (Sexsmith and Potts,
2009). A fishery from Uganda did not receive price premium at all. Similarly, Dutch
fisheries also expressed disappointment due to the lack of price premium for MSC-
certified North Sea herring (FAO, 2011) and the New Zealand Seafood Industry Council
(SeaFIC) noted that regarding hoki, it was not easy to identify premiums related to MSC
certification (ibid.).
In sum, the lack of price premiums, the relatively high certification costs and the exclu-
sion of socioeconomic aspects create barriers for small-scale fisheries. Given the increas-
ing demand of the MSC label by major retailers such barriers can be exacerbated and
become critical for the survival of small fisheries in the future. For this reason, the MSC
has recently launched the MSC Developing World Program (MSC, 2012b). The pro-
gramme aims primarily at increasing awareness of the MSC among crucial stakeholders,
fostering partnerships and including developing country voices in different stages of
standard development.
Fairtrade
Fairtrade began over 50 years ago as a mixture of charity organisations linked to a

variety of religious affiliations in Europe and the USA, which were subsequently com-
plemented by trading activities motivated by political solidarity (Wilkinson, 2007). It
emerged among political discourses emphasising that trade and not aid should provide
the basis for Third World development. Accordingly, Fairtrade groups became organ-
ised first on a national basis around importers and dedicated shops, and later on the
basis of labelling organisations licensing products for mainstream markets. The aim of
the Fairtrade movement is to improve the position of poor and marginalised producers
in the developing world, by creating a framework that enables trade to take place at
conditions respecting their interests. The way this is ensured is by guaranteeing a price to
producers participating in Fairtrade that is above market prices. Fairtrade is accompa-
nied by a label containing information on producers, thus establishing a symbolic rela-
tionship between Northern consumers and Southern producers who are often invisible
in the market (Raynolds, 2002; Renard, 2005).
Uptake boost
The mainstreaming of the movement started in the second half of the 1980s with the crea-
tion of the first Fairtrade labelling programme by the members of a Dutch association in
cooperation with a coffee grower association in Mexico: the Max Havelaar programme

(Nicholls, 2010; Kolk, 2013). The label guaranteed to consumers that the product was
sold under equitable conditions and appeared on packages of existing coffee brands
owned by established industries, for example, Douwe Egberts. This was a huge com-
mercial success and led to the expansion of the programme to many product categories,
including bananas, chocolate, clothing and so on.
The endorsement of Fairtrade by TNCs has been crucial in boosting its uptake.
Since the ‘corporatisation’ of the movement via its adoption by the multibillion-dollar
speciality coffee giant Starbucks in 2000, annual growth of the global Fairtrade market
has averaged over 40 per cent (Jaffee and Howard, 2010). In the years following this
development, a wide range of new commercial actors has entered the Fairtrade system.
Other large speciality coffee roasters sought certification to compete with Starbucks.
Some corporate mass roasters (Procter & Gamble, Nestlé) have also followed suit, as
have large restaurant chains (Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s) and retail chains (Costco,
Walmart). As a result, in 2009 Fairtrade certified sales amounted to approximately
EUR3.4 billion worldwide. As of 2012, 827 certified producer organisations in 58
producing countries that are medium or low on the Human Development Index, rep-
resenting over 1.2 million farmers and workers, participate in Fairtrade (Fairtrade
International, 2012).
Regulatory capture
The growth in size and volume of Fairtrade products, and the consequent complex-
ity and multiplication of products needing standards and certification have led to the
need to institutionalise the movement. In 1997 Fairtrade Labelling Organizations
International (FLO) was created as an umbrella organisation for pre-existing national
initiatives (Courville, 2003; Renard, 2005). FLO unified norms and rules of the different
national initiatives under one labelling and certification programme, accredited under
international norms and making use of third-party certification (Renard, 2005). As a
result, what started as a civic initiative with self-governed and self-certified structures
evolved into a professionalised bureaucracy with offices in Bonn. The centralisation
and professionalisation of the movement distanced producers from the South from the
centres of decision-making and led to the erosion of contact with national initiatives
and producer cooperatives. Trust has also been eroded as many Southern cooperatives
feel they have lost their voice in the new bureaucracy of the FLO. Despite an increase in
representation within FLO in recent years, Southern producers remain a clear minority
on FLO board of directors and key committees (Renard and Perezgovas, 2007; Jaffee
and Howard, 2010).
Fairtrade is based on two sets of standards: one for smallholder producer organisa-
tions and one for organisations dependent on hired labour, such as plantations. Given
the FLO’s developmental focus, two different sets of criteria are present: minimum
(required) and progress criteria (to be met over time). For smallholders, minimum crite-
ria are focused on the democratic functioning of the producer organisation and the use of
‘Fairtrade premium’ for social, economic and environmental development activities. For
plantations, the minimum criteria are focused on the implementation of the ILO conven-
tions and ensure worker rights and benefits, non-discrimination, and so forth. The FLO

285
also requires a ‘joint body’ structure made up of management and worker representa-
tives that decides on the use of ‘Fairtrade premium’.
Since 2003, in order to respond to increasing demand, the FLO dramatically increased
the certification of plantations and introduced many new products (e.g., cut flowers)
with exclusively or predominately plantation focus (Gogoi, 2008 in Jaffee and Howard,
2010). According to critics the inclusion of plantations weakened Fairtrade standards,
in particular with respect to labour issues (Jaffee and Howard, 2010). They note, for
instance, that labour standards protect the right to unionise, but they fail to guarantee
union representation. In addition, social premiums are jointly administered by manage-
ment and workers through controversial joint associations. Furthermore, standards only
require payment of national minimum wage not living wages. Likewise, in the effort to
attract licensing deals with TNCs, standards fail to protect small producers from unfair
price competition from certified plantations (Tucker, 2006 in Jaffee and Howard, 2010).

Scholars note a downward pressure on price premiums as a result of the mainstream-
ing success of the Fairtrade movement (Renard, 2005). Two factors are crucial in that
respect. First, the movement’s decision to enter the mainstream market rather than
remain a niche meant that production increased relative to demand (ibid). As the number
of certified producers and volumes of production increased price premiums decreased.
Second, a number of retailers and roasters started developing their own ‘socially respon-
sible labels’ (see Kolk, 2013). Starbucks, for instance, has initiated the CAFÉ pro-
gramme currently covering 75 per cent of its certified coffee. Other competitive schemes
with broader business representation and less stringent standards, such as the Common
Code for the Coffee Community (4C), are preferred by large TNCs, including Nestlé and
Kraft. In sum, this new competitive landscape in combination with Fairtrade’s effort to
withhold and even expand its mainstream uptake has resulted in smaller price premiums
for producers.
Next to a downward pressure on price premiums, FLO introduced certification fees.
Whereas in the movement’s early stages certification was paid for by market actors
through payment for the right to use the label and national initiatives, its professionali-
sation created the need to pay the professional auditors by the cooperatives. Scholars
observe, however, that producer organisations do not necessarily question the principle
of paying the costs of third party certification if this enhances the credibility of the label
(Renard, 2005). They question, though, the lack of transparency with which FLO and
FLO-Cert (the auditing organisation) have determined the rates charged (ibid).
Despite these criticisms, some producers also identify a range of benefits including
improved quality of cultivation and processing (for coffee), the easier acceptance to
the market and consolidation of commercial relation with buyers, as well as improve-
ments in administrative processes and commercialisation of skills (Renard, 2005). To
the extent that these benefits can compensate for the costs identified earlier, Fairtrade
can continue to claim that its fundamental objective, that is, to ensure equitable trading
arrangements for disadvantaged smallholders who are organised in cooperatives, has
not been seriously jeopardised by the involvement of TNCs. As these processes con-
tinue to unfold, future research shedding more light on the underlying dynamics is
necessary.

CONCLUSION
This chapter began with the observation that transnational corporations (TNCs) have
become pivotal actors in agri- food governance for sustainable development. Their
remarkable growth in both number and size as well as their global reach have made them
particularly attractive partners for governments and civil society organisations aiming to
foster environmental and social goals by harnessing market forces. In this context, we
observed that the development of standards and certification schemes that prescribe and
monitor environmental and socially responsible behaviour in agri-food supply chains
increasingly involves the participation of TNCs. We noted, however, that while TNC
involvement in sustainable agri-food governance has the potential to achieve great ben-
efits by transforming the market from within, it might also come at a cost.
Accordingly, this contribution examined the effects of TNC involvement in private
governance for the sustainability of the agri-food system. Involvement has been concep-
tualised both in terms of TNCs developing their own rules and standards as well as TNC
endorsement of private governance institutions initiated by or jointly with civil society
organisations. We examined four types of effects identified in the literature as closely
related to TNCs, specifically uptake boost, regulatory capture, weakening of standards
and barriers for small-scale capital actors. The chapter illustrated its argument with an
examination of TNC involvement in three prominent institutions aiming to address
sustainability challenges in agri-food: the GlobalGAP, the Marine Stewardship Council
and Fairtrade.
Our analysis demonstrated that in all cases, the involvement of TNCs led to a larger
uptake of the related private governance institutions in the market. However, this uptake
has not always been equally dispersed geographically, particularly in a North–South
context. In the case of the MSC, for instance, uptake was found to be confined to
Northern fisheries and markets. Such spatial uptake, in turn, could limit the environ-
mental benefits of the programme, particularly as the majority of the world’s vulnerable
fisheries are situated in the Global South.
The analysis also showed that regulatory capture, particularly in the form of marginal-
ising the interests of vulnerable actors and actors representing broader societal interests,
was evident in all cases. Even in Fairtrade, where the interests of small Southern suppli-
ers are at the heart of its objectives, the latter’s representation in FLO main decision-
making bodies was reported as marginal. We could not find sufficient evidence to report
capture of public regulation, however. While in the cases of both the GlobalGAP and
the MSC concerns have been voiced regarding the decentring of the state and prevention
of development of more stringent public regulation, current evidence is not sufficiently
broad and detailed to support a strong public regulatory capture claim.
Problematically, the analysis revealed a weakening of standards towards less stringent
goals and the creation of barriers for small capital actors to participate. The former
observation is associated with pressures to improve uptake in the mainstream market
and concerns that very stringent standards can only be implemented in a niche. The latter
observation is associated with the erosion of price premiums (when present), and the
high certification costs, which make certification difficult to afford for small suppliers
particularly in the South. While the standard-setting organisations themselves recognise
these challenges and have taken related measures, these are of a reformist nature aiming

287
to create small adjustments rather than radically shift the balance in favour of more
stringent and inclusive standards.
In short, our analysis reveals a mixed picture with respect to TNC involvement in
agri-food governance. While the benefits from a larger uptake of private governance
sustainability institutions can be substantial, the challenges are sufficiently serious to
demand a closer look. Consequently, as commendable as it may be that TNCs assume
responsibility for the benefit of agri-food sustainability, potential if not likely trade-offs
are important to bear in mind in efforts to shape future regulatory developments for the
sustainability of the agri-food system and beyond.
NOTES
1. In addition, public–private partnerships provide private actors with a significant role in governance.
2. In addition, Mayer and Gereffi (2010) point out that the existence of economic leverage is not merely a
question of size, but will depend on specific characteristics of the relationships between the relevant actors,
as well as on the transparency of practices (see also Auld et al., 2010 and Locke et al., 2009).
3. Note that this argument entails two conditions, however: (a) large firms with economic leverage need to
be included in the supply chain and (b) these large firms need to be leaders in terms of the objectives of the
governance institution. The two-fold nature of this argument is well reflected in Dauvergne and Lister’s
(2010) finding that big retailers in the timber sector are in a position to function as potential chain leaders
in improving the conditions in the timber sector and therefore the world’s forests, while at this point,
however, their pressure predominantly leads to cost cutting and further deteriorations in sustainability.
4. For ‘major musts’ 100 per cent compliance is compulsory, whereas for ‘minor musts’ 95 per cent compli-
ance is sufficient. ‘Shoulds’ have the status of recommendations that must be inspected by certification
bodies, but are not a prerequisite for the granting of a GlobalGAP certificate. Environmental inputs,
such as use of fertiliser and irrigation, are targeted by the standard but considered ‘minor musts’. Outputs
include one ‘major must’, related to the clearance of farm and premises of litter and waste to avoid estab-
lishing a breeding ground for pests and diseases that could result in a food safety risk. In the conservation
category, a number of requirements exist but almost all are ‘recommendations’, except for one ‘minor
must’ regarding the establishment of a management of wildlife and conservation plan for the enterprise
that acknowledges the impact of farming activities on the environment.
5. GRASP (GlobalGAP Risk Assessment on Social Practices), a recently introduced module that covers a
broader range of social issues, including children’s rights, legal status of employees, working hours and so
on, is completely voluntary and, therefore, not required for GlobalGAP certification.
6. GlobalGAP publishes a new version of the standard every three years to account for technological and
market developments.
7. Regular updates are provided on the website of the MSC (http://www.msc.org/business-support/key-facts-
about-msc and http://www.msc.org/track-a-fishery/in-assessment).
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14. Trade-related intellectual property: implications
for the global seed industry, food sovereignty and
farmers’ rights
Claire R. Parfitt and Daniel F. Robinson
THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REGIME
Forty per cent of the world’s population are engaged in agricultural production and
90 per cent of the world’s farms are less than two hectares (ha) in size (IAASTD, 2009).
Though the agri-food sector is dominated by a handful of multinational companies, the
majority of the participants in agriculture are workers, smallholders and peasants. The
intellectual property regime is a key feature of the ‘globalisation’ of agriculture in that it
has contributed to a concentration of capital amongst a handful of private companies,
influenced the direction of agricultural research and development in favour of broada-
cre, industrialised grain farming over biodiverse, agro-ecological systems, and is under-
mining the capacity of peoples to control and manage their agri-food systems.
A web of international, regional and domestic laws regulates intellectual property and
utilisation of the tangible materials covered by these laws (e.g., seeds and plant genetic
resources). As Drahos (1997, p. 202) notes of intellectual property (IP) rights-holders:
‘Owners of abstract objects see the dawn of an age in which they enjoy rights that have
a global reach’. The establishment of IP rights protection as a ‘trade-related’ concern
for governments in the 1980s and 1990s had a globalising effect on IP, which has subse-
quently impacted agricultural production and agri-food systems.
One of the most significant international agreements on intellectual property as
it relates to trade, food and agriculture is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects
of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The TRIPS Agreement (Annex 1C of the Agreements establishing the WTO, 1994)
is intended, according to its Preamble, to standardise intellectual property rights
amongst WTO member states, as well as providing mechanisms for enforcement and
dispute settlement (Dutfield, 2000). TRIPS prescribes a set of minimum standards for
the intellectual property regimes of WTO member states, and the Dispute Settlement
Understanding (DSU) provides for enforcement of rights, including the ability for
member states to ‘cross-retaliate’ – to sanction a country found to be non-compliant
under the DSU. With 155 member states, the WTO and TRIPS have dealt a powerful
‘harmonising’ and strengthening effect on IP enforcement internationally.
The most pertinent IP rights relating to agriculture are patents and plant breeder’s
rights. Article 27.3(b) of TRIPS provides a limited exception for IP rights relating to
plants. This exception requires WTO member states to provide patent protection for
plants, or a sui generis alternative, or a combination of systems.
The only internationally recognised sui generis protection, also known as plant
breeders’ rights (PBR) or plant variety protection (PVP), is covered by the UPOV
291
(International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants) Convention that
came into force in 1968, and has strengthened the protections for PBR-holders in sub-
sequent amendments (in 1978 and 1991). UPOV covers plant varieties that are new,
distinct, uniform and stable (known as ‘DUS requirements’, Articles 1, 6, 7, 8, 9). New
varieties are those that have not been sold or marketed without the agreement of the
breeder. Protected varieties must be distinguished from other plants by one or more
characteristics, and must demonstrate stability and uniformity of their characteristics
after propagation (Dutfield, 2008). However, these DUS requirements have been con-
troversial in many developing countries for encouraging genetic uniformity in protected
crops.
Key differences between PVP and patents for plants include the subject matter and the
scope of the protection. With respect to subject matter, PVP covers only plant varieties,
while patents can be applied to plant varieties as well as specific genes or gene sequences,
breeding processes and biological information. The use of patents to protect genes and
gene sequences has resulted in a number of very broad claims that provide the capacity
to ‘effectively confound competitors’, as discussed by Lawson (2002, p. 101) based on the
Australian experience: ‘The decisions about erythropoietin, Taq DNA polymerase and
serotonin receptors illustrate how multiple claims may apply to a basic sequence “inven-
tion”, and that in each case there is a very limited scope for substitution or imitation, or
even further innovation’.
Also of note is the case relating to European Patent EP0301749, whereby Monsanto,
upon acquiring Agracetus, defended its patent, which claimed: ‘A soybean seed which
will yield upon cultivation a soybean plant comprising in its genome a foreign gene
effective to cause the expression of a foreign gene product in the cells of the soybean
plant’. This was disputed by the ETC Group, Syngenta and Pioneer Hi-Bred, who were
concerned that this patent effectively covered all GM soy lines, undermining competi-
tion. Ultimately the ETC Group, as appellants, won this case on the grounds of lack of
novelty (Robinson, 2010).
The implication is that once a gene has been patented, it can be inserted into numerous
plants by means of genetic modification, and numerous patented genes can be inserted
into the same plant. As a result, genetically modified (GM) plants can be covered by
several patents, often in addition to PVP. Varieties bred by means other than genetic
modification (e.g., conventional breeding) may also be patentable in certain jurisdictions
(e.g., the USA and Australia), but only if they meet novelty and inventiveness criteria for
protection (and are useful).
The scope of PVP is somewhat narrower than patent protection. The UPOV
Convention allows an exemption for breeders to use protected plant material for the pur-
poses of research and developing new varieties. There is no such exemption for patented
materials under TRIPS. It is often assumed that there is also an exemption for farmers
to save and replant seeds from plants covered by PVP; however, this is a matter of dis-
cretion for the legislators at the nation-state level (Dutfield, 2000).1 Nonetheless, many
jurisdictions continue to provide farmers with such an exemption for the time being.
Some countries such as India have explicitly included provisions for ‘farmers’ rights’ to
save and reuse seeds (discussed below).
Although it has typically been assumed that PVP presents fewer problems in terms of
equity, social justice and development objectives than do patents on plants, convergence

Trade-related intellectual property 293
between these regimes over time suggests that this is decreasingly the case. In the 1991
amendments to the UPOV Convention, the maximum period for PVP was extended
from 15 to 20 years and it was agreed that plants could simultaneously hold both PVP
and patent protection. The scope of the PVP regime has also been expanded to cover
not only plant varieties but also harvested material and ‘essentially derived varieties’.2
In addition, the 1991 amendments extended the range of activities that require authori-
sation of the holder of PVP including ‘production or reproduction; offering for sale;
selling or other marketing; exporting; importing; and stocking for the above purposes’
(Dutfield, 2008, p. 37).
Although a key argument for multilateral agreements like TRIPS was that it would
reduce the capacity of powerful countries to impose their demands on other states, we
see an increasing dependence on bilateral and regional agreements to exert intellectual
property rights (Drahos, 2003). Such agreements impose requirements to comply with
international law such as TRIPS and UPOV, and establish more substantial protections,
or additional enforcement mechanisms for those laws. Examples include existing free
trade agreements (FTAs) such as the one between Australia and the United States (US)
and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and those currently being
negotiated like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and PACER-Plus. Countries like the US
exert a high level of control over the international intellectual property regime through
their power in these negotiations that supports the objectives of private companies and
constitutes a form of private governance (ibid.). Sell (2003) gives a telling account of
the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), using both TRIPS and
US trade law to exert pressure on other countries to tighten IP laws in accordance with
corporate interests. The activities of the Industry Functional Advisory Committee
on Intellectual Property Rights for Trade Policy Matters (IFAC) are also instructive.
Drawing its members from the upper echelons of the US business community, the IFAC
monitors trade negotiations to ensure consistent application of intellectual property
requirements, in accordance with US policy priorities. Shifting focus from multilateral
to bilateral and regional fora has been effective in assisting the US government to more
effectively impose its preferred policies on subjects such as intellectual property, having
a gradual ‘ratchet effect’ of strengthening IP norms (Drahos, 2004). This ‘ratchet’ is put
in motion by using bilateral rather than multilateral decision-making structures, coor-
dinating bilateral and multilateral IP strategies using mechanisms like the IFAC, and
entrenching minimum IP requirements in each agreement, leading to ever-increasing
standards of protection (Drahos, 2003). In relation to agriculture, for example, Roffe
(2008) notes that the US–Chile FTA provides for a ‘best effort’ clause in order for each
party to work towards patent protection for plants (even though Chile is a member of the
1978 UPOV Convention). Roffe (2008) also notes that the US–Morocco FTA provides a
direct obligation for the parties to allow grant of patents on animals and plants.
Establishment of strong intellectual property rights norms at the international level
(predominantly through TRIPS, but also through pressure to establish a Substantive
Patent Law Treaty in the World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO3) is leading
to stronger protection at the domestic level and convergence amongst certain juris-
dictions with respect to plant-related intellectual property. Various decisions of US,
Canadian and Australian law courts over the last few decades demonstrate this trend.
In Grain Pool of Western Australia v. Commonwealth (2000) 202 CLR 479 the

majority of the Australian High Court found that the PVP legislation (the Plant
Variety Act and the later Plant Breeders’ Rights Act 1994 [Cth]) was valid, falling
within the Commonwealth’s power to make laws about ‘patents of innovation’ in the
Constitution. The High Court revisited the ‘watershed’ Australian case of National
Research Development Corporation v. The Commissioner of Patents (1959) 102 CLR
252 that found no prohibition on patenting agricultural and horticultural methods,
and endorsed the US Supreme Court decision regarding patents on higher life forms in
Diamond v. Chakrabaty. The High Court’s decision in this case ‘has given a clear signal
that it will interpret the intellectual property power in a broad and flexible fashion’
(Rimmer, 2008, p. 59).
A similar trajectory towards increasingly broad interpretation of patent law can be
discerned from US and Canadian case law. In JEM AG Supply Inc v. Pioneer Hi-Bred
International Inc 534 U.S. 124 (2001) the US Supreme Court found that ‘utility patents’
(similar to patents in other jurisdictions) extend to plants and that the fact that the US
has an established plant patent regime system (similar to PVP in other jurisdictions) does
not exclude the utility patent system from applying to plants.
In Canada, the prominent case of canola breeder Percy Schmeiser emerged when
Monsanto Canada took action against him for infringement of its patent on GM Round
Up Ready canola. Schmeiser alleged that the GM plants on his land were the result of
contamination rather than deliberate planting. The Supreme Court found in favour of
Monsanto that the company’s patent was valid and that Schmeiser had breached the
patent regardless of how the GM seed arrived on his land (Law and Marles, 2004; Cullet,
2005). The outcomes of these decisions demonstrate a similar tendency towards extend-
ing the scope of patent protection and the rights of patent-holders (Rimmer, 2008).
Plant-related intellectual property protections are criticised on many grounds, includ-
ing the fact that intellectual property boundaries are more ‘blurred’ than those of ‘real’
or tangible property and there is greater capacity for overlap between different rights-
holders (Dutfield, 2006). There are also concerns regarding the use of arbitrary and
inadequate criteria for application of patent and PVP protections (Dutfield, 2003). This
chapter is primarily concerned with how intellectual property regimes are impacting on
farmers’ rights and food sovereignty, through changes in power relations and industry
composition.
The international community has acknowledged, and responded to, the potential for
intellectual property to impact adversely on farmers’ rights. The International Treaty
on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (‘Plant Treaty’) came into force
in 2004. The Plant Treaty aims to establish a multilateral system for facilitating access
to plant genetic resources, and sharing the benefits arising from their use on fair and
equitable terms (Preamble and Article 10). This is intended as a parallel or alternative to
the approach under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which established
national sovereignty over natural resources and through the Nagoya Protocol (in force
from October 2014) is now seeking to clarify the regulation of access to genetic resources
as subject to prior informed consent and benefit sharing in provider countries. The
Plant Treaty purports to provide for, amongst other things, farmers’ rights with respect
to accessing plant genetic resources and benefit sharing from exploitation of those
resources. According to Article 9, signatories are required to ‘take measures to protect
and promote Farmers’ Rights, including:

(a) protection of traditional knowledge relevant to plant genetic resources for food and
agriculture;
(b) the right to equitably participate in sharing benefits arising from the utilisation of plant
genetic resources for food and agriculture; and
(c) the right to participate in making decisions, at the national level, on matters related to the
conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. (FAO,
2009a, pp. 12–13)
Although it is important that the Plant Treaty acknowledges these aspects of farmers’
rights, it does not yet have sufficient detail, funding or mechanisms for implementation
to enable the enjoyment of these rights.
The implementation of the Plant Treaty has so far had limited impact on a number of
fronts. First, limited coverage means that the Plant Treaty applies to most major food
crops, but excludes minor ones that are more likely to be of importance to smallholder
farmers. Second, access must be provided only for materials in the public domain, meaning
that private companies or individuals are not required to provide access to the materials
that they own and control, but they can access the materials that are made publicly avail-
able. Third, even where access is granted, it is only for conservation, research and breeding
(GRAIN, 2005; Lawson, 2009). Fourth, though it is not permitted to claim intellectual
property rights over material accessed under the Plant Treaty, if a modification is made to
the material, it is possible to apply for such protection. Where commercialised varieties are
developed from material accessed via the Plant Treaty, participants are required to share
the monetary benefits of such commercialisation. Benefit-sharing rates represent only a
small royalty (1.1 per cent of sales less 30 per cent) as specified by the Standard Material
Transfer Agreement (SMTA) of the Treaty. Benefits are intended to accrue in a fund to
be used to support farmers and breeders in developing countries. However, to date only
donor funds have been used for these purposes in relation to the Plant Treaty. Part of the
problem seems to be that there are various avenues for breeders to more easily obtain
germplasm from non-Parties to the Plant Treaty, from universities, private genebanks,
private landholders, the US Department of Agriculture, and other sources. As Lawson
(2009, p. 254) notes, the text of the treaty and SMTA ‘creates a quandary – too much intel-
lectual property may limit the usefulness of the Multilateral System and too little intellec-
tual property may deliver inadequate benefits’ via the fund of the Treaty.
There have been critics who suggest that the Plant Treaty does not go far enough.
It acknowledges farmers’ contributions to the global food system, but does not clearly
define their rights, nor provide sufficient funding towards in situ conservation and breed-
ing activities (Footer, 2006; Lawson, 2009). An analysis of current trends in seed industry
dynamics and food sovereignty movements demonstrates that the intellectual property
regime continues to undermine farmers’ rights and the establishment of a sustainable
agri-food system.
THE SEED INDUSTRY: CONCENTRATION OF ECONOMIC

POWER
The developments in plant-related intellectual property laws discussed above have trav-
elled alongside developments in plant breeding technologies such as hybridisation and

genetic modification. These developments have been stimulated by increasing private

interest and investment in plant breeding.
Agricultural research has been the domain of peasant farmers for thousands of years,
but attracted increasing public investment with the emergence of the nation-state and
scientific progress since the Industrial Revolution, not to mention the increasing food
demands of a growing non-agricultural population. Private interest in plant breeding
(other than that of farmers themselves) was historically limited by the restricted possi-
bilities for financial returns,4 but the development of hybrid seeds, combined with intro-
duction of intellectual property for plants, has changed this situation (Kloppenburg,
2004).
Hybrid corn was developed in the early 1900s in the US, shortly before we see the
first Plant Patents Act 1930 (USA). Subsequent attempts to hybridise other crops
largely failed, and this sent further signals to the growing seed industry that legal forms
of intervention for commercial protection of ‘innovation’ was needed beyond just bio-
logical controls (Allard, 1999, pp. 92–4). These developments in the US started a con-
versation about plant-related intellectual property at the global level. The International
Association for the Protection of Industrial Property discussed the need for plant protec-
tion in 1932. In 1934, the London Act amended the Paris Convention on the Protection
of Industrial Property to expressly include ‘natural products’ as industrial property. The
1952 Wuesthoff Report supported the idea of both patent and sui generis plant protec-
tion, and in 1957 the International Association of Plant breeders selected a committee of
experts to address the issue (Dutfield, 2003; Mills, 2010).
Hybrid corn was of particular interest because the nature of the hybrid meant that
farmers were required to repurchase new seeds each year (Dutfield, 2003). This overcame
one of the biological barriers to profit-making and capital accumulation in plant breed-
ing, being that seeds reproduce themselves and are therefore a relatively cheap source of
the means of production for farmers (Kloppenburg, 2004). Along with stronger intellec-
tual property rights to protect financial returns, this scientific development encouraged
greater private investment in plant breeding. The more recent development of genetic use
restriction technologies (GURTs) also has provided a mechanism through which genetic
modification of plants that are not easily hybridised may control farmer reuse of seeds.
Variety-use restriction GURTs are a biotechnological control that results in sterile seeds
for the subsequent generation, incapacitating farmer seed saving (see Kameri-Mbote and
Otieno-Otek, 2009). This has obvious implications for farmers’ rights.
The case of the Plant Patent Act is a good example of the importance of political
power in the development of intellectual property rights (Dutfield, 2003). The Act
protected asexually reproduced plants and excluded sexually reproduced plants, even
though scientific developments at the time were focused primarily on the sexually repro-
duced varieties. The industry was able to achieve its objectives in protecting asexually
reproduced plants because of their level of political organisation and because they made
strategic compromises, including allowing the exclusion of tubers, thereby allaying
public concerns regarding the control of staples such as potatoes (ibid.).
Private influence continues to be an important factor in intellectual property law, and
industry development and dynamics. Multinational companies exert extraordinary influ-
ence over the food system (De Schutter, 2009), and the seed industry is a classic example.
Commercial control over agricultural resources is overwhelmingly concentrated in the

Monsanto
21%
The rest
50%
DuPont
16%
Syngenta
8%
Bayer Limagrain
2% 3%
Source: Compiled from company annual reports of seed sales and media coverage of global seed sales.
Figure 14.1 Top five global seed companies 2011 (market share, by sales)
Global North, with the world’s ten largest seed companies all based in Europe, North
America and Japan. Some key points are the following:
● The global seed industry was worth an estimated USD41 billion in 2011 and has
been rapidly growing and consolidating in recent decades.
● In 2008, ten companies controlled around 67 per cent of the global proprietary
seed market (Phillips, 2008; Hubbard, 2009).
● The top five companies – Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Limagrain and Bayer –
controlled around 50 per cent of global seed sales in 2011 (Figure 14.1).
We can also see the rapid consolidation of private power in particular markets. In
1980, eight companies controlled around 70 per cent of the global corn seed market
(Kloppenburg, 2004), but by 2010 this was reduced to two companies (Kaskey,
2010). In the US, where almost all corn grown is GM, Monsanto alone controls over
60 per cent of the market (Hubbard, 2009). In 2007, Monsanto held patents on approx-
imately 90 per cent of the world’s GM crops (Hunt, 2009) and more than 20 per cent
of the global proprietary seed market (ETC Group, 2008). Monsanto’s control of the
seed market in the US is so strong that its number one competitor, DuPont, brought
an antitrust action against it, leading to a Department of Justice investigation into
monopolistic practices, beginning in 2009 (Hubbard, 2009). DuPont, which lost more

than 10 per cent of its corn-seed market share to Monsanto in a decade, pointed to the
many seed company acquisitions, licensing deals and carefully defended patents that
Monsanto had used to enhance its market share. DuPont argued that through licens-
ing agreements with other seed companies, Monsanto’s patented genes are found in
nearly all of the corn, soy and cotton (all of which are GM) planted in the US (Gillam,
2009).
There is an important relationship between seeds and other agricultural inputs that
enables horizontal as well as vertical integration of the agri-food supply chain. In the
1980s, major agri-chemical companies began to acquire seed companies (Srinivasan,
2003). Today, four of the world’s top ten largest agri-chemical producers – Monsanto,
DuPont, Bayer and Syngenta – are also amongst the top ten seed companies (ETC
Group, 2008). The agri-chemical market is as concentrated as the seed market with the
top ten companies controlling 89 per cent of sales in 2007 (ibid.).
The consolidation of private control in the agri-food system and the integration
of dependence upon seeds and costly, intensive inputs are allowing companies in the
industry to increase their sales and profit margins through monopolistic practices. For
example, Monsanto increased its net income by 104 per cent between 2007 and 2008, and
increased its seed prices by as much as 35 per cent in 2008 (Phillips, 2008). The control of
intellectual property rights leads to self-reinforcing mechanisms for industry consolida-
tion where overlapping patents and PVP increase operating costs and barriers to entry,
denying opportunities for smaller firms to challenge the industry leaders (Srinivasan,
2003).
Extensive use of intellectual property rights has often been associated with anti-
competitive, monopolistic and cartel-like business practices (Drahos with Braithwaite,
2002; Palombi, 2009). As Drahos with Braithwaite (2002, p. 53) note: ‘Patent-sharing
agreements did exactly the same things that good old-fashioned cartel agreements
did. They divided up territories, set prices and controlled production’. The use of
patents in the agri-food sector is a contemporary example of the same correlation.
Farmers have complained of Monsanto colluding with other biotech companies,
like DuPont, to fix prices and control trade in seeds, which might be interpreted as
being in breach of US antitrust law (Drahos with Braithwaite, 2002). Joint ventures
and cross-licensing agreements between leading industry players collaborating on
research, development and commercialisation can take vital information out of the
public sphere and restrict access to new plant varieties. Some recent examples include
the following:
● Monsanto and BASF are engaged in a USD1.5 billion research and develop-
ment collaboration, covering five crops, which was extended in 2010 by a further
USD1 billion investment.
● Monsanto and Dow Agrochemicals developed a variety of GM corn stacked with
eight genetic traits, including patented genes from both companies, which was
released in 2010.
● Monsanto and Syngenta settled outstanding litigation in 2008, making a series of
cross-licensing agreements.
● Syngenta and DuPont announced an agreement to share their pesticide portfolios
in 2008 (ETC Group, 2008).

These kinds of restrictive arrangements between companies with large market share
contribute to the consolidation of intellectual property ownership amongst a few com-
panies and the potential for limiting access to commodities that are integral to people’s
lives (Dutfield, 2003).
Not only do industry leaders make agreements between themselves, but also with
governments, universities and public agencies. The public–private partnership (PPP)
between Novartis and the University of California is a well-known example (Klotz-
Ingram and Day-Rubenstein, 1999; Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009), while Australia’s
national science agency, CSIRO, is engaged in a number of joint ventures with some
of the world’s largest seed companies, including Monsanto, Limagrain and Syngenta.
In the United Kingdom, the process has been more indirect, with the privatisation of
research infrastructure and the placement of industry representatives on the boards
of research institutes (ibid.). The division of ‘innovative labour’ between the public
and private sectors also favours private interests, where public sector work focuses on
basic development of seeds, while the private sector applies profit-making innovations
(ibid.) such as insertion of a patented gene for herbicide tolerance. The agricultural
biotechnology industry relies heavily on public science, leading to many criticisms, for
example, that transnational companies use freely available, publicly developed germ-
plasm to develop GM seeds and then restrict farmers’ access to those seeds (Hubbard,
2009).
As was the case in the enactment of the US Plant Patent Act in the 1930s, the global
seed industry continues to exercise considerable political power in order to obtain its
preferred legislative and regulatory outcomes. In addition to the economic and market
power seed and agri-chemical companies are able to exercise through their market share,
and the influence they obtain through joint research and development ventures with
government, practices such as ‘revolving doors’ also have an impact on public policy.
Monsanto and the US government, in particular, are routinely criticised for the regular
exchange, or ‘revolving doors’, between the offices of senior bureaucrats and Monsanto
executive staff (Ferrara, 1998). A key example is Michael Taylor, a lawyer who rep-
resented Monsanto on issues related to artificial growth hormones for milk (rGBH).
Taylor later worked as the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) deputy commis-
sioner for policy, where he wrote the rBGH labelling guidelines, in which he downplayed
risks that were deemed sufficient to ban rGBH in Europe, Australia, Canada and other
jurisdictions (European Council Decision 1999/879/EC; Horovitz, 2009). Taylor spent a
few years in the direct employ of Monsanto, before returning to Obama’s FDA as the
‘food safety’ commissioner (Bloom, 2012). Since Ferrara’s 1998 article, which exposed
the lengths to which Monsanto went in order to obtain favourable public policy out-
comes, many other instances of unseemly relations between government officials and
executives have been noted. Bloom (2012) lists 15 senior employees of departments like
the FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and elected officials who have
either worked for Monsanto directly or provided professional services, such as legal
advice, to the company.
Concentration of economic and market power has gone hand in hand with certain
technological developments in agriculture, and with the interdependence of industry and
government in this sector.

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
The direction of research and development in this sector is critical to meeting the future
food needs of a growing population in the context of climate change and increasing
resource scarcity. Acknowledging that the global agri-food system is in crisis on a mul-
titude of levels (from food provisioning and price crises to the implications of climate
change, water scarcity and fossil fuel dependency, increasing food demands of a growing
population and so on), there has been considerable discussion in recent years about what
a future agri-food system must look like. Public discourse typically centres on the idea
that 70–100 per cent more food is required to feed a population of nine billion people by
2050, falling into a productionist paradigm that simply focuses on greater output (FAO,
2009b; Fischetti, 2011).
However, it is increasingly understood that the agri-food system is fundamentally
dysfunctional, requiring radical change in order to meet future challenges. A recent
report by 400 of the world’s leading agricultural scientists (IAASTD, 2009) called
decisively for agro-ecological development and a holistic transformation of the global
agri-food sector. This position is supported by the work of the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme (De
Schutter and Vanloqueren, 2011), as well as its Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
(De Schutter, 2011).
Justification for intellectual property rights often relies on the supposed incentives
these rights generate for innovation (Srinivasan, 2003). However, the possibility of
achieving the kinds of changes necessary to establish a socially, economically and eco-
logically sustainable food system is limited by prevailing intellectual property regimes.
Private interest and investment driven by profit, coupled with the structural power of
business and certain governments, direct agricultural research and development in par-
ticular ways.
While the emergence of plant-related intellectual property regimes has been closely
linked to and influenced by private interests and political power, both historically and on
a continuing basis today (Dutfield, 2003; Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009), we also observe
the inverse, where intellectual property rights and related factors provide an incentive
for particular research and development projects, while locking out others. Today, the
private sector funds around one-third of agricultural research globally and around half
in OECD countries (Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009). This has a considerable impact on
choice of research and development projects undertaken.
Hybrid seeds, the development of which was supported by the private interests that
stood to profit from them, spurred the emergence of high-input, industrialised farming,
as these seeds relied on chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and irrigation systems, for best
performance. This was known as the Green Revolution, which took place in the 1960s
and 1970s. Foreign aid and development projects promoted this model of agriculture to
increase food production in less developed economies. Since farming is a highly competi-
tive sector, typically comprising many industry players, operating on small margins with
limited market power, and relatively inelastic demand for food, farmers are caught on
what is sometimes referred to as a ‘technology treadmill’ (Howard, 2009). These industry
dynamics mean that small increases in agricultural productivity mean lower profits for
all producers and force farmers into a race to stay ahead of new developments. Farmers

cannot afford to be left behind when new technology to increase production becomes
available, so the farmers who survive are those who are early adopters of technological
developments, cannibalising the business of those who do not. The Green Revolution
and the establishment of a factory model for farming meant that agriculture in many
places was transformed from a biodiverse system relying on multifunctionality to
produce a wide range of food crops, to the use of a package of seeds and chemicals to
produce large quantities of broadacre grain crops.
Whilst this shift has led to greatly increased grain production, it has meant a sacrifice
in production of non-grain food sources and has also had enormous impacts on farmers’
lives and work, public health and nutrition, and environmental degradation (Dixon,
2009). Farmers’ work has often become dependent upon expensive seeds and chemicals
that are protected by intellectual property regimes, and sold by a handful of companies
that control the global agri-food sector. Chemical fertilisers and pesticides have had, and
are having, disastrous impacts on public health through food consumption, as well as
contamination of waterways and spray drift (see, e.g., Tantemsapya, 1996 on pesticides-
related health impacts in Thailand). The shift in production of a diverse range of foods
including fresh fruit and vegetables in favour of hybridised grains can be linked to nutri-
tional deficiency. Land degradation is accelerated by chemicals, leaching from arable
lands, and irrigation that causes salinity and related problems, undermining the future
productive capacity of the land. This combination of legal and scientific developments
has created ‘a system of agriculture that is really a system of technology in which the
farmer becomes the lessee of patented seeds, plants, fertilisers and pesticides’ (Drahos,
2003, p. 14).
Differential investment in agro-ecology and GM crops exemplifies the way that intel-
lectual property rights, along with other legal and institutional factors lock in certain
paths of agricultural development (Vanloqueren and Baret, 2009). GM crops have
received substantially more financial investment and political support than have initia-
tives for development of agro-ecological technologies. The reasons for this relate to the
financial incentives provided by intellectual property protection, the structural power
of the US government and business community to capture those financial rewards, the
increasing role of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in agricultural research and the
‘division of innovative labour’ between the public and private sector, as well as trends
towards privatisation of research infrastructure, as discussed above (ibid.).
The increasing concentration of intellectual property rights generates imperatives to
work with particular companies. In countries like India, South Africa and Australia,
where GM Bt cotton is now widely used, there is effectively one seed supplier – Monsanto.
This means that any research collaborations for locally specific variations on the seed
must involve Monsanto, which often takes a controlling interest in any joint ventures
and extracts a hefty licence fee for use of its seeds. In some circumstances, farmers do
extract a profit from these operations despite exorbitant licence fees, but Monsanto and
similar companies are only able to maintain these monopoly prices on their seeds due to
the restrictions imposed by intellectual property rights (Srinivasan, 2003).
Private interests and investment in agriculture have shaped the direction of research
and development and are driving us towards a particular food future. A complex of
political, cultural and economic factors come together to direct agricultural research and
development towards technological quick fixes in place of the more holistic response

s uggested by agro-ecology. In addition, the shifting relations of production in agricul-

ture, favouring export-oriented cash-crop production, using GM and hybrid seeds with
petrochemicals in huge industrial farms, is undermining local food production, biodiver-
sity, farmers’ autonomy, distributive justice and environmental sustainability.
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY AND FARMERS’ RIGHTS
The concept of ‘food sovereignty’ arose out of the convergence of farmers’ rights move-
ments around the world into the global peasants’ organisation, Via Campesina. Via
Campesina asserts the right to food sovereignty, and has done since its foundation in the
mid-1990s, in response to the emergence of the WTO. Food sovereignty is defined by Via
Campesina as ‘the right of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced
through sustainable methods and their right to define their own food and agriculture
systems’ (Via Campesina, 2007). This means that people, and not the corporate sector,
should have ‘the rights to use and manage lands, territories, water, seeds, livestock and
biodiversity’ (ibid.). The food sovereignty movement challenges the profit motive for
food production, focusing rather on the needs, interests and rights to self-determination
of those who rely on the agri-food system.
Intellectual property rights that affect access to plants and plant materials undermine
food sovereignty in various ways, both direct and indirect. For example, farmers who
choose to use patent-protected seeds are typically restricted from saving and reusing
seeds the next year or from using them for research. Patent owners may also impose
restrictions on farm management practices and may demand access to the farmers’ land,
in addition to the payment of hefty seed royalties. In Australia, farmers who plant GM
canola are required to sign a ‘Technology Use Agreement’, which obliges them to pay
licence fees, not to save seeds for future planting, not to use seeds for research or devel-
oping new varieties, to follow the patent-holder’s requirements regarding farm man-
agement techniques, including using the patent-holder’s herbicide, and to provide the
patent-holder with access to their land for up to three years after planting.5 In addition
to these legal restrictions, farmers who grow GM crops often face institutional restric-
tions. For example, segregation of GM from non-GM crops means that GM farmers are
often restricted as to where they can deliver their grain, not to mention restrictions in
terms of markets in which to sell it. Australian GM canola growers are facing substantial
discounts on their sales in 2012, as buyers are paying premiums for non-GM varieties
(Woods, 2012). There is even some evidence that GM canola growers are struggling to
sell their grain at all with reports of GM canola sitting unsold in silos (Roth, 2011), and
Monsanto and Cargill/AWB offering discounts and price guarantees for its seeds in 2012
(Phelps, 2012).
It is not only farmers who choose to grow GM crops that are affected. In the US and
Canada, non-GM farmers face high legal and financial risks if their lands are contami-
nated by GM seeds, even if they choose not to plant them. The case of Percy Schmeiser,
discussed above, is one example, though thousands of other farmers have been pursued
legally by Monsanto in similar matters. The company has brought lawsuits and ‘seed
piracy’ actions against thousands of farmers in the US, resulting in an estimated USD85
million to USD160 million in damages (Center for Food Safety, 2010).

Farmers’ choices about their farming practices are also being affected as it becomes
more and more difficult for organic farming to coexist with GM seeds. In 2003, the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that canola farmers in
Western Canada are no longer able to produce organic varieties due to the extent of GM
canola contamination (FAO, 2003). In the USA in 2011, a group of more than 50 organic
farmers’ organisations brought an action in New York State against Monsanto, arguing
that contamination by GM seeds was undermining the ongoing viability of organic
farming. The lawsuit was unsuccessful at first instance, but is currently being appealed
(Gillam, 2012). A case emerged in Western Australia in late 2010 when an organic wheat
and oats farmer discovered that 70 per cent of his land was contaminated by GM canola
from a neighbouring farm. The farmer has lost his lucrative organic status and is taking
action for damages against his neighbour, in a matter that will have significant implica-
tions for the future of farming in Australia (ABC, 2012).
There is a self-reinforcing relationship between intellectual property rights, private
control of the agri-food system and the direction of industry development. Intellectual
property rights drive consolidation in the industry by enabling companies to extract
profit and impose restrictions on farmers and other actors. In the inverse, consolidation
enables further enclosure of plant genetic resources and extension of intellectual prop-
erty rights where companies use their economic, market and political power to effect
changes in law and practice that are beneficial to their interests. As private interest in
agri-food has grown, capital has consolidated and the industry is now dominated by a
small number of transnational corporations (Howard, 2009; Hubbard, 2009). This con-
solidation is having a range of impacts on the lives, rights and work of farmers. Farmers
have diminished rights to save and replant seeds and to breed new varieties. We see a
shift in research activity towards the most lucrative proprietary seeds focused on cash-
crop production rather than those areas that are of most interest and importance for a
sustainable agricultural future. Food sovereignty movements that seek to restore farmers
at the centre of agri-food systems and to establish democratic means of determining how
the industry develops are crucial to finding a path to a sustainable future for food.
RESPONSES TO FOOD SECURITY AND FARMERS’ RIGHTS

CONCERNS: EXAMPLES FROM ASIA
In response to a number of these concerns, and utilising the limited flexibility afforded
them under TRIPS Article 27, a number of countries in Asia have adopted variations
from the UPOV model in developing their sui generis PVP laws (Robinson, 2007, 2008).
In relation to concerns that the DUS requirements specified by UPOV explicitly encour-
age genetic uniformity in protected varieties, the Malaysian PVP law has an ‘identifi-
ability’ criterion instead of uniformity and stability. This is even less prescriptive than
the 1978 UPOV definition of ‘homogeneity’, which was deemed to be too vague and
amended to ‘uniformity’ for the 1991 amendment. Having an identifiability requirement
may allow Malaysian farmers to protect and plant varieties that are distinct but still
more genetically diverse than their foreign equivalents. It may also provide for locally
bred varieties to be protected by setting a lower bar than uniformity, thus respecting
more incremental breeding innovations.

A number of countries’ PVP laws or equivalents contain disclosure of origin require-

ments (e.g., India, Thailand, Singapore and Vietnam) for plant varieties that breeders are
seeking to protect. This reflects concerns in biodiverse developing countries, that patent
and PVP laws may be used to misappropriate and protect plant varieties that have their
origins in these countries in Asia (without obtaining consent/material transfer agreement
and establishing benefit sharing as per the CBD or Plant Treaty).
The Indian Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (2001) is a novel law
because it affords extant (domestic and existing) plant varieties a form of exclusive pro-
tection. This has been described as a ‘protected commons’ approach, but has also raised
concerns about an ‘anticommons tragedy’ (Ramanna and Smale, 2004). The law imposes
benefit-sharing requirements for use of extant, farmer and community germplasm. Upon
successful registration of the varieties, the law provides for the: ‘[e]xclusive right of the
breeder or his successor, his agent or licensee, to produce, sell, market, distribute, import
or export the variety’. The Indian law also contains provisions for farmers’ rights. It
affords farmers the ability to save, use, sow, re-sow, exchange, share or sell farm saved
seed protected under the act (except ‘packaged branded seed’). The implementation of
the Indian PPVFR Act has been challenging for the Indian government, with little tech-
nical assistance provided (because India is not an UPOV member and the law is a unique
variant on existing sui generis models), as demonstrated by the delay in developing and
implementing regulations, rules and forms. Only relatively recently have extant variety
registrations been made, but the tally is now well over 1000 varieties protected. There are
also approximately 50 farmers varieties protected under the law with another 150 seeking
registration (details available at the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights
Authority of India website – http://plantauthority.gov.in). These are positive signs that
the Indian law is being used by local breeders and farmers to protect locally bred varieties
and farmers rights associated with their use (see also Koonan, 2014).
The Thai PVP Act seeks to automatically provide blanket protection of domestic
(extant) and wild varieties. It acts as a de facto access and benefit-sharing (ABS) law,
requiring permission and profit sharing arrangements for access to and research into
these varieties for commercial interests. Stipulations must be made by those seeking
access such as intentions with regards to IP rights; continued and free use of the variety
by farmers; and provision of benefits via a PVP Fund if the germplasm is commercial-
ised. Exclusive rights for locally bred varieties can also be sought under the Act. The
implementation of the Thai law has also been inhibited by delayed development of rules
and forms (impacted by years of political change in the country) (see Lertdhamtewe,
2014).
CONCLUSION
This chapter has provided a sketch of the global IP rights regime as it applies to agri-
culture, and the various political and economic structures that support this regime.
International trade agreements have had a particularly important role in the process
of solidifying the IP regime, with TRIPS establishing a global baseline for enforce-
ment, which is then further tightened through bilateral and regional trade agreements.
At the time of writing, there is much debate regarding the possible conclusion of the

rans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a proposed regional trade agreement for 12 Pacific Rim
T
nations, which is predicted to have significant consequences for domestic IP law.
The chapter has also explained how intensification of IP rights at the international
level is being translated into a convergence of such laws between domestic jurisdictions.
A review of recent developments in Australia, Canada and the US shows that the highest
courts in those jurisdictions are demonstrating a similar tendency towards the expansive
construction of IP rights.
This consolidation of IP rights has travelled alongside the concentration of economic
power in the agri-food system. The chapter tracks plant breeding developments during
the twenty-first century, against the expansion of IP laws. It is argued that there are inter-
relationships between socio-legal, political, economic and technological developments.
The emergence of plant-related IP is influenced by powerful economic interests, such as
seed and agri-chemical companies. At the same time, the establishment of the IP regime
has facilitated the growth of those companies and their power base. It is also argued
that while IP rights are justified on the basis that they encourage innovation, in practice,
they appear to encourage only particular forms of innovation. That is, they provide an
incentive for certain types of plant breeding that generate more lucrative products, like
genetically modified seeds, while locking out others.
Some of the types of agricultural innovation that appear to be locked out by the current
IP-dominated research and development paradigm include those that are encompassed
by the concepts of agro-ecology and food sovereignty. There is evidence of a growing
international consensus (see, for example, the 2009 IAASTD report and various research
from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food) that a radical transformation of
the food and farming systems is necessary to meet global food needs into the future. This
will mean something different than simply producing more food. It will require a holistic
understanding of farming, our relationships with surrounding ecosystems, wealth and
resource distribution. These are the kinds of analyses and investigations that are not
facilitated by a research programme that is concerned with the generation of IP rights.
Nor are they consistent with corporate control of seeds and other inputs. They demand
a more democratic approach to food production and distribution.
The concept of food sovereignty, pioneered by Via Campesina in response to the
establishment of the WTO, provides the possibility of the necessary political shift. The
global peasants’ movement, represented by Via Campesina, continues its campaign
against the further control of seeds by corporations (e.g., by opposing the TPP) and in
favour of agro-ecological innovation.
As discussed above, some nation-states have also acknowledged concerns of farmers,
grassroots organisations, NGOs, industry and within government regarding plant-
related IP and have enacted laws to address them. There is considerable concern that
IP is being used as a tool for misappropriation, concentration of commercial power and
control, and that it is diminishing farmers’ rights and impacting upon agrobiodiversity.
They demonstrate that it is possible for countries to avail themselves of the limited flex-
ibilities that TRIPS offers, and resist dominant Euro-American pressures for higher IP
standards affecting agriculture. They do also highlight the challenges these countries face
in pursuing alternate legal avenues to the dominant UPOV model. It is too early to assess
the impact of these laws or the prospects for broader adoption of such laws, but these
developments warrant close observation.

NOTES
1. This also comes down to which version of UPOV has been adopted (1978 or 1991) regarding the extent of
the exemption.
2. Essentially derived varieties are those that are very similar to existing varieties, often developed through
genetic modification and hybridisation breeding techniques. According to the Convention (UPOV, 1991),
essentially derived varieties are ‘(i) varieties which are essentially derived from the protected variety,
where the protected variety is not itself an essentially derived variety, (ii) varieties which are not clearly
distinguishable in accordance with Article 7 from the protected variety and (iii) varieties whose production
requires the repeated use of the protected variety’ (UPOV, 2009, p. 4).
3. The Substantive Patent Law Treaty is discussed in more detail by Oliva (2008, pp. 73–4). Forum shifting is
part of the ‘ratchet effect’ that Drahos (2003, 2004) describes, whereby standards are incrementally raised
in each subsequent forum.
4. Though there were some early attempts, particularly in the USA where the commercial seed industry was
born, to improve financial returns, for example, through political lobbying for an end to government pro-
grammes to provide free seeds to farmers (Dutfield, 2003).
5. This is information from an anonymous Australian farmer who provided a copy of the Technology Use
Agreement to the authors.
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15. The financialisation of food and farming
Geoffrey Lawrence, Sarah Ruth Sippel and David Burch*
INTRODUCTION
In recent years a range of financial institutions – including private equity consortia,
hedge funds, investment fund managers, pension and superannuation funds, merchant
banks, sovereign wealth funds and others – have begun to make major investments in
food and farmlands throughout the world. Historically, productive investments in the
food and farming sectors have not been favoured by the finance sector because of the risk
and uncertainty attached to agricultural assets. As a consequence, most financial assets
have been invested in real estate, shares and government and other bonds. However,
a number of factors – including an emerging scarcity of farmland, changing diets in
India and China, and the growth in biofuels production – have created greater certainty
and improved financial returns that have attracted major investments by financial
institutions.
In addition to a growing involvement in agricultural production, many financial
institutions and agri-food companies are also increasingly involved in the market for
commodities as ‘virtual’ assets, in particular through hedging, asset management strate-
gies, and speculation in commodity futures. Many agricultural commodities are being
packaged into financial assets that are then traded globally, often without the actual
acquisition of physical commodities by the purchasers of these assets. In the production
sector, much interest has focused on so-called ‘land grabs’ occurring in the less developed
countries, where issues of food security and food sovereignty are paramount. In the
commodity trading sector there is hedging and speculation in food commodities, with
quite serious implications for food security. This chapter will examine the financialisa-
tion of both food and farming, providing an explanation of how financialisation of these
sectors has occurred, along with the impacts of financialisation and the opposition that
is occurring throughout the world.
WHAT IS ‘FINANCIALISATION’?
The academic research and writing on financialisation is less than a decade old
(Goldstein, 2009). The broadest definition of ‘financialisation’ is provided by Epstein
(2005, p. 3) and refers to the ‘increasing importance of financial markets, financial
motives, financial institutions, and financial elites in the operation of the economy
and its governing institutions, both at the national and international levels’. Similarly,
Krippner (2005) highlights the fact that under financialisation, profits are made not, as
in the past, through trade and commodity production, but through financial manipula-
tions. In earlier periods of capitalist growth the production of, and trade in, commodi-
ties were the driving force of capital accumulation; that is, profits were generated from
309
the sale of goods and services. When the world economy recovered from recession in
the early 1970s, the production and sale of manufactured and other goods continued
strongly. Firms were building excess capacity – but in the context of limited invest-
ment options. It was at this time that the banks and other financial institutions saw an
opportunity to make profits through the creation and sale of financial products. These
products encouraged companies in the manufacturing sector to place money in finance –
thereby allowing firms to solve the problem of what to do with cash that had been gener-
ated from a burgeoning capitalist economy (Foster, 2007).
Since the 1970s the finance industry has grown disproportionally to other sectors
of the economy and has continued to do so – often creating substantial profits for
short-term speculators rather than long-term investors (Foster, 2007). Speculators were
responsible for creating the various ‘bubbles’ such as the dot.com bubble in early 2000
and the housing bubble of 2005–08, and since 2000 there has been a noticeable and
growing presence of finance firms generating investment and securing profit as part of
a ‘paper economy’ or what others have termed ‘casino capitalism’ (Stilwell, 2002). The
speculative component of commodity futures, which usually hovered around 30 per cent,
has now reached 80 per cent (Foodwatch, 2011).
Globally, merchant and commercial banks, finance houses, sovereign wealth funds,
private equity firms, hedge funds, and other financially focused firms are making huge
investments. They are using financial instruments such as credit default swaps, deriva-
tives, bonds, securities and futures trading to purchase companies with the general aim
of realising profits through a combination of new management regimes, asset stripping,
mergers, and the decoupling and sale of components of once-large companies (Burch
and Lawrence, 2009; McMichael, 2012a). This has resulted in an economic system that is
volatile, unstable and vulnerable to rupture – as was demonstrated in the global financial
crisis (GFC) of 2008, the fallout from which we are still witnessing.
The deregulated marketplace created by neoliberalist policies from the 1970s has fos-
tered the growth of financialisation (Harvey, 2005; Conway and Heynen, 2006; Burch
and Lawrence, 2009). According to Tickell (2006, p. 42) the neoliberalisation of finance
that began in the 1970s and accelerated throughout the last 30 years has been based
upon:
● the emergence of new financial products such as derivatives (e.g., futures, options
and ‘swaps’ that are tied to real-world assets such as commodities, stocks and
bonds);
● communication technologies that allow instantaneous transmission of funds
between global financial entities;
● the presence of transnational finance firms – not beholden to any nation state;
● the virtual disappearance of controls on capital flows;
● the blurring of long-standing distinctions between different types of financial
entities.
In particular, in removing many of the regulations on the activities of financial firms,

neoliberal governments have created conditions for the accelerated ‘securitisation’
of the economy. Securitisation is a means of raising capital that is secured on the
cash generated from a set of assets. Basically, illiquid assets (fixed assets like houses,

The financialisation of food and farming 311
cars or farmland), or a group of assets, are targeted and, via financial manipulation,
are turned into a liquid security. This facilitates the consolidation and sale of debt
(McMichael, 2012a) – or the commoditisation of risk (Bryan et al., 2009) – and is what
occurred, in recent times, in relation to house properties in the USA. A set of mort-
gages was turned into a security (a mortgage-backed security), which was then sold on
to firms in the secondary mortgage market. These firms anticipated growth in house
prices. The low interest rates that occurred after the dot.com bubble collapsed in 2001
provided good reason to believe that purchasing real estate would result in returns on
investment capital. But in 2006 the economic growth stimulated by strong investment
in the housing market caused interest rates to rise. The rise was devastating for many
mortgagees. When they defaulted on loans, the securities that had been purchased
reduced quickly in value: most became worthless. Many firms that had invested in
the sub-prime (more risky) securities in housing found they held ‘toxic assets’ that
could not be disposed of (Financial Times, 2012). Many formerly well-respected firms
such as Morgan Stanley and Lehmann Brothers went into receivership. Banks became
wary of lending, and money dried up, causing a reduction in financial exchange. The
result was the collapse of major sections of the finance industry both domestically
and globally, which spread beyond finance as consumers became increasingly reluc-
tant to purchase cars, holidays, restaurant meals, white goods, and other products.
Governments sought to provide support through ‘quantitative easing’ – basically
printing more money and sending it through the economy via the banks (Bowlby,
2009), hoping to stimulate spending. At the same time, finance capital began looking
for new opportunities for investment, and it is here that food and farming have
become recent targets.
Against this backdrop, this chapter provides an overview of recent transformations
of the agri-food system associated with the ‘financialisation’ of food and farming, and
identifies the main trends and drivers. It provides an explanation of how and why finan-
cialisation of the food and farm sectors has occurred and investigates, as well, its impacts
and the movements of opposition it has provoked throughout the world.
PRECONDITIONS FOR AND DRIVERS OF THE

FINANCIALISATION OF FOOD AND FARMING
Two important forces that promoted financialisation were neoliberal deregulation,

together with new information technologies that facilitated global flows of capital. While
nothing was out of bounds for financial investment in an era of financialisation, the idea
that financial firms would be interested in investing in food and farming was viewed with
incredulity. After all, financial institutions had been content to lend money to farmers
and to leave the risks of volatile commodity prices, unpredictable weather and rising
costs of inputs with those directly involved in agriculture (Murphy et al., 2012; Burch
and Lawrence, 2013). They also had limited interest in purchasing agribusinesses (grain
companies, beef feedlots, agri-machinery companies, and agri-chemical manufacturers)
as the management of such firms was viewed as a task for specialist farming-based firms
that understood markets and could succeed in high-risk ventures (Accenture, 2012). Yet,
in the last decade – and especially since the GFC – financial actors have been prominent

in the purchase of farmlands, the control of food-based firms and the production of bio-
fuels (Cotula et al., 2009; McMichael, 2012b).
What is driving this new fascination of the finance industry for food and farming? The
world is changing and there are many reasons that it would seem prudent to invest in the
agri-food sector. The six most important drivers are described below:
1. There is a decreasing per capita availability of farming land. In the 1960s some 0.42 ha
of arable farmland were available per capita. It is now 0.24 – a halving in 50 years.
The degradation of land through salinisation, acidification and soil loss through
wind erosion are part of the problem (one associated with overproduction and over-
grazing) while urbanisation is another factor reducing land availability (Matuschke,
2009; Lawrence et al., 2010). Predictions of a significant rise in the world population
– from the current seven billion people to nine billion by 2050 – and subsequent
increased demand for food, is also clearly of great importance (Cribb, 2010).
2. Peak oil is driving the conversion of farming lands to biofuel production. Lands once
producing foods for direct human consumption, or for grains for animal feed, are
being used to provide biofuels to replace oil. Given that governments are prescrib-
ing the amount of biofuel they want produced, firms that invest have certainty of
sales from, and therefore returns on, their investments. There was an 800 per cent
increase in venture capital investment in biofuels from 2004 to 2007, and it has been
predicted that if European and US targets for biofuel production are to be met,
Europe will need to plant 70 per cent of its farmlands to fuel crops, and the USA will
need to use the entirety of its corn and soy harvests for conversion into ethanol and
biodiesel (Holt-Giménez, 2007). While these targets are unlikely to be met, the state
has legitimised the move from food to fuel and those companies with funds to invest
are moving in on agricultural land (McMichael, 2012b).
3. The growth of the middle classes in nations like China, India and Indonesia is leading
to increasing demand for farm products. The changing diets of the middle classes in
these, and other, countries are leading to greater meat consumption – the so-called
‘meatification’ of the Eastern diet (Weis, 2013). Factory-farm production of chicken,
pork and beef requires a regular supply of grain. So, both meat and grain will be
in increasing demand as consumers in developing countries move from grain-and
vegetable-based diets to meat diets. That is, profits can be made by firms investing
in meat-based production (and in cereal production for the animal feedlots) that are
supplying an escalating middle class Asian (as well as global) market.
4. Climate change is bringing opportunities for farm investment. Climate change is pro-
voking governments into finding market-based approaches to the sequestration of
carbon as a means of reducing greenhouse gases. The farm sector is able to generate
carbon credits through tree planting, the use of zero-tillage, reduction of fertiliser
applications, and through better grazing practices (Australian Government, 2014).
The US Department of Agriculture has predicted that carbon trading will be a
USD30 billion per annum industry by 2050 (Thiesse, 2009), so it is no surprise that
investment funds are investing in farmlands to take advantage of this new income
stream from farming.
5. Guaranteeing food supply to oil-rich but soil- and water-poor nations. Large-scale
investments by rich, but soil-and water-deficient, countries such as Libya, Qatar

and Saudi Arabia in locations such as Africa, Asia and Australia have occurred
because of the desires of the aforementioned nations to have a regular supply of
food available to meet food security needs – and to prevent food riots (GRAIN,
2012a). Sovereign wealth funds of oil-rich countries totalled USD3808 billion in
2009, with Abu Dhabi alone investing some USD627 billion in food and farming
industries in Sub- Saharan Africa (Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, 2009).
GRAIN (2012a) has estimated that between 60 and 80 million ha of farm lands
are now controlled by sovereign wealth funds, banks, investment houses and
pension funds, but an updated assessment by Cotula (2012) suggests some 227
million ha is closer to the mark. Biofuels account for some 37 per cent of land
acquisitions, food 11 per cent, and the remaining 52 per cent is for agro-industrial
crops, forestry and mining, although it is acknowledged that, in relation to these
figures above, the ‘borderline between food and fuel is blurred’ (ibid., p. 663).
Biofuel support policies of the USA and EU are viewed as having been one of
the main causes of the food price hikes of 2007–08 (High Level Panel of Experts
[HLPE], 2011).
6. Speculative opportunities in food and farming. As noted earlier, the bursting of the
dot.com and housing bubbles has led investment companies to place their money in
alternative ventures. With the removal of constraints on capital flow, and with new
financial instruments at their disposal, investment companies – with very little com-
mercial interest in food and farming – have become speculators in commodity index
funds (CIFs) and in land (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy [IATP], 2011).
CIFs literally bundle futures contracts in commodities such as oil, coal, wheat, corn,
cattle and pigs into a single entity, which can then be traded. Investors seek to make
money from betting on price movements of this bundle of commodities. According
to Clapp (2012a), CIFs increased in a dramatic fashion from 2005 to 2008, doubling
in value to an estimated USD400 billion. Investment drove up the price of commodi-
ties. As Clapp (ibid., p. 145) asserts: ‘[I]t is not difficult to see how prices could be
driven up by large-scale long-term investors, and how speculation by index traders
to cover the costs of risks to the banks from those investments, could fuel food price
volatility’. Although opposed by financial corporations, the Dodd-Frank financial
reform bill, which was passed in the USA in 2010, has sought to impose controls on
trade in farm commodities so as to bring increased stability to agricultural markets.
This has, however, been of limited success to date (Suppan, 2011, 2012; Murphy
et al., 2012).
Speculation in land is also of significance. Savills Research (2012, pp. 4–5) has
reported that, internationally, farmland values across the globe have increased
on average during the last decade by 400 per cent, with countries like Hungary
(800 per cent) and Romania (1800 per cent) performing well above this average.
Farmland has outperformed residential and property markets throughout the world
and has been a safe and reliable investment in periods of instability (ibid.). Capital
gains are realised via appreciation in farmland value, while income is also generated
from productivity increases as farming becomes more industrialised (Cotula, 2012).
The locations for investment relate directly to the level of risk that investors can
tolerate. Wealth preservation (as a hedge against inflation and for portfolio expan-
sion, for example) is a key strategy for investors in lower-risk/lower-return countries

including Europe, USA, Canada and Australia, while those looking for higher
returns on invested capital are heading to Latin America and Africa (ibid.).
Taken together, these six drivers have underpinned the financialisation of food and
farming and, in recent years, financial institutions have founded hundreds of specialised
investment funds specifically targeting agri-food industries.
FORMS AND IMPACTS OF THE FINANCIALISATION OF

FOOD AND FARMING
The three main forms of financialisation in the food and farming industries are the take-
over of food manufacturers and food retailers; commodity speculation; and the direct
investment in farmlands. While all three have antecedents, the ways and extent to which
change is occurring suggest that a new dynamic is underway.
Takeovers in Food Manufacturing and Retailing
Hedge funds have been prominent in the procurement of firms that are ripe for takeover.
A hedge fund is an investment vehicle that is privately owned and offered to a select
number of wealthy clients who pay a very large minimum investment to become part of
the fund. These funds are not subject to the level of regulation afforded public invest-
ment vehicles and they are able to undertake risky practices, including short selling,
swaps and derivative trading both to purchase food companies and land. Private equity
consortia such as Blackstone, and Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts, have sought to achieve
profits by investing in agri-food companies that have both a large asset base and high
turnover. Some of the agri-food sector’s iconic companies – Nabisco, Burger King,
Cadbury Schweppes, and the UK supermarket chain Somerfield – have been subject to
takeover in recent years (Burch and Lawrence, 2009).
Through various purchasing manoeuvres, the world’s four largest grain traders –
Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus (known as ABCD) – today
control a large variety of farming commodities including 90 per cent of the global grain
trade (Murphy et al., 2012). They are adapting to, and exploiting, new market oppor-
tunities to retain their power in agri-food supply chains, undertaking activities such as
input supply, cattle and poultry production, grain elevator operations and biofuel pro-
duction (ibid.). Importantly, despite the havoc that high food prices and volatility caused
the poor of the world as they sought to manage the GFC, the ABCD group profited from
food price movements and from the financialisation of farming – as a result of the worlds
of food and finance becoming interlinked in complex ways. They have used new financial
products (such as derivatives and swaps) to broaden their business activities and have
become adept at walking a fine line between hedging and speculating (ibid.).
In relation to the purchase of food retailers, private equity consortia are focused
on realising ‘shareholder value’. That is, they do not take control of supermarkets
and other retailers to manage their business over the long term, or to increase their
competitiveness in the marketplace. Rather, they treat these companies as a ‘bundle of
assets’ that can be employed to generate the highest rates of return on investment over

the shortest timeframe (Fligstein and Markowitz, 1993). Private equity firms purchase
companies to sell key assets, or to leverage key assets of the company (such as proper-
ties that might be held) in order to secure new loans for further investment. Some also
impose management regimes aimed at improving a company’s operations and then –
when improvements have been made – float the company at an increased market value.
It is important to note that when private equity takes control of a company it does so
as the only shareholder. It is therefore the sole beneficiary from any increase in share-
holder value.
The aim of finance capital’s investments in the agri-food retailing sector is to restruc-
ture companies that are deemed to be underperforming so as to liberate liquid assets that
can then be invested more profitably in other areas. An example of this was the takeover
of the UK-based supermarket chain Somerfield in 2003. A private equity company,
Violet Acquisitions, purchased Somerfield and began to rework its operations. Many of
its stores were sold (with millions of pounds coming to Violet Acquisitions to be used
in other investments), underperforming and unprofitable food products were removed,
new ‘healthy’ food lines were added to the shelves, hundreds of staff were retrenched and
the company was split into an operating company and a property company (Western
Daily Press, 2006; Evening Standard, 2007; Wolley Dod and Crosky, 2007). The prop-
erty company was then used as security for the Violet Acquisitions consortium to raise
additional funds (with proceeds providing shareholders with significant returns on
investments). Somerfield’s operating company was then refloated on the stock exchange
and, as a slimmer, better managed company, sold for double the price initially paid for
the supermarket (Arnold and Rigby, 2008). The breaking up of Somerfield together
with financial manoeuvring by the private equity consortium (employing low interest
refinancing via bonds, one off-payments and bonuses) led to substantial monetary gains
being achieved – even at a time of the sub-prime mortgage ‘crisis’ (Kleinman and Bland,
2007; BMI Industry Insights, 2008).
Commodity Speculation
For well over a hundred years, producers of farm products have used futures markets to
hedge against commodity price falls. These ‘physical traders’ basically forward-sell their
products so that they can have a guarantee of what price they will receive when – in the
future – their crops are harvested or animals slaughtered. In fact, agricultural deriva-
tive trading is a form of insurance for both sellers and buyers against price volatility.
It therefore serves a useful marketplace function (HLPE, 2011; Clapp, 2012a). But it is
not only physical traders who are now interested in the futures market. Others – the so-
called ‘non-commercial speculators’ (Clapp, 2012b) – have now entered the market and
are at least partly to blame for commodity price increases. Agricultural derivatives, once
linked closely to the marketplace of food have instead become ‘financialised’, lending
themselves to speculation. With derivatives, only a small outlay of money can result in
high profits (Foodwatch, 2011; Oxfam, 2011).
There are over 60 commodities traded in futures markets. These include precious
metals, base metals, oil, corn, rice, soybeans, wheat, cocoa, coffee, cotton, sugar, pigs,
cattle, wool, palm oil and rubber with hedge funds, in particular, transforming these and
other products into arenas for speculative gain. Why would this be allowed to occur?

Lobbied by powerful actors in the finance sector, the US-based Commodity Futures
Trading Commission (CFTC), which regulates futures markets, increased the number
of contracts (‘positions limits’) that a hedge fund could hold (Wisner, 2008). This was
in 2000 and coincided with the passing of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act,
which removed many of the safeguards that ensured agricultural derivatives would not
be misused (Oxfam, 2011). It was revealed, in any case, that as early as 1991 the CFTC
had provided secret exemptions to some 19 banks and financial entities to purchase as
many ‘positions’ as they wanted (Brush and Loder, 2010). This, together with the general
loosening of control over positions, resulted in an unprecedented flow of capital into the
futures market. The creation of commodity index funds (CIFs), or bundles of agricul-
tural and other commodities that form a single instrument that can be bought and sold
like shares on the stock exchange, are the mechanism for speculation by hedge funds,
sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, banks and other investors (Clapp, 2012b). From
some USD13 billion in 2003, investment in CIFs grew massively to USD317 billion by
2008 (IATP, 2008). The ‘non-commercial speculators’ that were largely excluded from
agricultural commodities markets until deregulation at the start of this century are now
playing a significant role in commodity price speculation.
According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO, 2008), the volatility
in commodity prices (corn 30 per cent, soybeans 40 per cent, wheat 60 per cent) that
occurred in 2008 could not be accounted for in terms of supply and demand – so-called
‘market fundamentals’ (IATP, 2008). The volatility was due to speculative invest-
ments by the financial institutions that stood to gain by increases in commodity prices.
Agricultural commodity trading is therefore becoming like oil trading, where less than
30 per cent of commodity trade is in traditional (physical) hedging – the other 70 per cent
is in speculative trading (ibid.). Yet, increases in agricultural commodity prices have
direct effects on food security. The high farm commodity prices that occurred between
2006 and 2007 increased the food import bill in developing countries from some
USD191 billion to USD254 billion, which, according to the FAO (2008) meant that
some 75 million additional people were added to the then 850 million people around
the globe who were chronically hungry. For every 1 per cent increase in the cost of food
an additional 16 million people are condemned to hunger (International Trade Union
Confederation, 2009), leading Pace et al. (2008, p. 1650) to comment in The Lancet: ‘[I]t
seems to us an infringement of human rights and an offence against humanity that large
investors should speculate on food prices knowing that families in the poorest countries
will suffer hunger, malnutrition and death. . . The G8 should act quickly to regulate
global trading in food commodities’.
The G8 (and more recently the G20) has not acted in any meaningful way, trusting
markets instead to deliver the benefits of ‘free trade’ in agricultural commodities. In
September–October 2012 the commodity food price index stood at 187, some ten points
higher than at the peak of the food price crisis in April 2008 (Index Mundi, 2012). In
other words, agricultural commodity prices remain higher than they were in the ‘food
crisis’ of 2008 – an indication of the entrenched difficulties of countering the speculative
activities of financial firms in an era of financialisation.

Direct Investment in Farmlands
Finance is playing a major role in remodelling farming by purchasing farmlands for

speculation, for food production and for biofuels. While investors are spread over
the entire gamut of the finance industry (merchant and investment banks, investment
finance houses, managed investment companies, private equity consortia, asset manage-
ment companies and sovereign wealth funds), one of the most important developments
has been the investment in farmlands by the latter group – sovereign wealth funds
(SWFs) (GRAIN, 2012a, 2012b). SWFs are accumulated profits from the sale of oil, and
other natural resources, that are held by sovereign states. They are invested to provide
returns on capital and to provide other benefits to the nations investing those funds. The
largest SWFs have been established by Abu Dhabi (between USD500–875 billion) and
Singapore (USD100–330 billion), but other countries such as Norway, China, South
Korea, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Malaysia, Canada and Iran have also established SWFs. In
2014, the amount of money held by the world’s top 50 SWFs was estimated to be USD5
trillion (Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, 2014). Recently, the SWFs have moved from
low-risk to more high-risk/high-return strategies (Appelbaum et al., 2012).
Following the food crisis of 2007–08, many oil-rich countries decided to place their
SWF investments in foreign lands that could contribute to national food security. Others
saw advantage in purchasing farms to profit from biofuel production. Either way, lands
that were once owned nationally were being purchased or leased by global funds for
food repatriation or biofuel production (Table 15.1). It is estimated that since 2008 some
USD100 billion has been invested in the purchase of farmlands by SWFs and private
sector enterprises (Daniel, 2012). It is reported that some 227 million ha of foreign lands,
worldwide, have been acquired by companies in the period 2001–10, but this is viewed
as being on the conservative side of assessments (Cotula, 2012). That said, it is also the
case that the listing of investments in Table 15.1 needs careful interpretation: it has been
found that many investments reported in the press have been ‘overexaggerated’, others
have been proposed but remain unratified, and the various rationales for investment
(such as food-versus-biofuel) remain uncertain (GRAIN, 2012b; Cotula, 2012).
Table 15.1 indicates that government SWFs and finance companies, in particular,
are interested in the purchase and leasing of foreign lands. Many of the locations are
in Africa where land is deemed to be undervalued (GRAIN, 2012a). Some examples of
investments are as follows (see GRAIN, 2012b):
● The Al Qudra Holding is a joint-stock company established in Abu Dhabi in 2005

and invests with the aim of producing food for Abu Dhabi. It intends to increase
its land holdings to 400 000 ha and is currently purchasing land in Morocco,
Pakistan, Vietnam, Sudan and India.
● Chongqing Grain Group is a large Chinese grain corporation. The Brazilian
project is part of the company’s overall plan to spend USD3.4 billion in outsourc-
ing food for China from overseas locations.
● The Egyptian National Bank is investing in Ethiopia and Sudan so as to grow
cereals for export to Egypt.
● The Daewoo company is seeking to process flour, animal feed, methane gas and
ethanol in Indonesia for direct export to South Korea.

Table 15.1 Examples of investment in foreign lands by government sovereign wealth

funds and finance/other companies, 2006–12
Target Investor Home Sector Hectares Production Projected

Country Base Bought/ Investment
Leased in USD
Algeria Al Qudra UAE Finance, real 31 000 Milk, N/A
Holdings estate olive oil,
potatoes
Angola AfriAgro Portugal Finance, real 5000 Oil palm 30–35
estate (biofuels) million
Brazil Chongqing Grain China Agribusiness 200 000 Soybean 879 million
Group
Ethiopia Egyptian Egypt Government 20 000 Cereals 40 million
National Bank
Ghana Qatar Qatar Government 50 000 Food crops N/A
Indonesia Daewoo Logistic South Industrial 24 000 Maize 50 million
Indonesia/Cheil Korea (food,
Jedang Samsung biofuels)
Mali China Light China Industrial 20 000 Sugar cane 41 million
Industrial (food,
Corporation biofuels)
for Foreign
Economic
and Technical
Cooperation
Mozambique Libyan African Libya Government 20 000 Rice 33 million
Investment
Portfolio
Nigeria Foras Saudi Finance 1000 in Crops 100 million
International Arabia Nigeria; (for Africa)
Investment part of
Company 700 000
ha in
Africa
Poland Rabobank Neth’lnds Finance N/A Mixed 205 million
Senegal Tempieri Italy Finance 20 000 Sunflowers 204 million
Financial Group sweet (in process)
potatoes
Sudan Hassad Food Qatar Agribusiness 100 000 Sheep, 160 million
wheat
Zambia Chayton Capital UK Finance 20 000 Crops 85 million
Source: Summarised and adapted from GRAIN (2012b).
● Saudi Arabia’s Foras International Investment Company plans to cultivate rice

on some 700 000 ha of land in various African nations. Foras is the investment
arm of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which has shareholders from
throughout the Middle East.
● Hassad Food is a USD1 billion company established by the SWF of Qatar. It

holds land in Sudan and Australia and plans to invest in Brazil, Vietnam, Pakistan
and India for the production of food (largely sheep meat, wheat, barley and rice)
for export to Qatar.
Often projects, such as those listed above, are justified on the basis of the inflow of
foreign funds that will bring development to ‘backward’ rural areas of the developing
world. Yet, it is certain that a significant share of output from these projects is des-
tined for consumers in the countries investing in land (GRAIN, 2009). After all, one of
the main motivations of the investors is to overcome food shortages (and therefore to
prevent a food crisis and subsequent food riots) in their own countries (Cotula, 2012).
Leaders in Middle Eastern countries have become acutely aware that commodity price
spikes – as occurred in 2008 – will result in political turmoil (Gana, 2012). With billions
of dollars available in SWFs it was predictable that funds would seek out locations to
produce food for repatriation to food-dependent countries. It is important, however,
to recognise that dislocations can occur in the host countries. If subsistence producers
have been removed from the land to make way for food production by the foreign inves-
tors, then the question is raised of whether foreign investment has improved or, indeed,
reduced food security in the host country (GRAIN, 2012a, 2012b).
It has been shown that the new investors want access to the most fertile, irrigated,
agricultural land (Cotula, 2012; Catley et al., 2013). Not all of the investment in these
desirable locations is from overseas interests; local elites are recognising the value of
these lands. It is estimated that domestic investors accounted for some 97 per cent of
land acquisitions in Nigeria, 95 per cent in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger, 78 per cent
in Sudan, 70 per cent in Cambodia and 49 per cent in Ethiopia (Cotula, 2012, p. 656).
Nevertheless, the desirability of external investments is considered highly by developing
nations eager for new infrastructure and new export opportunities. Private companies
such as agribusiness firms are among the top investors. Their land purchases are facili-
tated by governments eager to proclaim their pro-developmentalist credentials to the
WTO and World Bank as a means of securing loans (McMichael, 2012a).
There have been at least two major interpretations of this new wave of foreign invest-
ment. The first view is that of many governments, economists and development agencies
such as the World Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the Consultative
Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the International Finance
Corporation (McMichael, 2012a; White et al., 2012). The argument is that foreign direct
investment (FDI) will ‘liberate’ lands that are currently underutilised, and so provide
the world with the food-producing capacity necessary to feed a burgeoning population.
The flow of capital into the developing world will improve both rural and urban infra-
structure, provide jobs, and bring in much needed income from the sale of exports. In
this model, the host country will begin to increase its trade in farming/fuel products and,
with the extra revenue raised, will be able to purchase goods from abroad. In terms of
comparative advantage, the developing countries will sell what they are best at produc-
ing (foods/biofuels) and will import equipment, machinery and information technologies
that will stimulate productivity and so revolutionise agriculture and provide for rural
modernisation and urban growth. This is part of an ‘agriculture for development’
model endorsed and fostered by the World Bank (World Bank, 2007). Grants are made
available, for example via the US government’s Millennium Challenge Corporation, to

c ountries that conform to neoliberal ideals of opening their borders to food imports,
thereby encouraging foreign purchase and leasing of farmlands, and the importation
of subsidised foods from the North. With fewer people needed in agriculture, once-
subsistence producers can move to the cities for paid work. This path of modernisation
promises to reduce rural poverty and result in a structure of production where salaried
rural and urban workers have purchasing power and can buy consumer goods. An
assumption is that the ‘backward’ peasantry will be all but eliminated, and the nation
will grow strongly on the back of its export economy (Zoelick, 2010). The World Bank
Group, which promotes such a strategy, is interested in ensuring that a private-sector,
market-led, development regime will foster capital flows into the developing world as the
catalyst for economic growth (Daniel, 2012).
A second view differs completely from this optimistic view of progress. It is argued
that large-scale commercial land transactions represent a global ‘land grab’ in which rich
nations seeking to guarantee their future food and fuel needs are exploiting the soils,
water and labour of developing nations (McMichael, 2014). Is it a new ‘enclosure’ move-
ment (McMichael, 2012a) that is part of the ‘colonial project’ – that is, a form of neoco-
lonialism that aims to provide cheap foods (and now fuels) to consumers in the Global
North. This is in the face of evidence that the era of cheap food may now be over (Moore,
2010). Today, acquisition of farmlands by foreign investors is viewed as reducing the
amount of cultivable land available to local farmers and, with all products from these
acquisitions exported, the result is greater food insecurity in the host nation (African
Development Bank, 2012). Further, many of the land deals are negotiated by central
governments without the knowledge or consent of local people. Local knowledge is
marginalised and – with local people displaced – a corporate agenda of ‘big’ a griculture
becomes standardised (GRAIN, 2012a). It is a regime that favours those corporations
controlling agribusiness developments globally (ibid.).
Biofuel production on lands once used by peasants to provide food has been scath-
ingly criticised. The International Trade Union Conference (2009) has argued that, when
the use value of food crops in feeding local people is replaced by an exchange value of
cropping for biofuel for the world’s wealthy nations, crops lose their intrinsic value,
becoming just one more input into global production cycles. For McMichael (2009,
pp. 155, 162), biofuels are ‘the ultimate fetishization of agriculture, converting a source
of human life into an energy input at a time of rising prices. . .the “agrofuels rush”
renders agriculture indistinguishable from energy production in a context where peak oil
is making its presence felt in world prices’. Close to 50 private equity firms are looking
to invest well over USD2 billion in African agriculture over the next two to four years
(Daniel, 2012). These will be speculative ventures looking for short-term profits and
are unlikely to provide long-term benefits to the host countries (ibid.). There is also an
environmental element to this that should not be overlooked. According to McMichael
(2012a, p. 686) the crisis of neoliberal accumulation (the demand for increasing resources
in an era of global warming, depletion of fossil fuels, and the destruction of water and
land through overuse and pollution):
increases the reproductive costs of capital and infrastructural costs of states. Not only does
this crisis propel and justify investment in land offshore in the name of addressing food
shortages and alternative energy, but also agro-industrial capitalization opens an invest-

ment frontier for capital in an era of financialization. . .the so-called rational planning of
planetary resources such as land (and water) is driven as much by financial goals as material
considerations.
OPPOSITION TO THE FINANCIALISATION OF FOOD AND

FARMING
Despite the ‘Great Recession’ caused by the GFC, it does not appear that financialisa-
tion of the economy is a spent force. Rather, according to Nölke (2012), it remains a
predominant and growing feature of Western economies. To curb it would require,
inter alia, imposition of a financial transaction tax for commodity derivatives markets,
controls on the cross-border movement of capital, curbs on the activities of hedge funds,
the separation of investment banking from retail banking, the re-establishment of strong
position limits, and the reintroduction of rules that distinguish market operators (who
buy and sell commodities) from speculators (Tickell, 2006; HLPE, 2011; United Nations,
2011). Yet, there are few identifiable moves to undertake such actions or to tighten regu-
lation and control global capital flows (Tickell, 2006). The crisis-prone nature of capital
accumulation will therefore remain ever present. As individuals, communities and
nations grapple with the consequences of financialisation, there is likely to be continuing
protest and contestation. With the GFC of 2008 and the food price hikes that occurred
as a result, over 30 riots occurred in countries such as Guinea, Mexico, Morocco,
Tunisia, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen, with people dying in violent protests in Haiti
(Pechlaner and Otero, 2010).
As Galaty (2013) has argued, the appropriation of pasturelands in the developing
world is often occurring politically (via the consent of governments that claim ownership
and so offer leases and other deals to foreign investors) while ignoring the social and eco-
nomic bases of existing land use, based upon customary rights. Resources once available
to subsistence farmers are thereby appropriated, leaving local people and communities
with reduced livelihood security (Babiker, 2013; Nunow, 2013). Many of the deals are
secretive (Nunow, 2013). Galaty (2013, pp. 146, 149) states that, in Africa:
[l]ocal landholders – especially mobile herders – are often completely unaware that their lands
are being acquired in ways that transgress their right to retain, use or receive compensation for
parcels that they hold through local consent and with clear collective recognition. . .[indicating]
the fragility of customary rights. . . Privatization of rangelands has been carried out under
the curious rubric of making landholding secure. . .while in fact it has done the opposite: it
has destabilised local systems of tenure, opened the door to corruption and speculators, and
stripped land from pastoralists on the grounds that they were not using the land well and so
deserved to lose it.
In Kenya, for example, the ‘land grab’ has fragmented the Tana Delta, restricting the
movement of pastoralists who need to move cattle to areas of water availability in times
of drought (Nunow, 2013). In the more marginal pastoral regions in the Horn of Africa
there is an emerging developmentalist view that pastoralism is an outdated form of land
management and that new forms will emerge, albeit with the input of foreign capital
(Letai and Lind, 2013). At the local level in Sudan, for example, there are strong antago-
nisms between herders and the new purchasers of land, with herders being ‘squeezed

onto an ever-decreasing rangeland area, and typically onto lands that are furthest from
waters sources’ (Babiker, 2013, p. 181). The designation of the grazing lands as govern-
ment property – although subject to usufruct rights (allowing people to use these lands
by decree of the government) – give the state a legal right to reclassify these ‘undemar-
cated lands’ as available for lease and purchase for commercial farming (Babiker, 2013).
The majority of herders in Africa need clear and enforceable rights to grazing lands.
But this has not been forthcoming, leaving pastoralism – in the context of the overseas-
driven commercialisation and intensification of agriculture – in a situation of conflict
and uncertainty (ibid.).
Increasing public awareness about, and protest and resistance against, large-scale land
acquisitions by foreign investors has become one of the most important goals of agrar-
ian movements worldwide. The resistance movement began with the international non-
profit organisation GRAIN, which has been supporting local farmers and communities
since the 1980s. GRAIN (2008) not only initiated the land-grabbing discourse but it has
also constantly collected and provided information online (farmlandgrab.org) and pub-
lished extensively on the topic. In 2011, GRAIN received the Right Livelihood Award
(the so-called alternative Nobel Prize) for its ‘worldwide work to protect the livelihoods
and rights of farming communities and to expose the massive purchases of farmland in
developing countries by foreign financial interests’ (The Right Livelihood Award, 2011).
Another crucial civil society actor, La Via Campesina – a coalition of peasant farmers
that has become one of the largest social movements in the world – has continued to rail
against the so-called ‘land grabs’ that are occurring in the developing world. It argues
that land grabs result in the installation of a form of agricultural industrialisation that
seeks to ‘depeasantise’ the land, forcing subsistence producers into urban slums, while
appropriating agricultural produce for the benefit of Northern consumers (White et al.,
2012). It calls for national food sovereignty over market-based food exporting. La Via
Campesina is also seeking to reinstall alternative ways of securing foods – that is, from
publicly owned lands, via the expansion of small-scale holdings, and through the devel-
opment of strong, viable, local markets. There is a human rights dimension in this: forced
evictions, land foreclosure, the lack of information about land deals, and exclusion of
local communities from participation in decision-making, are violations of human rights
(De Schutter, 2011). The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(United Nations, 1999) proclaimed that states should ensure that the right to food is
universal, while the International Covenant of the same committee recognised the right
of all people to be free from hunger (Mahon, 2012). Increased regulation would be one
means of ensuring that equity and social justice principles are considered in any future
decision-making about large-scale land acquisitions (White et al., 2012).
An example of a failed acquisition is that of the Daewoo Corporation of South Korea.
In late 2008, the Daewoo logistics arm of one of Korea’s largest companies negotiated
a 99-year lease for some 1.3 million ha of prime agricultural land in Madagascar for the
growing of corn and palm oil for biofuels. However, before the deal was approved local
protests – about the appropriation of currently used lands – became increasingly vocal
and resulted in significant social unrest. These actions helped to lead to the overthrow of
the government in February 2009. The Daewoo proposal was cancelled by the incoming
government, indicating that such extensive ‘deterritorialisation’ of farming is likely to
generate a great deal of popular opposition when food resources and other fundamen-

tals of life are involved (Burgis and Blas, 2009; GRAIN, 2009). As Murphy et al. (2012,
p. 58) have argued ‘food security is too precious to be left to the private sector’. The idea
that market functions of supply and demand will produce the best outcomes in global
food provision is viewed as inadequate: governments have an obligation to meet the
food needs of a population, not hope that food will move across borders in a seamless
manner to supply the needs of all people. In fact, the poor in many developing countries
do not have the economic resources to purchase food, no matter how available it might
be (Lawrence et al., 2010). The protests of the poor, and of the displaced, go unheeded.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The financialisation of global food and farming is one of the most significant socioeco-
nomic transformations the world is currently witnessing. Land (and the water associated
with it) is a new asset class for investors (who desire greater vertical integration of their
business activities), for nations that are food or energy deficient, for those wanting to
make profits from land-price inflation and speculation, and for investors who see new
opportunities in carbon markets (including the global imperative to move from fossil
fuels to biofuels). Importantly, with investment companies producing and exporting
from a foreign land without the use of the conventional marketplace, we may be witness-
ing a ‘closed circuit’ for financial and food/farming transactions that could have impor-
tant ramifications in terms of: increased vertical integration of agribusiness; the demise
of major sections of smallholder and family farming and pastoral activity as govern-
ments take land from the poor and sell/lease it to the wealthy; increased opportunities,
through transfer pricing, for avoidance of taxes; and the end of the current multilateral
system of trade in agricultural and energy products (Cotula, 2012; McMichael, 2012a;
White et al., 2012). Neoliberal financial deregulation has supported a liquidity-focused
marketplace that encourages securitisation, acquisitions by private equity companies
and SWFs, and speculative activities in food and farming (HLPE, 2011; McMichael,
2012b). The accumulation crisis has driven international capital markets to agriculture –
as a new investment frontier – as a means of securing profits in biophysical assets that
look set to rise in value (Daniel, 2012).
In the past, agricultural commodity exchanges were based upon supply and demand
of food and fibre contracts that would assist producers to transfer risk, and for the
buying of futures contracts by firms that were prepared to assume the responsibility
for risk – but in the hope of making a profit if prices rose beyond the contract price
that had been signed. The financialisation of agriculture has meant that this intricate
balance has been broken. Agri-food trading by financial investors is done with the view
of making substantial profits in both the short and long term (Burch and Lawrence,
2009). Financial investors increase price volatility and move prices away from levels that
would normally be achieved through usual (supply-and demand-driven) futures markets
(United Nations, 2011). Market liberalisation has increased international food price
volatility, thereby affecting many developing nations (HLPE, 2011). The commodity
price hike that occurred in 2008 was a direct consequence of this (United Nations, 2011).
Financialisation has also changed the ways signals are given, and interpreted, by market
participants: normal supply/demand assessments are now supplemented with finance

industry concerns about peak oil, climate change, agricultural productivity declines, and
government policy directions – introducing new and sometimes ‘spurious’ price signals
to the marketplace (ibid.). The movement from supply/demand fundamentals to the
view that there is a wider, systemic reduction in the global capacity to produce foods,
fibres and biofuels is likely to generate new ‘price bubbles’ that will increase prices and
have a negative effect on the poorest people in the world (Lawrence et al., 2010; United
Nations, 2011). The likelihood of food price increases is therefore heightened, and deci-
sions by financial firms are made in this context. The result is that – in relation to the
‘herd behaviour’ of the marketplace – farming lands in both developed and develop-
ing nations are now viewed as one of the best investment locations for finance (United
Nations, 2011). Accompanying this, there is a speculative run of capital into the control
of land, water and food/fibre (Murphy et al., 2012) – to the potential benefit of people
in the Global North and in oil-rich nations, but to the detriment of millions of displaced
peasant and subsistence farmers worldwide (White et al., 2012).
The era of financialisation is one marked by crises – in food production and avail-
ability, in fossil fuel price hikes, in economic polarisation among and between nations,
and in continuing and seemingly unstoppable environmental degradation (Lawrence
et al., 2010). The supposed solution according to the advocates of global neoliberal-
ism is to let the markets operate in a manner unfettered by government regulations.
This, it is claimed, will produce efficiency, increases in productivity, and be a stimulus
for world trade – itself seen as the catalyst for economic expansion and more rational
resource use. In an era where processes of globalisation are forcing returns to scale in
farming, and therefore driving the creation of fewer and larger farms globally, farming
is becoming increasingly dependent on finance capital for its operations (Van der Ploeg,
2010). Finance capital is seen to play a crucial role in generating efficiency outcomes
and, in particular, ensuring food is available cheaply for a burgeoning world popula-
tion. In contrast, and as highlighted throughout this chapter, many researchers have
viewed financialisation as the problem, not the solution, to food production and supply.
Financialisation is considered to be distorting prices, allowing for speculative activities,
promoting the agro-industrialisation of farming, and driving peasant farmers (who pres-
ently feed about half the world’s population) out of business (see McMichael, 2012a).
The crucial question the world is facing is ‘Will an increasingly financialised food and
farming system feed the world and do so in an equitable manner?’ Global entities like
the World Bank, IMF and WTO, the grain traders, and free-trade-inspired governments
answer with an unqualified ‘Yes’. Critics point to the significant dislocations that have
occurred and are occurring throughout the agri-food industries, along with the destruc-
tive outcomes for rural livelihoods and the environment and answer ‘No’. Social protest
movements, despite their increasing presence, remain vocal but seem powerless to alter
the financialisation trajectory. Yet, if food prices increase and basic foods become una-
vailable to urban populations we are likely to see the reappearance of food riots. This
will focus the minds of governments on how best to guarantee a regular supply of food
to their peoples, which may lead, through reregulation, to the curtailment of the specula-
tive and other price-distorting activities of firms in the finance sector. Of course, there is
no guarantee at all that financialisation will be reined in by governments in an era that
continues to promote neoliberalist policies and expects structural (economic, political
and social) adjustment to follow in automatic fashion.

NOTE
* The authors would like to acknowledge that the research undertaken in writing this chapter was part-
funded by the Australian Research Council (Project No. DP 110102299). Professor Lawrence was also
part-funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2010-330-00159) and the Norwegian
Research Council (Project No. 220691).
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16. All you need is export? Moroccan farmers
juggling global and local markets
Sarah Ruth Sippel*
INTRODUCTION
The global production of fruit and vegetables is one of the most dynamic areas of global
agriculture. With an increase of 30 per cent during the 1980s and of 56 per cent during
the 1990s and early 2000s, horticulture production has become the fastest-growing food
sector worldwide (Diop and Jaffee, 2005; IAASTD, 2009). As emerging high-value
crops, fruit and vegetables also occupy an important part of global agricultural trade;
even perishable produce is increasingly shipped globally. This development has been
enabled by new, sophisticated technologies that have dramatically changed production,
post-harvesting, transportation and logistics (Bourlakis et al., 2011). It has, at the same
time, been spurred on by changing dietary habits and consumer demand, stimulated and
accommodated by the retail sector. Over the past decade, fruit and vegetable produc-
tions have increasingly become dominated by supermarkets commanding over large
quantities, setting quality standards and widely influencing producer decisions, result-
ing in ‘buyer-driven’ organisations of value chains (cf. Dolan and Humphrey, 2000,
2004; Gibbon, 2003; Gibbon and Ponte, 2005). Geographically, global trade patterns
of fruit and vegetables are still largely following the traditional routes of their colonial
predecessors – coffee, tea or cocoa – with productions based in the Global South aimed
for consumption in the Global North (Fold and Pritchard, 2005). Forty per cent of the
increase in global production originated from the Global South,1 where the produc-
tion of export crops, specialising in counter-seasonal supply, has often been fostered
as a strategy to earn foreign currency. Fruit and vegetables, however, require massive
inputs of cash, labour, chemicals and know-how, while farmers are simultaneously being
exposed to climate and plant pest risks as well as high volatility of prices.
Against this backdrop, a broad body of literature has evolved focusing on the partici-
pation of farmers, especially smallholders, in global markets together with the conditions
and implications of their integration into export chains. Many authors have addressed
these questions within the framework of global commodity and value chain approaches
(cf. Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994; Bair, 2005, 2009). These offer the possibility to con-
ceptually link production in one part of the world economy to consumption in another
(Gwynne, 1999), while particularly emphasising power relations, which allows for
power asymmetries, governance structures, and in-and exclusion processes in relation
to value chains to be addressed (Raikes et al., 2000). Three key areas of research can be
distinguished, as outlined below.
The first strand of literature has focused on the conditions of integration into high-
value chains via contract farming. Contract farming can be considered as a key mecha-
nism of especially integrating smaller farmers into export markets while also bearing
328
Moroccan farmers juggling global and local markets 329
risks of exploitation and new dependencies (see, e.g., Little and Watts, 1994; Singh, 2002;
McCullough et al., 2008; Blandon et al., 2009; Miyata et al., 2009; Schipmann and Qaim,
2011; Michelson et al., 2012; Maertens et al., 2012). The increasing power of supermar-
kets in the Global North and the Global South (see, e.g., Reardon et al., 2003, 2008,
2012; Codron et al., 2004), and the implications of this shift of power in the agri-food
system for smaller farmers has been a second major area of investigation. Specifically the
emerging dominance of new safety and quality requirements, mainly established by the
private sector, have been debated as potential market barriers and mechanisms of exclu-
sion from export chains (see, e.g., Dolan and Humphrey, 2000; Swinnen, 2007; Reardon
et al., 2008, 2012; Henson and Humphrey, 2010; Lee et al., 2012). A third debate, which
has also been overlapping with development policy and projects, has examined global
value chains as potential instruments for rural development, improving livelihoods and
reducing poverty, especially under the term ‘upgrading’ (see, e.g., Ruben et al., 2006;
McCullough et al., 2008; Markelova et al., 2009; Van Dijk and Trienekens, 2012).
Even though the implications for smaller producers have been controversially dis-
cussed, an often implicit assumption of the global commodity or value chain debate –
which has also informed national policies (cf. Challies, 2008; Ouma et al., 2013) – is
that the integration into export markets would improve the situation of farmers in com-
parison to supplying national markets. This assumption can be unfounded, as can the
equally common expectation that farmers would sell to global supply chains if they were
able to (Fold and Gough, 2008; Schipmann and Qaim, 2010, 2011). In this chapter, I
address the assumption of the ‘desirable export market’ by discussing empirical findings
from a study in Morocco’s main fruit and vegetable export production region, focusing
in particular on its relevance for rural livelihoods.
Dating back to its colonial history, the Moroccan government has fostered the
production of export-oriented crops over many decades and with the Green Plan for
Morocco (Plan Maroc Vert) lately reconfirmed its commitment to the future promotion
of export-oriented agriculture as a ‘growth sector’ (cf. Akesbi, 2014). While Moroccan
fruit and vegetable export is often told as a ‘success story’ with regard to its technical
level and flourishing commercialisation on the international scale, only a small minority
of producers participate in the benefits from export gains. Export integration as such,
I argue, does not equal participation in gains, which rather depends on the conditions
of integration. In most cases, the domestic market is of far greater importance for local
farmers and the survival of family farming, a crucial anchor of rural livelihood security
in Morocco. On a broader scale, export production has even had detrimental effects on
the rural social landscape of the region, which ultimately puts the export strategy and its
implications for rural development into question.
This chapter seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of dif-
ferent market segments for rural livelihoods in a globalised agricultural setting, while
emphasising the need to challenge the ‘desirable participation’ in export markets. In
doing this, I draw upon recent claims to integrate global value chain analysis and liveli-
hood approaches in order to better differentiate between groups of agricultural produc-
ers in the Global South, move beyond the binary opposition of inclusion/exclusion in
regard to value chains, and examine the implications of agri-food chain restructuring
on rural development (cf. Fold and Gough, 2008; Challies, 2008; Bolwig et al., 2010;
Challies and Murray, 2011).

The chapter is organised as follows. The first section introduces Morocco’s main agri-
cultural export region for fruit and vegetables, the Souss region in the southwest of the
country. The second section highlights processes of value chain inclusion/exclusion that
have shaped the participation of smaller farmers over recent decades. The third section
focuses on a particular group of farmers, namely those living in the rural areas of the
Souss region. Based on quantitative survey data from three local settings, three types of
farmers are identified and their commercialisation strategies of juggling local and global
markets as well as the importance of respective market segments for family farming are
analysed.2 Finally, I will draw some conclusions with regard to the nexus of export pro-
duction and rural livelihoods.
THE MOROCCAN SOUSS REGION: AGRICULTURAL EXPORT

BOOM AND SOCIAL FRAGMENTATION
For some Mediterranean products, especially tomatoes and citrus fruits, Morocco is
among the top ten export nations worldwide and one of the most important trading part-
ners of the EU.3 The majority of the export production is concentrated in one region, the
Souss plain in the southwest of Morocco, and one of the most dynamic areas of intensive,
export-oriented agriculture in North Africa (Figure 16.1). The agricultural export sector
Source: Created by author (used with permission).
Figure 16.1 The Souss plain: intensive agriculture and location of study areas

is characterised by a sophisticated level of technology, a high degree of compliance with

private sector standards and an excellent professional organisation and integration into
international commercialisation networks. It has, at the same time, led to highly frag-
mented landscapes of up-to-date export spaces mainly dominated by absentee producers
on the one hand, and social spaces of threatened rural livelihoods and new dependen-
cies on the other hand (cf. Sippel, 2014b). Since its independence from France in 1956,
the Moroccan state government has focused its agricultural policy on the development
of irrigated agricultural production, including the promotion of export crops, at the
expense of rainfed agriculture (Swearingen, 1987; Akesbi et al., 2008). This agricultural
strategy has been consistent during periods of state-directed economy as well as neolib-
eral restructuring since the 1990s, while serving as a crucial means of maintaining power
for the royal family and its network of elite supporters (Leveau, 1985; Davis, 2006). The
Green Plan for Morocco, launched by the government in 2008, underlines and further
endorses this strategy by placing the emphasis (and bulk of monetary support) on agri-
cultural ‘growth sectors’ mainly earmarked for the export (Akesbi, 2011, 2014).
The Souss region is among those regions that have been equipped with large irrigation
infrastructure since the 1970s. While the first introduction of export-oriented crops in
the Souss plain dates back to the 1940s (when Morocco was a French protectorate), the
region has experienced a steady growth of citrus fruit plantations and, since the 1990s,
a massive increase in early vegetable production in plastic greenhouses (Berriane, 2002;
Bouchelkha, 2003, 2005). The production amounts to 1.5 million tons of vegetables and
800 000 tons of citrus fruits per year (ORMVA/SM, 2007). More than 90 per cent of all
vegetables and two-thirds of citrus fruits that Morocco annually exports originate from
this region (EACCE, 2009a, 2009b), which is also of crucial importance for the domestic
supply of fruit and vegetables (Belkadi, 2003). The counter-seasonal production of early
vegetables is predominantly directed to the European Union (EU) while citrus fruits
markets are more diverse, with Russia, the EU and Canada being main destinations. The
agricultural export production has brought about a remarkable agri-industrial infra-
structure in the region consisting of packing stations, export bureaus and commercial
centres, research institutions, agricultural trade fairs and shops, and businesses selling
agro-supply. The agricultural boom has also played a key role for the economic develop-
ment of the Souss region, which is currently, after Casablanca, the second most impor-
tant economic region in Morocco, adding 12.2 per cent to the national GDP (DEPF,
2010, p. 34).
Production and exportation of fresh fruit and vegetables are dominated by a small
group of key actors who can be categorised as family businesses, young entrepreneurs,
and Moroccan as well as European investors.4 While some of them export individually
via trading partners, the majority are organised into export groups or export coop-
eratives, or contractually affiliated to the approximately 120 packing stations, of
which around 100 export vegetables and 20 citrus fruits (AMFEL, 2008). The sector
is characterised by a high degree of internationalisation, increasing concentration of
production and exportation capacities, as well as a considerable fluctuation of actors.
Since the 1990s, the export production has (again) become increasingly international-
ised: European actors, mainly from France and Spain, have gained in importance and
have invested in complementary counter-seasonal productions in Morocco, thereby
selectively relocating productions from Southern Europe to Morocco (cf. Sippel, 2014b).

The investment-friendly agricultural policy of the Moroccan government has widely

encouraged these relocations. Advantageous climatic conditions for counter-seasonal
production during the European winter months, proximity to Europe, and abundant
cheap labour have further added to the attractiveness of the Souss region.
While new actors have entered the stage, the absolute number of producers involved in
production and exportation has been constantly decreasing due to processes of consoli-
dation, thereby leading to a concentration of power in fewer hands. Especially private
export enterprises – often Moroccan–European joint ventures with varying shares and
interests – aim to establish vertically integrated businesses that control every level of the
value chain from production to packaging, to exportation, distribution and commer-
cialisation in Europe. In absolute terms, the compliance with private standards is very
high. Forty-eight per cent (15 800 ha) of the citrus production surface is certified (RGA,
2007, p. 96), as well as around 60 per cent of farms producing vegetables in greenhouses
(Rastoin et al., 2008, p. 28). Standardisation processes are, however, driven by key com-
panies commanding large parts of the production, resulting in a gap between certified
produce and certified producers (Chemnitz, 2007).5 The most common standards are
the GlobalGAP standard on the production level and British Retail Consortium (BRC)
standards on the packaging level.6
Due to lacking rainfalls and low dam levels, the export production relies almost exclu-
sively on privately pumped groundwater, which has resulted in a continuous overexploi-
tation of water resources in the region. This process, noted already in the 1970s (Popp,
1983), has accelerated with greenhouse expansion since the 1990s. Situated in a semi-arid
to arid climate zone, the region has low rainfalls of approximately 230 mm per year
(ABH/SM, 2007) and regularly occurring droughts, especially since 2000. Consequently,
groundwater tables have been sinking between 1 and 2 m annually, in some places even
up to 7 m per year. Hence, irrigation water needs to be pumped from increasingly deeper
depths, with driven wells currently reaching up to a depth of 250 m. Access to water has
thus become a matter of capital availability in order to drill new and deepen existing
wells. Lacking means to reach the groundwater for irrigation has in turn resulted in a
widespread decline in agricultural activities, especially among smaller farmers, while new
investments and extensions of export productions are still taking place. Although there
have been several government initiatives7 to protect the water resources and reduce the
new drilling and deepening of existing wells, a sustainable water resource management
has not been established so far. This is mainly due to the complex constellation of the
economic importance of the sector, its interdependence with Moroccan political and eco-
nomic elites, and underfunded as well as overlapping institutional responsibilities, which
have led to a situation where even existing regulations are not effectively implemented
(Houdret, 2010, 2012).
The overpumping of groundwater resources and the resulting severe water scarcity
pose major challenges for the future sustainability of export production in the Souss
region: overexploitation of natural resources, highly political redistribution of access
to resources, and the strong demand for labour in intensive vegetable production have
generated far-reaching fragmentation and disruption of rural social landscapes. The
social conditions in terms of rural livelihood securities and agricultural activities on the
local level are characterised by a sharp contrast to the superlatives generally associated
with the export sector. A sharp marked fragmentation of involved actors has become

the key feature of the intensive export agriculture. Large parts of the intensive produc-
tion areas, namely greenhouses and citrus plantations, are owned and cultivated by the
above-characterised producers, who largely act as ‘absentee landowners’.8 Most of them
do not reside next to their farms or in nearby villages but live in regional towns of the
Souss, in urban agglomerations of Agadir, or even come from other Moroccan cities
such as Casablanca or Marrakech. Some of them visit their farms or packing stations
not more than once a year. In these cases, the business is run by a director as well as
company, station and farm managers who lead their respective teams of accountants,
engineers, technicians and agricultural labourers; during the peak season, hired staff can
reach upwards of several thousand people.
The social structure of the rural Souss has in turn been transformed into a ‘reservoir’
of agricultural labourers working in the intensive production and packing stations of
the export sector (cf. Sippel, 2014b). These workers, composed of former peasants and
migrants from other Moroccan regions, mainly populate the villages of the plain. While
in some areas, particularly in Chtouka, an important percentage of households migrated
to the Souss deliberately in order to work as agricultural labourers (DRSMD, 2007),
there has also been a massive shift from small-scale agriculture to wage labour induced
by the intensive, export-oriented production schemes. Livelihoods in the rural Souss
hence considerably depend on the export structures via wage labour, while (as own
survey data on the household level indicate) only every sixth income in the villages is
generated from self-employed agriculture (Table 16.1).
Table 16.1 Social structure and income sources in the rural Souss
Chtouka Lagfifat Ahmar

Social structure
Inhabitants 3607 3448 1872
Households (HH) 854 661 329
Size of HH (persons) 4.2 5.2 5.7
Economically active population (%) 32.7 29.4 29.8
Economically active people per HH 1.4 1.5 1.7
Income sources (%)
Self-employed:
Agriculture 17.1 16.3 15.7
Commerce 5.6 6.8 7.9
Service 6.8 4.4 7.0
Transportation 8.0 4.4 3.7
Wage labour:
Agricultural labour 46.1 54.1 58.2
Labour (other than agriculture, e.g., construction) 5.3 6.9 3.0
Service 5.8 2.4 2.5
Other (e.g., education, administration, military) 5.3 4.7 2.0
Note: The household census encompasses two villages in Chtouka, three in Lagfifat and one in Ahmar;
percentages refer to the total number of people earning an income in the villages.
Source: Created from own survey data, 2008.

THIN LINES: INCLUSION/EXCLUSION PROCESSES WITHIN

EXPORT CHAINS
Over the past decades, the integration into global and local value chains in the Souss
has changed within the context of new quality requirements and increasingly vertically
integrated production and export structures. Also, the occurrence of new pests, chang-
ing demand structures, and the increasing stress on water resources have altered chances
of participation in export chains. While some export opportunities have been selectively
closed, others have emerged; lines between exclusion from participation and new ways of
inclusion are hence being constantly redrawn.
The tomato as the epitome of Moroccan agricultural export production has been
subject to fierce negotiations with the EU over decades, particularly with the Spanish
producers who fear Moroccan competition (Aznar Sánchez, 2006). Tomatoes are
exported within the framework of a complicated system of annual and monthly quotas,
as well as related entry prices that determine to a great extent actual export quanti-
ties (Chemnitz and Grethe, 2005). Tomato production is the export chain for which
the model of vertical integration was first introduced in the sector by the joint venture
of a Moroccan–French export company, which has since become the role model for
other businesses (Tozanli and El Hadad Gauthier, 2007). The process of vertical inte-
gration during which tomato export became dominated by big export companies (at
the expense of smaller farmers) was fostered by the emergence of a pest, the whitefly
(Trialeurodes vaporariorum), transmitting the tomato yellow leaf curl virus. The virus,
which was first detected in Morocco in 1998 (PNTTA, 2000), can only be effectively
controlled in greenhouses and led to a sharp decline of open-air tomato production.
Today, export tomatoes exclusively stem from greenhouse production (ORMVA/SM,
2007). Possibilities for local farmers to participate in the lucrative tomato export, as,
for instance, described for the 1990s by Turner (2002), have therefore been consider-
ably reduced. Apart from quality requirements and certifications, farmers who could
not afford to invest in plastic greenhouses have been effectively driven out of tomato
export chains due to the emergence of the whitefly. When the whitefly started to destroy
tomato harvests, most of them decided to quit tomato production in the early 2000s,
and some turned to the cultivation of green beans for which almost simultaneously a
large export demand unfolded.
In addition to the tomato, citrus fruits are the second traditional agricultural export
product in the Souss region, which were also introduced by French colonialists. After
Morocco’s independence in 1956, also smaller farmers started to cultivate citrus for
export markets (Popp, 1983). Quality requirements have impacted citrus export possi-
bilities as well, though less so than in the early vegetable sector since target markets are
different. While 93 per cent of vegetable exports are directed to the EU market domi-
nated by supermarket chains, 44 per cent of citrus fruits are produced for the Russian
market, which does not (yet) require cost-and knowledge-intensive private certifica-
tions (EACCE, 2009a, 2009b). The production of water-demanding citrus fruits has,
however, particularly suffered from the overexploitation and, in some places, depletion
of groundwater resources. Between 1996 and 2003, the area for citrus plantations in
the traditional heart of citrus fruit production of the plain, Sebt El-Guerdane, shrank
by one-third (from 16 350 ha to 11 950 ha) due to falling water tables (ABH/SM, 2005,

pp. 9–10). It can be assumed that this process has continued since. Larger producers who
could afford it have started to relocate their plantations to other areas within or outside
the Souss region. Again, smaller producers have been most severely affected and often
had to reduce or even quit citrus farming.
While tomatoes and citrus fruits are the established and increasingly elite-dominated
export crops, green beans have become the new boom product. This boom is partly
due to the fact that tomato export quantities to the EU have remained restricted
as well as more than fulfilled over the last years, thus limiting a further increase in
tomato export production. Faced with this situation, some Moroccan export busi-
nesses started to establish new trade relations for green beans, especially with the
British market. Simultaneously, the Spanish producers and exporters have emerged
as a new group of actors since the early 2000s that has started to grow and buy green
beans mainly directed to the Spanish market.9 At the time of the case study research,
there were around 20 packing stations owned by Spanish exporters in the Souss. While
the possibilities to participate in tomato export without greenhouses have been closed,
the export chain of green beans has offered new export opportunities for small-scale
farmers, and a certain (re)integration of smallholders into export chains has taken
place. Even though green beans are very labour intensive they demand less investment
since they can be grown open-air and have short production cycles; green beans have
thus become a relatively common crop at the local level. However, participation in
export chains via green beans does not necessarily mean participation in export gains,
nor does it in general contribute to viable farm incomes, as will be further demon-
strated below.
Finally, another important greenhouse crop, which has a unique position in the
regional portfolio as it is not exported, is the banana. Banana production was intro-
duced in Morocco in the early 1980s when banana imports were prohibited and national
production was encouraged via tax exemptions, thereby attracting mainly urban inves-
tors (Bouchelkha, 1995). For about ten years banana production was booming, but it
slowed in the early 1990s and was eventually abandoned by many investors when the
banana import ban was lifted in the aftermath of Morocco’s accession to the World
Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995. Instead, many investors reoriented their produc-
tion towards export vegetables. Nevertheless, if the required investment can be achieved,
bananas are still a comparatively lucrative product that is exclusively grown for the
Moroccan market.
The processes described above have significantly altered the chances of smallholder
participation in global markets. Against this backdrop, the following section inves-
tigates how farmers in the villages of the Souss are currently integrated into national
and international value chains and examines the implications of market integration for
the viability of their farms. I will start by presenting three case studies of local farmers
that illustrate farm and family structures in the rural Souss while representing different
marketing strategies.

JUGGLING MARKETS: INTEGRATION OF MOROCCAN

FARMERS INTO VALUE CHAINS
Case 1: Best Quality for the Packing Station
Hassan lives in a village in the community of Lagfifat. He is 61 years old, married and has
never been to school. He runs the farm together with his adult son. Hassan owns 3.5 ha of
land property and rents an extra field of 6.5 ha. He has 2 ha of citrus fruit plantations. On
the remaining 8 ha he grows courgettes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, peas and broad and
green beans. Hassan also keeps a livestock of five cows for milk production and 70 sheep.
Apart from the citrus trees irrigated by gravity, he has equipped his fields with a drip
irrigation system via his own well, which reaches to 120 m in depth. The irrigation system
is one of the main costs of his farm: he paid 20 000 MAD10 for each, the motor-pump
and the tubes for the drip irrigation; within only one year he had to deepen his well three
times for which he paid 60 000 MAD. Further running costs include seeds, fertilisers and
manure, pesticides and the replacement of old tubes for irrigation, all together around
150 000 MAD per year. Finally, he also needs additional labour. He hires between one
and two, occasionally up to ten workers on 300 days per year, depending on the season
and his needs. Hassan has always made use of local and regional market chains as well
as commercialisation possibilities offered by the export sector. For many years, he used
to deliver the main part of his citrus fruits to a packing station in Oulad Teima. When
the packing station went bankrupt in the late 1990s, he sold to another one for about
two years. However, mainly due to lacking water supply, the quality of his citrus fruits
deteriorated and was finally not sufficient for export, so he focused on the national
market instead. In 2006, he started to sell peas and green beans to buyers purchasing for
packing stations. Usually, he sells the first harvest of peas and green beans, which is the
best quality, to the buyers, while his eldest son brings the remainder, together with the
other crops, to the wholesale market in Oulad Teima. Hassan has known the owner of
the station for several years but there have never been written contracts or advance pay-
ments, neither with the owner nor the buyers. In 2007/08, the price difference between the
packing station and the local market was about 1 MAD: the owner of the packing station
paid him 6 MAD per kg of green beans while the price on the local market was between
5–4 MAD. Hassan considers the situation of his family as moderate. The farm, he says,
is currently viable for him and his wife. But he is concerned about the future for his son.
Over the last years, he explains, farming has become increasingly difficult and, instead of
being able to invest in a greenhouse, they had to reduce their agricultural activity.
Case 2: Diversified Family Farm Focusing on the Local Market
Lahcen lives in the community of Ahmar, is 50 years old, married, and has three adult
children. He attended the primary school. On his farm, he works together with his two
eldest sons. Lahcen inherited 2 ha of land from his father; he also has continuously
bought land over the last 30 years from other family members and village inhabitants.
Today, he owns about 50 ha of land. In 1984, he started to plant citrus trees and in 1992
he installed his first plastic greenhouse for the production of bananas. Currently, he cul-
tivates 5 ha of bananas, 32 ha of citrus fruits and 4 ha each of eggplants, broad beans and

forage maize. The whole production is drip irrigated via his four wells, reaching between
150 and 200 m deep. Throughout the year, Lahcen employs between 17 and 27 agricul-
tural workers per day. His annual costs for seeds, fertilisers, manure, pesticides and agri-
cultural material add up to 370 000 MAD plus a further 550 000 MAD for running the
four wells. On a weekly basis, he and one of his sons sell the vegetables and some of the
citrus fruits on the wholesale market in Inezgane. The main portion of the citrus fruits
and the bananas are sold to buyers who come directly to the field. All transactions are
made in cash. In the case of the citrus fruits, Lahcen sells to three different buyers: one
who buys produce on behalf of an export packing station in Sebt El-Guerdane; the other
two buyers resell the fruits on markets in Oulad Teima and Inezgane. When Lahcen has
completed the deal with the buyers, his business is done – all further steps, including the
harvest of the fruits, are taken over by the buyers. In the case of the bananas, he has been
selling them to the same buyer for five years, and the buyer sells them on the wholesale
market in Inezgane. In addition to his fruit and vegetable production, Lahcen is member
of a milk cooperative to which he delivers the milk from his 12 cows. He also has a herd
of 300 sheep and goats. He considers the economic situation of his family as ‘very good’
and would like to see his sons succeeding him in farming, to ‘not lose the family herit-
age’ and because they ‘love this job’. Farming, he says, is a good profession but difficult
to maintain, since there has been little support from the state government in terms of
commercialisation, better education or credits. Farmers have been left alone to cope by
themselves.
Case 3: Green Beans as a New Export Niche Product?
Said is 52 years old, married and has six children. He has secondary education and is
the vice-president of a local development organisation in his village located in the com-
munity of Lagfifat. He runs the farm alone while two of his sons occasionally work as
day labourers. Said’s wife works in a crèche and contributes a monthly amount of 1000
MAD to the household’s income. Said has access to 1.5 ha of land, including 0.5 ha
land property and 1 ha land use rights in the nearby Argan forest. He also keeps two
sheep for the religious feast Eid al-Adha. Said has been selling vegetables to the export
market since the late 1980s. Until the late 1990s, he used to grow tomatoes in the open
and sold them to packing stations via the local market. When the whitefly appeared,
open field production of tomatoes became very difficult. He stopped producing them
and switched to other crops. A few years ago, Said started to grow green beans and sell
them to packing stations. Since his own well, which only reaches to a depth of 50 m, ran
dry he has been working in a sharecropping arrangement with another local farmer from
the village. His sharecropping partner contributes the water for irrigation and the annual
production costs, and has equipped the field with tubes for drip irrigation; Said in turn
contributes his land and his labour. Within this arrangement, he grows two cycles of
green beans on 1 ha of land and sells them to a packing station in Ait Melloul. He got to
know the owner, a Moroccan businessman who works together with a Spanish partner,
via another farmer in the village and has delivered his green beans to him for two years
in a row now. After the deduction of the production costs, Said and his sharecropping
partner split the benefit 50–50. Said considers the economic situation of his family as
difficult: his agricultural income is not sufficient to deepen his well to restart his own

business so that he continues to depend on his sharecropping partner. The family also
needs the additional income earned by Said’s sons and wife. For his children he wishes a
better future via education. He recently sold his only cow to send one of his children to
university in Agadir.
Farming at the Village Level
The fruit and vegetable production by local farmers in the Souss region encompasses a
variety of crops differing between the subregional contexts and depending on land and
water access, investment capacities, (family) labour availability and market integration.
As shown in Table 16.1, only a minority of the rural population of the Souss region cur-
rently participate in self-employed agriculture. Within the regional context of the Souss
these farmers belong to the group of small and smallest farmers. Also within this group,
as the examples of Hassan, Said and Lahcen illustrate, there are great differences in their
capacity to participate in farming. In this section I will introduce the different scopes of
action of these farmers who – contrary to the many absentee landholders dominating the
export production – are currently living in the villages of the Souss region (for the loca-
tion of the study areas, see Figure 16.1). I will then address the implications of different
forms of integration into local and global value chains.
The technical level of production, the respective choice of crops and especially the
question whether the farmer has been able to invest in plastic greenhouses appear
to be the most important indicators for the farmer’s scope of action and, thus, for
the viability of farming in the rural Souss. Three types of farmers can be identified:
(1) ‘forage crop farmers’, who are not able to participate in the production of fruit and
vegetables and concentrate on growing fodder crops for their livestock; (2) ‘open-air
fruit and veg farmers’ who grow fruit and vegetables in the open; and (3) ‘greenhouse
farmers’, who have invested in plastic greenhouses and produce crops under plastic
(Table 16.2).
With almost two-thirds of the sample surveyed for the study, the open-air fruit and
vegetable farmers represent the majority. Depending on the subregional context, these
farmers grow vegetables such as beans, peas, courgettes, carrots or potatoes and fruits
such as citrus fruits, pomegranates or watermelons. In two-thirds of the cases, these are
combined with fodder production for their livestock. On average, these farmers have
access to around 8 ha of land and cultivate about 4.6 ha of it; three in four own a well for
irrigation. The forage crop farmers in turn only grow fodder, mainly maize and lucerne,
for their livestock, which mostly consists of few heads of cattle, sheep and goats for milk
and meat production. With 3.6 ha of land and one in three farmers not owning a well, the
access to natural resources of this group is considerably below average. If existing, depths
of wells are comparatively low. One-third of the forage crop farmers depend on the often
dysfunctional public water supply or water-sharing arrangements for irrigation. Even
though they are in most cases members of local milk cooperatives, their scope of action
is very limited due to the inability to develop other crops. The greenhouse farmers have
the largest scope of action among local farmers. On average, they can access more than
15 ha of land and own 1.7 wells. Most importantly, these farmers produce crops such
as tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, green beans, cucumbers and bananas under plastic.
The greenhouse production is often combined with open-air production of further fruit

Table 16.2 Types of local farmers in the Souss plain
Forage Crop Open-air Greenhouse

Farmers Fruit and Veg Farmers
[N 5 29] Farmers [N 5 44]
[N 5 107]
Social structure
Age of head of farm 52.4 50.4 51.1
Assessment of economic situation 39.3 51.4 80.0
(good or very good, %)
Future of children in Souss agriculture? 37.9 38.8 73.2
(yes, %)
Land (ha)
Land accessa 3.6 8.1 16.8
Land purchases 0.6 1.9 8.6
Greenhouse area – – 3.9
Cultivated land 1.6 4.6 12.0
Water
Water accessb 48.6 92.0 215.2
Number of wells 0.7 0.9 1.7
Livestock (heads)
Cattle 4.3 3.6 7.2
Sheep and goats 10.4 15.8 40.7
Technical level (%)
Drip irrigation (partly or whole production) 31.0 79.3 100
Plastic greenhouses – – 100
Private certification – – 4.5
Costs and investments (MAD)
Investments in farm (previous 10 years) 18 083 86 179 867 378
Investments in well 6204 19 816 49 463
Running costs for agricultural input and energy 13 883 81 959 489 755
Running costs for hired labour 2276 21 637 217 007
Labour
Family labour (male) 1.3 1.9 2.9
Family labour (female) 0.9 0.2 0.1
Permanent employees 0.1 0.2 2.5
Day labourers (working days per year) 29 380 3687
Market integration (fruit and vegetables, %)
National market – 61.7 51.2
National and export market – 34.6 46.5
Export market – 3.7 2.3
Market channels – 1.4 1.8
Notes:
a. Land access includes land property, land use rights and leased land.
b. Accumulated depth of wells (in metres).

and vegetables and, in half of the cases, also with fodder crops. The greenhouse farmer is
hence a relatively well-diversified local farmer.
The technical level of production, the capacity to put money into the farm and the
labour structure of the three types of farmers vary considerably. While more than three-
quarters of the open-air fruit and vegetable farmers, as well as all greenhouse farmers,
have (at least partly) installed drip irrigation on their farm, this is only the case for one-
third of the forage crop farmers. Furthermore, annual costs farmers are able to afford
vary between around 14 000 MAD for the forage crop farmers and, with close to 500 000
MAD, more than 30 times more for the greenhouse farmers. With regard to investments
undertaken in the farm structure over the past decade, the greenhouse farmers have
invested almost 50 times more than forage crop farmers. These findings point to the
enormous cash inputs necessary for both investment and running costs of greenhouse
production, which is only affordable for a small minority of local farmers – and a negli-
gible percentage of the total rural population. Only few local farmers have been able to
take advantage of the highly dynamic agricultural export sector, adopt technical skills
and transfer them to their own farm.
The large disparities among local farmers are finally reflected in the labour structure
of the farms. Forage crop farmers rely almost exclusively on the workforce of the family:
permanent employees are practically non-existent and also day labourers are only hired
during restricted periods of the year; moreover, it is female family members who contrib-
ute almost half of the family workforce, a crucial characteristic of this type of farmer,
underlining the precarious conditions they work under. As for the open-air fruit and
vegetable farmers, family labour is still the most important workforce and accounts for
roughly two-thirds of labour on the farm; however, family labour is almost exclusively
male. In addition, one-third of labour is taken up by hired day labourers. With respect
to the greenhouse farmers, there is first an increase in family labour, with an average
of 2.9 male family members working on the farm. Second, the bulk of work realised by
the family in the first two farmer groups shifts to hired labour taking over 80 per cent of
the farm work.
Technical level, investment capacities and labour structure hence underpin the
different and highly unequal traits of local farming in the rural Souss. Interestingly,
however, these characteristics – which can be considered as indicators for a relatively
diversified and viable farm structure – do not correspond with patterns of integration
into different value chains as one might assume. Instead, the survey data indicate
that while there are large gaps between the agricultural scopes of action between
farmers, the patterns of market channels for both show more similarities than dif-
ferences. A considerable number of greenhouse farmers also produce exclusively for
the Moroccan market, and while indeed every second greenhouse farmer sells to the
export market, this is also the case for 38.3 per cent of the open-air fruit and vegetable
farmers. Having said this, what is the role of different market segments and how do
farmers combine national and international marketing channels? The next section will
take a closer look at the different market segments and the conditions and implica-
tions they entail.

Local fruit and vegetable production
82.7% Sale from the field 26.0%

30.7% 18.0%
(e.g. green beans, peas, tomatoes)

Direct marketing
(e.g. green beans, citrus)
Direct delivery
(diverse products)
(e.g. bananas, citrus)

National market
Export market
Buyer
Regional wholesale markets additional purchase
Packing stations
(Inezgane, Oulad Teima, ...) sorted produce
National market Export market

(Souss, Morocco) (EU, Russia, ...)
Source: Created by author (used with permission).
Figure 16.2 Market channels used by local farmers in the Souss
Commercialisation Strategies: Market Channels and Export Integration
Farmers in the villages of the Souss use three different market channels to sell their
produce (see Figure 16.2). The first and main channel is direct commercialisation by
selling produce on one of the regional markets. The second one is to sell produce via
buyers who come to the field as intermediaries between other buyers or packing stations.
Finally, produce can be directly delivered to packing stations for the export market.
Around half of the farmers focus on one market channel for selling their produce; the
other half combines different channels.
Direct commercialisation on one of the regional wholesale markets in the Souss plain
is by far the most important market channel. Over 82 per cent of the local farmers make
use of this option, while for 38 per cent of them this is the only marketing channel. There
are two main wholesale markets, located in Inezgane and in Oulad Teima, which are
major hubs for the national commercialisation of fresh fruit and vegetables also beyond
the Souss region (Belkadi, 2003). Both markets are not specialised but trade every kind
of fruit or vegetable grown in the plain. Buyers who come directly to the field represent

the second most important marketing channel. Every second farmer (48.7 per cent)
makes use of this option, often built on stable relations between farmer and buyer.11
Contrary to the regional wholesale markets, buyers are organised according to the
national or international market segment they supply, as well as the product they are
specialised in. One-third of the farmers sell to the national market via buyers, with the
main commodities being bananas and citrus fruits. As in the case of Lahcen, farmers may
decide to sell their produce to different buyers depending on the offer they make and the
desired quantity and quality. Lahcen’s case, moreover, illustrates that, while usually the
farmer takes care of the harvest, in the case of citrus fruits this often becomes the job of
the buyer. Buyers bring their own workers for the harvest and then carry the produce
to the next destination, which can be a packing station, a wholesale or local market or
another intermediary.
Buyers for the international market can either buy produce on behalf of packing sta-
tions or act as individual agents between farmer and station. Around one-fifth of farmers
(18 per cent) use this option, particularly for citrus fruits and green beans. As in the case
of Hassan, farmers use this option for their best-quality produce. The second possibility
of export market integration is the direct delivery of produce to a packing station, which
applies to vegetables, such as tomatoes, sweet peppers and courgettes, and citrus fruits.
As illustrated in the case of Hassan, the prices the farmers could obtain within the differ-
ent market segments are not all that different. For instance, prices for green beans varied
between 2–7 MAD per kg on the domestic market and 4–10 MAD for the export market.
Hence, export prices for local farmers are only a little higher than prices on the national
market, while it has to be taken into account that it is usually the best-quality produce
that is sold to the export market. Local farms thus participate only minimally, if at all,
in export gains. How can this outcome be explained? One observed reason relates to the
type of export market integration of local farmers in general, while survey data further
indicate that the type of produce (through which a farmer is integrated into export
chains) matters for the viability of local farming.
For both, international and national buyers and packing stations, farmers maintain
mid-and long-term relations with buyers and packing station owners. Yet, even though
contacts with buyers or packing station owners can be quite steady, only few farmers
reported about written contracts, agreements or advance payments. Only three of the
farmers interviewed in the villages were integrated into export chains as formal members
of a cooperative or as contractors bound to a packing station by a contract that usually
comes as a cahier de charges (catalogue of obligations); two of these were also the only
ones that complied with the GlobalGAP standard. In only three cases of the sample, did
local farmers reach the status of an official subcontractor. Even though linked to export
chains, village farmers are thus overwhelmingly not included in the mutual engagements,
obligations and responsibilities that typify the export market integration of those domi-
nating export: contractors, members of cooperatives and export groups, or owners of
packing stations. The ‘loose integration’ of most local farmers impacts greatly on their
participation in export gains, which in many cases requires at least the status of a sub-
contractor – the less formally a farmer is integrated in the export chain, the less likely he
is to benefit from the greater income potential this market segment offers.
In addition to the kind of integration, the type of produce delivered to national and
international markets is also essential and has to be considered within the context of the

Table 16.3 Export integration of farmers on the village level
Integration Via Open- Integration Via

air Vegetables Greenhouse Veg/Citrus
[N 5 37] [N 5 25]
Social structure
Age of head of farm 52.7 52.5
Secondary incomes in household 0.9 0.2
Assessment of economic situation 45.9 87.5
(good or very good, %)
Land (ha)
Land accessa 6.6 20.6
Land purchases 1.1 13.6
Cultivated land 4.5 14.8
Water
Water accessb 87 233
Number of wells 0.8 1.8
Livestock (heads)
Cattle 2.6 9.4
Sheep and goats 13.9 58.0
Costs and investments (MAD)
Investments (previous 10 years) 70 061 716 619
Investments in well 18 750 35 223
Running costs for agricultural input and energy 67 630 573 056
Labour
Family labour (male) 2.1 2.9
Permanent employees 0.1 4.0
Day labourers (working days per year) 502 3885
Notes:
a. Land access includes land property, land use rights and leased land.
b. Accumulated depth of wells (in metres).
changing mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion described above. There is a crucial differ-

ence between farmers who are integrated via greenhouse vegetables or citrus fruits and
those who are integrated via open-air vegetables. Although linked to export markets,
open-air vegetable farming, especially if it is the main basis of the family farm, is not
financially viable and limits the possibilities for further investment (Table 16.3). Farmers
relying on open-air vegetables for export are rather vulnerable to market changes and
climatic conditions and, as does Said, increasingly depend on non-agricultural income in
the household. They belong to the group of local farmers with the most restricted scope
of action, while farmers who are linked to export markets via greenhouse vegetables or
citrus fruits command a larger scope of action, and their farming activity is compara-
tively secure within the local context. However, also for the latter group the importance
of the export market should not be overestimated. In the majority of the cases, the export

market, as for Lahcen, represents one pillar of a diversified commercialisation and

farming strategy including several marketing channels as well as livestock production.
The importance of export market integration for local farmers and the future viabil-
ity of family farming in the Souss has to be carefully weighed: first, local farmers are
unlikely to participate in export gains due to their lacking institutional integration into
the export sector; participation in gains usually requires at least a contractual agreement
with the packing station built upon mutual obligations and responsibilities. Second, the
implications of export integration further depend on the type of produce through which
farmers are integrated. Only farmers who are integrated via greenhouse vegetables or
citrus fruits are doing relatively well; yet, this is apparently not only due to export inte-
gration but also their overall diversified farming structure. These products furthermore
require investment in greenhouses (in the case of vegetables) or a minimum quality of
produce (in the case of citrus fruits), which could only be achieved by a minority of the
investigated farmers. For local farmers who have become (re)integrated into export
chains through cultivation of open-air vegetables such as green beans, this (re)integra-
tion has not contributed to an improved viability of their farming activity.
To sum up, local farmers in Morocco’s main fruit and vegetable export region pursue
different strategies of combining local and global market segments and value chains.
Even though large quantities of export produce are grown and, to a certain degree, pur-
chased in the Souss region, export market chains have a supplementary but not neces-
sarily more profitable function. It is rather the national market that is paramount for the
future existence of local farmers, while the ways in which they are integrated into export
market chains often do not guarantee a viable outcome for their families.
CONCLUSION: ARE EXPORT MARKETS DESIRABLE?
Similarly to other countries in the Global South, the Moroccan government has fostered
export-oriented agriculture over the last decades and, as announced in the Green Plan
for Morocco in 2008, intends to further promote this agricultural development strategy
in the future. Morocco has indeed succeeded in becoming an important export nation
for tomatoes and citrus fruits, as well as a main trading partner of the EU. But for
whom is the export market an achievable and profitable market and does it contribute
to enhancing rural livelihood security? This chapter has demonstrated that the way in
which Morocco’s export strategy has been implemented has led to increasing inequalities
and new dependencies on global markets, rather than helping to secure rural livelihoods.
While export markets are often considered by governments as a ‘desirable market’, alleg-
edly offering greater gains and income potential for smaller farmers, I have argued that
the assumption of the ‘desirable export market’ has to be questioned on several levels.
First, empirical research in the Souss reveals a spatially fragmented and socially dis-
rupted landscape. While a small group of key actors dominate production and exporta-
tion, and are therefore able to realise great profits from the export market, the social face
of the rural landscape has changed dramatically over the past decades. Self-employed
agriculture – the traditional backbone of rural livelihood security in Morocco – has
become a minor activity in the rural Souss, being widely replaced by agricultural labour
as a major income source. This shift in income sources has resulted in new dependen-

cies of rural livelihoods on global food markets via incomes gained from wage labour.
Second, farmers who are still actively participating in farming in the villages of the Souss
region differ in their access to natural resources, their capacity to invest in farming, and
consequently their possibility to secure their livelihoods through farming; only a minor-
ity are currently in a comparatively secure position. While farmers living in the villages
are indeed linked to global markets and export value chains in multiple ways, it is rather
the national market that remains of crucial importance for their livelihoods. There are
two main reasons for this. First, most village farmers are only loosely integrated into
export chains due to, among other reasons, limited access to natural resources, capital
to invest in their farm and ability to achieve minimum standards; the ‘loose’ integration
in most cases does not entail participation in benefits in terms of higher prices. Second,
there are crucial differences between the products through which local farmers are linked
to export chains, with the more lucrative products once again requiring higher invest-
ments (such as deepening wells or constructing greenhouses), which are not feasible
for many local farmers. If implemented in this way, the assumption of the ‘desirable
export market’ rather turns into an engine that fosters the continuous overexploitation
of natural resources, creates new dependencies on globalising labour markets, and leads
to increasing social inequality, which together are detrimental to rural development and
livelihood security.
NOTES
* I am grateful to the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for making this
project financially possible. Apart from the many Moroccans who shared their stories and knowledge
with me, I would particularly like to thank Badreddine El Guennouni, Mohamed Ouassou and Mustapha
Zoumhane for their commitment and tireless effort and energy in assisting me with this research.
1. Except for the mainly domestically oriented Chinese production that accounted for 52 per cent during
1970–2004 (IAASTD, 2009, p. 149).
2. The data presented in this chapter were obtained during my qualitative and quantitative fieldwork in
the Souss region between 2006 and 2009 as part of my PhD research (cf. Sippel, 2014a). In this chapter,
I particularly refer to a quantitative study conducted in autumn 2008, focusing on local agriculture and
the integration of village farmers in international and domestic market chains. One hundred and eighty
farmers were interviewed who were living in eight villages spread over the Souss plain (see Figure 16.1).
Additionally, household censuses were conducted to assess the importance of farming activities within
rural income structures.
3. Globally, in terms of quantity, Morocco came fourth for mandarin exports, eighth for orange exports
and sixth for tomato exports in 2011 (FAOSTAT, 2011); 80.0 per cent of tomatoes (369 689 tons) and
60.8 per cent of beans (115 056 tons) imported to the EU from third countries in 2013 were delivered by
Morocco, as well as 22.3 per cent of mandarins (74 462 tons) (EC, 2013).
4. These categories have been developed from my qualitative research on the export sector between 2006
and 2009 and can be considered as archetypes of producers and exporters that dominate the agricultural
export sector in the Moroccan Souss (Sippel, 2014a). Family businesses refer to large family holdings
often including several generations of family members; these families stem from the Souss region and
have been able to realise a tremendous social upward mobility within the context of the export sector (cf.
Sippel, 2012). The category of young entrepreneurs refers to a group of producers who are often not from
the Souss and who have been able to enter the (vegetable) export sector due higher levels of education
(often agricultural engineers) and specific credit loans offered to young entrepreneurs by the Moroccan
state (crédit jeunes promoteurs). The category of investors refers to Moroccan, often urban, actors who
are not agricultural producers in the first place, but consider agriculture as an investment asset.
5. Cf. Aloui and Kenny (2005) for a detailed analysis of certification costs in Morocco; Chemnitz’s (2007)
study on Moroccan export tomato producers highlights the importance of access to knowledge in the
decision process for or against compliance with standards.

6. The GlobalGAP standard (originally EurepGAP) was developed in 1997 by the Euro-Retailer Produce
Working Group in order to create a standard for certifying ‘good agricultural practices’. The standard
covers food safety and traceability, protection of the environment, working conditions as well as animal
welfare, and assumes various crop, pest and quality management systems (see www.globalgap.org). BRC
Global Standards are developed by the British Retail Consortium; the BRC Food Safety Standard has
been designed to certify all kinds of food processing operations where open food is handled, processed or
packed (see www.brcglobalstandards.com).
7. See especially the initiative Le contrat de nappe (Groundwater Table Contract) and the resulting frame-
work agreement La convention cadre pour la préservation et le développement des ressources en eau dans
le bassin hydraulique du Souss-Massa (Framework Convention for the Preservation and Development
of Water Resources in the Hydraulic Catchment Area of the Souss-Massa), which have been signed by
several public and private actors and institutions of the water sector (accessible online on the website of
the water agency of the Souss region, www.abhsmd.ma).
8. Cultivated land can be owned or leased; landownership is more common for citrus production while land
used for vegetable production is often leased.
9. This development is mirrored in the export figures: since the late 1990s, the export of green beans has
multiplied more than tenfold and increased from around 9000 tons in 1997/98 to 113 000 tons in 2008/09,
the majority of which is exported to Spain (60 000 tons in 2008/09) (EACCE, 2008, p. 4; EACCE, 2009a,
pp. 9–14).
10. 1 MAD (Moroccan dirham) equals 0.1 US dollar (www.oanda.com, accessed 28 April 2014).
11. Two-thirds of the farmers who sold to buyers in 2007/08 had already sold to the same buyer the year
before; in some cases the relationship had been established for more than five years.
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17. Inequality regimes in food processing industries*
Lia Bryant
INTRODUCTION
Food processing is the largest manufacturing sector in many economies. In the United
States food processing shipments were worth approximately USD538 billion in 2006
(US Department of Commerce, 2010). During the same time period in France, the
leading European producer of food, food processing was worth approximately EUR148
billion (Caroli et al., 2009), and in Australia it was worth AUD82 billion in 2009/10
(Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, 2010). These examples, while dem-
onstrating the economic worth of food industries to specific nations, also indicate their
importance for local employment. The consistent message in both the media and in aca-
demic work is that the viability of these sectors and therefore the jobs of their workers
are under threat (Grunert et al., 2010). Grunert and others suggest that ‘highly competi-
tive environment[s] has made it difficult for companies, multinational corporations, and
small-medium sized enterprises alike to operate profitably’ (ibid., p. 370), although the
smaller the scale the higher the risk, particularly for companies not producing niche
market produce.
Across nations similar economic constraints face these industries, including the domi-
nant power of retailers in the food chain that demand low prices of food processors and
manufacturers and ‘just-in-time requirements’ (Grimshaw et al., 2005). The ‘just-in-time
requirements’ necessitate that perishable goods in industries like fruit and meat must be
ready to be delivered in the required quantity, quality and format on demand. Further,
these industries now compete with supermarket branding of products where in some
countries, like the United Kingdom, retailers require processing industries to create sepa-
rate production lines to cater for their labels (Lloyd and James, 2008). This places food
processing companies under greater pressure, causing increases in capital costs in terms
of both labour and equipment.
Globally, food processing organisations have responded in a variety of ways to market
pressures but there are some notable patterns, like a focus on branding regional produce
as quality and unique and/or by continuing to produce low value-added products at the
lowest cost possible. Also common to these organisations are similar employment con-
ditions based on low-wage, low-skill, under-or non-unionised employees, a reliance on
temporary labour from agencies, mostly migrant labour and higher proportions of casu-
alised female workers (Bosch and Weinkopf, 2008; Salverda et al., 2008; Caroli et al.,
2009; Grunert et al., 2010; Buchanan et al., 2011).
Within national contexts there have been a range of policy responses to the economic
threats faced by food organisations. However, a number of nation-states have executed
a suite of programmes that support the introduction of new technologies, training to
raise skill levels, and strategies to address skills gaps and skills shortages to increase
productivity (Buchanan, 2006; Lloyd and Payne, 2007; Chan and Moehler, 2008; Lloyd
350
Inequality regimes in food processing industries 351
et al., 2008; Lloyd and Mayhew, 2010). The intention of these policies is to shift firms
stuck in a ‘low skills equilibrium’, a cycle that produces low-skill, low-wage, low-value-
added products and low returns (Grugulis et al., 2004; Lloyd and Payne, 2007; Coelli
and Wilkins, 2008). Skill development has been conceived as the panacea to improve the
economic viability of firms and labour market outcomes for workers. In the UK, Lloyd
and Mayhew aptly summarise the British Government’s approach to skills policy:
[S]kills policy at the lower end of the labour market was based upon four key assumptions.
First, firms are frustrated by their inability to recruit adequately skilled or trained workers and
that these skill shortages are constraining economic growth and performance. Second, those
without a level 2 qualification will be virtually unemployable as their jobs will largely disappear.
Third, once an individual gains a level 2 qualification, further training and progression is highly
likely. Fourth, skills are ‘the best route out of poverty’ (Hook, 2006: 1). (Lloyd and Mayhew,
2010, p. 432)
As a consequence of political positioning around the concept of skill requirements, the

meanings attributed to ‘skill’ have been central in academic debates about labour and
the sustainability of food processing firms. These debates have remained predominantly
within the discipline of economics. The contemporary literature is skewed towards ques-
tions of flexible labour, low-wage work and skills (e.g., Caroli et al., 2009, 2010; Edwards
et al., 2009; Grunert et al., 2010). However, within this existing body of knowledge there
is little research that examines what constitutes ‘the worker’ in food processing other
than quantifying the workforce according to gender, ethnicity and race. Theoretical
and empirical studies of organisations and work clearly show that the local and cultural
dynamics that constitute job descriptions and meanings of skills are highly gendered,
classed and raced (Acker, 1990, 1998, 2006; Adkins, 1995; Halford and Leonard, 2006;
Simpson and Lewis, 2007). These cultural dynamics working at the level of the organi-
sation and occurring in the context of nations and more specifically local places deem
which bodies are able to do particular jobs. Despite or in addition to national policies
and global and local economic trends facing food industries it is the micro-politics of
food organisations that shapes the labour force.
In this chapter a case study of a selection of Australian food processing industries are
used to empirically examine the gendering of specific positions such as apprentice and
process line operator to identify practices associated with employment and skilling in
rural-based food processing industries. The case study consists of interviews with human
resources (HR) officers in a selection of food and beverage industries. Human resource
personnel were targeted for the study because, as Watson et al. (2006) argue, they are
likely to have a nuanced understanding about the recruitment, training and retention of
workers, including any issues associated with skills shortages or mismatches. Industries
sampled included meatworks, dairy, fruit and wine processing. These sectors were chosen
due to their economic significance to rural economies as classified by the Australian and
New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification system (ABS, 2005).
As these industries are based in rural Australia an analysis of place is used alongside
Acker’s (2006) concept of inequality regimes to understand the dynamics of power
within organisations. Place is understood in the context of Australian rural communities
and the historical, political, economic and social conditions that give rise to norms and
practices that contribute to social meanings associated with community and belonging

(see Bryant and Pini, 2011). Inequality regimes can be understood as ‘loosely interrelated
practices, processes, actions, and meanings that result in and maintain class, gender,
and racial inequalities within particular organisations’ (Acker, 2006, p. 443). For Acker
(1990, 2006) inequality regimes occur as a result of organisational processes that obscure
both workers and work as gendered, classed and raced and reproduce a universal, bodi-
less worker ideal. Acker’s work is useful as it takes into consideration recruitment and
hiring as ‘a process of finding the worker most suited for a particular position’, influ-
enced by ‘the gender and race of existing jobholders [who] at least partially define who is
suitable’ (2006, p. 449).
Images of appropriate gendered and classed bodies influence perceptions and hiring,
where ‘female bodies are appropriate for some jobs; male bodies for other jobs’ (ibid.).
These gendered bodies are at the same time classed; as feminist scholars have dem-
onstrated, gender and class intersect to constitute work and worker (Crompton and
Sanderson, 1990; Crompton, 2010). In this study the focus is on specific occupational
positions like ‘blue-collar’ or trades and semi-skilled positions. Whilst occupation is not
a sole determinant of class, it provides a lens through which to examine the construc-
tion of bodies in relation to occupational positions alongside broader understandings
of gender and class that allow the examination of cultural markers of class on the body
(e.g., Savage, 2003; Skeggs, 2004, 2005; Bryant and Pini, 2011). Thus, in this chapter
I explore how rural labour markets are influenced by the interstices of gendered and
classed practices of both place and organisations.
The chapter begins with a discussion of labour market processes associated with
food processing industries and their relation to workforce skilling policies occurring in
Western economies. The international body of literature associated with skills is then
examined to gain insight into the nature and meaning of skills and how these meanings
are deployed in food processing. Analysis of the case study is presented and the findings
indicate that the gendering of work, place and organisation occurs across three themes:
(1) women, work and reproducing bodies; (2) male embodiment, organisation and place;
and (3) absent bodies: women and apprenticeships (see also Bryant and Jaworksi, 2011
from which these findings are developed). These findings point to the underlying power
relationships associated with recruitment and occupational segregation that reproduce
traditional understandings of an ideal worker as articulated within Acker’s (2006, p. 449)
conceptualisation of inequality regimes.
SKILL AND FOOD PROCESSING
The trend to see skill as the central mechanism to increase employment and economic
growth stems from the influential work of Manuel Castells (1996). Castells character-
ised Western labour markets as becoming more intensely global and driven by ever-
increasing new technologies that require organisations to adapt promptly and train and
retrain their workforce to remain competitive. Castells argued in the late 1990s that we
now live in a ‘network society’ driven by ‘informationalism’ (1996, p. 219) whereby a
‘highly skilled, creative and autonomous labour force becomes the fundamental source
of productivity and competitiveness concerned with the generation and processing of
knowledge and information’ (Grugulis et al., 2004, p. 4).

Castells’s (1996) understanding of the labour market has become widely reflected in
policy in economies like Australia, parts of Europe, the UK and the USA (Crabtree,
2002; Grugulis et al., 2004). This understanding of labour market functioning defines
and redefines not only what is understood as skilled work but also what skills are neces-
sary to increase food productivity and increase the wealth production of food compa-
nies. Castells’s thesis has become so influential that according to Crabtree (2002, p. 50)
we now have a ‘cult of Castells’, particularly reflected in government policies in OECD
countries about the ‘importance of knowledge, the new complexity of work and employ-
ers’ demand for workers with higher order thinking skills’ (Grugulis et al., 2004, p. 4).
This scenario in which skills and technology go hand in hand with economic success
has now become orthodoxy. This policy position has been accepted despite critique that
has ‘pointed to the limitations of policy that rests on simplistic notions of human capital
theory and skewed emphasis upon a very narrow and limited set of interventions aimed
at boosting the supply of skills’ (Lloyd and Payne, 2004, p. 207).
To critique policies associated with skilling the workforce it is necessary to consider
the meanings and indeed the ambiguity of ‘skill’ (Attewell, 1990). As Attewell sug-
gests, ‘skill proves on reflection to be a complex and ambiguous idea, maintained by
unexamined assumptions’ (ibid., p. 422). At the core of understanding skill is the idea
of competence – that is, to do something well (Attewell, 1990; Lafer, 2004; Grugulis,
2007; Chan and Moehler, 2008). Competence implies mental and physical ability linked
to knowledge, but also physical dexterity (Attewell, 1990; Grugulis et al., 2004). Part of
understanding what skill means is the idea that one can improve it. This dominates con-
temporary government-and industry-based perspectives, where skill is understood as a
certified qualification based on training (ABS, 2009–11; DEWR, 2006a; Grugulis, 2007,
2009). Certified qualifications and training, however, are not the most reliable measures,
as they do not indicate entirely ‘what employers are, or are not, seeking in recruits’, and
overlook the fact that skills are ‘not simply the preserve of individuals but the product
of a complex interrelationship between workers, work and power’ (Grugulis, 2003,
pp. 3–4). Bryant and King have summarised these complex interstices of power that
construct meanings of skill in Australia. They suggest that ‘[it] has been long recognised
that in terms of assessment, curriculum development and establishment of training, the
vocational education system is indistinguishable from the industrial relations system
where territory is highly contested’ (2007, p. 39). Further, Richard Curtain points to
the multiple players who have a stake in defining skills, arguing that ‘the main actors
involved in the skill formation process are governments, individuals, firms and unions.
The type and level and method of acquisition of skills are shaped by the relative role each
actor plays in the process’ (1987, p. 10).
Similarly, there are political contexts attached to the term ‘skills shortages’, and
the term is used in a variety of ways and complicated by a lack of a clear definition
(Richardson, 2007). This slipperiness in defining skills shortages is compounded by a
number of factors. First, many countries do not have an objective means of identify-
ing skills shortages, despite having a list of occupations designated as being in shortage
(DEWR, 2006b; Bryant and King, 2007). Second, skills shortages are understood as a
universal lack of workers (Hall and Lansbury, 2006). This is despite shortages varying
across occupations, regions and industries, and among employers within the same
industry in the same region (Hall and Lansbury, 2006; Watson et al., 2006; Bryant and

King, 2007). Third, skills shortages are confused with skills ‘gaps’ (Bryant and Jaworski,
2012). While both are similar in that they lead to similar outcomes, gap refers to a lack
of workers with specific competencies rather than a lack of workers as such (DEWR,
2006a, 2006b).
Different understandings of skills shortages lead to further problems. As Watson et al.
(2006) explain in the United Kingdom context, treating skills shortages as universal
creates difficulties in gaining consensus among stakeholders, and identifying specific
problems among employers. In addition, confusing skills shortages with gaps in skills
locates the problem as one that governments should solve (Schofield, 2003; Hall and
Lansbury, 2006). Policy debates in countries such as the United Kingdom (North and
Smallbone, 1995; Adams et al., 2002; Devins and Hogarth, 2005; Monsatiriotis, 2005;
Watson et al., 2006); United States (Marshall, 2001; Theodore and Weber, 2001); Spain
(Diez, 2002) and Australia (Buchanan, 2006) have focused on the supply side of skill
development and how the tertiary education sector may equip workers with relevant
skills and qualifications. Buchanan et al. have argued that, in Australia, for example,
the outcome has been that ‘training levels are falling among key areas of skill demand,
and reform has not resulted in a demand-driven system, but instead a system of business
welfare: employers have merely shifted training costs to the state, [and] not improved the
contribution to skill formation’ (2004, p. 198). Other scholars have argued that employ-
ers have actively worked on ‘a low skill equilibrium’ model, thereby producing a deskill-
ing of labour (Grugulis et al., 2004). Grugulis et al. explain:
Rationalising and simplifying – or deskilling – the work process has been a feature of both
much of assembly and batch production. . . The incentives for employers to move out of the
low skills equilibrium. . .is by no means evident. Employers perceive. . .the cost of training set
against other [economic] concerns. (Ibid., p. 14)
Indeed, debates about skills shortages are dependent on the vested interests of stake-
holders (Bryant and King, 2007; Lloyd and Mayhew, 2010). This explains why some
commentators in Australia see the topic as subject to hegemonic ownership between
stakeholders and the industrial relations system (e.g., Pocock, 1989; Labour Market
Analysis Branch, 1992). That is, ‘who is defined as skilled [and therefore, for example,
who is eligible to fill skill gaps in the labour market] is determined by countervailing
industrial power and access to the resources of government’ (Labour Market Analysis
Branch, 1992, p. 6). Relations of power reside at the heart of understandings of skills
shortages, affecting what purpose and whose interest such understandings serve.
Relations of power at the organisational level also shape questions of skill and skills
shortages. Joan Acker’s (1990, 1998) sociological work provides a useful lens to discern
how power relationships work at the level of the organisation specifically in relation
to how skills become gendered, classed and raced. The physical body becomes a social
site where power is exercised, connected to local everyday practices. This is because, as
Lorber and Moore highlight, human bodies ‘are socially produced under specific cul-
tural circumstances. . .shaped by socio-cultural ideals of what female and male bodies
should look like and be capable of’ (2007, p. 4).
The idea of gendered and embodied capability is masked within the prevailing notion
of a disembodied worker, who fills the job and performs any work at any time. As Acker
(2006) has argued the disembodied worker ideal is central to understanding how culture

and power work in organisations. The deeply gendered notion of the disembodied worker
shapes jobs, training, opportunities for advancement and everyday culture in organisa-
tions. For instance, in relation to gender and power, Bastalich et al. (2007) explain that
the problem is not about attracting women to specific jobs, or whether some work is
unsuitable. The problem is that ‘workplace culture polices a narrow set of masculine
norms and is intolerant of diversity’ (Bastalich et al., 2007, p. 397). Anyone who fails
to conform to norms is cast as an outsider whose gendered worker identity does not fit
(Evetts, 1998; Sayce et al., 2006). Thus, it is important to understand why some workers
may not be employed in food industries even though they may be skilled and available
for organisations to employ them. In particular, it is important to examine the sort of
practices deployed by organisations to attract, train and retain rural workers.
FOOD PROCESSING AT THE ORGANISATIONAL LEVEL: AN

AUSTRALIAN CASE STUDY
The food industry makes a significant contribution to rural and regional Australia, with
over 40 per cent of food processing employment occurring in rural areas (Bragatheswaran
and Lawrence, 2008). The food industries are Australia’s largest manufacturing indus-
tries (ABS, 2009–11). This sector provides more than 17 per cent of industry value-
added products and 20 per cent of total sales and services income to the Australian
economy (Bragatheswaran and Lawrence, 2008). In February 2006 there were just over
a million people employed in all manufacturing industries with about 19 per cent of these
employed in food processing and manufacturing (ABS, 2006).
In 2004 qualitative interviews were held with human resource and management
personnel in a selection of 23 rural and regional food processing companies from each
Australian state and territory. The food processing industries sampled include fruit,
wine, dairy, horticulture, meat and seafood (Table 17.1).
Where food processing organisations were small, family-based industries, management
personnel took on the human resource role. The industries sampled varied in size (Table
17.1). The sampling process reflected the structural differences associated with differ-
ent industry sizes and locations. Where the sector was represented by large c ompanies,
Table 17.1 Sample of food and beverage processing industries by commodity groups
Food and Beverage Processing No. of Processing Sites Corresponding Location

Industries and by Size by Statea
Meat processing 9: 5 large; 4 medium NSW, NT, SA, WA
Dairy 5: 2 medium; 3 large NSW, WA
Seafood 2 small TAS
Fruit processing 2 large SA, VIC
Food and beverage and misc. (wine) 4 large QLD, SA, VIC
TOTAL 23
Note: a. NSW 5 New South Wales; NT 5 Northern Territory; SA5 South Australia; WA 5 Western
Australia; TAS 5 Tasmania; VIC 5 Victoria; QLD 5 Queensland.

Table 17.2 Women as a percentage of workforce for specific food and beverage

processing industries, by sampled site
Food and Beverage Processing Industries Sites with Less Sites with 11–49% Sites with 50%
than 10% of of Workforce or More of
Workforce Female Workforce
Female Female
Meat processing 5 4
Dairy 3 2
Seafood 1 1
Fruit processing 1 1
Food and beverage and misc. 2 3
TOTAL 5 11 7
these constituted the first line of sampling (e.g., meatworks in South Australia and the
Northern Territory). However, where the industry at the national level had a more varied
commodity base (e.g., in dairy, milk, cheese, yoghurt) the size of companies varied par-
ticularly by state. This variance in size from small family businesses (less than 50 employ-
ees, e.g., cheese making) to medium-sized enterprises (1001 employees, e.g., meatworks)
to large and multinational corporations (2001 employees, e.g., wine) was accommodated
to investigate diverse contexts and issues shaping gender and work.
According to national statistics, women account for 34 per cent of employees in food
processing industries (ABS, 2006, 2009–11). Although this is lower than in the processing
sector as a whole (44.8 per cent), it still remains a significant industry for women (ABS,
2009–11). This is because one in five women employed in the processing sector works in
food processing and approximately a quarter of this workforce works part-time (ABS,
2006). Importantly, as women also constitute a large proportion of casual employees,
census data may underestimate the number of women working in the sector.
Food and beverage processing sites reported a wide variance in the gender profile of
their workers. As Table 17.2 indicates, there are clear gender differences in several spe-
cific industries. Women processors have a significant presence at all the fruit manufac-
turing sites, while men dominate in meat processing (National Training Meat Industry
Advisory Council, 2009).
Interviews focused on ascertaining gendered workforce profiles, training opportuni-
ties and requirements, recruitment practices including reasons for recruitment and the
ways in which jobs were advertised, and discussions about tasks associated with jobs,
‘skills shortages’ and the skills required to sustain the organisation. Whilst the qualitative
data was collected some time ago, it provides an important context for understanding
how gendered workforce profiles come into being in rural areas. HR personnel today
may not provide similar interview responses; however, data from the Australian Bureau
of Statistics indicate little structural change in workforce profiles in these industries from
the period 2004 to 2011. Thus, whilst there maybe a change in responses to questions
about how these organisations are gendered according to whom they employ and in what
capacity, there has been minimal structural change in workers’ profiles.
Interviews were analysed using interpretative data methods, seeking to ascertain

atterns, themes, gaps, replication and new questions to be explored in the course of the
p
study (Patton, 2002). An important component to this method is that analysis occurs
throughout the data collection phase as well as after it. The inductive analysis of the data
revealed three themes focused on gendered embodiment that show how perceptions of
skills and skills shortages are part of the gendering of workplaces.
GENDERING OF WORK, PLACE AND ORGANISATIONS

Place is an important factor affecting how work is constituted and shaped as gendered
in local environments. In each of the industries the workforce is predominantly obtained
from the local communities in which the site is located. However, different occupa-
tions or job classifications influence the geographical location from which employees
are recruited. Specifically those recruited locally are less likely to have formal skills and
qualifications. Local people are more likely to be in the less secure, casualised, repetitive,
low-paid and sometimes dangerous work. Meatworks in all states of Australia employ
the majority of their workers from the region and surrounding towns in which the site is
located. Specifically, workers are employed from a 50–100 km range. However, for all
meatworks in the sample the distance from where employees reside to the site has grown
as organisations have expanded. As an HR manager from an abattoir explained: ‘two
years ago we employed 90 per cent of our staff from a 20 km distance from the plant and
now we would employ about 65 per cent from this location’. He also explained that this
shift in employment of people from local communities was due to expansion and the lack
of available workers who lived nearby.
In production almost the entire workforce is recruited from within 50 km of the plant
site; however, the story is different for workers in supervisory and trade and technical
skill positions. For example, in the maintenance area of meat processing plants trades
people are recruited from Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa. HR personnel argued
that they are forced to recruit technical personnel from overseas as there is a ‘skills short-
age’ in Australia especially in trades. Australian social policies foster overseas employ-
ment and allow organisations to employ international personnel on entry visas via a
skills matching database (Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous
Affairs, 2003) that is especially geared towards rural and regional employment.
For the most part dairy, seafood, fruit and wine processing industries also employ
local residents. Process workers, supervisory staff and semi-skilled workers in the pro-
duction area are often sourced from local areas, and in dairy and fruit processing some
have risen from processing positions to supervisory or semi-skilled positions. In the fruit
processing industries many of those employed as plant managers and supervisors have
worked at the company for many years (sometimes up to 30 years) and have been pro-
moted to managerial positions. An HR officer explained that ‘we prefer to have plant
managers who understand what it is like to be a production worker and the issues of
rotation of staff’. Again in fruit processing, like dairy and meat, higher-level manage-
rial positions such as export managers are overseas recruitments. The wine industry
differs from the other processing industries in the sample as it has been one of the largest
buoyant processing industries, characterised by global acquisitions and takeovers, and
the sites in the sample are part of multinational corporations.

In wine production most workers are local; however, middle and senior management
often reside in cities. This industry has better pay and cleaner working conditions than the
other food industries. An HR officer from fruit processing reported that ‘money isn’t great
in the fruit industry and in this region the wineries pay more money and so there is not
the same level of interest in working for us’. Indeed, HR officers across the sectors (with
the exception of wine) explained that in areas like trade it is particularly difficult to recruit
staff. For example: ‘The hardest group to recruit are trades [especially] trying to employ
electricians, they are difficult to get. There are huge demands in business for their skills,
and so they can ask for what they like in terms of pay. . .we have not been able to keep up’.
Consistently across the sample interviewees reported that there was difficulty in
recruiting workers including production workers as the current workforce ages. This
difficulty in recruitment was explained as a consequence of poorer working conditions
in food processing industries, including lower pay than for comparable work in other
sectors, community perceptions of the processing industry as low status, early starting
hours, repetitive work, and hard, physical and at times dirty and dangerous work.
Local workers are sourced for production; however, they are the most casualised
and expendable part of the food industries workforce. Internationally the susceptibil-
ity of these workers and the conditions under which they work are well recognised
(Appelbaum et al., 2003; Caroli et al., 2009). Across national contexts managers deploy
similar discursive arguments that utilise the idea of the ‘low skills equilibrium’ to keep
production workers on low wages and insecure work. However, this concept is at odds
with strategies employed by processing companies to obtain ‘skilled’ labour via overseas
recruitment of trade workers, supervisors and management. Edwards et al. (2009) have
argued that:
since its popularisation by Finegold and Soskice (1988), this concept [low skills equilibrium –
LSE] has played a key role in UK policy debates, with a particular focus on national institu-
tions, such as the training system and their role in keeping the whole economy on a low-skills
trajectory. A much smaller strand of work starts from the premise that the LSE is ‘arguably
best understood at the level of the individual organisation (Wilson and Hogarth, 2003: vii)’.
(Edwards et al., 2009, p. 40)
If we turn to the level of the organisation, it is the social category of class and its inter-
section with place that determines what work is available and for whom. The low skills
equilibrium discourse masks inequality regimes and places its emphasis and therefore
the behaviour and direction of the organisation in the context of the ‘economy’. Indeed,
the low skills equilibrium model almost strips the organisation of agency, as it becomes
an entity caught in the grasp of national and global economies that work to destabilise
its existence.
In the sections below, the way in which inequality regimes work at the level of the
organisation are further examined. The findings from interview data indicate three
themes that explain the gendered and classed nature of work that occurs in place within
specific food organisations. The first theme focuses on how HR personnel’s organisa-
tional understandings of women’s bodies as reproducing bodies shape the work avail-
able to women. The gendered availability of work at the same time reproduces meanings
about skills and skills shortages. The second theme examines men’s embodiment in
meat processing work, illustrating how masculinities shape gender divisions of labour,

and contribute to the notion of skills shortages in blue-collar jobs, or jobs traditionally
associated with working-class people. The third theme steps back from analysis of the
employment of unskilled and skilled workers to consider entry into technical occupa-
tions through apprenticeships in food processing. Apprenticeships are examined because
they are closely tied to policies to redress ‘skills shortages’ in these industries and gender
imbalances in skilled occupations. Here class intersects with gender differently, particu-
larly as apprenticeships are traditionally thought to be the province of young working-
class men’s education.
Women, Work and Reproducing Bodies
Interview data demonstrated that understandings of skills shortages were influenced by

the nature of the work, and whether this work suited some workers more than others
according to gender. HR personnel suggested that ‘women, unlike men, are prepared to
take work which is repetitive and paid less as they want work to fit in with looking after
kids’. These mothering bodies are classed and articulated by poorer working conditions
and their inability to pay for childcare. It seems that women’s reproducing bodies, and
the caring labour they perform as mothers, embody their work choices. As Acker (2006),
Adkins (1995) and Brandth and Haugen (2005) argue in various ways, this gendered
organisation of work is constructed on women’s obligations outside of paid work, which
maintain gender inequality both in the private and public spheres. What is important
about the food processing sector is that gender inequalities are hidden not because, as
Acker argues, ‘they are difficult to see’ (2006, p. 452), but because working women’s
embodiment is understood as implicitly heterosexual, involving responsibilities of caring
for family (Bryant and Pini, 2011). This naturalising and neutralising of social and cul-
tural meanings about women’s bodies becomes invisible in the gendered organisation of
work (Bryant and Jaworski, 2011).
HR personnel across all food processing industries articulated the relationship
between shiftwork and motherhood. For example:
In production work, there are usually morning and afternoon shifts; rarely there is a third shift
to make it a 24-hour operation. But when we do this third shift, and hopefully this is growing,
then this will be a problem, especially for women, as there is no public transport. Certain shifts
are popular with women, the early morning shift is popular, but not so much the other as they
want to get home to children. These workers are often casuals, but if they become permanent
they lose flexibility. . . We try to be sympathetic but also it’s difficult with production.
And:
We have no shiftwork, but we will be introducing it and I see it as a problem for getting
adequate supervisors – the workers are not used to shiftwork here. We have a lot of mums here
who leave at 3.00 or 4.00 pm and go home to family but to get them to do a 4.00 pm shift [is]
difficult for us to deal [with]. A different age group will need to be employed – we will recruit
outsiders for shiftwork. If I change conditions for current workers then they will have to leave
because of children.
As some scholars argue, the invisible organisation of work is strongly entrenched

in rural spaces and defined and performed as heterosexual (Bryant, 2003, 2006; Little,

2003, 2007; Panelli, 2007; Brandth and Haugen, 2005; Bryant and Jaworski, 2011).
Thus, the picture is complicated by place in physical and social terms, where, as Bryant
and Pini (2011) argue, certain ideals about heterosexuality and work identity are deeply
entrenched and very difficult to change. Consequently, whilst inequality regimes are con-
structed by ‘surrounding society, its politics, history, and culture’ (Acker, 2006, p. 443),
they are also reconstructed at the scale of place. HR personnel articulated the impor-
tance of rural place and gender as conditions of the organisation of work. The following
excerpt from a food processing HR worker shows this to be the case:
In this region there are quite traditional, conservative views. It is a Lutheran community and we
have a conservative industry where women are under-represented at senior level. Women are in
those typical slots, women in clerical and men in production. As a company we have actively
sought women using funding available through training rebates.
This traditional pattern of work is sustained by the culture of the organisation,

one that is bound to religious and social traditions embedded in local communities.
Importantly, as Paechter’s (2003) research shows, views of local people inform recruit-
ment and retention practices, which can in fact marginalise particular groups such as
women. This form of marginalisation is particularly problematic in that it disfavours
women who are less able to get a job in another industry and profession because of their
skill level as well as family responsibilities. In this sense, it is possible to suggest that the
working-class status of women working in the industry is maintained by the working
culture of the region.
Male Embodiment, Organisation and Place
At the meat processing sites men have traditionally dominated the slaughter, loading
and skin areas. HR officers attributed this pattern to the physical demands of the work,
and the work culture on the production floors. The male body is presumed to be able to
meet the demands of heavy, bloody and dirty work. For Connell (2005), this relates to
an interpretation of manual workers’ bodies as masculine, defined by toughness, endur-
ance and strength. This form of working-class hegemonic masculinity is neatly situated
in ‘meatworks’. As Wolkowitz (2006) suggests, work is organised around working-class
men’s presumed capabilities and bodies in some organisations and industrial sectors
despite mechanisation. Furthermore, there are some areas of work, like the slaughter-
house, where cultural ideas deem that dirt and disgust are only fit for the masculine body
(Isaksen, 2005). When focusing on meat processing, however, we are talking about spe-
cific types of ‘dirt’. As Isaksen suggests, ‘[we] need to understand how different kinds of
dirt are related to each other and how they are socially ranked and ordered. . .the further
down the ranking list the more negative the feelings and the stronger the intensity of
contempt and disgust’ (2005, pp. 119–20).
In the context of ‘meatworks’ dirt refers to animal blood, bone and matter, whereas
in an industry like mining, for example, it refers to soil, dampness and darkness. These
differences associated with dirt give rise to different class locations among men in skilled
and unskilled jobs. Social locations, however, are also situated in particular images and
ideas of what it means to work in rural communities. For example, HR personnel and
managers from ‘meatworks’ explained that:

[w]e are not the employer of choice in rural communities. We think that, although everyone
likes meat, the local community doesn’t want abattoirs because there is a lot of effluent and it
is quite smelly. We are deemed not to be a glamorous industry with repetitive and hard labour.
So why would they come to us when they can be paid a lot more and work in the mining
industry?
There is also a different social and therefore classed understanding of the skill inher-
ent in these types of jobs and industries, like truck drivers or meat processing workers,
which further differentiates men and their bodily skill. Brandth and Haugen draw atten-
tion to this social understanding of skill by arguing that machinery and equipment for
men may present ‘an extension of their bodies’ (2005, p. 95). Like Brandth and Haugen’s
(2005) loggers’ bodies, miners are ‘equipped with hard hats’. Conversely, men on the
factory floor of the abattoir are covered with plastic hairnets and plastic coats to dimin-
ish blood spills on their clothes. How these bodies are clothed highlights a point made
by Williams (1998) in regards to abjection, male bodies and masculinity. Male bodies
are socially constructed as corporeal containers resisting ‘external forces, while holding
back internal ones from expansion and intrusion’ (ibid., p. 69). The way corporeal bodies
are clothed signifies assumptions about masculine bodies, and the gendered and classed
nature of work done by men. Yet these bodies are also out of sight, performing labour in
rural communities. The threat of abjection is contained not only by the way the bodies
are clothed, but also by how they are located in place, determined by the food processing
sector they are working in.
It is clear that to be embodied via gender involves doing labour deemed as gendered.
Yet to be embodied is to feel and express emotion. How emotions are defined, conveyed
and evaluated is shaped by hegemonic discourses and practices of gender (Brody, 1999;
Ahmed, 2000; Bryant and Pini, 2011). This may happen at a micro level, but also a more
discursive, macro level. For example, despite the gendering of processing industries such
as meatworks, larger processing plants have changed their practices to employ women.
Interview data revealed that some plants have begun to employ women in offal areas
out of ‘desperation’ as few male workers were applying for work. While a push factor
for employment, desperation is also an emotion. When HR staff were asked whether the
employment of women was successful in offal areas, they agreed by stating that ‘women
took pride and care in their work’. Thus, women’s different embodiment to men was
used to explain women’s successful employment in a traditionally working-class mascu-
line domain. In this sense, skills shortages are bound not only to the number of workers
available, but also to specific gendered and embodied organisational practices and per-
ceptions, and how such practices come to be.
Absent Bodies: Women and Apprenticeships
Australian government policy has focused on increasing resources to attract and train
apprentices in areas identified as being in short supply of labour (Schofield, 2003).
HR personnel in the food and beverage industries explained that in the main men held
apprenticeships. A manager said that ‘girls rarely applied’. When asked why this is the
case, the response was: ‘The girls want to go to uni[versity] and some only have an inter-
est in clerical. They say “We don’t want to work there”.’ According to HR personnel
young women are ascribing what theorists like Skeggs (2005) and Sayer (2005) refer to

as moral worth to specific occupations. This moral worth might be furnished by a desire
to leave local rural communities to live in the cities. Place in the physical and social sense
repels and propels young people towards professions and organisations in urban places.
The gendered nature of what it means to be an apprentice was conveyed through spe-
cific use of language. When asked about whether there was a need for apprenticeships,
the term ‘tradesmen’ was used. This suggests an implicit masculine norm may culturally
signify who is meant to work as an apprentice (Schilt, 2006). Further, apprenticeships
themselves are inscribed by class as a consequence of the lower positioning of trades
within occupational hierarchies in Western societies (Wright, 2001).
Novices such as apprentices, Paechter argues, are seen as ‘developing expertise
through participation in legitimate and acknowledged activities’ (2003, p. 70) that are
part of an occupational community. Paechter further argues that novices develop not
only expertise, but also ‘their understanding of and embeddedness in the culture that sur-
rounds it’ (ibid.). What is important about Paechter’s point is that, if women are absent
in apprentices, this reinforces the view that particular jobs belong to people according to
their gender and indeed their class. In this sense, apprentices reveal the gendered nature
of a particular sector, where meanings about masculinity and femininity shape what it
means to work in a particular industry, organisation and region. Jobs become embodied
as masculine through absences rather than presences. Jobs also become embodied as
masculine in and through communities whose gendered and classed values and culture
may not readily accept and recognise women participating in apprenticeships. This com-
pounds absence even further.
What is important about absence is that it may detract HR personnel from paying
attention to the gendered dimension of organisational culture even though there may
be a genuine attempt to recruit men and women (Acker, 1998, 2006; Yancey Martin,
2003). Although some personnel recognise possible reasons for low numbers of women,
their explanations do not take gender into serious consideration (Sayce et al., 2006).
As DiTomasco et al. (2007) argue, such responses can indicate a lack of recognition of
underlying power relationships associated with gendered processes within the recruit-
ment process in particular, and occupational segregation more broadly. Instead, the
gendered nature of recruitment and retention is attributed to individual career choices.
CONCLUDING REMARKS: FOOD PROCESSING AND

MULTISCALAR PROCESSES
A highly repetitive global pattern has been the introduction of policies by nation-states
to increase skill and or address ‘skills shortages’ as a mechanism for increasing the pro-
ductivity of food processing firms. The body of literature on skills demonstrates that
the concept of skill is complex and political. It is embedded in local political discourses
associated with the role of the nation-state in contemporary markets, with ideas around
migration and work and the ability of corporations to construct parameters around
which skills are in ‘short’ supply. Perhaps the most concerning global pattern across
Western economies is the way the concept of ‘low skills equilibrium’ is used politically.
The Australian case study presented in this chapter suggests that the notion of a low
skills equilibrium feeds a discursive position that enables and powers food processing

corporations to limit what they are prepared to do to improve the working conditions
and training opportunities for workers. The threat of moving offshore for cheaper
labour is a part of the low skills equilibrium discourse that has worked well for some
food corporations in bargaining with governments, unions and workers.
This case study of food processing demonstrates the way in which global patterns
around meanings of skill and policies associated with training take on meaning and are
practised at the local level of the organisation. These food organisations are located
within a social cultural milieu whereby skill and work take on specific meanings that are
also subject to change depending on local labour market conditions and changing social
norms. As Linda McDowell eloquently states:
[B]y integrating a ‘gender and organisational’ perspective into analyses and theories of
global economic change, the nature of production and work begin to look different. . .the
TNC. . .may be a global organisation but its constituent parts are grounded in a very real
sense within nation states and local economies. . .while new research about commodity chains,
research and innovation, and production networks is becoming more common it is less usual
to trace networks between say, households and labour markets, between local customs and
gender divisions of labour, or between local social relations and international migration.
(2001, pp. 239–40)
Complexities of scale are integral to analyses of gender and organisation. The inter-
stices of the global, national and local in particular have received much theoretical atten-
tion (e.g., Ong, 1999; Grewal and Kaplan, 2001; Brickell and Datta, 2011; Robinson,
2011). In the context of rural-based organisations, these have largely been studied from
the perspective of commodity flows and the cultural has mostly been excluded. To
remedy this tendency, Woods (2007, p. 485) has called for reconceptualisations of rural-
ity and globalisation that incorporate a greater focus on place and the politics of negotia-
tion between scales. McDowell’s (2001) work also shows us that we must go further and
that multiscalar processes require a focus on place in its complexity, from household, to
place of worship, to football club and work, to identify how local social relations consti-
tute labour market relations within and across the flow of spaces. Attempting to capture
the complexity of place, this chapter has brought the body into the question of scale,
and by centralising corporeality it has allowed for analyses that follow movements of the
body from home and community to work and vice versa. These movements show that
gendered and classed bodies are both present and absent in shaping what constitutes skill
and availability of work in local economies and that corporations are indeed themselves
embodied and as such constrain and allow specific patterns of work.
NOTE
* This chapter draws on material previously published in Human Relations and the Journal of Management
and Organization. Permission has been granted from Sage Publications for use of: Bryant, L. and
K. Jaworski (2011), ‘Gender, embodiment and place: the gendering of skills shortages in the mining and
food processing industries’, Human Relations, 64(10), 1345–68. Permission has been granted from the
Journal of Management and Organization for the use of: Bryant, L. and K. Jaworski (2012), ‘Minding the
gaps: examining gender and skill shortages in Australian rural non-agricultural workplaces’, Journal of
Management and Organization, 18(4), 500–516.

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18. Global companies and local community relations:
power, access and partnership in food production
and rural resource development
Roy E. Rickson, Kara E. Rickson, Peter Hoppe and
David Burch
INTRODUCTION
Economic globalisation and liberalised trade encouraged by neoliberal government

policies have yielded unprecedented power to transnational company groups operating
across the sectors of food production, mining and energy. At the same time, some of
these very processes serve to highlight and intensify conflicts over issues of social and
environmental equity in rural communities and agricultural regions, in Australia as well
as many other resource development ‘boom’ regions across the globe (Krannich, 2012).
Largely due to a tendency for states to reduce constraints on agricultural production and
resource development, relationships between rural communities and large-scale national
and international company investors are increasingly important in determining the terms
of resource access, management and control and in raising issues of interdependence and
equity, ecological viability, social power and trust. The ‘global’ and the ‘local’ are bound
together in many important respects pertinent to these issues, of course, not least in the
ways we produce and distribute food and energy, make decisions and commitments to
certain development trajectories, and structure and distribute associated benefits and
costs. Issues of food, energy and environmental security are of worldwide, societal signif-
icance. However, for rural communities, farmers and residents, there are clear incentives
for directly pressuring food, mining and energy companies seeking to establish produc-
tive bases in their regions, both within formal decision-making processes, or outside of
them, if they are seen as insufficiently inclusive or responsive to local concerns.
If corporate investment is contingent at all upon local cooperation or at least acqui-
escence, then issues of distributive justice will be central to internal community relations
and those with project developers and state agencies. Therefore, we can approach agri-
food and mining companies accessing natural resources as involving an open-ended
and indeterminate dynamic of actors deciding what they want, determining how to get
it, how to deal with the consequences, and how to deal with each other (Bennett, 2005,
p. 31). In this chapter, we discuss the access relations characterising both the agri-food
and mining sectors, which necessarily puts our focus on relations between international
companies representing those sectors and local rural communities. We argue that the
sites of access are ‘contested terrains’ (Cronon, 1996), and often involve struggles over
meaning, authoritative knowledge and decision-making power in determining the nature
and significance of potential social and environmental impacts of development. Local
mobilisations responsive to inequities in the distribution of benefits and risks of resource
368
Global companies and local community relations 369
development are increasingly powerful, sometimes also drawing on broad advocacy

or support networks and resources, but variably effective in making local legitimacy
and cooperation a contingency for companies seeking access to resources, or securing
the opportunity to reject particular development projects or trajectories. Therefore, a
primary focus of the chapter is how and when do the concerns of people and groups
living in rural, often resource-rich, communities and regions enter the strategic plan-
ning of large-scale corporate company groups in ways that promote distributive justice,
sustain local environments, keep local productive activities economically viable, and
defer to concerns about possible impacts on community life, valued landscapes and
cultural heritage.
ACCESS RELATIONS
Ribot and Peluso’s (2003) concept of access analysis provides a useful starting point for
analysis, suggesting a basis for examining the dynamic processes and social interactions
in natural resource access. Citing Neale (1998, p. 48, original emphasis), they consider
actors accessing resources they do not own, in focusing ‘on the issues of who does (and
who does not) get to use what, in what ways, and when’ (Ribot and Peluso, 2003, p. 154).
Resource access is a platform for local and national economic development, but for local
people distributive justice is critical. How the social and environmental costs of resource
extraction, along with its economic benefits, are distributed across communities, regions
and nations is a core strategic issue for industry also, due to government, and civil
society organisations mobilised locally or nationally, pressuring industries directly or
indirectly to change the way they do business (Bridge, 2004). Held (2000, p. 400) reminds
us that in our relationships with the natural environment, and of course each other,
we are members of ‘overlapping communities of fate’ or members of Selznick’s (1996,
p. 275) ‘networks of interdependence’. There are always risks and uncertainties about
the nature and importance of social and environmental impacts of industrial projects,
which includes what is measured and methodologies selected. These constitute what
Stark (2009, p. 9), following John Dewey, views as conceptually and technically uncer-
tain ‘perplexing problems’ requiring continual research and analysis. However, granting
such challenges fails to fully address the powerful differences between state, corporate
and citizen actors in terms of the creation or imposition of related risks and hazards,
the latter potentially having little access to related decision-making over appropriate
development, mitigation, or research trajectories. Inequities in the distribution of eco-
nomic benefits and project impacts, both during assessment processes and following
approval, may thus be difficult to define and resolve. They may also change, given that
relations shaping access to resources, including property rights, ‘are always changing,
depending upon on an individual’s or group’s position and power within various social
relationships’ (Ribot and Peluso, 2003, p. 158).
Accessing, or seeking to benefit from, any natural resource requires interacting with
those having property rights based upon legal title of ownership or traditional rights of
occupation such as those of indigenous peoples. Such interactions can involve active
cooperation, passive acceptance or fully mobilised protest and resistance. The mate-
rial, cultural and political-economic dimensions of these ‘bundles’ and ‘webs’ of powers

determining access may come into public view as active resistance. This may be the case
when local groups, for example those having material or symbolic claim and opposed to
industry exploitation, try to block or seek to genuinely influence project development
and the mitigation of its impacts, or when corporations or government agencies advocate
for projects (Ribot and Peluso, 2003; Hoppe et al., 2007).
Resolving or negotiating differences across network relations is significantly related to
ease of access by any actor, whether corporate or community. Network connections are
critical for seeking to influence project planning and operations, but some connections
are more important than others for legitimising access to natural resources. All such con-
figurations of support or resistance are complex as local situations change over time and
interact with ecological, political and economic, social and cultural differences. Further,
any given actor has multiple interests or values, of differing intensities, with some of
them probably contradictory (Lukes, 2005).
Organisations, rather than ‘tightly bounded entities’ responsive mostly to the verti-
cal administrative hierarchies of corporate groups and ‘clearly demarcated from the
surrounding environment’, instead have boundaries that are porous, problematic and
indeterminate (Suchman, 1995, p. 571). International groups of companies try to build
administrative structures that are flawlessly incorporated across cultures, time zones and
ecosystems, and to the extent possible control strategic and operational planning at each
production and processing site.
However, contingency pressures linked to economic opportunities, national politi-
cal frameworks, or social and ecological change, may vary in intensity and substance,
leading the managers of member companies negotiating them across similar administra-
tive structures to create diverse organisational responses. Social institutions, or deeply
embedded patterns of thinking and acting on the part of both companies and communi-
ties, will also vary across regions and differently affect company and community interac-
tion when contingencies over access to natural resources emerge (Hoppe et al., 2007).
Pritchard and Burch (2003, preface), for example, describe the global food system as ‘a
set of heterogeneous and fragmented processes, bounded in multiple ways by the separa-
tions of geography, culture, capital and knowledge’.
There is always tension between the ‘localisation’ and ‘standardisation’ of policies
and programmes in company group management, which includes local managers imple-
menting central company group policy on, for example, commitments to environmental
sustainability and human rights as part of local community relations. Even though stable
investment futures are, to some degree, contingent on community acceptance, companies
and their managers will approach their respective communities of operation differently,
even within the same corporate group. Local residents or community groups similarly
differ in their ability to mobilise, overcome their differences, and sustain long-term pres-
sure on companies or, for that matter, confront inequities within their own communities.
Farmers concerned about the effects of fracking to extract coal seam gas, for example,
can be expected to respond differently than landowning elites investing in infrastructure
and housing associated with rapid rural development resulting from mining investments.
Nevertheless, it is important to note, according to Ife (2002, p. 145), that ‘[w]hile global
capital may be able to intimidate national governments, its power to coerce local action
is much weaker’. Also, sometimes the underdogs win; those ‘without things, status or
wealth’ can sometimes bring about real change (Piven, 2007, p. 4). There are attributes of

power, other than money, that can be mobilised by underdogs potentially engendering
political influence and that is the capacity to ‘mobilise numbers of people’, which is, in
turn, based upon ‘the social and cooperative relations in which people are enmeshed by
virtue of group life’ (ibid., pp. 3, 5).
Buttel (1987, p. 478) earlier suggested that the nature and scope of local organising to
address grievances (related to toxic waste facility sitings in this case) are closely related
to local class structure, as well as initial responses by local business and political elites.
If opposition arises in communities of lower socioeconomic status, ‘unsatisfactory
responses by local or extra local elites’ may lead ‘to an expansion of the scope of the
conflict to include larger issues such as democratic responsiveness’ (ibid., pp. 478–9).
Whatever the context, working out the ‘social and ecological states’ that different
parties, with dissimilar or even contradictory values, interests and objectives, varying
institutional histories, and capacities for action, can settle on, implement, manage and
monitor is a primary challenge – not least in food and energy networks, where risks are
uncertain or even indeterminate (Wynne, 1992), and not easily measured.
AGRICULTURE AND MINING: CONFUSION AND CLARITY

OF IMPACTS
Local communities are inevitably caught up in the expanding reach of international

investment and finance, and ever-increasing and expansive food and energy security
goals. Australian farmers, according to Lawrence (1999, p. 187), have been ‘progressively
integrated into the industrial food sector’, with the concentration of food processing,
farm ownership and state deregulation ensuring ‘that the future of “family farming” is
linked unambiguously to the profit-making aspirations of firms in the corporate sector’
(ibid.; also see Gray and Lawrence, 2001). Pritchard et al. (2007, p. 80) argue further that
there is a ‘blurring of the boundary between the farm and the corporate-dominated food
industry’; rather than a distinctively separate economic field, it is ‘but a node within an
organised and well-articulated agri-food supply chain’. Friedland (1991, p. 22) earlier
pointed to the organisational dimensions of agriculture, as have Rickson and Burch
(1996) in their concept of organisational agriculture, referring to the increasingly sig-
nificant role of large-scale national and international agri-food companies, including
processors and retailers, in farm crop and animal production, land and water conserva-
tion, agri-chemicals and agricultural technologies. Separation of property ownership
and control promotes remote concentration of power on the investment side, we suggest,
as firms seek to consolidate their influence on primary production and resource extrac-
tion. It similarly promotes concentration of property ownership as landholders attempt
to reduce their risk and increase their influence and economic advantage by expanding
their land investments.
A fluctuating but seemingly enduring Australian ‘resources boom’ is facing increased
competition from a potential, if cyclical, ‘food boom’, and both are dependent upon
rapidly developing Asian import markets for goods such as cars, air conditioners and
foodstuffs, all energy-intensive products with large and expanding environmental foot-
prints. In terms of the latter, Greenpeace (2013), for example, identify Australia and
China as leading the list of planned new fossil fuel-based energy projects worldwide,

dramatically influencing the world’s carbon load and potentially leading to catastrophic
climate change. Even so, ‘Australia is the standout in LNG [liquefied natural gas], with
70 per cent of total world investment in new LNG plants occurring here’ (Uren, 2012,
p. 2). In terms of foreign investment, Uren (2013, p. 23) notes that it is ‘pouring into
Australia at a rate faster than ever before’. Furthermore, this investment is ‘overwhelm-
ingly supporting resource projects’, but also real estate investment, including productive
farmland. The often adversarial relationships between actors with agricultural or mining
interest led Australia Institute researchers to question whether agriculture has become
mining’s collateral damage, in terms of the latter’s adverse impacts on rural export
income (Grudnoff, 2012; Walker, 2012).
The uncertainties and potential harms associated with the social and environmental
impacts of mining on local, and more remote, communities is certainly a basis for resist-
ance to exploration and drilling for coal seam gas (CSG) across rural communities in
North America, Australia and Europe. One industry response has been to employ de-
legitimation strategies that represent critics and their concerns as ill-founded, confused,
or overtly ideological (while neglecting to engage with ideologies promoting develop-
ment; see Freudenburg and Alario, 2007). At the same time, a high-profile sporting
celebrity has served as the public face of an expensive advertising campaign by Australia
Pacific LNG (APLNG, 2013a, 2013b) sympathising with public ‘confusion’, ‘talking to
experts’, ‘listening to farmers’, ‘learning about the facts’, and ‘discovering the benefits’
of CSG (Turner, 2013).
CONTESTED TERRAINS, CONTINGENT RELATIONSHIPS
People engaged in the business of farming, or residing in rural and regional areas, are
ambivalent about natural resource issues. While identifying strongly with the culture
of agrarian fundamentalism emphasising the intrinsic value of farming and rural life,
farmers simultaneously feel, according to one study, that they have the right to do as
they please with their property, which includes selling to the highest bidder, whoever that
might be (Rickson et al., 1990). At the same time, as mining for coal seam gas dramati-
cally expands across eastern Australia, disputes over resource extraction have spread
and intensified – in rural regions, at farm gates, in capital cities, and within state and
federal governments. The Australian experience, in this regard, mirrors the American
(Krannich, 2012; Malin, 2014). Investment revenue is also tempered by rapid population
growth and temporary settlements in mining ‘boom town’ areas with familiar challenges
related to housing availability and affordability for existing residents.
A sometimes large influx of temporary, periodic or longer-term workforces stretches
social service provision, creates ‘two speed economies’ and raises concerns about the
impacts of future ‘busts’ (see Harrison, 2012). While there is some evidence of coop-
eration between companies, farmers, communities and other groups sharing some com-
mercial or other interests, conflicting views both between and within different groups
remain. To name one example, ‘the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council has
applied to explore for coal seam gas under 40 per cent of the state’, which has sparked
‘outrage from Indigenous and non- Indigenous people alike’ (Howden, 2012, p. 1).
Highly charged public debates about drilling for coal seam gas may also draw attention

to long-standing conflicts between food and energy sectors if operations threaten under-
ground or surface water sources. Indeed, concerns over scientific or technical knowledge,
industry compliance and competence, government oversight and impartiality, and com-
peting (often differently privileged) claims and counter-claims about mining’s impacts
on land, water, air, regional ecologies and residential communities together make rural
landscapes socially, economically, politically and culturally ‘contested terrains’ (Cronon,
1996, p. 51).
Following Freudenburg’s (2005, p. 89) North American-based work, directly applica-
ble to Australia and its rural regions and communities, any relationship between locals
and mining companies is shaped by ‘the privileged access to environmental rights and
resources’ that extractive industries have heretofore enjoyed, that is, the general practice
of distributing the costs and benefits of industry access ‘in a way that is unequal, yet
widely accepted as legitimate’. Privileged access to resources is made possible for compa-
nies by a related diversion of attention, ‘largely through taken-for-granted or privileged
accounts, which are rarely questioned even in leftist critiques’ (ibid.). In other words,
more than ‘actual patterns of access to natural resources’, but also ‘access to nature’s
capacity for absorbing wastes, tend to be highly skewed, bringing profits to very few ben-
eficiaries’ (ibid.). Indeed, social and environmental costs are often concentrated locally
or regionally, and usually those experiencing impacts most severely are not among the
few who benefit (Lane et al., 2003). Those with privileged access to nature, moreover,
‘enjoy a disproportionate level of authority to explain nature–society relationships’ and
their explanations are framed to head off or reduce any challenges to their privileged
access (Davidson and Grant, 2012, p. 70, original emphasis; see also Lowe, 2014).
Powerful, well-resourced companies can dominate both the discursive and political
‘framing’, material production, and allocation of social and environmental risk. They
can assemble technical and legal professionals to support their position and recruit
prominent spokespersons to publically endorse their claims and explanations (Lowe,
2014). Mobilised resistance to these privileges either locally or further afield can,
however, create a set of contingent relationships where local groups and individuals reject
company rights to access natural resources on company terms, whether on privately
owned land, in national parks and protected areas or on culturally significant ‘sacred
sites’ (Lane and Rickson, 1997; Lane et al., 2003). The particular contingencies we are
concerned with are based upon social relations of action and reaction, compliance and
resistance, and are the consequence of ‘people [and their organisations] making choices,
and choices making a difference [to others], often in unexpected ways’ (Patterson, 2001,
p. xxi). We have then what Piven (2007, p. 5) calls ‘interdependent power’, that is, a situ-
ation when corporate investment is contingent, to some degree, on local cooperation,
perhaps upon an informal ‘social license to operate’ (Gambling, 2006). We refer to active
cooperation rather than the kind that is based upon simple acquiescence or fatalism, in
that local people have ‘the potential for exercising power, at least in principle’ by ‘with-
drawing or threatening to withdraw’ their cooperation; ‘interdependent power is implicit
in much of what we think about power from below’ (Piven, 2007, p. 5).
Historically, mining in Australia and elsewhere has coexisted uneasily with agricul-
ture (Cleary, 2012, 2013; Munro, 2012). Fitzgerald (2012, p. 25), citing Cleary (2012),
suggests that the balance of power (and, following Freudenburg’s, 2005, ‘privileged
access’) is granted to mining and energy corporations, especially in places such as the

Darling Downs in Queensland where ‘regulation of our resources sector remains in the
hands of poorly resourced and often opaque state governments that lack independence’.
According to a cement company manager participating in interviews by Hoppe and his
colleagues (2006, p. 63), when it comes to launching a mining project, ‘Sometimes the
government and the company get together and decide that we are going to make this
happen no matter what’. Large-scale investment by international food companies is also
encouraged and ‘privileged’ by governments as they establish their operations across
critical farming areas and contract with local farmers to grow crops and rear livestock
under specified conditions. There are a host of contradictions and contingencies in the
mining of natural resources and sustenance of agricultural systems (Rickson and Burch,
1996; Burch et al., 1999). Actors may compete to promote or protect both their interests
and accounts of the nature and importance of potential threats, asserting the ‘privilege
of explanation’ (Rorty, 1989, p. 5), and drawing on certain forms of authoritative knowl-
edge (that may be differentially accessible; Ribot and Peluso, 2003).
Concepts such as ‘corporate social responsibility’, the ‘triple bottom line’, ‘going
beyond compliance’ and seeking a ‘social license to operate’ cut across the food and
extractive industries and their commitments. Although genuine commitments and their
influence over project decisions vary, they are a means through which local groups and
civil organisations may have opportunity to influence, or object to, company behaviour
if it is substantially different from stated company policies regarding social and environ-
mental responsibilities. Such commitments are largely responses to high-profile social
and environmental justice movements, and while concessions may be more symbolic
than material, they potentially act as constraints upon company profligacy, depending
upon how well organised and resourced civil society organisations are, and how respon-
sive government authorities are to their concerns. Global food and mining companies
have not always been so constrained, and there is still considerable variation across
states, when companies meet local opponents and their representatives with coercive,
even military force, to counter any resistance. As the power of the state recedes, the influ-
ence of corporations on rural communities has clearly increased, but power has its limits,
primarily through the mobilised opposition of local citizens and their allies (Piven, 2007).
There is also the possibility, following North (1998), that organisations are capable
of critically confronting their institutional histories of privileged access, and manag-
ers can respond creatively rather than defensively to community and environmental
contingencies.
CONTROL AND RECIPROCITY: SAM THE BANANA MAN AND

KILLING FOR COAL
Schama (2012, p. 88), in a review of Cohen’s (2012) book on United Fruit and its CEO
‘Sam the Banana Man’, suggests that ‘[i]t’s difficult today to imagine the power of United
Fruit. It was one of the first “truly global” corporations, writes Cohen, as prevalent as
Google and “as feared as Halliburton”’. Citing Cohen, Schama (2012, p. 88) notes that in
the 1940s and 1950s, it was ‘hard to distinguish United Fruit from the CIA’: in 1942 the
company owned 70 per cent of all private land in Guatemala; by 1961 it had one of the
world’s largest navies, and ‘the US government borrowed United Fruit’s guns and ships

when it sent a band of Cuban exiles into the Bay of Pigs’. Similarly, the power of modern
international mining is hard to underestimate, even though companies today are unlikely
to declare war with its workers, labor unions or local residents at their investment sites,
unlike the events reported by Andrews (2008) in Killing for Coal. In 1914, a shooting war
between the US Colorado National Guard, former employees of a Rockefeller-owned
coal mine, and striking miners broke out after ‘[s]even months of shootouts and assas-
sinations, executions and ambushes’ ending in the Ludlow Massacre (Andrews, 2008,
p. 1). Brute force by companies and militant, armed responses by workers and their
families are central to the history of the American Appalachian coalfields where mourn-
ful dirges are still sung, telling of family members treated like so much company fodder,
suffering and dying from the ‘black lung’. The song ‘You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive’
suggests past coal company indifference to the health and welfare of eastern Kentucky
workers having little or no choice in how they make a living, generation after generation.
Lawrence and Hodal (2014) provide a recent example, reporting that forced labour, or
industrial slavery, can be found in the Thai shrimp industry (see also Goss et al., 2000,
for a study of production contracts in this industry).
Critical contingencies for companies in the mining and food sectors are (1) sustaining
access to the natural resources they need for processing, manufacturing and marketing,
and (2) effectively managing the contingent relations they have with other economic,
political and social actors competing for the same resources, such as those with their
communities of operation. Among the critical outcomes for local citizens, often including
company employees, is how individual industrial projects and general corporate invest-
ment affects the ecosystems they are dependent upon or environments they are exposed
to and, thereby, their homes, farms, communities, livelihoods, health and well-being, and
cultural landscapes. These are problems that neither companies nor communities can
solve alone, and are perhaps best understood as decisions based on social commitment
rather than oft-cited management of scientific uncertainty, technical competence and
innovation or broader necessity (Wynne, 1992). Related industry–community interac-
tions necessarily involve long-term relationships, whether based on contention and mis-
trust or reciprocity and cooperation, or moving between the two, over time.
Sam the Banana Man and his company, United Fruit, along with the owners and man-
agers of the coal company that went to war with its employees are, perhaps, historical
aberrations. Even so, company strategies for inducing local cooperation, both in mining
and agri-food sectors, can be observed as they continue to deploy power-based strategies
designed to compel cooperation rather than those relying upon genuine partnerships
where there is power sharing and there are efforts to build trust (Hoppe et al., 2007).
In either case, company and local relations in rural communities are critical; for local
people, they have the greatest effect upon their living quality, and environmental and
economic futures, alongside those relationships they have with family and friends (Burch
et al., 1999; Bonanno and Constance, 2003).
CONTRACT FARMERS: WORKING FROM THE PERIPHERY
Farmers under contract production are ‘price takers’ rather than ‘price givers’ (Rickson
and Burch, 1996; Walker, 2012), but all food sectors are organised, to different degrees,

to negotiate price. Food producers rather than processors or retailers are at the peripher-
ies of power in processing and retailing networks unless mobilised sufficiently to directly
influence public policy and private corporate decision-making regarding not only the
price paid for their product, but the conditions under which a commodity is grown or
produced. Although there are avenues for bargaining over price, the primary market
forces that farmers negotiate revolve around what the company decides to buy, when
the crop will be harvested and how much of the crop they will buy, contingent for one
thing upon the quality of the crop when delivered (Rickson and Burch, 1996). A stated
long-term goal of agri-food processors and supermarkets, to be achieved through policy
reform, is ‘advancing farmer innovation, productivity, and long-term sustainability’ and
‘supporting the next generation of farmers and industry leaders’ (Woolworths Ltd, 2013,
p. 16). However, the gradual separation of land ownership by farmers from the power to
make decisions about farmland use, cropping and animal production continues (Rickson
and Burch, 1996). Access to land and water resources by agri-food companies, the food
and industrial crops produced and, of course, the skills of the farmer are primarily
achieved through production contracts, or similar contractual agreements, rather than
by their owning land and hiring people to farm. This is more the case with food crops
than industrial crops such as cotton.
Rickson and Burch (1996, p. 173) define contracts as key company strategies to
regulate or industrialise farm labour and farmer relations to their land so that products
can be standardised as raw inputs for processing and sale on global markets (see also
Pritchard and Burch, 2003). Companies, including food processors and now supermar-
kets, have access to farmland and influence how crops and animals are grown or reared
while largely avoiding, as we note above, the risks and biophysical uncertainties of
owning land. Rickson and Burch (1996) found that managers of processing companies
annually review grower compliance with contractual standards based upon farm visits
by professional staff and the quality of the crop produced. Farmers who are deemed bad
performers are ‘weeded out’ – those who are deemed neither reliable nor consistently
delivering crops meeting their quality standards. Managers reported that this involves
‘culling’ some farmers, and ‘selecting’ reliable farmers who ‘give us a good product’
(ibid., p. 187). However, agri-food company managers exercise discretion in their farmer
relations, depending upon the commodity, its availability and the market price, and
farmers can be given several chances to meet selected standards.
Reliable farmers, from the company point of view, are those they want to keep and are
rewarded primarily through the financial security of continued contracts or some type
of financial inducement. Some farmers, however, see this as part of a strategy, which
extends to price negotiations, of playing farmers off against each other to individualise
protest and grievances, significantly limiting their power as a group to influence not only
price, but conditions under which crops are grown and harvested (Rickson and Burch,
1996; Rickson et al., 2001). Farm decision-making, ranging from seed and plant selection
to crop and animal care to the routines of conservation and harvesting, is effectively sub-
sumed into organisational management structures. This is, for many farmers in Australia
(Rickson and Burch, 1996), North America (Winson, 1990; Wolf et al., 2001), Mexico
(Echanove and Steffen, 2005) and Thailand (Goss et al., 2000; Burch and Rickson,
2011), a ‘livelihood strategy’ for those dependent upon food processing companies for
‘financing, technical assistance and access to markets’, ever more so as a consequence of

‘the withdrawal of state support and regulation of agricultural production’ (Echanove

and Steffen, 2005, p. 166).
GENDERED AGRICULTURE: ‘WOMEN ARE STRONG, BUT

RURAL WOMEN ARE STRONGER’
Farmer and company relationships are highly gendered (Rickson, 1997; Rickson et al.,
1998, 2006). Farm women routinely report that managers and field agents working for
processing companies always ask for their husbands when visiting or calling even though
they, the farm women, see themselves as ‘equal partners’. Farm women’s groups, par-
tially as a response to their perceived inferior status with companies, often take a more
aggressive and mobilised stance on agri-food company and government agency policies
and decisions than farm men. Farm men and women, in our studies, generally agree and
conclude that many of their concerns such as the fairness of pricing by companies, or
complex bureaucracy on the part of agencies, were largely ignored by companies and
government agencies alike. Neither company and agency managers nor politicians were
‘listening’ to them even though they publically said that they were ‘consulting’ them.
Farm men, more than women, were members of the formal ‘vegetable and industry com-
mittees’ set up to negotiate crop prices and contract conditions, but, as noted, women
were more mobilised and vocal in advocacy groups than farm men.
Some women said that ‘their’ men were too weak in the negotiations over price and
conditions. Research by Sarah Rickson and colleagues (2001, p. 256) reported a focus
group of farm women asserting that ‘[w]omen are strong, but rural women are stronger’
(also see Rickson et al., 1998, p. 445). The studies suggest farm women’s general distrust
of many private and public organisations, from companies to government agencies and
financial institutions that comprise national and international agriculture. These farm
women, and farm men (often their partners), considered strategies by companies as well
as government agencies to be largely designed to individualise farm community protest.
They argued that their distrust of companies was grounded in a long history of difficult
interaction between local farmers and these organisations.
Although company relations discussed here were difficult, research by Rickson et al.
(2001) found that farm women (and men) were organising to increase their bargaining
power with companies. While concerned about their influence on companies, most of
the farm women surveyed agreed that closer working relationships between farmers and
processors were essential to their farm, family and community futures (Rickson et al.,
2006). Production contracts with food processors gave them access to world markets and
they were confident that local farmers could compete with the world’s best. These rural
producers were, and are, looking for allies outside of farm communities and providing
training for other farm men and women so that they can successfully assert farm family
and rural community interests ‘beyond the farm gate’. They strongly felt that farm
decision-making in their respective industries (dairying, vegetables, potatoes, poppies for
producing opiates) should be ‘returned to the farmer’ and that a primary dimension of
sustainability is ‘fitting farming more closely to natural ecosystems’ (ibid., p. 125). With a
few exceptions, these farmers also viewed the actions of processing companies they were
contracted to as contradictory to that goal.

Tasmanian farm women in Rickson et al.’s (2001, p. 266) study were mobilised, then,
but generally expressed the view that they had ‘neither voice nor power’ in relation to
either processing companies or government agencies. The issues nominated by these
women as the most important to them, their families and their farming sector were health
and welfare, community decline, and the need by farm families for community and
social support. They felt strongly that ‘farming and farm families have lost status and
power in the Australian culture’ (ibid., pp. 263, 268). When asked why there were these
problems in rural farm communities, the resounding answer was that neither companies
nor responsible government regulatory or planning agencies consulted them. Instead,
farm women referred to ‘cosmetic consultations’ arranged for unsuitable days or times
that conflicted with childcare obligations, for example, or more frequently ‘simply being
ignored’ when they did attend meetings (ibid., p. 267). The predominant perspective was
that companies and governments were willing to consult with local people, but were
reluctant to listen (Rickson et al., 2001, 2006).
A MOSAIC OF CONTRADICTION AND THE DOUBLE SQUEEZE
If there is a history of difficult relations between agri-food companies and Australian

farmers (Burch et al., 1999; Lawrence, 1999; Gray and Lawrence, 2001), the same
is true for mining. Institutionalised distrust is rather common, not least stemming
from the impacts of (mining and agri-food) company operations. However, there is,
as noted above, also some evidence of collaboration and cooperation between local
landholders, mining and agri-food organisations based upon trust and reciprocity. The
overlap of (sometimes competing or conflicting) food and mining activities in rural
areas is, however, seen to be intensifying as coal seam gas ventures move from a pri-
marily investment base into greatly expanded production, alongside approval to open
central Queensland’s Galilee Basin to what will become Australia’s largest coal mine
(Milman, 2014), and ambitious proposals to spur a ‘food boom’, transform Northern
Australia into a food bowl for Asia by 2030 (Liberal National Party, 2013), and double
Queensland’s food production by 2040 (The State of Queensland, 2013). When mining
and agricultural activities compete for access to the same resources, farmers and other
local people are effectively caught in a ‘double squeeze’, where agri-food interests are
promoting industrial and productivist agriculture relying upon intensive cultivation and
reliable water supplies while the mining sector simultaneously promotes natural resource
development, potentially harming the land and water systems that agriculture depends
upon. ‘Big’ agriculture and mining are thereby entangled in ever more complex ways
while directly impacting upon rural landscapes, people and communities. Food and
energy markets, although dominated by a few big companies, are at the same time highly
competitive, resource dependent, and primarily oriented to shareholder value, which
precludes effectively balancing short-term profit objectives with social and environmen-
tal justice, at any scale.
Regarding the massive expansion of coal seam gas production across eastern Australia
in recent years, for example, Rickson (2012, p. 1) observes that ‘[q]uestions have been
raised not only about the safety of cumulative and longer-term impacts on aquifers
and agriculture, including the nation’s food security, but also about the very future of

Australia’s rural and regional communities, environment and economy’. Similar tensions
are also evident in rural communities in the United States undergoing further industriali-
sation through increased mining investments. In the latter case, mostly related to shale
gas development, county authorities are facing constrictions of their rights to zone local
land use by state agencies that open prospects of private residential communities turning
into industrial precincts (Finewood and Stroup, 2012; Malin, 2014). Governments
pulling back their support for small-and medium-sized farms has made these farmers
more dependent upon the royalties from natural gas developers leasing their land for
drilling and potentially risking the productive basis for agriculture (Malin, 2014), bring-
ing home the sometimes contradictory interactions of agriculture and mining.
The tensions do not end there. Dawson (2014) reports on the struggle by North
Dakota’s state regulatory agencies to keep pace with the rapid expansion of the oil
industry where thousands of wells ‘are dotting the landscape and producing [potentially
harmful] gas as a by-product of hydraulic fracking and horizontal drilling for oil in the
Bakken Shale’. Along with Finewood and Stroup (2012), Malin (2014) argues that the
financial return to farmers allowing drilling on their land inevitably pits them against
broader community interests and concern about the potential negative impacts of frack-
ing. These studies on the ‘contested landscapes’ of unconventional energy production
also suggest that the process isolates and individualises farmer responses to any harm
they may be concerned about and serves to ‘normalise’ the coexistence of mining and
agriculture, particularly for farmers of small-and medium-sized holdings. Findings
suggest that such farmers supporting energy extraction rationalise their limited economic
and political power to contest shale gas mining by invoking neoliberal ideologies of
technological confidence (in ‘fracking’, in this case) that minimise risks, and see ‘no real
choice but to sign’ (ibid., p. 17).
In Australia, onshore exploration and mining for such ‘unconventional’ energy is
focused on vast coal deposits and the methane trapped in its seams, particularly in eastern
states. Indeed, four coal seam gas (CSG) ‘mega-projects’ in Queensland’s Surat Basin,
those run by Santos and Petronas, British Gas’s Queensland Gas Company, Origin with
Conoco-Phillips and Sinopec, and most recently the Arrow Energy venture owned by
the Shell group and PetroChina, have been approved by state and federal governments
since 2010. A substantial portion of these energy interests centre on productive farmland,
primarily in northern New South Wales and southwest and central Queensland, but with
reserves identified, and attempts to establish corporate production, in other farming
regions, including in Victoria and Tasmania. The adequacy and legitimacy of associated
legislative protections, scientific knowledge, assessment processes, and institutional and
organisational decision-making, operation and oversight during this period of massive
expansion have been challenged by a broad constituency, including through popular and
farmer protests and blockades, and warnings issued by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), peak scientific, agriculture and
environmental bodies within Australia, and federal parliamentary inquiries (see, e.g.,
the Senate Rural Affairs and Transport References Committee’s 2011 interim report).
Powerful counter-claims, however, continue to be issued by state and federal govern-
ment agencies and representatives as well as industry bodies and company CEOs seeking
to extend or secure operations.
While both state and federal governments in recent years have called for more

eaningful and sustained community engagement by companies, a considerable

m
focus has been placed on community education initiatives, and better communicat-
ing the ‘real’ risks of mining (see, e.g., Bromby, 2011; Franklin, 2011). At the same
time, a nationally organised ‘Lock the Gate Alliance’ advocates for the protection
of farmland from potentially irreversible harm caused by gas and mining operations
outstripping scientific understanding, government capabilities for oversight and reme-
diability of impacts. They cite concerns about the ecological impacts of mining, not
least regarding potential, (and documented; Nicholls, 2014), surface and groundwater
contamination.
Technological optimism characterises industry and government responses that CSG
production will ‘provide cleaner energy for the world, but not at the expense of
Queensland’ (APLNG, 2012a). Framing opposition as stemming from lack of access
to objective information or confusion, APLNG (2012b), for example, suggests that
‘few know exactly how it’s [extracting gas is] done. We would like to change that’.
As Freudenburg and Pastor (1992, p. 399) have observed, however, when legitimacy
issues are raised in dealing with public responses to technological risk, agencies (and
proponents) may sustain broader consent for policies if dissent is seen to be based on
illegitimate concerns; ‘the prevailing construction reflects at least an implicit choice to
treat ordinary citizens’ behaviors as problematic, without extending the same scrutiny to
behaviors of scientists and officials [and industry], or to the characteristics of the contro-
versial technologies themselves’. It may also be noted that prospects of CSG providing a
lower-carbon alternative have also come under fire, with indications that both ‘fugitive’
emissions at well sites and those released in the liquification process that ready the gas
for fulfilment of contracted supply to major overseas markets, such as in China, largely
negate planned emissions ‘savings’ compared to coal production (see Campbell and
Turton, 2012; Santos and Maher, 2012; Tait et al., 2013).
Large-scale CSG mining operations cite successful community negotiations and
signed agreements with farmers for access to their land as evidence of having secured
a local ‘social license to operate’ and a rallying of popular support (see, e.g., McHugh,
2013). Even so, there has been very limited legal recourse for landowners in Queensland
to deny property access to companies, with appropriately obtained permits for explora-
tion or development, other than seeking assistance in the negotiation of compensation
terms in the Land Court (see McCarthy, 2013), though passage of the Regional Planning
Interests Act (RPIA) 2014 may provide further protections in this regard in the future
(Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning, 2014). Regulatory and
policy frameworks differ considerably between states, though there is generally some
degree of public consultation or opportunity for comment regarding proposed projects.
In some cases these frameworks themselves are undergoing rapid change, including
assessment and approval processes intended to ‘streamline’ development applications in
Queensland, and restricting notification and rights to object to proposed developments
in some circumstances (effected through the RPIA 2014; see Environmental Defenders
Office, 2014). However, uncertainties and tensions remain over the prospects of rela-
tively short-term gains that have potentially placed the health, safety, productivity and
viability of environments and communities at risk.

TOMATOES AND CEMENT: FROM THE PERIPHERY TO THE

CENTRE
Global competition, marketing agreements and increased dependence by farmers on

agri-food organisations have pushed small-and medium-sized farmers to the power
periphery of modern food systems, or out of farming altogether. However, to the extent
that these processes are promoting concentration of farmland ownership, they can under
some circumstances increase farmer power. In this regard, Pritchard et al. (2007), refer
to a new class of ‘farm family entrepreneurs’, requiring us to re-evaluate the concept of
family farming, and adding an important perspective to the study of power and depend-
ence relations between agri-food companies and farmers. The tomato farmers under
production contracts with food processors that Pritchard and his colleagues studied are
adept at mobilising their members as well as outside contacts to protect and promote
their financial interests. They are innovative, have access to appropriate knowledge,
skills, and technical data, or access to professionals and capital enabling them to inter-
pret and apply these data to their farming enterprises independently, significantly influ-
encing price negotiations with processors. These attributes provide a basis for mobilising
their national and international contacts to promote local economic and community
interests. Although Rickson and Burch (1996) found some evidence of ‘deskilling’
among Tasmanian farmers, in the above study ‘there was a clear process of re-skilling,
as growers moved out of the diversified production of a range of commodities, towards
a more complex, specialised and capital-intensive production profile’ (Pritchard et al.,
2007, p. 83).
Hoppe et al.’s (2007) case study in Untervaz, Switzerland shows that organised local
pressure and creative responses by managers to local concerns about development pro-
jects can be transformed into genuine partnerships where there is project-specific power
sharing and trust. The planned expansion of a limestone quarry by Bunder Cement
Untervaz (BCU, now Holcim Untervaz and a member of Holcim, one of the world’s
largest cement groups) met intense, unexpected resistance to their proposal by local com-
munity groups. The study area was in many respects a classical example of a contested
terrain, with intersecting agricultural and limestone mining interests, a diverse ecology
and a landscape where culturally significant sites, and scenic and recreational values
competed directly with commercial mining, though the latter would have strengthened
had the original company proposal been accepted by the community. At the same time,
the company had a long-established relationship with the community and was accepted,
according to reports from locals as well as prominent regional professionals and offi-
cials, as a good corporate citizen contributing significantly to the area by providing
employment and taxes, but also through its support of the area’s social and cultural
institutions. Yet the company had an urgent need, if it were to continue local operations,
which required a commercial decision. Expanded access to the area’s high-grade lime-
stone was necessary if the company were to continue its Untervaz operations. Company
plans, along with technical data about limestone locations and a scoping of the new
quarry’s potential social and environmental impacts were thereby presented in an open
forum called by the Untervaz City Council at the company’s request (Hoppe et al.,
2007).
To the surprise of managers, there were a number of questions, if not antagonisms,

directed at the proposal. Going ahead with expanding the open pit quarry was not
explicitly contingent upon widespread local approval, but for the company and its man-
agers, local legitimacy and cooperative relationships were seen as essential to continued
operations. Managers responded by proposing a decision-making partnership spanning
company and community boundaries that would allow the community to influence
all stages of project development from selection of mining technologies to monitoring
and mitigating the social and environmental impacts of the technologies chosen for the
project’s development (ibid.). In summary, the committee had decision-making power
contributing to the process whereby managers reworked their original proposal to open
project development, including constructing a new quarry, to deliberation and negotia-
tion, with the community recognised as equal partners in project development through
its elected representatives on the committee. This encompassed evaluating alternative
technologies for quarry construction, considering mining technologies other than open
pit quarries, and assessing the impacts of alternative technical proposals. The strategy
adopted by BCU in this instance was essentially a commercial decision, but was made in
the context of deep-seated, institutionalised relations of social trust with the community
and region. This history of interaction ‘helped to establish a base for creative responses
[by BCU (Holcim Untervaz), government agencies and the community] to Untervaz
objections to its initial plans for expanding the surface area of its existing quarry’
(ibid., p. 73).
CONCLUSION
Examining the complex and contingent relationships between global companies and
community groups, including town residents and farmers, offers insight into the diverse
responses to attempts by industry actors to access local resources, including the skills
of rural people and their communities. These relationships are uncertain, conditional
and loosely connected to each other, but are increasingly critical to justly resolving
issues cutting across food and energy production, much of it now concentrating on land
and water supplies, mineral and gas resources, and rural landscapes and communities.
The actors themselves, whether members of international agri-food or mining groups,
local communities, agencies of state or civil society organisations, are part of complex
structures where internal diversity and opposing views are common. Access to natural
resources by any of these actors inevitably involves the others either as protagonists,
advocates or, in some cases, combatants. Natural resource access is, of course, central
to broader concepts of social and economic development at national, regional and com-
munity scales. We argue that regardless of whether we are debating what development
should be, or what is important and what counts, when it comes to resource access
struggles, industry and community relations may powerfully influence developmental
trajectories, not least in relation to mining and agriculture.
Partnership in resource development is often a stated goal by large corporations
across the food and mining sectors, but such an outcome seems contradictory with
the existing power of these organisations given that a few large companies (including
processing, retailing and agri-chemicals) dominate. The economic activities of the two
sectors overlap and are potentially at odds with each other at community and regional

levels when, for example, mining affects the land and water resources that farming
and the agri-food sector are dependent upon; or, when farming areas, rich in mineral
and gas resources are off limits to mining companies. However, research suggests that
community mobilisation can, to a degree, reduce power imbalances, thereby promot-
ing collaboration and partnership between companies and locals. Rural communities
are caught in the middle – a double squeeze we have called it. The social and economic
networks of individuals, groups and organisations overlapping at community, national
and international scales further complicate matters in their variable commitment to
economic, socio-cultural and environmental justice goals, often constituting what may
be called a mosaic of contradiction. As a consequence, agriculture and mining coexist
uneasily across the contested terrains of rural and regional communities as agri-food and
mining companies engage, and in some cases listen to, mobilised farmers, residents and
their allies as they pressure companies to recognise their economic needs and concerns
for social and environmental justice.
A history of privileged corporate access to natural resources, including local skills and
knowledge, is increasingly being challenged as farmers, rural residents and of course
indigenous peoples mobilise and refuse to be pushed to the periphery of strategic project
development. Local groups want involvement in all phases of project planning and
implementation regarding, for instance, how project risks and economic opportunities
are distributed, and what is measured or valued in social and environmental impacts of
development projects. These considerations are important from initial conversations
and plans, to alternative project proposals, and down to specific project blueprints. Our
focus has been on the complicated entanglement of the food, mining and energy sectors
over access to resources, and a continuing question for research and policy is how and
when the needs and perspectives of communities are genuinely considered as legitimate
constraints on economic activities by large-scale, often globally organised companies
dominating these sectors and regions. Some degree of democratisation in this regard
is most likely to occur when companies find that their access to natural resources is to
any degree contingent upon the approval of mobilised locals, whether farmers, rural
community residents or traditional land owners.
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PART IV
CHALLENGES TO THE
GLOBALISATION OF
AGRICULTURE

19. Multifunctional agricultural transition: essential
for local diversity in a globalised world
Simon J. Fielke
INTRODUCTION
Historically, agricultural practice has been based on producing as much food and fibre as
possible. However, this approach to agricultural development has been challenged as the
local social and environmental consequences of the global productivist regime have been
recognised. This chapter will examine one of the alternative paradigms that have been
proposed to address the need to value the social and environmental outcomes of agri-
cultural land use. Multifunctional agriculture has been conceptualised to recognise the
need for a transition toward agricultural systems that acknowledge the non-commodity,
as well as the commodity and food production values central to agricultural pursuits.
The subsequent distinction made between top-down multifunctionality in the European
Union (EU) and bottom-up multifunctionality in Australia is not to say that there are
not examples of the alternate form of multifunctionality in both regions. This chapter is
not arguing that the EU does not share forums for producer-driven multifunctionality;
in fact, many of the alternative food networks discussed in the Australian case study
were initiated in Old World nations such as some members of the EU. Australian agri-
cultural governance has also involved top-down examples of multifunctionality, with
recent Character Preservation Bills to protect peri-urban agricultural regions of South
Australia as one such example (Government of South Australia, 2011). The two multi-
functional case studies instead intend to expose the positive and negative aspects of very
different approaches to achieving some form of multifunctional land use.
WHAT IS ‘MULTIFUNCTIONAL’ AGRICULTURE?
Quite simply, multifunctional agriculture, or multifunctionality, refers to valuing the

multiple functions or outcomes of agricultural land use and food production. The
requirement that both the commodity and non-commodity outcomes of agriculture are
recognised means social and environmental impacts are explicitly considered in agri-
cultural land use decision-making (Potter and Burney, 2002; OECD, 2003; McCarthy,
2005; Cocklin et al., 2006; Holmes, 2006; Jordan and Warner, 2010). While it is obvious
that agricultural land use has always had social and environmental consequences, under
the globally dominant neoliberal productivist paradigm these are labelled as economic
‘externalities’, meaning that while occurring they are generally not directly economi-
cally valued (Prestegard, 2004). This stance implies that any external social and envi-
ronmental costs or benefits are the responsibility of the rest of society (Hardin, 1968).
Multifunctional agriculture aims not only to recognise these social and environmental
389
externalities, but also to place some form of economic value on positive outcomes for
the common good (Potter and Burney, 2002; Randall, 2002; Potter and Tilzey, 2007).
Holistic recognition of the multitude of ecosystem services involved with agricultural
production and the subsequent impacts agriculture has on the entire ecosystem (includ-
ing human beings) is the cornerstone of multifunctional agriculture (Wilson, 2007). It is
also important to note that use of the term ‘multifunctional agriculture’ has been con-
tested in regard to the various contexts in which it has been used (e.g., by policy-makers,
in practice by farmers, or theoretically by academics).
The rest of this chapter will discuss the origins of the multifunctional paradigm, before
giving two examples of multifunctionality: the first driven from the top-down by recent
agricultural governance in the European Union under the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP); the second initiated by producers opting to farm sustainably in the relatively
neoliberal Australian agricultural context.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF MULTIFUNCTIONAL AGRICULTURE
When the EU was founded in 1950 it was in response to geopolitical tension from the
‘Cold War’ and in an attempt to stabilise markets within the region (Castree et al., 2010).
As a result, communal interests emerged between member states. Agricultural produc-
tion was one of these interests because the members felt that, through its influence on
food prices, it had a major impact on the cost of living and therefore wage levels and
industrial costs (Bowler, 1985; Ingersent and Rayner, 1999). To address these issues
the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was created following the drawing up of the
Treaty of Rome in 1957 (Bowler, 1985; Knudsen, 2009). Although members had varying
understandings of the direct relevance of the CAP to their respective nations, it meant
that the entire EU agricultural sector had similar aims to conserve a ‘robust agricultural
sector, rural populations, and the security of food’ (Hill, 2000, p. 39). Despite these aims,
early CAP policies erred on the weak side of multifunctionality by primarily focusing on
maximising production to ‘ensure regional and national self-sufficiently’ (Wilson, 2007,
p. 247).
In the 1990s the CAP priorities shifted to embrace a social welfare agenda, where
economically marginal producers were assisted to maintain countryside occupied and
managed by farmers (Potter, 2006). In 1992 the MacSharry Reform of the CAP saw the
replacement of price support mechanisms, for example tariffs on imports, with direct
payments to farmers that were not only linked to the output of commodities but also
other aspects of agricultural land use (Serra et al., 2005; Ballas et al., 2006). Subsequently,
Agenda 2000 built on the MacSharry Reform of the CAP by explicitly recognising the
social and environmental roles of farmers and attempted to develop a ‘coherent and sus-
tainable framework for the future of Europe’s rural areas’ (Rickard, 2004, p. 746). These
policy changes met some opposition, however, and a Mid-Term Review of the CAP in
2002 suggested dramatic further alterations (Rickard, 2004). Concerns about the eco-
nomic cost of the CAP and international free trade pressure meant that in 2003 the
governing body placed an upper limit on CAP expenditure. However, it was argued that
there was a need to refocus current farm support away from production ‘towards envi-
ronmental outputs as a means of securing a profitable and sustainable farming industry’

Multifunctional agricultural transition 391
80%
1995–97
70% 2008–2010
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Norway Switzerland European Australia OECD
Union
Source: Adapted from OECD (2011).
Figure 19.1 Government subsidies as a percentage of gross farm revenue in Norway,

Switzerland, the EU, Australia and the OECD
(ibid., p. 746). The environmental impacts of agricultural land use were central to the
2003 CAP reform as ecological sustainability was a primary concern and the ‘country
stewardship’ role of farmers was recognised (Robinson, 2004, p. 92). In relation to social
outcomes it was also noted that a ‘fair standard of living for the agricultural community
was paramount’ (ibid.). It is important to recognise that the actual policy mechanisms
used to most appropriately subsidise agricultural producers vary between EU members
and can be contested on various grounds (Tarrant, 1992). For example, the use of ‘multi-
functional agriculture’ as a ‘political tool’, as opposed to providing real world multifunc-
tional ‘transition’ in agricultural systems is a serious concern (Wilson, 2007).
Figure 19.1 highlights the significant difference in assistance from governments
from two European non-members of the EU, Switzerland and Norway, the entire EU,
Australia and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
average, from 1995 to 2010. It is evident that farmers in the EU received 34 per cent
of farm revenue from government subsidies between 1995 and 1997, which fell to
22 per cent between 2008 and 2010. Farmers in Switzerland and Norway are shown
to receive an even greater percentage of revenue from this source. On the other hand,
Australian farmers virtually have to fend for themselves in global commodity markets
with only 6 per cent of revenue coming from government subsidies between 1995 and
1997, which drops to just 3 per cent of income between 2008 and 2010. The drastic
difference in farmer revenue from subsidies is an example of the added support that
governments in the EU and other regions of Europe are willing to afford their primary
producers. It seems that the European model of agriculture embodies a ‘particular con-
struction of the relationship between agriculture, environment and rural society’ that is
rooted ‘deep in European culture and politics’ (Potter, 2006, p. 192). By taking a more
protectionist, multifunctional stance, the EU contradicted actions by export-orientated

Table 19.1 Key structural elements of productivist and post-productivist agricultural

regimes
Productivist Regime Post-productivist Regime

Intensification: of production (via increased Extensification: reduced production (via
use of capital and external inputs) to increase decreased use of land, capital and external
productivity per unit area of land inputs)
Concentration: majority of farmland owned by Dispersion: greater equality in distribution of
(declining) minority of farmers farmland among farmers
Specialisation: key regions developing Diversification: increasing intra-regional
specialisations in particular industries heterogeneity in agricultural land uses
Economical: production is the primary goal of Conservation: social and environmental
land use responsibilities of land use also recognised
Source: Adapted from Argent (2002, p. 99).
nations, such as Australia. A battle between arguably protectionist multifunctional poli-

cies and market-based efficiency detracted from the conceptualisation of multifunctional
agricultural practice, in regard to reducing commodity surpluses and providing more
economic support for other ecosystem services, instead provoking polarising political
discourse surrounding the term (Potter, 2006; Dibden et al., 2009; López-i-Gelats and
Tàbara, 2010).
Recognition of social and environmental outcomes of land use in the European
CAP in the 1990s laid the foundation for what is now referred to as ‘multifunctional’
agricultural policy. The reforms to the CAP that moved toward supporting the social
and environmental outcomes of agricultural land use were arguably influenced by
earlier theoretical political economy analyses of the structural influences on agriculture
(Rodefeld et al., 1978; Buttel and Newby, 1980; Blaikie, 1985), which recognised the need
to incorporate these alternative outcomes of agricultural land use into decision-making.
This led to the concept of ‘post-productivist’ agriculture that refers to farming that is
not geared solely toward production (Table 19.1), and in some cases may not involve
producing commodities at all (non-productivism), but rather encompasses farming to
achieve explicit social and environmental outcomes that are subsequently economically
valued in some way (Wilson, 2007).
The post-productivist paradigm was criticised, however, for neglecting the global
economic and social benefits attributed to the maximum production of food and fibre
involved with the productivist agricultural model (Walford, 2003; Argent et al., 2007;
Dibden et al., 2009). Multifunctional agriculture was presented by academics as a
theoretically unique concept that, separate from political influence, explicitly valued
all facets of agricultural land use – the economic and global food security benefits of
productivist agriculture and the long-term, local, social and environmental benefits of
post-productivist agriculture (Wilson, 2001; Argent et al., 2007; Dibden et al., 2009).
The OECD (2001) recognised that it was important to consider the ecosystem services
provided by agricultural systems in the form of multifunctional land use by attempt-
ing to put an objective framework in place that could be followed by member nations.
Further publications refined the concept that valued commodity and non-commodity

consequences of agricultural land use economically (OECD, 2003, 2005, 2008). While
the practical expression of multifunctionality can be encouraged through government
policy, as has been discussed in certain reforms to the CAP, multifunctional agricul-
tural land use can also occur without serious political support for various reasons.
While political recognition of ‘multifunctional’ agriculture may not be as widespread in
Australia, there are numerous reasons for farmers themselves to consider the local social
and environmental outcomes of their agricultural land use to obtain premium prices for
their produce, effectively allowing positive ecological and social consequences to be eco-
nomically valued, as will be discussed further in the Australian case study.
TOP-DOWN MULTIFUNCTIONALITY: AGRICULTURAL

GOVERNANCE UNDER THE EU’S CAP
While the negative environmental and social outcomes of productivist agricultural

practice, subsequent academic analyses, and aspects of the CAP have been discussed
as contributing to the theoretical formulation of post-productivist and multifunctional
agriculture, a case study on the actual mechanisms used to value the local social and
environmental outcomes of agricultural land use is useful in describing multifunctional
agriculture in a globalised world. In the EU agricultural governance has involved a
number of policies aimed at economically valuing the multifunctionality of agricultural
land use.
In the UK the multifunctional shift has included the introduction of a range of agri-
environmental programmes aimed at reducing agricultural commodity surpluses and
halting farm-related environmental degradation with conservation payments (Bowler,
1992; Argent, 2002). In 1977 direct and indirect support to the mining, manufacturing
and construction sectors of the UK economy combined was 7.1 per cent of gross domes-
tic product (GDP), whereas support to agriculture was 13.6 per cent, almost double that
of the three combined sectors (Bowler, 1992, p. 242). In 1985 the total effects of the CAP
provided a subsidy of GBP20 000 per farmer in the UK and GBP7000 per job in agricul-
ture (Bowler, 1992). The government sought to compensate for low wages in the farming
sector; however, the link between support and multifunctional outcomes remained
relatively weak (ibid.). Wilson (2007) notes that the previously mentioned reforms to
the CAP throughout the 2000s, via the introduction of a range of agri-environmental
policies, aimed to ‘strengthen’ the multifunctionality of European agriculture. In 2001
the ‘traditional’ Ministry for Agriculture in the UK was replaced with the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), an organisation with an ‘argu-
ably more post-productivist agenda’ (ibid., pp. 125–6). This period (2000s) also saw
the introduction of Rural Development Regulation at the EU level through the CAP,
which included ‘measures for marketing of quality agricultural products, encourage-
ment of farm diversification activities, encouragement of tourism in rural areas, and
landscape conservation policies’ (ibid., p. 195). Rural Development Regulation involved
farmers being required to reach minimum environmental standards in order to receive
farm subsidies and a proportion of CAP funding also went toward explicitly ‘multi-
functional’ agri-environmental instruments (Wilson, 2007). Subsequent CAP support
mechanisms, such as the Single Farm Payments (introduced in 2005), were completely

decoupled from production – instead being linked to environmental, food safety and
animal welfare (multifunctional) standards. This reform replaced the previous CAP
support mechanism that provided farmers with artificially high prices for produce with
the expectation that the funds would be targeted toward measures to encourage the pro-
tection of public goods, such as open and varied landscapes, wildlife habitat, and food
security (McMichael, 1999). Currently, the CAP in the UK consists of direct payments
for the land area managed, which involves meeting environmental cross-compliance
measures (Pillar 1) and optional agri-environmental schemes for which farmers receive
extra financial supports for socio-environmental beneficial activities (Pillar 2) (DEFRA,
2005; Rural Payments Agency, 2011a, 2011b). In recent CAP negotiations, however, the
UK has been pushing for increased outcome-based agri-environmental payments for
measures such as biodiversity and heritage conservation and preservation and positive
outcomes for rural community development (DEFRA, 2013).
By briefly discussing some of the CAP mechanisms in regard to the UK it is evident
that a number of policies have been influential in contributing to incomes for farmers
to improve both the social and environmental outcomes of agricultural land use.
Subsidising the economically inefficient farm sector at the expense of the EU tax base is
practical because social, environmental and political concerns are in some instances as
important as economic considerations (Bowler, 1992). That said, it does not mean that
the top-down multifunctional stance of the EU does not have a number of problems.
Although it would seem that the multifunctional policies of the CAP are redistributing
wealth in a fairer manner in order to increase the beneficial social and environmental
outcomes of agricultural land use, there are critics. Bowler (ibid.) argues that previously
the majority of the financial support went to the larger farmers because those who sold
the most received the most in deficiency payments (one of the policy support mecha-
nisms) – those farmers that need the support least. Since the most recent reforms of the
CAP, however, these issues have attempted to be solved by moving away from a subsidy
culture toward support for explicit agri-environmental outcomes (Daugbjerg et al.,
2005; Wilson, 2007). It is also a concern that some farmers are not aware of the level of
support they are receiving, and therefore perceive themselves to be globally competitive
when they are not. If governments hide certain agricultural support such as the infla-
tion of produce prices, or tariffs placed on imports, farmers may not realise they are not
competitively producing, and there may not be any incentive to become more efficient
(Daugbjerg et al., 2005). These protectionist policies can also mean a surplus of food
is created that is not globally competitive, adding to the EU’s economic expense and
meaning that other countries cannot fairly compete (McMichael and Raynolds, 1994).
There are also various criticisms of the direction of supposedly multifunctional agri-
cultural governance since the 2000s. It has been argued that the reforms during this
period, instead of initiating serious changes in farming toward multifunctional practice,
supported many farms continuing ‘business as usual’ under the guise of ‘green or non-
productivist’ policy (Wilson, 2007). It is also a concern that some areas, where perhaps
strong multifunctional outcomes were already being realised, had agricultural multifunc-
tionality weakened in order to continue to receive support and find a balance between
subsidisation and production. Another issue created by increasing the ‘stewardship’ com-
ponent of farming under the CAP is the way farmers feel about their occupation. Surveys
done by Burton and Wilson (2006) in the UK and evidence from other studies through-

Table 19.2 Theoretical benefits and criticisms of top-down European multifunctionality

and bottom-up Australian multifunctionality
Top-down Europe Bottom-up Australia

Benefits Wide-scale and compulsory Environmental – increased biodiversity
Environmental – increased biodiversity conservation, reduced degradation
conservation, reduced degradation, Social – benefits associated with
environmental outcomes valued alternative food networks: direct
Social – food sovereignty, sustainable contact with consumers; fairer prices;
rural regions reduced financial pressure
Criticisms Economic – expensive to maintain Not large scale – no real social shift to
subsidisation, exacerbates current responsible rather than conventional
debt crises, not always cost effective food production
out Europe show that despite much ‘talk of an increasing conservationist component to
farming, farmers’ self-concepts are still dominated by production-orientated identities’
(p. 95). This issue is not insurmountable, however, as these farmers also ‘produce’ ecosys-
tem services as a by-product, which if recognised explicitly and financial reward accrues
to the farmer, forms the essence of a ‘multifunctional agricultural system’.
The final criticism of multifunctional policy in the EU that will be discussed here is
that, despite social and ecological recognition in the CAP, negative environmental out-
comes have still been felt when farming has been intensified in order to maximise the
economic benefits of economic (Robinson, 2004). Perhaps because these problems are
being recognised, or because the CAP instruments to increase social and environmental
welfare are not working as well as hoped, it is argued that the agenda in the EU has
recently shifted further toward economic conservatism (Potter, 2006; Potter and Tilzey,
2007; Maye et al., 2008). If this shift continues, in the wake of large international debt in
the region, reducing the likelihood of expensive agricultural support continuing, in some
instances farmers in the EU may end up competing more equally on the global market
(Smith, 2011).
This section has given a brief overview of some of the multifunctional mechanisms of
the CAP that have influenced agricultural development in the EU over the last 60 years.
Some policy mechanisms, aims, and criticisms of the CAP were reported to highlight
how the region has used top-down state intervention to recognise the diversity of agricul-
ture in the EU and reduce the negative social and environmental impacts of agricultural
land use. Table 19.2 highlights some of the theoretical benefits and costs of this top-
down multifunctional model, along with the positive and negative aspects of bottom-up
Australian multifunctionality, which will be discussed in the next section of this chapter.
BOTTOM-UP MULTIFUNCTIONALITY: PRODUCER-DRIVEN

SUSTAINABILITY IN AUSTRALIAN AGRICULTURE
Australian agricultural policy differs dramatically from the European example because
the focus is on mass production and efficiency under a neoliberal agricultural regime that

is yet to explicitly recognise the social and environmental (non-commodity) outcomes of

agricultural land use. In this context, Australia is one example of a somewhat produc-
tivist nation where social objectives do not feature strongly in agricultural policy (Hill,
2000). Australian farmers virtually have to fend for themselves in global commodity
markets with only 6 per cent of their farm revenue coming from government subsidies
between 1995 and 1997, which dropped to just 3 per cent of revenue between 2008 and
2010 (see Figure 19.1). Under this system of food production, it is not seen as valuable to
subsidise the economically inefficient small-farm sector at the expense of the more effi-
cient farms (Bowler, 1992). The reasons behind the nationwide aversion to governmental
support in the agricultural sector are complex, and there are a number of interrelated
historical, political and economic factors involved. The relatively recent settlement of
the Australian land mass, in historical terms, meant that European agricultural produc-
tion techniques were embraced and anything considered to be arable land was cleared
of vegetation despite negative environmental consequences (Hamblin, 2009). The lack
of consideration of the environmental, along with the cultural significance of the land to
indigenous Australians is a result of pioneers’ anthropocentric and colonial worldviews,
as they felt they could dominate the land and other cultures because they were of little
value to either their personal, or the colony’s, endeavours (Curry, 2000; Howden and
Vanclay, 2000; Hage and Rauckiene, 2004).
Since federation in 1901, however, the weight of political and economic support
afforded the rural community and the agricultural sector has ebbed and flowed with
different governments, and according to the prevalence of natural and economic dis-
asters (Lawrence, 1987). In the 1980s, despite the growing recognition of the environ-
mental impacts of conventional agriculture (Wynen and Fritz, 1987), a further push
to increase productivity began and a neoliberal, commercial, productivist agricultural
regime has been maintained by consecutive governments (Argent, 2002; Dibden
et al., 2009; Andrée et al., 2010). In 2002, a National Framework for Environmental
Management Systems was introduced to address some of the issues surrounding a lack
of environmental consideration in agricultural practice (Hamblin, 2009). While this
scheme may seem to enforce multifunctional principles there are doubts in terms of its
effectiveness and its application can be seen to further enforce neoliberal market ideals
(Seymour and Ridley, 2005). The results of this neoliberal governance can be seen in
the fact that Australian agriculture continues to be export focused and productivist
in nature, creating enough food for almost three times its population, in many cases
at the expense of environmental and social externalities (Hamblin, 2009). There has
been some support for on-farm environmental improvement through the grant-based
Landcare Programme, but there are a number of issues with appropriate, reliable and
consistent allocation of funds in this system (Williams, 2004; Wilson, 2004; Australian
Government, 2011).
Despite this negative portrayal of the environmental and social governance of
Australian agriculture, some positive signs in terms of a multifunctional movement will
now be discussed. Numerous scholars argue that in fact a multifunctional movement
is occurring in Australia for various reasons (Holmes, 2002, 2006; Argent et al., 2007;
Higgins et al., 2008a, 2008b; Dibden et al., 2009). Producer concerns that have influ-
enced farm decision-making across the globe have also impacted small-and medium-
scale farms in Australia. Issues including the struggle to compete economically with

larger farms; a dramatic increase in economic debt incurred by farmers; the realisation
of the environmental consequences of conventional agricultural practice; an increasing
feeling of responsibility in the farming community; and the recognition of the amenity
value of some rural land, are reasons many farmers are searching for more socially and
environmentally sustainable agricultural pursuits. One example of the application of
these producer-driven, multifunctional-related concerns can be found in ‘alternative
food networks’ that are proliferating globally as a result of both producers’ and consum-
ers’ social and environmental concerns (Hinrichs et al., 2004; Kirwan, 2006; Connell
et al., 2008; Macias, 2008; Friedland, 2010). Alternative food networks are mechanisms
that allow certain environmental benefits to be included in the price of produce, with the
labelling of ‘organic’, ‘biodynamic’, ‘free range’, and other niche wares commonplace,
allowing a premium to be charged. These networks can also have social benefits because
some of them allow for direct contact between the producer and consumer and remove
the ‘middle men’ that, historically, profit greatly from neoliberal, productivist Australian
agriculture (Lawrence, 1999; McMichael, 1999). The fact that Australian farmers are
pursuing alternative ‘organic’ agricultural futures in these realms is positive. Research
has found that organic agriculture has environmental benefits because organic farming
utilises natural ecosystem services to increase fertility and does not involve certain
degrading conventional practices (Wynen and Fritz, 1987; Hole et al., 2005; Kasperczyk
and Knickel, 2006; Kristiansen and Merfield, 2006). Whilst currently debatable, it has
also been argued that there are nutritional benefits involved with the consumption of
organic produce, which is a relatively small component of the agricultural industry in
Australia, compared to the USA and Europe, but one for which demand is rapidly
growing (Brandt and Molgaard, 2006; Huber and Van de Vijver, 2008; Keith, 2009;
Robinson-O’Brien et al., 2009).
As a result of recognition of social, environmental and economic crises exacerbated
by the dominant productivist Australian paradigm, a small percentage of farmers use
alternative food networks to survive, incorporate multifunctional ideals, and pursue
more sustainable methods of production and marketing (Fielke and Bardsley, 2013).
One example of an alternative food network improving the multifunctional outcomes
of agricultural land use can be found in research on Australian farmers’ markets (ibid.).
Farmers’ markets in Australia are ‘predominantly fresh food markets that operate regu-
larly within a community at a focal public location that provides a suitable environment
for farmers and food producers to sell farm-origin and associated value-added processed
food products directly to customers’ (Australian Farmers’ Markets Association, 2010c).
Arguably, the popularity of farmers’ markets grew out of the USA and other Old World
developed countries such as those within the EU, where the idea of selling produce
directly to the consumer is more commonplace than in wholesale/export-orientated
Australia (Kirwan, 2006; USDA, 2010). While this means that the EU is not an explicitly
‘top-down’ example of multifunctionality, the proportion of government support for
multifunctional outcomes is much higher there than in Australia (see Figure 19.1), and as
such farmers’ markets were chosen as a point of difference to the productivist Australian
norm. Australian farmers’ markets provide one example of an alternative food network
that can coexist with minimal agricultural support and the productivist focus of neolib-
eral Australian governance. There are now 150 farmers’ markets in Australia (Australian
Farmers’ Markets Association, 2010a, 2010b), all of which have four core aims that

coincide with the concept of multifunctional agriculture (related positive outcomes

follow each aim in brackets):
● to preserve farmland and sustainable agriculture (environmental);

● to support and stimulate the profitable trading, viability and business growth of
independent primary producers, hobby farmers, community and home gardeners,
and associated artisan produce value-adders (economic/social);
● to provide customers with regular supplies of fresh food and access to improved
nutrition (social);
● to contribute to the economic, social and health capital of the host community
(economic/social).
Numerous commentators have also acknowledged the positive role of farmers’

markets in the developed world to foster more economically, environmentally and
socially sustainable agricultural systems at the local level (Feenstra and Lewis, 1999;
Govindasamy et al., 2002; Hinrichs et al., 2004; Kirwan, 2006; Robinson and Hartenfeld,
2007; Smithers et al., 2008; Lyson et al., 2009). A recent study of South Australian
farmers’ markets highlighted that producers involved with these alternative food net-
works were still selling their produce in wholesale markets, as well as diversifying into
these alternative agricultural markets, to minimise risks to their agri-businesses (Fielke
and Bardsley, 2013). It was also found that farmers’ markets were extremely important
to those producers involved, and certain multifunctional outcomes such as significant
concerns about issues of future social and environmental well-being, recognition of the
value of these niche markets, and understanding of the overall importance of agricultural
production, were recognised (ibid.).
While there is definitely more scope for government intervention to increase the
social and environmental sustainability of Australian agricultural land use, farmers’
markets are just one example that show that some producers are attempting to pursue
a multifunctional future without widespread political support. The major concern
with this form of multifunctionality, as shown in Table 19.2, is that the majority of
the responsibility for multifunctional agricultural production is placed on the produc-
ers’ shoulders in the productivist Australian context. The burden of responsibility
means that the producer-driven multifunctional agriculture found in some regions of
Australia will struggle to become widespread as it relies on historically anthropocen-
tric farmers’ worldviews shifting dramatically, to consider mechanisms that will allow
them to benefit economically from positive ecological and social outcomes of their
agricultural land use. In particular, lower levels of education than the rest of Australian
society mean that agricultural actors are expected to consider multiple outcomes whilst
being less likely to understand them (Fielke and Bardsley, 2014). Consequently, despite
numerous spatial studies prioritising areas of high ecological and social conservation
value (Bryan et al., 2008, 2010; Crossman and Bryan, 2009; Raymond et al., 2009),
the results are rarely taken on board by private landowners due to a lack of economic
valuation mechanisms for the social and environmental services these citizens provide
via their land management (Raymond and Brown, 2011). These results, or lack thereof,
beg the question, do Australian primary producers want a top-down approach to
encourage multifunctional agricultural land use or is it that the incentives for shifting

to more sustainable, multifunctional agricultural practices are currently not great

enough?
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
This chapter has highlighted some of the issues with multifunctional agriculture in a glo-
balised world, as both productivist Australian agriculture and relatively multifunctional
European agriculture are both under threat from the dominant socioeconomic system
on which civilisation is currently based. The environmental and social outcomes of
Australian agriculture lack the prioritisation that compulsory multifunctional economic
recognition would provide. Europe, under the CAP, has sought to address these issues
with government-enforced multifunctional policy. So what does the future of agricul-
tural development involve if there are continual reduction in government support for the
sector? What does the future hold if financial issues in Europe reduce the likelihood of
current rates of government support continuing, and environmental and social problems
in Australia are exacerbated by a lack of widespread economic support for these agricul-
tural consequences?
The answer is not clear, but whatever the case may be, the concept of multifunctional
agriculture, or the economic valuation of the non-commodity outcomes of agriculture in
various strengths is imperative to maintaining regional diversity as globalisation drives
the restructuring of agriculture (Wilson, 2007). The environmental consequences of
agricultural land use need to be recognised, as without healthy environments and eco-
system services agricultural food production would not exist. The social consequences
of agricultural land use are directly correlated to farmers’ and rural communities’
well-being – these citizens need to be happy and healthy in order to produce the food
the rest of society relies upon. In Australia, these issues need to be addressed with more
cohesive and holistic multifunctional policy in order for there to be widespread change,
as the uptake of bottom-up producer-driven multifunctionality will lag with minimal
government support. On the other hand, CAP social and environmental agricultural
subsidisation policies in Europe have altered the focus of the agricultural sector but at
an economic cost. Stringent management of agricultural funding may be the solution.
It is important to recognise, as Lawrence et al. (1992) note, that the purpose of agrar-
ian production (to create healthy food for society) and the capitalist goal of the private
accumulation of profit, can be in direct contrast. There are also issues in regard to the
capitalist ideal that there can be perpetual growth in a finite world (Suzuki et al., 2008),
particularly in regard to continual productivity gains. Innovation in the way the world
is envisaged is required and the ability to imagine an alternative future – where the envi-
ronmental and social consequences of agricultural land use are valued at least equally
with economic outcomes – is vital to the future sustainability of agricultural produc-
tion, and subsequently the subsistence of the global society. This alternative future is
multifunctional; the impacts of agricultural decision-making must be discussed holisti-
cally if human beings are to thrive in the coming centuries and that involves valuing all
local social, environmental, and economic consequences with appropriate long-term
weightings.

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20. Recreating diversity for resilient and adaptive
agricultural systems
Douglas K. Bardsley*
INTRODUCTION
Diversity is a vital component of the adaptation and resilience of any system, and bio-
logical diversity is an essential element of all socio-ecosystems (Berkes and Folke, 1998;
Holling, 2001). Yet, as Smil (1993, p. 83) points out: ‘The fundamental scientific dif-
ficulty with preservation of biodiversity is that we simply do not know which and how
many species we can lose without compromising the sustainability of affected ecosys-
tems, or, with continuing large-scale losses, without undermining the biotic foundations
of our societies and economies’. To develop that knowledge many ecosystems, including
strongly managed systems such as forestry and fisheries, are now monitored, managed
and accredited for sustainability against their levels of biodiversity. Agriculture applies
no similar form of systemic analysis to assess diversity, only considering specific market
certification or government policy needs such as for organic production, agricultural
biodiversity (agrobiodiversity) conservation or ecological direct payment programmes.
This omission ensures that the diversity within and between agro-ecosystems at scales
that range from individual fields through to regional, national or global patterns is
rarely assessed or managed, and is often discounted altogether (Ehrlich and Ehrlich,
1991; Negri, 2005; Love and Spaner, 2007). This chapter will present the case that the
agrobiodiversity within and between agro-ecosystems – the genes, varieties, species and
systems that form the basis of the symbiotic relationships between plants, animals and
humanity – must now be evaluated and recreated, to ensure that approaches to global
food production become more resilient in light of the challenges presented by future
socio-ecological risk.
While a rural multifunctional transition that better represents the different values of
farming systems is occurring in many countries (see, e.g., Holmes, 2006; Wilson, 2008),
the diversity of the production systems themselves are rarely emphasised. Much rural
diversification has led to increased complexity of marketing and processing, or non-
agricultural income sources, rather than answering broader questions of agro-ecological
resilience and adaptation (Robinson, 2004). Adger et al. (2009, p. 342) note that ‘the
resilience approach, as applied to linked social and ecological systems, views learning
and adaptation as important processes that improve system resilience to a range of
shocks, achievable through adaptive management’. The reasons for discounting diver-
sity within productive agro-ecosystems to support such resilience are numerous, but that
oversight is being challenged by researchers, industry bodies, governments, and very
importantly, farmers themselves (Bardsley, 2003; Altieri and Nichols, 2004; Thrupp,
2004; Ratnadass et al., 2012). In particular, agroforestry, permaculture, organic, bio-
dynamic, urban and community agriculture explicitly utilise and promote difference for
404
Recreating diversity 405
ecological sustainability and social welfare outcomes (Mollison, 1978; Sanchez, 1995;
Turinek et al., 2009; Salatin, 2011). Still, key links between diversity and the resilience
of socio-ecosystems at local, national and global scales and the dominant agricultural
development processes remain allusive. Simply put, the heterogeneity of agro-ecosystems
must be maintained or enhanced to ensure that the complex needs of societies are met,
while also withstanding external shocks that are emerging to influential financial, energy,
climate and natural resource systems.
Diversity works at multiple layers to support farming activities, but farmers must
renew this diversity yearly (Zimmerer, 2010). Some of the elements of diversity within
agro-ecosystems are widely recognised, including the application of mixed-farming tech-
niques that balance crop and livestock production; the rotations of crops with a pasture
or fallow to manage nutrition or pests; or the use of integrated pest and weed manage-
ment techniques to frame a diverse range of techniques to manage undesirable species
within agro-ecosystems. In some cases, these diverse systems have been retained from
pre-modern times, but in most cases in developed countries, research and development
is beginning to integrate complexity back into oversimplified and mechanistic agro-
ecosystems at farm and regional scales. The recreation of the alternative approaches
listed above has also led to an increase in inter-farm diversity, especially within more
intensive horticultural and animal husbandry systems. While these initiatives are to be
lauded and supported, this chapter will present an argument that extends beyond the
need for enhanced complexity in relation to specific farm management activities, to
advocate the need for all diversity within and across agro-ecosystems to be measured,
understood and supported as a basis for enhancing global socio-ecological resilience.
AGROBIODIVERSITY AND A NEW GLOBAL FOOD SECURITY
Global food security is coming under increasing pressure. Since 1990 there has been no
net improvement in reducing the number of people who have insecure food supplies,
with approximately one in seven, or one billion people, experiencing significant problems
accessing sufficient, nutritious food for a healthy and productive life (WFP and FAO,
2009). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to go into the complex issues of food security
in detail, but a number of key issues are relevant to a discussion of the roles of agrobio-
diversity. The production and productivity increases of modern agro-ecosystems have
plateaued in many regions over the last decade, while demand continues to climb with
growing human populations consuming more and higher-quality foods. Simultaneously,
risks to supply from changing climatic and natural resource conditions, non-food agri-
cultural production, financial insecurity and government policies have increased. The
outcome for global food security is that significant improvements in systems of produc-
tion and distribution are required.
Agricultural productivity gains remain a major goal of future development. To guide
those gains, the Cairns Group of Trading Nations has been strongly advocating within
the World Trade Organization for the further liberalisation of agricultural trade, deregu-
lation of industry and improved efficiencies of production and distribution (Anderson
and Martin, 2005; Moon, 2011). For example, advocates for agricultural liberalisation
note that during 2008 and 2010, when global food prices rose dramatically, there were

Table 20.1 Divergent paradigms for agricultural development
Liberal-productivist Paradigm Alternative Socio-ecology Paradigm

Focus on the core/urban The periphery/margins
Maximise profitability Ecological sustainability
Maximise production Diversity & flexibility
Tendency to standardise Support diversification
Strengthen private institutions Alternative and public institutions
Modern technologies Enhance traditional methods
Focus on individualism Community/cooperative focus
Centralisation of power and enterprise Dissemination of power and enterprise: participation
Source: Adapted from Bardsley (2003).
cascading, negative effects of state restrictions on national food exports leading to

increased volatility in commodity prices, which in turn led to greater food insecurity for
many (Anderson and Nelgen, 2012). While such a neoliberal development agenda may
be appropriate to grow agricultural outputs and economic activity for some countries as
they adapt to change (see Goklany, 2007), for many others, simply maintaining current
levels of productivity in the context of future risk will be a major challenge. From a
broader socio-ecological perspective, with one eye on contemporary crises in relation
to global food supply and marginal rural communities in many countries, and the other
on emerging risks to global agriculture including climate change, resource availability
and rising input costs, a parallel path for agricultural development is required to the
dominant liberal-productivist paradigm, which focuses on socio-ecological resilience
(Table 20.1). Rather than prioritising productivity gains, the alternative path would
aim to ensure the security and sustainability of food access to poor and marginalised
communities, including: managing food price insecurity; supporting socioeconomic
development in those most vulnerable communities; mitigating risks to food access, or
at least not increasing those risks; and improving systemic flexibility for adaptation.
Agrobiodiversity within and between systems plays important roles to help meet all of
those goals, but will continue to be discounted unless agricultural policy and practice
incorporates the value of diversity into food systems research and development.
Global agriculture has created the perception of diversity and abundance for many
people at local scales. Modern agricultural development, particularly as it was mani-
fest as the Green Revolution, led to significant increases in global food production
without which there would have been more malnutrition for more people (Conway and
Barbier, 1990; Bray, 1994). Agricultural modernisation has seen dominant staple crop
species, especially rice, wheat, corn and potatoes, and a number of high-yielding varie-
ties (HYVs) of those species, replacing a diversity of less formally developed species and
local landrace varieties of the dominant crops (Yapa, 1993). The HYVs of the Green
Revolution were introduced as a package with changes to production systems including
greater use of inorganic fertilisers and pesticides, and increasing irrigation and mechani-
sation, and focused in favourable agro-ecological regions amongst the wealthier farmers
(Burch, 1982; Shiva, 1990; Weiskopf and De Haas, 1995). The rapid process of mod-
ernisation significantly diminished indigenous agricultural diversity, leading to genetic

erosion as local varieties were lost and local species devalued (Altieri, 1987; Brush, 1992;
Ford-Lloyd et al., 2009). Using the language of biodiversity studies (Whittaker et al.,
2001; Gabriel et al., 2006; Karp et al., 2012), the local alpha (a) diversity at the farm
level may appear to increase with opportunities for farmers to access and utilise a wider
global range of different crop and animal species or varieties, production or processing
techniques. However, the dominant forms of agricultural modernisation have proved so
successful across regional beta (b) and global gamma (g) scales that diversity has dimin-
ished at those scales, increasing socio-ecological risk for many societies. As well as b and
g diversity across agro-ecosystems, much of the local a diversity is also being lost, with
extensive monocultural systems dominating on farms and across entire regions, increas-
ing the sensitivity of systems to external risks.
RISK AND GLOBALISATION OF AGRICULTURE
Risk is an inherent part of farming and can only ever be mitigated or managed, never
eliminated. In fact, an essential component of farming is for producers to be entrepre-
neurial: to take risks to create or recreate different approaches to produce, process,
move, store and provide food (Pyysiäinen et al., 2006). Historically, societies have lived
with the regular likelihood of the impacts of socio-ecological risks, including food inse-
curity and exposure to disease or environmental hazards. Yet, one of the great successes
of modernity has been the reduction of such risks through the effective application of
technologies such as HYVs (Milestad et al., 2012). Simultaneously, however, new risks
have emerged, many of which are embedded within the use of the modern technologies
themselves, or are recognisable only via scientific study, which makes their manage-
ment difficult. Alario (1993, p. 281) asserts that ‘risks can no longer be thought of as
the by-product of what science does not comprehend. To the contrary, risk is a logical
outgrowth of the obsession with the uninhibited domination of nature’. Beck (2009)
highlights the new global scope and range of risks that modern society faces from
technological failures through to global resource depletion and environmental change.
Agriculture and food security systems more broadly, must evolve to respond to the new
risks: to ensure systems are able to adapt to change or remain resilient in the context of
major shifts in ecological, economic or policy conditions.
Analyses suggest that not only are there limited opportunities for further expansion
of agricultural production areas around the globe to meet future production needs, but
also that in many places climate change will significantly deplete available resources,
as well as increasing environmental hazards (Howden et al., 2007; Nelson et al., 2008;
Godfray et al., 2010; Gornall, 2010; Pimental et al., 2010; Vermeulen et al., 2012). For
example, water for the development of agricultural irrigation schemes is already scarce
or contested in many key catchment areas of the globe, and climate change will worsen
shortages in many of those places (Hanjra and Qureshi, 2010; Ringler et al., 2010;
Spiertz, 2010). While food security challenges can be projected, it is difficult to anticipate
or manage non-linear change, which is also the type of change that can be most damag-
ing for people’s food security and environments. This raises the need for a new type of
decision-making that prioritises support for innovative autonomous adaptation to risk
(Bardsley and Rogers, 2011). However, such responses to risk will only be available for

people, especially for those who are resource poor, if they can understand the new risks
and draw from a range of local resources to enact appropriate adaptive change. Within
agro-ecosystems, if there is no local diversity to choose between, or if financial or social
capacities are too limited to access external resources, opportunities for autonomous
adaptation will be highly constrained. As a result, one significant new risk to food
systems that have been simplified, conventionalised and comprehensively interconnected
at a global scale could be simultaneous structural or societal failures at multiple scales
(Athanasiou, 1996; Young et al., 2006).
There are numerous financial, technical, research and development means to reduce
risks that are not directly dependent on diversity (see, e.g., Hazell and Hess, 2010).
However, not all farming communities have access to financial or technical risk reduc-
tion mechanisms, particularly those that are physically, culturally or socioeconomically
marginalised (Ibarra and Skees, 2007). For marginalised farming communities therefore,
an important role remains for difference, both within and between agro-ecosystems, to
ensure that a variety of products and practices provides for a complexity of food pro-
duction and consumption needs (Clawson, 1985; Bardsley, 2003). Beyond the margins,
sustaining or rebuilding diversity into global agriculture at all scales would help ensure
that any process or event such as financial speculation in agricultural futures markets,
sudden changes in market conditions, spikes in input prices, or a failure of any specific
crop, do not have catastrophic influences on regional or global agricultural production
or food security.
It is not the claim of this chapter to argue that a focus on agricultural diversity would
cure all socio-ecological problems, but rather that diversity is a vital, often overlooked
element in sustaining or developing systemic resilience and adaptive capacity. In other
words, while diverse agro-ecosystems do not ensure improved risk management they can
improve opportunities for resilience and adaptation in many ways: from farmers owning
properties in different regions, sourcing inputs or transporting stock from one place or
another depending on conditions, to increasing on-farm storage capacity to ensure that
a product can be sold when prices are favourable, spatial and temporal diversity is used
by farmers in many different contexts. Farmers diversify by producing a range of goods
and services, or taking more control of the value chain, including the supply, process-
ing, distribution or sale of products. Here, the focus is on agrobiodiversity, because of
the specific and overlapping values that it provides to support systemic resilience and
flexibility (Jackson et al., 2007). In particular, agrobiodiversity can buffer systems to the
risks of rapid change (Box 20.1).
Just as diverse economies are less prone to boom and bust cycles, diverse agro-
ecosystems may not be as productive during very good seasons, but systemic complexity
smooths average production from one year to the next. For example, Shiva (1991, p. 47)
states that:
[w]herever the new IRRI [International Rice Research Institute] rice varieties were introduced
in Asia, they proved to be susceptible to diseases and pests. For example, IR-8 was attacked
by bacterial blight in South-east Asia in 1968 and 1969. In 1970 and 1971, it was destroyed by
the tungro virus. In 1975, half a million acres under the new rice varieties in Indonesia were
destroyed by pests. In 1977, IR-36, which was supposed to be resistant to eight major known
diseases and pests including bacterial blight and tungro virus, was developed. However, it was
attacked by two new viruses called ‘ragged stunt’ and ‘wilted stunt’.

BOX 20.1 MAJOR REASONS TO MAINTAIN AGROBIODIVERSITY
1. Conserve genetic diversity for current and future use.

2. Maintain diversity in the field at all levels:
a. Heterogeneity of the crop variety or animal breed;
b. Mixtures of varieties and species within and between crops;
c. Difference between crops on a farm and across agro-ecological niches;
d. Diversity of crops, farming practices across a region or country, leading to functional
heterogeneity.
3. Different crops or animals will be able to tolerate or thrive under differing pest, environmen-
tal or input conditions, including the retention of some crops less dependent on external
inputs.
4. Different crops or animals will receive different market prices, or more effectively secure
subsistence production.
5. Agrobiodiversity provides opportunities for humanity to exploit genetic material, varieties
and species for future use.
6. Diversity of ownership and marketing of seeds and food.
7. Marketing of unique products for niche markets.
8. Targeted state, community or private support for agrobiodiversity conservation as an alter-
native income stream, particularly in the margins.
Source: Adapted from Bardsley and Thomas (2006).
Juma (1989, pp. 100–101) paints a similar picture for Taiwan, stating that:
[w]hen the IR-8 variety was attacked by the tungro disease, the farms switched to IR-20, but
this hybrid proved vulnerable to grassy stunt virus and brown hopper insects. The farmers were
then supplied with the IR-26 hybrid which appeared to be resistant to most of the diseases and
pests in the country but it proved vulnerable to strong winds.
Work by Bardsley and Thomas (2005b, p. 410) similarly notes for wheat production
that ‘a reliance on a single gene for yellow rust (Puccinia striiformis) immunity across
numerous widely used varieties in Turkey has increased the risk of widespread crop
losses caused by mutations in the fungus’. As a Turkish plant pathologist noted
(ibid.):
The resistance was broken in the year 1995. 5000 tonnes of grain was lost. The grain does not
fully develop and you can’t make flour out of the wizened grain. Every four to five years there
is an epidemic. This year [1999] in Turkey there is a yellow rust epidemic. This year is very wet
in mid-July and cool. The bread wheat Gerek79 is very drought tolerant and good at avoid-
ing winter damage. It covers two million hectares in Turkey and is the number one variety in
acreage, but it is very susceptible to yellow rust since 1990. There is no spraying for yellow rust
because it is very expensive to buy chemicals and the fields are very small for the majority of
farmers. There is nothing that the farmers can do. They just have to leave their fields.
As individual farmers, their communities and regions become more dependent on

external inputs and lose their local diversity across the globe, many also lose the capac-
ity to innovate locally without outside assistance. The discounting of the roles of agro-
biodiversity is due to many reasons (Smale et al., 2002), yet most are associated with a
lack of understanding of the values of agrobiodiversity within socio-ecosystems and the
difficulty of effectively embedding those values within socio-ecosystems.

VALUING AGROBIODIVERSITY
Some societies are beginning to identify and monitor levels of agrobiodiversity, but
most policy and practice are emerging primarily to support the conservation of genetic
resources (UNEP, 2010; Fahrig et al., 2011). The Consultative Group for International
Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the Global Crop Diversity Trust have established
effective genebank systems for conserving such diversity (Khoury et al., 2010). While
ex situ conservation is essential, the focus is on the conservation of the genetic material
alone, rather than the ongoing local utilisation and adaptation of agrobiodiversity on
farms; and genebank systems are also confronting numerous limitations, especially in
poorer countries (FAO, 1996; Ford-Lloyd et al., 2009). Partly in response to the limita-
tions of ex situ agrobiodiversity conservation, formal in situ programmes are beginning
to link to development programmes to increase agricultural production while conserv-
ing on-farm agrobiodiversity (Bardsley and Thomas, 2006; Pascual and Perrings, 2007).
More broadly, local agrobiodiversity is still so highly valued in many countries for
cultural, ecological or other specific local reasons, that it is recreated by farming com-
munities, irrespective of agricultural modernisation processes and policies, in forms of
de facto conservation (Bardsley and Thomas, 2005a, 2005b; Wale, 2011). Within devel-
oping countries, much of the resistance to homogenisation in agriculture is linked to the
high local values attributed to agrobiodiversity and the discussion below draws from the
author’s previously unpublished research in the Northeast region of Thailand (Isaan),
to highlight this point (Bardsley, 1996). Within industrialised countries, more formal
policies and programmes are often required to maintain diverse systems, and here recent
research from Graubünden, Switzerland, highlights how local diversity can be supported
through the complex integration of individual and cooperative action, state policy,
conservation programmes and marketing initiatives (Bardsley and Bardsley, 2014).
Case 1: Isaan, Thailand
Thailand has traditionally been highly dependent upon natural resource exploitation
and successful agricultural production systems to generate food and fibre, an intricate
rural cultural structure and more recently, sources of taxation and export revenue
(Dixon, 1995). Throughout Thailand’s drive towards modernisation, as Jansen (1991,
p. 23) states, ‘the alliance between political elite and economic bourgeoisie in Thailand
was strongly biased in favour of modern industries in urban areas and against the agri-
cultural sector and urban workers’. Partly for these reasons, development in the largely
rainfed, relatively infertile rural region of Isaan (Figure 20.1), has lagged behind other
regions in Thailand and there has been considerable outmigration from the region
(Parnwell, 1988; Kulick and Wilson, 1992; Amare et al., 2012). As the Thai National
Economic and Social Development Board and The World Bank (2005, p. 16) state:
The Northeast generates just over one fifth of Thailand’s agricultural GDP, even though the
region accounts for one half of the farms and two fifths of the agricultural land. Low agricul-
tural productivity is linked to factors like small farm size, low market power of farmers, limited
irrigation and lack of fertilizers and pesticides use. But perhaps the most important reasons are
weak natural resources and the focus on rice production, a water-intensive crop. The Northeast
has a long dry season as well as porous and highly saline soils which retain water poorly.

Figure 20.1 Map of Isaan indicating major research sites
The discussion on the topic of the role of diversity within regional agro-ecosystems below
draws from semi-structured interviews conducted in 1995 with agricultural researchers
and extension workers in and around Khon Kaen, Chum Phae, Phimai, Surin, Sakon
Nakhon, and at Ubon Ratchatani within Isaan.
Thailand has worked with international organisations such as the CGIAR to mod-
ernise its agricultural systems (Suphannachart and Warr, 2011). Rice (Oryza sativa)

HYVs were incorporated into cropping systems in Isaan during the Green Revolution,
but many farmers still retained local landraces for different reasons. Kao Khor 6 (RD6),
released in 1978, and the more recent jasmine rice variety Kao Dawk Mali 105 (KDML
105) are two important HYVs that were introduced and grown extensively throughout
the region, and indeed most rice farmers in Isaan utilised these varieties. As an officer
from the Department of Agricultural Extension mentioned:
There is 160 000 rai of paddy in the Chumphae region and about half is for KDML105 – an
aromatic rice that is promoted for export, and half for RD6. There are no traditional varieties
grown in the region. The area of KDML105 is increasing but no farmers grow just KDML105;
they grow both together.
Such widespread adoption of these two varieties is an indication of the unifying

demands of the market and the top-down approach of agricultural research and exten-
sion that aligned the practices of the majority of producers. The production of these two
varieties replaced many traditional landraces, such as Nang Dang, La-ong Kasat, Kap
Yung, ETong, and Net Yai, some of which are now present only in genebanks; others
were lost completely.
KDML105 was widely accepted because it meets the agronomic needs of the people
of the Northeast. It is quite tolerant of marginal conditions, and as a result provided
relatively high, stable yields for farmers, even though the soil may dry out at times during
the growing season. Importantly, the price for KDML105 was high because of its aro-
matic and long-grained characteristics that were desirable for the international market.
In many farming communities, KDML105 was grown largely as a cash crop because it
was not widely eaten by local people who prefer glutinous or other indigenous varieties.
Most farmers who introduced the rice HYVs also retained local landraces to ensure such
cultural needs and particular agronomic requirements were met. A rice and farming
systems extension officer stated:
The shift to KDML105 has been 95 per cent successful, it receives a very good price and the
farmers have no problem consuming or marketing this variety. Some farmers grow KD15,
which is similar to KDML105. Old varieties like Metleck, Niang Kamaw and La-ong Kasat
are still grown for family consumption in very small areas but the price for the rice is very
low. KDML105 has a better drought tolerance than the old varieties and it responds better to
fertiliser.
The director of the Thai Department of Agricultural Extension similarly stated:

‘Traditional varieties didn’t match the market demand, so farmers have exchanged their
traditional varieties with KDML105 and now they get a better price. Seventy to eighty
per cent of farmers grow KDML105 but some of them still retain their traditional varie-
ties especially in areas with a longer growing season’.
Farmers in Isaan have also evolved an understanding about the limitations of soil
conditions and in many cases adapted methods of production to these limitations.
Traditionally farmers relied on fertility inputs from buffalo and other livestock manures,
leaves from trees in fields or neighbouring forests, and regular flooding that brought
nutrients down from upper catchment areas. However, to generate high yields from
the HYVs, elevated levels of soil fertility are required, so local varieties were often still
grown where soil fertility is poor. In fact, agrobiodiversity was used as a traditional food

security approach, because extreme and variable production environments ensure that
no single production technique is effective, particularly when fertilisers or irrigation are
unavailable. An officer from the Rice Research Centre mentioned that:
KDML105 and RD6 are grown on the lowest land where standing water is present. EDOR is a
glutinous native variety for upland areas that ripens earlier so labour can be adjusted through-
out the season and is more tolerant of poor conditions than the other varieties. RD15 is a non-
glutinous rice for selling, grown on about 40 per cent of the upland area, but the grain is darker
and not as aromatic and the cooking quality is not good.
Many farmers retain local rice landraces to fill cultural niches where the taste and
cooking quality of the rice can be particularly important, often in association with wild
harvested foods (see Cruz-Garcia and Price, 2011). As an agronomy lecturer stated
‘Some farmers are unwilling to accept new varieties: of particular importance is that
some varieties are no good for Thai food. Farmers still keep specific varieties for specific
foods, such as black rice or confectionary rice’. Within the southern provinces of Isaan
where Khmer influences are strong, non-glutinous rice is preferred in comparison to
the remainder of the northeast where glutinous rice is more favoured. An agronomist
from a rice experiment station stated that ‘About 85 per cent of farmers are now using
KDML105. KhouTaHang17 and LPT123 are also grown for consumption because
farmers in Nakhon Ratchasima don’t like sticky rice’. A rural sociologist also noted
that:
[f]armers will alter the variety they use depending on the season; therefore they may use an
early variety if they think they are going to run short of rain. Religious ceremonies are also
important: the specific variety Khou Do is harvested in early October for a religious festival.
Agricultural planning is very broad, but for any technology you must find a suitable area.
The brief case study suggests that as Isaan farming communities resist the erosion
of their local agrobiodiversity, all levels of diversity are, at least to some extent, being
maintained:
a diversity within a farm or community, because different species, varieties, breeds

and methods of production are utilised;
b diversity between farms within a community or region, because different people
farming in different and often difficult environments are producing different com-
modities to meet a range of socio-cultural and commercial needs; and
g diversity as genetic diversity, varieties, species, agro-ecosystems and associated
food and production cultures unique to the planet are retained across the region.
Nevertheless, as diversity is eroded, there have been negative agronomic and socioeco-
nomic impacts. A crop pathologist from the Rice Research Institute stated:
Farmers grow the well-known rice varieties, RD6 and KDML105, which are good cooking
quality varieties but are susceptible to Brown Plant Hopper, which transmits viral diseases.
The resistant varieties are not good quality so farmers will not grow these. When farmers use
a susceptible plant variety the Brown Plant Hopper population can increase regularly and
spread throughout Thailand and become resistant to chemical control and the chemicals kill
the natural predators.

A plant breeder from a rice experiment station went on to explain that:
[t]hree years ago RD6 was attacked by the rice blast, and farmers had to spend much money to
maintain production. In the past there were many varieties, perhaps five per village, now there
are only two varieties used widely across the northeast. At harvesting time there is no labour
and not enough harvesters because all the varieties mature at the same time.
While retention of diversity is vital for many farming communities in Isaan, the
process of recreating some local diversity ensures that farmers will often be sacrificing
short-term production gains or profits in favour of broader cultural or agro-ecological
goals. It becomes difficult for farmers to reflect socio-ecological values through their
activities if they are struggling to maintain viable systems. Farms cannot just be
museums, and so institutional, financial or resource support are increasingly needed
for on-farm conservation activities. That realisation has informed some agricultural
diversification policies in Thailand, which have had modest results in assisting farmers
to broaden the number of crops grown on rice farms to include vegetables, root crops
or other cereals, as well as expanding their animal husbandry (Yao, 1997; Kasem and
Thapa, 2011). Whereas support for diversification is still evolving in many developing
countries (see FAO, 2012), complex policy and practice for in situ agrobiodiversity con-
servation is already being applied in industrialised countries, such as France, Austria
and Italy, where the capacity to support farm communities to retain diversity is more
significant (see, e.g., Bocci, 2009; Enjalbert et al., 2011). Here case study research under-
taken in Switzerland provides good examples of the range of policy and practices that
can support local initiatives to conserve local diversity in a marginal region within a
wealthy country.
Case 2: Graubünden, Switzerland
Switzerland provides an interesting case study of an industrialised country’s response

to the retention of diversity because it is relatively independent, sitting outside the
European Union and consequently, the Common Agricultural Policy framework. It
has also needed to target policy to support marginal rural communities, because it has
large areas of mountain agriculture on small fields and farms, and many farmers strug-
gle to compete within a liberalised market. Almost two-thirds of the country is covered
by lakes and the Alps, with one quarter of the land area uninhabitable, so only about
1.1 million hectares of Switzerland is potentially useful for agricultural production and
of this, approximately 300 000 ha is used for arable production (BFS, 2012). The case
study focused on crop production activities in Graubünden, a relatively large, moun-
tainous canton with limited opportunities for cultivation only in fields on the floors and
shoulders of valleys (Figure 20.2). The canton has some of the highest elevation crop
production in the Alps and creates many unique products, such as the only malting
barley in Switzerland. The discussion below draws from qualitative data, mostly trans-
lated from German, obtained from a survey of 78 farmers from the farmer cooperative
Genossenschaft Gran Alpin in Graubünden in 2011 (Bardsley and Bardsley, 2014).
Although Switzerland is not a centre of origin of agrobiodiversity, it became a sec-
ondary centre because of the exchange historically of crop material across Central
Europe; the diverse climates, landscapes and agro-ecosystems; and the variety of cultures

Figure 20.2 Map of Switzerland indicating major research sites in Graubünden
have created conditions for the development and retention of unique agro-ecosystems
within the mountain and valley regions (BLW, 1997; Schlumbaum and Blatter, 1999).
For example, more than 1000 accessions of Swiss wheat (Triticum aestivum var. aesti-
vum) landraces are present in the Swiss National Genebank, representing some of the
complexity of the local traditional agro-ecological and cultural attributes of the region
(Schachl, 1988; Kleijer et al., 1990). Most of this diversity is derived from cantons
Graubünden and Valais because the landraces were lost from the plains as agriculture
modernised prior to the systematic collection since the 1930s (Bardsley and Thomas,
2004).
It is worth explaining the process of genetic erosion in Switzerland in some detail
because it has parallels in many countries both historically and in contemporary settings.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, modern wheat varieties became available and
were rapidly taken up by farmers who had traditionally grown local landraces, because
they resulted in better yields and improved flour quality. In 1948, the winter wheat
variety Probus was released with a broad adaptation to environmental conditions and
was widely adopted by the majority of Swiss farmers on the plains (Kleijer, 1983; Fossati
et al., 1988). The first semi-dwarf variety, Zenith, was released in 1969. In the majority
of cases, landraces were not retained with the uptake of HYVs, so both the total area
allocated to landraces and the number of landraces grown declined rapidly. However,
many mountain agricultural systems remained marginalised from these changes due to a
range of factors including: a lack of capital to purchase inputs; smaller farms; a range of
agro-ecological conditions including low fertility soils, short growing seasons, and long
winters; and difficulties transporting goods to and from high mountain valleys.

While the mountain valley farmers did not initially adopt HYVs, over time much of
the local agrobiodiversity has still eroded, especially as modern wheat, barley (Hordeum
vulgare) and oats (Avena sativa) were cultivated instead of traditional crops such as
rye (Secale cereale), spelt (Triticum spelta), emmer (Triticum dicoccum) and einkorn
(Triticum monococcum) (Bardsley and Thomas, 2004). Train and road transport eventu-
ally allowed for most reaches of the mountains to be made relatively accessible. Where
isolated communities had relied upon the local production of cereal crops for bread,
food could be imported from the plain, so much arable land in the mountains was con-
verted to pasture and production to animal husbandry. Other mountain communities
could no longer sustain agricultural activities at all, because they could not compete with
cheaper imports. Still, some communities were unable to access or make effective use of
the emerging agricultural technologies, and continued to rely on traditional knowledge
and agrobiodiversity (Netting, 1981; Von Glasenapp and Thornton, 2011). Some argue
that the subsistence mountain agricultural systems of Switzerland in the early twentieth
century differed little from the production systems of the Middle Ages (Mathieu, 1992).
Thus, while the landrace diversity eroded rapidly in the plains, up until the middle of the
twentieth century mountainous areas such as Graubünden acted as a refuge for unique
local agrobiodiversity.
Swiss government and non- government organisations (NGOs) are now strongly
involved in supporting local agrobiodiversity. The Swiss Commission for the
Conservation of Cultivated Plants and the Federal Law on Agriculture Article 140
commits the state to work towards in situ conservation initiatives (BLW, 1997).
Although state support for agriculture in Switzerland remains one of the highest in the
world, assistance is increasingly decoupling from levels of farm outputs. Direct payment
systems in mountain regions in particular are linking economic assistance to more sus-
tainable production systems, including biodiversity conservation practices (Engel et al.,
2008; Flury and Huber, 2008). Farmed alpine landscapes continue to be highly valued
for aesthetic and natural biodiversity outcomes (Lindemann-Matthies et al., 2010). At
the same time, NGOs such as Schweizerischer Bauernverband (Swiss Farmers’ Union),
Schweizerische Arbeitsgemeinschaft für die Berggebiete (Swiss Working Group for
Mountain Regions), and Schweizer Berghilfe (Swiss Mountain Aid), along with coop-
erative supermarket chains Migros and COOP, explicitly support mountain agriculture
and rural communities. For example, COOP through its Pro Montagna initiative is pro-
moting mountain produce, and has teamed up with the local agrobiodiversity conserva-
tion NGO, ProSpecieRara, to market old varieties of grain and vegetable crops (COOP,
2012). Such initiatives are only possible because the state has created agricultural law
Articles 2 and 29 for national seed marketing, and Article 140 for plant breeding, to
allow small numbers of non-listed varieties to be marketed locally (BLW, 1997).
Switzerland’s highly developed economy enables widespread private investment into
regional, organic and biodynamic production and marketing systems associated with
local agrobiodiversity (Aeberhard and Rist, 2009). Producer cooperatives are becoming
more popular in the mountain areas to improve the organisation of alternative produc-
tion systems, particularly for economic reasons such as the reduction of production
costs and improved marketing. Genossenschaft Gran Alpin (http://www.granalpin.ch)
is one such marketing cooperative organisation that is assisting farmers to continue
cereal production over 600 m above sea level in Graubünden. Most individual farmers

are only producing cereals on a few hectares in the high mountain valleys, so the coop-
erative has worked to market the regional, premium cereal products collectively. By
coordinating the production, processing and marketing of cereals from organic moun-
tain cereal producers from the region, the profitability of marginal cereal cultivation
is improved. The cereals have perceived health and ecological values, and are strongly
linked to the farming communities themselves, so there are substantial regional devel-
opment implications, including links to landscape aesthetics, tourism and the national
identification with a mountain agrarian culture. Many of the farmers are also involved
in a Vernetzungsprojekt (network project), a state project that targets financial incentives
to farmers who are willing to conserve biodiversity on their farms (Amt für Natur und
Umwelt, 2009).
The cooperative provides a secure premium price for cereal products linked to the
uniqueness of their production systems, and all the values of identity, landscape stew-
ardship, biodiversity conservation and regional development that such systems represent
(Bardsley and Bardsley, 2014). By coordinating the mountain crop producers’ activities,
different production systems are retained at altitudes that would not be viable without
NGO and state assistance. A farmer from Mustair noted that ‘Cereal production is an
activity close to my heart and in the organic marketplace one can achieve some very
reasonable prices. This was due to Gran Alpin being able to establish a market that can
provide a relative degree of certainty’. Another farmer from Rodels noted that ‘With
Gran Alpin we are producing cereals according to sustainable, biological principles,
which can be sold at a good price. It is really great that it is even possible. I find produc-
ing cereals in an alpine region an exciting challenge’. Supporting these ideas, a farmer
from Alvaneu Dorf stated: ‘Gran Alpin supports local production of cereals that achieve
good sales and prices. It promotes a diverse agricultural sector and the production of
natural foods. Gran Alpin strengthens cultural values to maintain identity’.
From the survey, it is clear that Gran Alpin does more than just market cereal prod-
ucts, playing multiple roles to: provide appropriate seed for mountain conditions; lobby
government for more targeted assistance for mountain agrarianism; provide a place for
cooperation and sense of identity for farmers; support agrotourism; as well as assist
farmers with risk management both explicitly and implicitly. For example, one moun-
tain farmer from Urmein surveyed in 2011 noted that ‘In the case of a missed harvest,
at least the cost of seed, and in some cases even more, can be covered by Gran Alpin’s
“Risk Fund”’. Gran Alpin provides a form of crop insurance within the cooperative,
and farmers whose production conditions are less extreme than other members subsidise
other farmers. As a respondent from Paspels noted, ‘We get paid SFR1.08/kg, while
others get SFR1.20/kg because we are lower down the valley, and the farmers higher up
get more’. The retention of cereal production systems also provides practical agronomic
values for farmers, including the capacity to branch out from the dominant forms of
animal husbandry for milk, cheese and meat production, and the removal of excess nitro-
gen from animal production. Moreover, the plant breeder at Gran Alpin is attempting
to develop unique varieties from the local germplasm that is adapted to local conditions
and farmers are exploring the production of old varieties of rye, buckwheat (Fagopyrum
esculentum) and spelt.
From these examples it is clear that the support for the recreation of a, b and g agro-
biodiversity is also supporting the cultural integrity of the region. Just as in Isaan, it is

possible to conclude that vital diversity in Graubünden is being retained and utilised on
farms that are valuable at local, regional, national and global scales. Even though the
cooperative acts to mitigate risks for the mountain agrarian systems, difficulties remain,
particularly as state support has been reduced for many farmers over the last 20 years. As
a farmer from Zernez pointed out, ‘Crop production at 1470 m above sea level is not eco-
nomically viable. Without further support, crop production will end, even with the better
price offered by Gran Alpin’. It is important to recognise that the recreation of diversity
in agro-ecosystems is never fully achieved and will require ongoing actions by farmers
and the broader community to ensure the symbiotic interrelationship is maintained.
A POLICY AGENDA TO SUPPORT AGRICULTURAL

DIVERSITY
Bioversity International recently reviewed the challenges of integrating agrobiodiversity

into approaches that aim to meet broad sustainable development needs (UNEP, 2010).
While there are important opportunities being investigated and implemented globally,
there is still only limited recognition of the problems that eventuate from modernisation
diminishing levels of diversity. Some formal in situ programmes are being implemented,
and as mentioned above, ex situ conservation initiatives undertake vital genetic conser-
vation, yet there is still unique agrobiodiversity being lost from inappropriate develop-
ment and, in most cases, farmers are rarely provided with policy incentives to recreate
the diversity they do manage. Part of the problem lies in the approach to monitoring
and assessing agrobiodiversity, which effectively confines discussions of diversity within
farming systems to genetic resources and natural biodiversity, so that scientific values
are prioritised over farming communities’ interpretations (Zimmerer, 2010). Initiatives
such as cultural recognition, regional or organic production accreditation, or direct envi-
ronmental payments for agrobiodiversity empower farmers and provide a competitive
advantage based on local diversity. In fact, the Thai and Swiss examples suggest that
immediate use values can be explicitly recognised to support farmers to recreate diversity
through public institutions or private mechanisms.
As new concerns are raised about global food security, Pinstrup-Andersen et al. (2011)
are advocating for the impact on human nutrition levels to become the ultimate indicator
of policies and practices aimed at overcoming food insecurity. Such a goal may require
an increased focus on maintaining production within marginal rural regions where
poverty is entrenched and production systems regularly fail to meet local food supply
needs. Just as there is an increased call for renewed investment into research and devel-
opment into food systems to meet future global demand, there needs to be formal evalu-
ation and monitoring of the multiple roles of agrobiodiversity, especially in the margins.
Impact assessments are commonly undertaken for natural biodiversity as major develop-
ments are implemented, but are almost unknown as a regulated activity in relation to the
enormous change associated with the introduction of modern agricultural crops, breeds
or technologies in the diffuse, yet vitally important agro-ecosystems of the planet. New
technologies that are being developed, such as genetically modified organisms (GMOs),
are being introduced in a manner that continues to erode local diversity around the
globe (Meyer, 2011). GMOs could be particularly damaging for diversity levels because

they can be so superior to other varieties that regional diversity is rapidly diminished,
and some species can cross-pollinate and cause problems with neighbouring alternative
systems. For example, if new genetically modified crops with nutrient biofortification
become very successful (see Khush et al., 2012), a new wave of agrobiodiversity losses
could spread throughout marginal areas of developing countries.
To respond to the risk of diversity losses from the implementation of new technologies,
a greater effort needs to be invested into monitoring diversity at all scales and supporting
farmers to use and recreate local diversity (Norgaard, 1988). Sustainable approaches to
agricultural development would see physical and social scientists collaborating to work
across disciplines and scales to undertake comprehensive reviews of the roles of diversity:
from examining farmers’ and community decision-making at local scales; to regional
planning and food systems analyses at regional scales; and through to macroeconomic,
technical, demographic and policy change at national and international levels (Bardsley,
2003, 2006). With an improved understanding of the important roles of agrobiodiversity,
multistate entities such as the CGIAR and international NGOs, as well as national insti-
tutions, would provide more effective research and development to meet the complex
needs of farming communities.
CONCLUSION
The constant and significant improvements that will be required for humanity to manage
the food security challenges ahead will only be achieved through creative approaches
to the management of environmental resources, consumption, hazards, injustice and
risk at global scales. Humanity continues to be adept at creating and recreating better
ways of doing, and there should be a confidence that any perceived structural barriers or
material limits to managing global risk will only ever be the defining preconditions for
effective critical analysis and socio-ecological adaptation. Nevertheless, the innovation
that forms the basis of human adaptation must continue to be framed by an ongoing,
flexible dialectic that allows for the evolution of new relationships between humanity
and the environment. Such ongoing reform in socio-ecosystems has only been possible
historically when people have had a diversity to draw from and experiment with – when
farmers and their communities have been able to undertake their own research, with or
without external assistance, to bring about change within their own systems. Without
a diversity of resources, especially biological resources, to regenerate and utilise, local
experimentation will be constrained by farmers’ access to research institutes and their
outputs, creating and entrenching inequalities of adaptation.
An advocacy of diversity in agro-ecosystems is not an argument against agricultural
modernisation. On the contrary, the explosion of theory, policy and practice to concep-
tualise and enact approaches to retain non-agricultural biodiversity clearly indicates
that diversity can be valued and supported effectively. In fact, what were once seen as
radical ideas of blending production and conservation goals in forestry, fisheries and
organic agricultural production systems are now being certified, commercialised and
conventionalised. Arguably, such a broader revolution in thought and practice is yet to
occur for agrobiodiversity, and it has been argued here that there is now a role for policy
and practice to better support communities classify and retain diverse agro-ecosystems

in situ to assist to respond to the challenges of global risk. As globalisation increases the
interdependency of food production and supply chains, the right for people to define
the form of agricultural development that suits their culture will become particularly
important.
There is a vital role for the retention of a diversity of unique, complex systems across
all scales to sustain the capacity of socio-ecosystems to prepare for and respond to
change. However, it will be particularly important to target support for resilience in
regions that are geographically, agro-ecologically, socioeconomically or culturally mar-
ginal. By focusing on developing diversity in the margins, communities and areas with
the least opportunity to exploit commercial advantages within the dominant paradigm
could maintain resilient and adaptive systems as they exploit a range of unique, local
alternatives. Simultaneously, the necessary increases in productivity would remain
the focus within the dominant, core production system of the globe. As humanity
undertakes the fundamental transformations required to adapt to new global risks, the
diversity within and between agro-ecosystems will only increase in value. From local,
farm-level diversification initiatives through to international networks to conserve and
reproduce agrobiodiversity, the recreation of agricultural diversity will be fundamental
to ensure sustainable futures in the global era.
NOTE
* The author’s thanks go to Chris Crothers for producing the maps and to Maria Egenolf, Peer Schilperoord
and Etienne Piguet for their assistance with the research in Switzerland.
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21. The changing dynamics of alternative agri-food
networks: a European perspective
Brian Ilbery and Damian Maye
INTRODUCTION
Alternative food networks (AFNs) have been of increasing academic interest in devel-
oped market economies since the main ‘productivist’ agricultural regime was challenged
in the early 1990s. They are typically positioned as representing a shift away from an
industrialised and conventional food sector towards a relocalised food and farming
regime. In a recent review, Tregear (2011, p. 419) defined AFNs as ‘forms of food pro-
visioning with characteristics deemed to be different from, perhaps counteractive to,
mainstream [or conventional] modes which dominate in developed countries’. Until
the major food price spikes in 2007–08, AFNs experienced considerable growth in sales
of fair-trade, organic, local and regional speciality foods through such retail outlets as
farmers’ markets, box schemes, farm shops, community-supported agriculture and com-
munity gardens (Kneafsey et al., 2008; Maye and Kirwan, 2010; Goodman et al., 2012;
Mount, 2012). Feenstra (1997) sees AFNs as being rooted in particular places, aiming
to be economically viable for farmers and consumers, using ecologically sound farming
and distribution practices, and enhancing social equity and democracy for all members
of a community. Similarly, Whatmore et al. (2003) write about AFNs redistributing
value through the food chain, reconvening ‘trust’ between producers and consumers, and
articulating new forms of political association and market governance.
While the socioeconomic and ecological benefits of AFNs tend to be emphasised, this
chapter will demonstrate that a range of problems characterise their use and interpreta-
tion. Indeed, various terms have been used and conflated in relation to AFNs; as Tregear
(2011) suggests, ‘AFN’ has become a universal term for a heterogeneous set of food
systems and something opposite to conventional food systems. However, for many, the
term ‘network’ is preferred to ‘system’ because it ‘reflects a theoretical interest in convey-
ing the complex ways in which food is made available through contested and contingent
relationships, which often deny categorisation as being either “conventional” or “alter-
native”’ (Kneafsey, 2010, p. 179).
Conceptually, Wiskerke (2009) sees AFNs as one element of an emerging alternative
food geography (see also Maye et al., 2007), in which new relations are formed between
the state/private sectors, the market and civil society. He suggests that AFNs give rise
to an integrated and territorial mode of food governance, one that is very different from
the ‘hypermodern food geography’ that stems from a neoliberal orthodoxy characterised
by deregulation, privatisation and the withdrawal of the state. Wiskerke (2009) identifies
two dominant paradigms in relation to the provision of food, leading to two different
food geographies.
First, the ‘agri-industrial paradigm’ (hypermodern food geography) is characterised
425
by an ‘ongoing industrialisation and globalisation of the agri-food production chain and

standardisation of food production and processing through globally applied production,
processing and distribution regulations and quality assurance schemes’ (ibid., p. 374).
This model of food provisioning is driven by three ‘mutually reinforcing’ processes:
first, ‘disconnecting’, where the distance between producers/suppliers and consumers is
increasing; second, ‘disembedding’, where the local or regional character of food prod-
ucts is disappearing; and third, ‘disentwining’, where increasing specialisation in the food
supply chain has disconnected the producers and suppliers of food from each other.
Second, the ‘integrated and territorial agri-food paradigm’ (alternative food geogra-
phy) is where food production is based upon the specific qualities and distinctive features
of an area or region. As Wiskerke (ibid.) states, this paradigm is ‘built around a highly
differentiated definition of food quality, which reflects differences in farming systems,
organisational networks, cultural traditions, consumer preferences, institutional frame-
works and policy support’. The three ‘mutually reinforcing’ processes in this case are:
first, ‘(re)connecting’, where the various players link up with each other to form close
regional networks and engender social capital; second, ‘embedding’, where distance
between food production and consumption is shortened, and the socio-cultural, histori-
cal and landscape characteristics of a region become embodied in the food; and third,
‘intertwining’, where the various economic and non-economic activities and roles come
together in a region to create coherence and synergy.
Wiskerke’s (2009) notion of a developing territorial agri-food paradigm helps to
distinguish between North American and European research on AFNs. Goodman
(2003, 2004) has suggested that in the former AFNs are often conceptualised or por-
trayed as politicised discourses of oppositional or radical activism in an attempt to
resist global capitalism. In contrast, the latter tends to discuss AFNs in terms of their
contribution to small businesses and territorially based rural development (Ilbery and
Kneafsey, 1998; Renting et al., 2003; Maye and Kirwan, 2010). As Kneafsey (2010,
p. 181) emphasises, ‘much of the European research literature has been concerned with
the efforts of small agro-food producers and processors located in marginal rural areas
to carve out niche market opportunities by selling high-quality “speciality” products
through “short” supply chains and more direct, sometimes relocalised, relationships
with consumers’. This chapter is very much concerned with European perspectives
on AFNs and there is no doubt that their development has benefited from reforms
of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and in particular its ‘second pillar’ – the
Rural Development Regulation – which is encouraging a more integrated and endog-
enous approach to rural development (Sonnino and Marsden, 2006; Goodman and
Goodman, 2007). As Sonnino and Marsden (2006, p. 192) explain, ‘there has been a
regionalisation of rural policy. . .and the relocalisation of food is becoming a stronger
dimension of the broader process and politics of regionalisation’. The normative
idealisation of the ‘rural local’ in Europe is therefore ‘attenuated and obscured. . .by a
complementary discourse of economic performance and competitiveness’ (Goodman
et al., 2012, p. 17).
The key features of both ‘conventional’ and ‘alternative’ food networks are outlined
in Table 21.1, which gives the impression of a series of bipolar opposites (Ilbery and
Maye, 2005a). Thus, words such as ‘quality’, ‘embedded’, ‘sustainable’, ‘traditional’ and
‘natural’ characterise AFNs, in contrast to the ‘quantity’, ‘disembedded’, ‘agri-chemicals’,

Changing dynamics of alternative agri-food networks 427
Table 21.1 Distinctions between ‘conventional’ and ‘alternative’ food networks
Conventional Alternative
Modern Post-modern
Manufactured/processed Natural/fresh
Mass (large-scale) production Craft/artisanal (small-scale) production
Long food supply chains Short food supply chains
Costs externalised Costs internalised
Rationalised Traditional
Standardised Difference/diversity
Intensification Extensification
Monoculture Biodiversity
Homogenisation of foods Regional palates
Hypermarkets Local markets
Agri-chemicals Organic/sustainable farming
Non-renewable energy Reusable energy
Fast food Slow food
Quantity Quality
Disembedded Embedded
Source: Based on Ilbery and Maye (2005a).
‘rationalised’ and ‘manufactured’ features of conventional food networks. However, in

reality, AFNs are not completely separate or distinct from conventional food networks.
Indeed, Sonnino and Marsden (2006, p. 181) see them as ‘highly competitive and rela-
tional to one another’ and they call for a more critical examination of the links between
the two. Likewise, for Goodman and Goodman (2007), while the distinction between
‘conventional’ and ‘alternative’ retains some heuristic value, the interface between them
is increasingly permeable and highly contested. As Murdoch and Miele (1999) reported,
it is quite feasible for a large conventional food producer to diversify into AFNs and vice
versa. Thus, many food networks are hybridised, with AFN producers often ‘dipping in’
and ‘dipping out’ of what normatively would be described as conventional food chains,
although they are in fact part of the one hybrid food system (Ilbery and Maye, 2005a).
This chapter aims to provide both theoretical and empirical insights into the chang-
ing nature of AFN research in Europe. The next section reviews changing theoretical
approaches to the study of AFNs, especially in a European context, before the chapter
draws on a range of case study evidence that traces the evolution of AFN research – from
an initial interest in ‘locality’ foods that emphasised the quality of food into a growing
interest in both ‘locality’ and ‘local’ foods, including an examination of the local com-
munity and health benefits of food, and on the networks through which alternative
foods move. The links between AFNs and recent debates on food security, in what may
be referred to as a developing ‘neo-productivist’ agricultural regime, then form the basis
of the next section, before the final section attempts to draw some conclusions about
European research on AFNs.

THEORISING AND PROBLEMATISING AFNS
Despite a number of very good review papers on AFNs (e.g., Watts et al., 2005; Sonnino
and Marsden, 2006; Maye and Kirwan, 2010; see also Feagan, 2007 and Mount, 2012 in
relation to local food), it is generally accepted that AFN work remains underdeveloped
theoretically. For Goodman and Goodman (2007), the AFN literature has neglected
theoretical development in favour of empirically grounded case study analyses and for
Sonnino and Marsden (ibid., p. 184), there is a need to ‘develop a more rigorous theoreti-
cal framework around alternative food networks’. Nevertheless, a recent critical review
by Tregear (2011) outlines the key features of three theoretical approaches to research
in the field:
● Political economy, whereby large-scale political and economic structures, includ-

ing neoliberal policies and global capitalism, can help explain micro-level human
behaviour associated with AFNs. As Tregear (ibid., p. 420) expresses, under a
political economy perspective AFNs are conceptualised as ‘movements in the
constant struggle against the threatening forces of global capitalism’, where
inequalities and injustices are emphasised. However, typical of much American
research on AFNs, a political economy perspective does not really help to explain
the regional clusters of AFNs/local foods in places such as France and Northern
Italy (Murdoch and Miele, 1999), which seem to survive or even prosper in spite of
global capitalism.
● Rural sociology/development, which is concerned more with the rural area impli-
cations of AFN dynamics rather than with the marginalising effects of global
capitalism. Characteristic of much European research, this perspective emphasises
endogenous growth and sees AFNs as ‘social constructions’ that reflect the beliefs,
motives and values of participating members. Concepts such as quality, embed-
dedness, trust and regard are used to explain the development of AFNs at the
micro level. The focus tends to be on the positive benefits of AFNs, although the
rural development perspective can be criticised for taking insufficient account of
the wider political and economic forces shaping AFNs.
● Network theory, where AFNs are conceptualised as networks (or clusters) of
actors operating at the regional or meso scale. Thus, AFNs develop as a result
of interaction and negotiation processes between actor groups, against a backdrop
of regulation and institutional environments. Again, AFNs are seen as ‘social con-
structions’, where it is possible for some actors to dominate agendas and to pursue
different strategies. As Tregear (2011) suggests, a network approach helps to avoid
conflating spatial scale with specific actor values or behaviours.
Tregear (2011, p. 421) neatly summarises the contrasts between the three theoretical
perspectives:
[W]hereas political economy studies have an impulse to ascribe a particular anti-capitalist

socio-political status to (particularly) local food systems, and rural sociology and develop-
ment studies tend to attribute particular sets of social relations to such systems, work in [the
network] strand often takes the position of the local as one spatial scale of activity where
complex things happen, and the job of the researcher is to explain why certain food systems

exhibit particular behaviours and impacts rather than assuming a priori that they possess them
inherently.
In refinement and further elaboration of the more territorialised rural development

perspective, Kneafsey (2010) sees the re-regionalisation of food as an outcome of three
‘cross-cutting’ impulses:
● ‘Rescaling’ or the devolution of governance functions to the regional scale (Maye

and Ilbery, 2007; Goodman et al., 2012; Little et al., 2012). Regions are seen as
being able to develop policies that are better adapted to local specificities and to
build resilience in the face of globalised competition. Thus, governance rather than
government is emphasised and delivery of AFNs is through partnerships between
public, private and voluntary agencies. CAP reforms have contributed to rescaling
in the European Union (EU), but as Kneafsey (ibid., p. 183) emphasises, ‘regional
governance does not necessarily lead to regional consciousness’. Indeed, Maye
and Ilbery (2007) suggested that regional institutions in Northeast England were
implementing a central government strategy on local foods rather than developing
a genuine regional devolution of power.
● ‘Respacing’ or changes in the agri-food sector that are driven by market-based
ecological modernisation. Consumer demands for foods of local provenance
(and higher quality) and more sustainable farming systems may help to valorise
local and regional foods. However, it has been suggested that valorisation may be
sought simply for the purpose of achieving certification, as in the EU’s PDO (pro-
tected designation of origin) and PGI (protected geographical indication) food and
drink labels (Ilbery and Kneafsey, 2000a; Parrott et al., 2002). It is questionable,
therefore, whether such legislation stimulates regional food networks, leading
Kneafsey (2010, p. 184) to suggest that ‘respacing is primarily a driver of regional
foods rather than regionalised food networks’.
● ‘Reconnection’ or supporting food that is produced, retailed and consumed in a
specific area. Social and environmental factors are emphasised, especially by con-
sumers driven by the desire for fresh, healthy food and concerns for local environ-
ments and economies. As Kneafsey (2010, p. 185) articulates, ‘whereas rescaling
and respacing attend primarily to policy and market dimensions, the reconnection
perspective excavates the multiple and sometimes contradictory motives expressed
by individuals and agencies involved in the construction of territorially-embedded
food projects and initiatives’.
A number of concepts are central to the different theoretical approaches to AFN

research and especially to the emerging rural development/territorial agri-food regime,
with its focus on local and/or regional foods. Three concepts are worthy of particular
note (see Goodman et al., 2012 for a detailed review):
● ‘Short food supply chains’ (SFSCs) whereby the number of nodes between the
producer and final consumer are reduced and/or minimised, enabling producers
to keep a higher proportion of the added value and to make more direct connec-
tions with consumers (Maye and Kirwan, 2010). Food travels through a chain

(or network) that is embedded with information about the mode of production,
provenance and the distinctive quality aspects of the product. Following Marsden
et al. (2000), three types of SFSC can be identified: ‘face-to face’, where the con-
sumer buys directly from the producer, for example, farmers’ market, farm shop,
delivery round; ‘spatially proximate’, where products are sold through local retail
outlets (e.g., village store) and consumers are aware of the links between product
and place; and ‘spatially extended’, where food is sold outside its region of origin
(e.g., via the Internet) to people who have little personal knowledge of the place
of production. In such cases, branding and product labelling are often important
means of conveying information about product, process and place. While the first
two SFSCs are generally associated with ‘local’ foods, the third relates to ‘locality’
foods.1
● ‘Convention theory’ (CT) whereby economic relationships are understood as
‘culturalised’, with specific conventions ‘bundling around’ food networks to make
them economically negotiable (Murdoch et al., 2000, pp. 113–15). In other words,
it is possible to identify specific norms, values and organisational forms for dif-
ferent food networks, each with different conventions of quality (or ‘orders of
worth’). Murdoch et al. (2000) identify six ‘conventions’ relevant to quality food
products: commercial (e.g., price and value of goods); domestic (e.g., products that
draw on attachments to place and traditional methods of production); industrial
(e.g., efficiency and reliability concerns); public (e.g., consumer recognition of
trademarks, brands and packaging); civic (e.g., societal benefits) and ecological
(e.g., production impacts). CT is particularly useful in helping to unveil the hybrid
nature of quality production/AFNs, as food producers and processors can exist
simultaneously in ‘several worlds of production’. Various papers apply CT to
AFN examples (e.g., Kirwan, 2006; Rosin and Campbell, 2009).
● ‘Social embeddedness’ whereby economic behaviour is embedded in, and mediated
by, a complex web of local social relations (Winter, 2003; Kirwan, 2004). Thus,
AFNs are characterised by local ties and features such as trust, loyalty, respect,
regard, friendship and acknowledgement. Of course, social embeddedness does
not just apply to AFNs; all economic relations are, to some extent, socially embed-
ded and Sonnino and Marsden (2006) emphasise the need to examine both vertical
(political and institutional) and horizontal (societal, spatial and cultural) dimen-
sions of embeddedness. This suggests that AFNs may themselves be underpinned
by relations of power, inequality and exploitation, as much as by trust, regard and
interpersonal ties. Different degrees of social embeddedness exist in all food net-
works therefore, but its importance is emphasised in AFNs.
There is no doubt that many AFNs are characterised by features that are captured
in the above concepts as they are anchored in a particular locale, provide diversifica-
tion opportunities for farmers and encourage community engagement. However, as
Tregear (2011) makes clear, it is important to adopt a more critical perspective because
a range of problems exists with their use and interpretation. For the sake of easy pres-
entation, it is possible to categorise such problems into five related groups. First, and
following Tregear (ibid., p. 423), there has been ‘insufficient clarity and consistency in
usage of key concepts’. Thus, there has been a tendency to conflate terms such as ‘local’,

‘quality’, ‘alternative’ and ‘sustainable’, as all part of some oppositional camp to the
agri-industrial paradigm (Ilbery and Maye, 2005a). If one accepts the more likely posi-
tion of hybrid food geographies, one must also accept the problem with using these very
different terms in such a manner. For example, most research has assumed that the start-
ing point of an AFN is the primary producer, with insufficient regard given to important
‘upstream’ dimensions of the network. In their research in the Scottish–English borders,
Ilbery and Maye (2005a and 2005b) found that the starting point of various SFSCs was
a range of input suppliers that also characterise more conventional food supply chains.
These inputs often came many miles away from the point of production and sometimes
from overseas – placing a different perspective on the very notion of a short and sustain-
able AFN. Similar analysis of the ‘downstream’ elements of various AFNs found that
producers often had to resort to the use of ‘conventional’ abattoirs, carriers, wholesalers
and commercial customers. Thus, ‘dipping in and out’ of ‘conventional’ food networks
is characteristic of many so-called AFNs, which are in fact part of the one diverse food
economy.
Second, there has been a tendency for researchers of AFNs to fall into what Born
and Purcell (2006) describe as the ‘local food trap’, where food networks operating on a
local scale are deemed to be socially just and ecologically sustainable and to deliver high-
quality, fresh and healthy food. However, as Born and Purcell (2006, p. 195) emphasise,
‘local food systems are equally likely to be just or unjust, sustainable or unsustainable,
secure or insecure’. Similarly, Hinrichs (2003, p. 36) warns that ‘specific social and
environmental relations do not always map predictably onto the spatial relation’ (see
also Winter, 2003). This argument is taken one stage further by DuPuis and Goodman
(2005) who are critical of what they refer to as ‘unreflexive localism’, which invests the
local scale with a particular (good) set of norms. They call for a more ‘reflexive local-
ism’ or ‘politics in place’ that recognises that AFNs do not necessarily mitigate poverty,
inequality and social exclusion. Indeed, there is evidence that some AFNs, such as
farmers’ markets, are biased towards richer, professional and the retired middle classes
(Holloway and Kneafsey, 2000). Tregear (2011, p. 419) summarises this neatly when she
suggests that accounts of AFNs may be biased and ‘some localised food initiatives may
maintain rather than overturn pre-existing inequalities between participants and exhibit
insularity and defensiveness rather than openness’. As Goodman et al. (2012, p. 8) put it,
‘reflexive localism is the foundation of a democratic local food politics’.
The third problematic area is the lack of evidence relating to the positive local/regional
impacts of AFNs. As Sonnino and Marsden (2006) ask, are AFNs really leading to
a revalorisation of the countryside? Indeed, Tregear (2011) suggests that AFNs do
not necessarily offer positive multiplier effects for wider regional economies; there is
similarly limited evidence that the anticipated environmental and community benefits
of AFNs are being realised. Significantly, an index of food relocalisation for England
and Wales, created by Ricketts Hein et al. (2006), found that AFNs tend to concentrate
in the more prosperous regions, with a richer agricultural base. Thus, AFNs might be
a product rather than a driver of regional regeneration. In fact, there is some evidence
that state support for AFNs through the Rural Development Regulation is creating
some regional distortion in more marginal areas, with funding for farmers’ markets and
farm shops leading to the demise of local retail outlets (Ilbery and Maye, 2005a). Many
AFN producers are also struggling to maintain their incomes through ‘alternative’ food

products (see point four below) and are often reliant on state subsidies and/or conven-
tional food networks to survive and develop their businesses. Likewise, the assumption
that food travelling through AFNs is inherently safer, healthier and of higher quality
(Little et al., 2009) is flawed because cheese and milk products at farmers’ markets, for
example, often come from local, but conventional farming systems. Consumers also do
not always buy local foods for food safety reasons, but to support local farmers and
to seek fresh produce. Indeed, a truly consumer perspective on AFNs remains elusive
(Maye and Kirwan, 2010; Tregear, 2011; although see Kneafsey et al., 2008 for detailed
producer–consumer accounts).
Fourth and partly related to the economic imperative that necessarily drives all busi-
nesses, AFN producers are not always motivated by concerns such as social justice,
equality, sustainability and ethics. Many also do not oppose the forces of capitalism
and Whatmore et al. (2003) ask what is alternative about AFNs? Indeed, it has already
been established that many AFN producers ‘dip in’ and ‘dip out’ of ‘conventional’
food networks through economic necessity and there is considerable potential for the
mainstreaming or conventionalisation of AFNs, especially with weaker food networks
(Watts et al., 2005) involving speciality, organic and fair-trade food products that are
increasingly being sold through, and squeezed by, corporate interests and supermarket
retail chains. Consumers similarly often shop in both alternative and conventional food
outlets. Also in terms of motivation, producer–consumer relations are not necessarily
superior in AFNs compared to conventional food networks. While it is accepted that
the face-to-face information exchanged in AFNs is often different to the use of labels
and certification schemes in their more conventional counterparts, this is not neces-
sarily superior. There is potential for ‘staged authenticity’ in both types of network
(MacCannell, 1973).
Finally, it has to be remembered that all food systems are characterised by embed-
dedness, marketness and alterity. Thus, AFNs arise within a context shaped largely by
prevailing systems; it is within this wider context that they will necessarily interact and
co-evolve. It follows from this therefore that any future development of AFNs is likely
to be affected by the growing ‘productivist’ pressures associated with climate change and
food security; this will be examined in a later section of this chapter, helping to highlight
the dynamic nature of AFNs.
RESEARCHING AFNS IN EUROPE
Researching the extent, nature and impact of AFNs in Europe is notoriously difficult
because of the paucity of official or other data on the likes of SFSCs, direct marketing
and farmers’ markets. As Renting et al. (2003, p. 402) suggested, apart from organic
farming (which may market its products through AFNs), any attempt to obtain an
overview of the incidence of AFNs in Europe ‘is seriously hampered by the lack of
official data of sufficient reach and quality’. Aware of these limitations, the same
authors examined the spread of SFSCs in seven European countries in a project exam-
ining the socioeconomic impact of rural development practices in Europe.2 Reporting
for the year 1998 and thus in the relatively early years of AFN development, they
demonstrated some interesting initial findings about quality food production, direct

selling and organic farming in the seven countries.3 First, they were taken up mainly by
medium-sized farms. Second, there were large intercountry differences in the incidence
of SFSCs, being much more developed in the Mediterranean countries like Italy, Spain
and France than in the northern countries of the Netherlands, UK and Ireland. Third,
there were also quite striking contrasts in the types of SFSC. Thus, regional quality pro-
duction and direct selling, built upon long-lasting cultural and gastronomic traditions,
were more characteristic of Italy, Spain and France than their northern counterparts.
The picture for organic farming was more mixed, being weakly developed in Spain as
well as in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. Fourth, in terms of socioeconomic
impact, SFSCs reached their highest impact in Italy, France and Germany where they
accounted for between 7 and 10 per cent of the total NVA realised in agriculture.4 This
is in contrast to figures of 2–4 per cent for Spain, the UK and the Netherlands, and just
1 per cent for Ireland. Renting et al. (2003, p. 407) concluded by suggesting that direct
selling accounted for the largest number of farms involved and had the highest impact
levels, whereas ‘for organic and quality food products the picture is more complex and
highly differentiated between countries’. It is to some of these complexities that the rest
of this section now turns.
One key element of AFNs and the relocalisation of food systems is the ability to dif-
ferentiate products from those produced under more conventional farming systems.
Constructing difference is often achieved through the use of labels, logos and certifica-
tion schemes and, following Ilbery et al. (2005) and Maye et al. (2007), there are three
essential ingredients for constructing difference: product, place and process (the three
‘Ps’). These ingredients can be mixed in different ways to encourage the development
of either ‘locality’ or ‘local’ foods. However, two main possibilities present themselves.
First, ‘product and place’ is where the emphasis is placed on quality or niche ‘locality’
foods that are usually marketed and sold beyond their region of origin through spatially
extended SFSCs. The focus is on the food itself rather than the networks through which
it travels, representing what Watts et al. (2005) describe as weaker AFNs. These have
characterised European attempts to engender endogenous rural development, especially
in the more lagging regions, and have been influenced by changes to the CAP, and devel-
opment of its ‘second pillar’ in particular, which are broadening rural policy away from
a narrow sectoral focus on agriculture towards a more territorial agenda.
Second, ‘process and place’ is where the emphasis is on what Watts et al. (2005)
term ‘stronger alternatives’ because the focus is on the networks through which ‘local’
food travels via direct or spatially proximate SFSCs rather than on the quality of the
food itself. Process and place AFNs often provide an oppositional agenda to the agri-
industrial paradigm and have characterised much North American research on the
subject. Nevertheless, they are in evidence in Europe in, for example, the local food
sector, community food projects, organic food and fair-trade markets.
The distinctions between ‘locality’ and ‘local’ foods, ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ AFNs, and
‘product/place’ and ‘product/process’ are now used to help structure and demonstrate
the nature and evolution of AFN research in Europe. These distinctions are not intended
as well- defined boundaries. Locality foods, for example, are frequently consumed
locally. Nevertheless, the distinctions are valid to ‘emphasize the ability of certain foods
to “travel” by mobilizing. . .“qualities” of “place”’ (Goodman et al., 2012, p. 68). Thus,
such distinctions are used to help synthesise and highlight certain features of European

AFNs. There is space here to focus on just a limited number of examples of AFN
development.
Product and Place
While there are numerous case studies of regional speciality or locality foods, such as De
Roest and Menghi’s (2000) study on Parmigiano Reggiano cheese in Italy, Ilbery et al.’s
(2005) study on Comté cheese in France and Schaer et al.’s (2006) study on Rhöngut
meat in Germany, the example used here is of an EU-wide attempt to ‘fix’ product to
place through quality food labels. In the early 1990s, the EU introduced its PDO and
PGI quality labels to protect producers from attempted copies of their product and
to promote food and drink products with a recognisable geographical origin (Ilbery
and Kneafsey, 2000a, 2000b; Parrott et al., 2002). Similar to the French Appellation
d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) system, groups of producers can apply for either a PDO
(product originates from a specific place and is linked to its natural/geographical envi-
ronment) or a PGI (product is linked to a particular place, but not necessarily in terms of
its raw materials). Goodman (2003) suggests that such labels are indicative of a ‘quality
turn’ and characteristic of attempts to encourage territorial rural development, especially
in more marginal regional economies.
The number of PDO/PGI designations has continued to increase steadily, from 450 in
2000 to 760 in 2008; the figure had reached 970 by 2011. Using data for 2008, a number
of key points can be discerned (Table 21.2). First, there is a strong southern concentra-
tion of PDOs/PGIs, with Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Greece accounting for just
over 80 per cent of all designations. This compares with a relative paucity in northern
and eastern countries, with just Germany, the UK, Austria and the Czech Republic
each recording ten or more. The data reflect the cultural significance of regional/special-
ity food in Southern European societies and the rather ‘placeless foodscapes’ of more
Table 21.2 PDO and PGI designations in selected European countries, 2008
Country Total PDO PGI 1 2 3 4 5 6

Italy 165 109 56 34 52 38 29 2 0
France 156 75 81 45 27 9 4 52 0
Spain 110 63 47 19 29 20 10 13 0
Portugal 105 57 48 13 22 6 28 27 0
Greece 85 62 23 20 32 26 0 0 0
Germany 62 30 32 4 3 1 8 3 36
UK 29 14 15 12 1 0 0 7 2
Austria 12 8 4 6 2 1 2 0 0
Czech 10 2 8 0 0 0 0 0 3
Republic
EU 27 764 434 330 163 172 104 85 106 41
Note: 1. Cheese; 2. Fruit/vegetables/cereals; 3. Oils/fats; 4. Meat products; 5. Fresh meats; 6. Beer/mineral

and spring water.
Source: European Commission (2012).

northern societies. Second, PDOs outnumber PGIs in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece,
whereas the opposite is the case in France, Germany and the UK. Third, there is con-
siderable intercountry variation in the types of food/drink products receiving PDO/PGI
protected status. Cheeses and fruit/vegetables/cereals are among the most popular; while
the former are dominant in France and, on a smaller scale, in the UK and Austria, the
latter are more significant in the southern countries of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Fresh meats are more important than meat products in France, but this is reversed in
Italy, and in Portugal there is an almost equal balance between the two. Oils and fats
are of significance only in Italy, Greece and Spain. Finally, drinks (mainly mineral and
spring water, but also beer) account for well over half of all PDO/PGI designations in
Germany – even though they do not figure at all in the list of protected products in the
top five ranked countries (Table 21.2).
Murdoch et al. (2000, p. 108) suggested that ‘those areas that have largely remained
marginal to industrialised agriculture are generally the very areas where quality pro-
duction might thrive’. Indeed, the concentration of PDOs/PGIs in Southern European
countries reflects a number of cultural and structural factors, such as the predominance
of small, diversified and labour-intensive farms, the presence of highly fragmented food
processing sectors and the prevalence of the convention of ‘domestic worth’ (Parrott
et al., 2002). There is a strong belief that the terroir or context of production (culture,
tradition, production process, terrain, climate and local knowledge) actually shapes the
quality of the product itself (Sonnino and Marsden, 2006). In contrast, different cultural
and structural factors militate against the development of AFNs in Northern European
countries. These include larger, more capital-intensive and specialised farm businesses,
and a more centralised processing sector dominated by larger food manufacturers and
retailers. As Sonnino and Marsden (2006, p. 186) surmise, AFNs (and PDO/PGI desig-
nations) in Northern Europe are based on ‘modern and more commercial quality defi-
nitions. . .and on innovative (and retailer-led) forms of marketing’. Classifying PDOs/
PGIs as examples of ‘defensive localism’, Watts et al. (2005) believe that, despite con-
siderable government encouragement, their potential for stimulating economic develop-
ment in regions that lack a developed culture of terroir is limited. In fact, they suggest
that ‘in a neoliberal market economy, producers of protected and speciality foods may
end up competing against each other for finite niche markets’ (p. 28). Reservation was
also expressed by Ilbery and Kneafsey (2000a) in their examination of some of the earlier
PDO/PGI designations in the UK. They suggested that some of the producer groups
applying for status were little more than ‘groups of convenience’ that had no real inten-
tion of working together and had used the quality marks to protect their names from
cheap imitations rather than as a genuine marketing device.
Process and Place
Following Maye et al. (2007), evidence of AFN development based on process and place
comes from four sources: first, the local food sector; second, community food projects;
third, public procurement; and fourth, organic foods and fair-trade markets. Again,
space prohibits analysis of all four categories and so this subsection focuses on local
and organic food sectors in particular, given their significance in European contexts,
and on previous research conducted by the current authors in the UK. Rather than

examining specific types of SFSC, such as farmers’ markets (Holloway and Kneafsey,
2000; Kirwan, 2004, 2006), vente directe (Battershill and Gilg, 1998) and box schemes
(Dürrschmidt, 1999), attention is directed towards the networks that individual farm
businesses involved in organic production develop for both their inputs and outputs (for
more general discussions of local food networks, including how alterity is maintained
across different producer–consumer relations, see Kneafsey et al., 2008 and Goodman
et al., 2012, pp. 79–82). This will help to demonstrate whether AFNs are truly separate
from more conventional food networks or whether there is considerable overlap and
blurring between them. Examples are taken from Southwest England, Southwest Wales
and Southeast England. More detailed accounts can be found in Ilbery et al. (2010) and
Ilbery and Maye (2011).
Within the three ‘core’ areas of organic farming listed above, 61 in-depth interviews
were conducted in 2009 with a range of organic businesses in terms of farm size, farm
type and marketing channels used to distribute their produce. Interest was focused on
the number of marketing channels used to distribute organic food and the distances over
which both inputs and outputs were purchased and sold. A ‘whole chain’ methodol-
ogy was adopted in order to identify links both ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ from the
business and to explore the geography and nature of business relations. Results showed
interesting differences between the three regions and the types of marketing channel
used. On the one hand, there were organic commodity producers who sold their raw
products directly to supermarkets, processors and organic cooperatives like OMSCo
(Organic Milk Suppliers Cooperative) and who were not trying to either add value or
sell their produce locally. On the other hand, the usually smaller organic producers were
attempting to produce for the local economy and to sell their products either directly to
the final consumer (via farm gate sales, farm shops, box schemes and farmers’ markets)
or to independent retailers, a range of catering establishments and other local farmers.
However, closer inspection suggested that this kind of binary distinction was not
that helpful because ‘in reality, there is considerable “blurring” or hybridisation and a
number of organic producers often combine different types of national and local mar-
keting channels’ (Ilbery et al., 2010, p. 967). This is well illustrated through an example
of a hybridised supply chain on a relatively small (105 ha) organic dairy farm in East
Sussex (Figure 21.1). In this case, 90 per cent of the milk (volume) is sold to OMSCo
and is worth 42 per cent of total sales. The business recently started selling bottled raw
milk through its own delivery round; this accounts for the remaining 10 per cent of milk,
but is worth over 50 per cent of total sales. A local farmers’ market was used to promote
the sale of the organic milk and to attract new customers. The business also sells veal to
customers and cross-bred calves to a local farmer. The farmer’s explanation for the two
milk supply chains was as follows:
I’d say the two milk chains are fairly even [in terms of importance] because obviously the milk
round is massive in terms of the relative price per litre, but having said that the way organic
milk is going we need to pump out volume and get income that way as well.
Thus, there was a perceived need to complement the value-added local milk round
with bulk milk production for the national organic market. The business was driven pri-
marily by economic principles and the maintenance of the farm as a viable family busi-
ness. As Figure 21.1 illustrates, the business has to source some of its necessary inputs

Input suppliers
Silage Feed Seeds Bottles Caps Other Inputs:

concentrate
Own Merchant Merchant Supplier Specialist Vets
farm Bristol Local Blackburn supplier Contractors
West All Local
Yorkshire
Organic Diary
Farm Abattoir
Henfield
Farmers’ Milk round: OMSCo: Other

market: Farmer:
Raw milk/ Milk
Raw milk beef National: 42% Cross calves
Local: 1%* Local: 49% Local: 8%
Final Consumer
Note: * Figures denote percentage of sales value rather than percentage of total value.
Source: Adapted from Ilbery and Maye (2011, p. 38).
Figure 21.1 Whole chain diagram for an organic dairy business in Southeast England
from outside the region, thus questioning its local development impact and demonstrat-
ing the lack of a developed organic infrastructure in the area.
Indeed, at the time of the survey, some producers gave the impression that local markets
were becoming saturated and so they deliberately sought to complement these with more
distant marketing channels. It is not surprising, therefore, that there was a fairly even split
between local (within 30 minutes of the farm) and national sales (over 60 minutes from the
farm), at 42 per cent and 40 per cent respectively. Local sales did increase to 53 per cent in
Southeast England and fall to 33 per cent in Southwest Wales, suggesting greater use of

direct marketing channels in the former and greater dependence on marketing coopera-
tives and processors to distribute organic produce more widely in the latter. In terms of
inputs, over 50 per cent were found to come from either regional (30–60 minutes from the
farm) or national sources, with some livestock feed having to be imported. While selling
a higher proportion of organic produce locally, organic producers in Southeast England
were found to source the highest percentage of their inputs from regional and especially
national suppliers. This brings into question the local multiplier effects of organic farming
and the regional and rural development benefits of organic AFNs, especially in the more
prosperous Southeast England, where there is a high demand for organic food but a
weakly developed infrastructure in terms of supply and marketing cooperatives.
These brief analyses of local and organic food producers demonstrate that they will
act instrumentally to improve their economic value, competitiveness and overall control.
This, in turn, means that producers are likely to change the nature of their supply chain
over time, with such dynamism and mobility often the key to the success or survival of
a business. It often becomes very difficult to remain completely alternative. Economic
competition, usually from larger and national enterprises, can make it difficult for AFNs
to survive and depend solely on alternative marketing channels such as box schemes,
farmers’ markets and farm shops. Indeed, the sales of organic food in England and
Wales have fallen by as much as 30 per cent since the global recession and price spikes
of 2007–08, reminding one of the need to examine AFNs within their wider institutional
and economic contexts. The next section attempts to do this by examining the potential
of AFNs within much wider food security debates.
AFNS AND FOOD SECURITY: THE CASE OF LOCAL FOOD

NETWORKS IN THE UK
It was argued earlier that AFNs operate within a larger food system. The previous
section demonstrated the ways that certain AFNs necessarily interact and co-evolve
with ‘conventional’ food networks. This section considers how the future development
of AFNs might be affected by a growing and increasingly dominant food security policy
discourse and a developing neo-productivist agricultural regime. There is insufficient
space to cover all types of AFN and so the focus is on local food networks (LFNs) and a
recent analysis of food security politics in the UK (Kirwan and Maye, 2013).
Food security, which re-emerged in international discourse to frame responses to the
2007–08 food price spikes and anxieties about global climate change and key resource
pressures (Ambler-Edwards et al., 2009; Horlings and Marsden, 2011; MacMillan and
Dowler, 2011), is usually associated with market-based solutions and a technological
approach to a global food crisis (Beddington, 2010; Foresight, 2011). These narrow
interpretations of global food security have negative implications for the role and
development of AFNs and more specifically LFNs. Advocates of local food argue that
it will still have a part to play in emerging food security scenarios, not least because it
helps retain domestic production capacity, as well as having the potential to reduce the
resource footprint of food (Brown and Geldard, 2008). Kirwan and Maye (2013) opera-
tionalise Mooney and Hunt’s (2009) conceptualisation of food security as a consensus
frame to examine LFNs positioning within these debates. A consensus frame implies

overall consent to the values and objectives signified by the term, but it nonetheless
engenders opposition in terms of how the goals might best be achieved or actioned.
Thus, Mooney and Hunt (2009, p. 470) assert there is ‘contested ownership behind the
apparent consensus on food security’. They identify three collective action frames, which
encompass food security as a consensus frame. These are:
● food security associated with hunger and malnutrition;

● food security as a component of a community’s developmental whole; and
● food security as minimising risks in industrialised agricultural production in
terms of the risk of ‘normal accidents’ and ‘intentional accidents’ associated with
agri-terrorism.
The first frame (hunger and malnutrition) is the one typically associated with the term
food security. The community food security framing, which gained momentum in the
1990s through a focus on local or regional supply systems, is the one most obviously
applicable to discussions about LFNs. The third framing (food security as risk) is driven
by the desire to manage, control and minimise risks in the food chain. Mooney and
Hunt (2009) posit that collective action to address each of these frames can also vary,
with multiple interpretations possible. They suggest that each food security framing
can, on the one hand, carry a ‘flat key’, which usually reinforces extant dominant inter-
pretations and practices and, on the other hand, carry a ‘sharp key’ that offers critical,
alternative interpretations and practices. The keys within each frame thus imply power
differentials, with either an endorsement or critique of dominant institutional practices.
Flat and sharp keys signify tendencies rather than essences. This is an important distinc-
tion given the transitional qualities of particular production systems, including LFNs,
and the way that food chain and other social actors are repositioning and reshaping
their alliances.
Kirwan and Maye (2013) apply this conceptualisation of food security collective action
frames to the relationship between ‘official’ UK food security approaches and the place
of LFNs within these debates. Their analysis shows how the UK’s official response to
food security epitomises a number of the ‘flat’ key characteristics described by Mooney
and Hunt (2009). The most striking feature of the UK approach, particularly since the
1980s, is the consistent argument that national food security will be best achieved via an
effectively functioning global market for food, in conjunction with the European Single
Market. The analysis reveals how the principal food security challenge is framed at the
global scale (i.e., world hunger as an action frame). The risk frame is also evident, as part
of a wider pro-free-trade mantra that argues supply chain resilience and risk mitigation
are best managed by securing food needs through a variety of countries, via the global
market. While there is recognition of the need to improve resilience in domestic supply
chains, this is to some extent viewed as a ‘moral obligation’ to set an example of how
best to secure global food supplies and thus still support the general neoliberal thrust
influencing the ‘official’ UK food security framing.
Within this ‘official’ framing, food security is avowedly not equated with self-
sufficiency, and support for LFNs is effectively rhetorical, seen primarily as a means of
facilitating change within the main frame, rather than as a response in its own right or as
a significant part of any long-term strategic planning. One reason for this is the relatively

small quantities involved. Nevertheless, in considering the role of LFNs as part of a

move towards more sustainable food systems and greater food security within the UK, it
is instructive to recall how local food has in the past been used to respond to acute food
security issues, in quantitative terms. The Ministry of Agriculture’s ‘Dig for Victory’
campaign, launched one month into World War II in 1939, called on every man and
woman in Britain to keep an allotment and to grow food in response to the food short-
ages caused by the German U-Boat blockades (Lowe and Liddon, 2009). This example
is often cited as a symbol of what can be achieved through localising food supplies, when
faced with a hiatus in the global food supply system. Yet, this approach is in danger of
falling into the ‘local trap’: it is avowedly insular in perspective and fails to adequately
deal with the complex set of issues that threaten contemporary food security in the UK.
As noted above, there are strong arguments for questioning the value of local food,
simply on the basis that it has been produced at a local scale. Likewise, the Department
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA, 2006) stresses that LFNs are not
immune from risk and are also prone to disruption, not least because in many cases they
are dependent on inputs (such as soya-based food products, fuel and fertilisers) that are
not available locally. In addition, a large proportion of local food is now sold through
corporate retailers (who epitomise the global scale of operation), notwithstanding the
role of local retail outlets such as farmers’ markets, farm shops and local food hubs.
These tensions resonate with earlier arguments that suggest that it is difficult to maintain
a binary distinction between local and global.
Kirwan and Maye (2013) therefore conclude that it would be folly to suggest that
LFNs can make significant contributions to overall production in quantitative terms, but
they also point out that UK food security is about more than this. In this respect, advo-
cates of LFNs are unequivocal in arguing that they have an important part to play in
ensuring food security within the UK. Nevertheless, for their significance to be acknowl-
edged, the notion of food security needs to focus more on the micro level and the needs
of communities, households and individuals (rather than simply at a national level), and
to recognise those who might be facing food poverty (MacMillan and Dowler, 2011). In
so doing, it can then encompass more than simply access, availability and affordability,
including also the social and cultural acceptability of certain types of food, as well as
education about the nutritional value of food, thereby helping to foster social inclusion
and indeed social justice (Dowler et al., 2001).
There is a clear boundary between the sharp key response of those interested in
developing localised food systems, and the establishment’s flat key response of ensur-
ing resilience through recourse to world markets. However, in order to understand
the contribution that LFNs might make to the UK’s food security in the twenty-first
century, Kirwan and Maye (2013) suggest it is necessary to avoid framing approaches to
food security in such oppositional terms. Such static frames fail to reflect the dynamic
and transitional qualities of particular production systems, a dominant theme running
through this chapter. Approaches to food security, including those associated with
LFNs, thus need to be understood as being permeable. This allows for the articulation
of a more processed-based, relational vision of sustainable food security. Adopting this
perspective offers a more transformative and progressive role for LFNs, both now and
in the future.

CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has mapped the evolution of AFNs and AFN research in Europe, includ-
ing dominant theoretical approaches and empirical foci. Research on AFNs now has
some quite distinct elements. Three in particular stand out from the review provided
here: first, AFNs are designed to differentiate products from those under conventional
farming systems; second, the range and diversity of schemes that might be labelled
‘alternative’ is widely documented; and third, there is widespread recognition that
AFNs need to be critiqued, including the privileges assigned to terms like ‘alternative’
and ‘local’. In particular, agri-food scholars in Europe and elsewhere are asking ques-
tions about the ‘alternativeness’ of AFNs (Whatmore et al., 2003; Goodman et al.,
2012). This critique is valid, especially as the ‘alternative’ banner has proliferated to
include more and more things. Rather than reject the concept outright, the emphasis
within the literature has been to develop more subtle frames of reference to understand
AFN dynamics. There is general consensus, for example, that constructing simplistic
binaries between ‘alternative’ and ‘conventional’ networks is not useful; rather, AFN
scholars now use language that captures a sense of hybridity, complexity, relationality
and diversity. ‘Alternativeness’ is thus best understood in relation to an equally contest-
able notion of the ‘conventional’, with the utility and meaning of the term being context
dependent (Holloway et al., 2007).
In a European context, the evolution of AFNs has a fairly well-established trajectory
(Wiskerke, 2009). Initially, the emphasis was on linking high-quality or niche ‘locality’
foods to place using quality food labels. AFN activities and research now extend beyond
territorial identification through labelling and certification, with prominence given to
social and economic processes of value generation and the revalorised and embedded
characteristics of local food networks that include, for example, direct and local food
selling, community food projects and public procurement. This contrast between AFNs
that emphasise ‘product and place’ and AFNs that emphasise ‘process and place’ is
used heuristically to highlight the general evolution of AFN research in Europe and,
importantly, to differentiate engagement with, and potential for subordination by, con-
ventional food networks operating in a global, neoliberal polity (Watts et al., 2005). In
practice, the situation is more porous. Some foods will operate within different worlds,
each with different conventions of quality (Maye and Kirwan, 2010).
In relation to the future evolution of AFNs in Europe, three important aspects are high-
lighted. First, SFSCs and the quality food economy have epitomised AFN development
in Europe (Goodman, 2004; Goodman et al., 2012). They symbolised a rural develop
ment dynamic that repositioned the family farm at the centre of the rural economy and
provided a much-needed alternative to conventional (intensive) production that in the
early 2000s was not generating revenue for small and medium-sized farm enterprises.
This SFSC perspective is avowedly production orientated and there is, as Tregear (2011)
notes, still a need to develop detailed consumer accounts of AFNs. Without undermin-
ing this point about the need to fill the consumer void, it is important to praise the
value and importance of the short food supply chain concept. This is particularly so at
a European rural development policy level and in light of forthcoming (post-2013) CAP
reforms and the continued attempt to balance the territorial development of rural areas
through the Rural Development Regulation. Indeed, the social and economic benefits of

farm-based direct marketing are arguably still to be realised and adequately supported
at policy levels. Significant here too is a need to extend and recognise the diverse places
where SFSCs take hold – they are not only a rural dynamic, but also take place and have
huge potential benefits for producers and consumers in urban and peri-urban contexts.
SFSCs, especially if understood in ‘whole chain’ terms, continue to have important
value. Second, important questions about evidence and impacts need to be addressed,
responding to both concerns raised in recent reviews by Tregear (2011), Sonnino and
Marsden (2006) and Kirwan and Maye (2013), and the changing political economy
context, including the significant influence of food security as a ‘master frame’. The ben-
efits of AFNs and LFNs are widely heralded, but there is now an urgent need, especially
given the emergence of a new (neo-productivist) agricultural regime, to develop quanti-
tative and qualitative indicators that can assess and evidence positive AFN impacts in
terms of material, socioeconomic, ecological and health benefits. As noted earlier in this
chapter, there is a paucity of data on SFSCs and direct marketing. Some may argue that
such ‘quantification’ and ‘measurement’ is counter to AFN rationales, but demands for
such evidence are becoming more important if AFN activists and advocates are to argue
convincingly and fight against techno-scientific responses to food security and climate
change (Horlings and Marsden, 2011). The conventional–alternative divide in agri-food
systems may thus remain a battlefield that intensifies with increasing concerns over food
security issues and the need to feed an ever-expanding global population.
The third and final point concerns the wider challenge of designing the most sustain-
able and appropriate food security policies, which accommodate rather than sideline
AFN practices. So far, this holistic positioning does not seem to be reflected much in
government thinking. Kirwan and Maye’s (2013) analysis of local foods in the UK
shows, for example, that LFNs do not figure much in recent policy discourse and long-
term strategic planning. The key challenge to achieving a more holistic food system
vision is related to the power of the ‘current agri-industrial food paradigm’ (Horlings and
Marsden, 2011, p. 442), and the dominance of existing scientific and marketing framings
that essentially view food security as a global issue. AFNs are thus at an interesting and
potentially critical turning point. Debates about the ethics and politics of AFNs look set
to continue. The future development of AFNs is likely to be influenced by the current
economic downturn, climate change imperatives, growing productionist pressures and
the ongoing food security crisis. How and where AFNs fit within this new political eco-
nomic context will be an important influence on future research and will require new
conceptual and methodological tools (e.g., behavioural approaches, network theory
perspectives, multicriteria assessments) that not only map network dynamics, rhetorics
and politics but that also highlight and evidence tangible AFN benefits and multilevel
impacts.
NOTES
1. Although contested, an accepted definition of local foods is foods that are produced, processed and
retailed within a defined geographical area, usually 30–50 miles radius of the point of retail in the UK,
whereas locality foods refer to foods that are produced and processed in a particular place but often circu-
late more widely.
2. The countries were Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, UK and Ireland.

3. While direct selling largely coincides with face-to-face SFSCs, both quality food production and organic
farming may cover all three types of SFSC outlined in this chapter.
4. The net value-added generated on top of conventional agricultural production.
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22. Building sustainable communities through
alternative food systems
Alison Blay-Palmer and Irena Knezevic*
INTRODUCTION
Much has been written about alternative food systems and their capacity to stimulate
more sustainable communities. A groundbreaking publication that helped to begin this
conversation was Lappé’s Diet for a Small Planet (1971). As we move past the 40th
anniversary of this book, we seem to be farther behind now than when Lappé wrote her
seminal piece. And things seem to be getting worse. Food crises provoke riots, the number
of malnourished, obese and diabetic people is on the rise, world food stocks are ebbing
and the food production system is in peril in the face of climate change (Brown, 2012;
Clapp, 2012). As Morgan and Sonnino (2010) aptly sum it up, we are dealing with a ‘new
food equation’. People in all parts of the world are faced by challenges stemming from
these new food realities. In the study area for this chapter – Ontario, Canada – people
find themselves faced with a dwindling and aging pool of farmers in part due to precari-
ous farm incomes (Government of Canada, 2012), pervasive food scares (Greenberg and
Elliott, 2009), as well as escalating diabetes and obesity rates (Blay-Palmer et al., 2012).
All of these crises raise important questions about the viability of the conventional food
system moving forward.
On the positive side, food offers the opportunity to envision structural transforma-
tion by building more sustainable communities (Dahlberg, 1993; Feenstra, 1997; Lyson,
2004; Morgan, 2008; Robinson, 2008; Sumner, 2012). This is of particular interest to a
jurisdiction such as Ontario where the long-standing economic reliance on manufactur-
ing has been usurped by the continued volatility of markets. Food and agriculture can
offer community development potential in a post-industrial setting (Colasanti et al.,
2012). Food serves as a platform for addressing problems of social equity, personal
well-being, ecological resilience, robust economies and more participatory democratic
action (Kloppenberg et al., 1996; Feenstra, 1997; Hinrichs and Lyson, 2008; Robinson,
2008; Blay-Palmer and Koc, 2010; Connelly et al., 2011; Levkoe, 2011). However,
despite a growing number of community-based initiatives, the food system continues
to be dominated by highly processed, industrial, global food production–consumption
chains. While community initiatives do offer hope, figuring out how we scale up from
the alternative to the mainstream remains a major challenge to bringing about increased
sustainability through food.
This chapter elaborates the need for more integrated, ‘bottom- up’, participa-
tory initiatives as a way to scale out and up (Friedmann, 2007; Westley and Adantze,
2009). As Robinson explains in his book on agriculture and sustainable rural
communities:
446
Building sustainable communities 447
Research questions need to be explored relating to the nature of rural social networks, par-
ticipation of individuals in co-operative ventures and the role of individuals in leadership and
entrepreneurship. . .sustainability must necessarily embrace widespread citizen participation
and ‘bottom-up’ control as ‘top-down’ imposition of solutions is inherently unsustainable. In
this sense community participation becomes the fourth arm of sustainability, equally as vital
in moves towards attainment of greater sustainability as economic, environmental and social
dimensions of the project. (2008, pp. 31–2)
This chapter begins by elaborating two theoretical constructs. First we review the
principles behind complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory with particular attention to
the thinking about building adaptive capacity. We then turn our attention to the related
ideas of scaling up and out as possible ways to understand the potential for change.
Following this theoretical overview, we present research results from interviews and case
studies of provincial sustainable food system organizations in Ontario, Canada. We con-
clude by considering how we can use theoretical understanding to inform the creation of
increasingly sustainable food systems.
COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS (CAS)
CAS theory provides a framework to help us understand system dynamics. By merging

chaos theory, systems thinking, complexity theory and social innovation among others,
CAS is used to study fields as diverse as organizational behavior, food security and
health care. As this approach cannot be completely elaborated in this chapter, we will
stick to key framework dimensions that are used in our analysis of sustainable, local food
systems later in the chapter. Applying this framework to food systems builds on work
by Stroink and Nelson (2013). While their paper describes community-based initiatives,
this chapter goes up a scale to examine provincial-level initiatives. There are advantages
to thinking from a systems perspective. While it is important to heed Hinrichs’s (2010)
cautions not to miss the value of the ‘disconnectedness’ (Bell, 2008 as cited in Hinrichs,
2010), power imbalances (Shove and Walker, 2007 as cited in Hinrichs, 2010), or the
limitations imposed by boundaries and blinders in confining the field of analysis, adopt-
ing a systems approach for analysis and synthesis can provide a comprehensive way to
analyze contributing factors and develop relevant, informed solutions for practition-
ers and policy-makers. CAS offers both a rationale for why it is important to consider
systems and some insights about the tools that foster system resilience.
A foundational concept of CAS theory is panarchy, defined as, ‘the hierarchical struc-
ture in which systems of nature. . .and humans. . .are interlinked in never-ending adap-
tive cycles of growth, accumulation, restructuring, and renewal’ (Holling, 2001, p. 392).
Similar to concepts of nested hierarchies used in evolutionary biology and economic
geography (Swyngedouw, 2004), attending to cycles focuses our attention on the inter-
relationships and connectivity between different scales in a system. In considering system
resilience, several concepts emerge from this basic idea. First is the recognition that
adaptive systems are emergent and co-evolving. Emergence is a key concept as the com-
binations that result from the interaction of linkages within and between scales cannot be
anticipated due to the complexity and associated unpredictability. Co-evolution means
that these unpredictable outcomes influence one another, making a system at once more

resilient and more complex. The capacity for self-organization is also critical in CAS
theory as it allows systems to transcend paradigms by evolving and changing (Meadows,
2008). So, for example, in the case of new knowledge creation we have existing knowl-
edge as the platform for new resource creation layered onto the available assets such
as human insight/creativity, available funds, or government input. The extent to which
interaction takes place between the existing and emergent helps to determine a system’s
adaptive capacity and resilience. System diversity is key as it adds redundancy that
makes the system more robust.
Meadows (2008) offers other specific insights about the processes and tools that foster
system resilience. These include identifying and activating leverage points by building
appropriate infrastructure, information flows and feedback loops. These flows and
loops need to be iterative, cross-sectoral, and interdisciplinary, promote learning, and
link information on the ground to decision and policy-makers. A good example of this
process is the creation of the Montreal International Protocol to protect the ozone layer.
In this case, the multistakeholder working groups set standards and lists of banned
chemicals based on the then-current (1987) knowledge. By respecting the need to learn
from the implementation period and adjust the protocols, a three-year review period was
established so new chemicals could be added to the list (ibid.). This protocol is arguably
one of the most successful examples of multilateral, environmental negotiations in world
history (UNEP, 2006).
Having enumerated key factors needed to bring about change, we now turn our atten-
tion to merging these insights with ideas about creating enough critical mass to effect
system transformation. Building on CAS theory, Westley et al. (2009) examined social
enterprises and remarked on two mechanisms for change. In the first case, where ‘scaling
out’ occurs, activities are expanded through network and knowledge building, and dis-
semination so that innovations were replicated and spread out to more organizations. In
the second set of circumstances, they observed that other social entrepreneurs wanted to
effect a system change, or what they refer to as ‘scaling up’. Scaling up requires a refram-
ing of the problem, and often a champion. To have system change, organizations need
to have a platform for change through their programs and/or products. Based on their
research, Westley and colleagues (2009) propose four types of scaling up configurations.
The first type occurs when an organization has demonstrated the potential for system
change but has yet to realize it except within their organization. Change emerges from
learning and experimentation, an inclusive and participatory organizational structure,
and a centralized strategy. One notable difficulty in bringing about change based on this
model can occur when there is loss of momentum within the organization. The second
type of change originates from the bottom up. This case typically requires a champion,
vision and consistent principles. This organizational type is often challenged by scarce
resources and dilution of founding energy as organizations try to scale up. The third
organizational type exists when an umbrella organization provides seed funding with the
goal of introducing system change and is stated explicitly in the early stages of organiza-
tional growth. The risk in this case is a lack of ownership of ideas as it is more top-down.
There is also the chance for poor integration, and the lack of a champion. However,
it does allow organizations to ‘think like a movement’ (ibid., p. 18). The fourth type
builds from the idea that ‘system change starts with community change’ (ibid., p. 19).
This model is founded on the use of networks and partnerships as it builds on existing

assets. The key challenge is to connect a place-based strategy to broader policy/economic

change to facilitate the dissemination of principles. The final type exists when there is a
controlled replication of a respected program that provides legitimacy to those adopt-
ing it. This model is well suited to scaling out but is not as relevant for scaling up. To be
effective, it requires partners within the system to bring about change. Robinson (2008,
p. 34) pulls together these thoughts in the context of rurality:
For rural systems to be truly sustainable there needs to be a partnership between people and
government that transcends ‘top down’ arrangements that have been dominant in Developed
Countries. This requires both a change in attitude by those in power as well as the creation
of effective mechanisms for involving the widest possible cross-section of individuals within
communities. Only then is it likely that there will be policies developed and actions taken that
address the range of economic, social and environmental considerations that are embedded
within the concept of sustainability. Whilst the concept itself may be open to criticism for its
imprecise nature and myriad interpretations, the combination of its three prime dimensions
coupled with citizen participation seems to offer the best hope for forging a ‘balanced’ and
viable future for agriculture and rural communities.
According to Westley et al. (2009), for system transformation to occur, organizations

need to build a ‘platform’ through successful dissemination of their ideas or products.
Without this platform of experience, reputation, and in-depth knowledge of the field, it
would be practically impossible to make larger-scale difference. In addition, being suc-
cessful on scaling out enables an organization to view problems and issues that were not
visible before and therefore to identify new ways and approaches to change the system.
It is through this lens that we report on food organizations in Ontario.
THE RESEARCH PROJECT
In this chapter, we present a subset of work from a larger project that scanned over 350
community-based initiatives. From this work we identified more than 170 individuals for
key informant interviews. We followed this up with 21 case studies (see the 2013 special
issue of Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability,
Volume 18, Issue 5). As one would expect, there is a range of approaches to local,
sustainable food throughout Ontario. In this section we will discuss findings from the
provincial level organizations based on secondary sources, interviews and case studies
with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) and
its Foodland Ontario, Broader Public Sector and Ontariofresh initiatives; the Ontario
Natural Food Co-op (ONFC) and its emerging associated organization, Local Organic
Food Co-ops (LOFC); and Sustain Ontario. In many ways, these organizations each
represent a different food systems approach. The provincial government is most closely
aligned to conventional agriculture, the ONFC is very supportive of community-based,
local and sustainable food, while Sustain Ontario is trying to find a middle ground.
The provincial government has actively promoted export agriculture since the mid-
1990s. At that time OMAFRA switched its focus from supporting farmers through
extension services and research to developing export markets. This emphasis continues
to dominate ministry priorities. For example, OMAFRA actively supports the develop-
ment and application of biotechnology, functional food and biosecurity research for

large-scale agri-industry investing tens of millions of research dollars and other resources
in these areas (OMAFRA, 2012).
Foodland Ontario, as a brand developed by OMAFRA in 1977, is a notable excep-
tion to the export approach. The program includes recognizable slogans, such as ‘Good
things grow in Ontario’, a logo, and ongoing marketing campaigns. As its website
explains, Foodland Ontario identifies and promotes Ontario foods in grocery stores
through the distribution of point-of-purchase material and in-store promotions to over
1200 stores across the province (Foodland Ontario, 2011). The program is also present
in farmers’ markets. Foodland Ontario boasts 94 percent brand recognition in the prov-
ince, and its promotional materials include recipes, seasonality information, nutritional
information, and other educational material for consumers. The program also includes
the Foodland Ontario Retailer Awards, which recognize retailers who contribute to the
promotion of Ontario foods in notable and innovative ways.
In the last four years, OMAFRA has made bolder forays into local food by funding
initiatives to promote institutional procurement of Ontario-grown and/or produced
food. One of these initiatives is the Green Belt Broader Public Sector (BPS) Investment
Fund, a granting program that aims to get more Ontario food into public institutions.
This project is interesting as it reflects the tensions the government wrestles to reconcile.
On the one hand, there is enormous pressure from multinational corporations and con-
ventional producer groups for support to expand their access to local markets through
public procurement opportunities. On the other hand are comparatively small-scale
initiatives that are attempting to create a more local and sustainable food system. The
most recent awards to grant applicants reflect attempts to deal with these tensions as less
than one in five of every funding dollar was allocated to community-based local, sustain-
able food initiatives.1 Ontariofresh.ca is a free website (www.ontariofresh.ca) and online
community designed to support the BPS. The goal of the site is to create connections
across the food service value chain, linking bulk buyers, chefs, restaurants, caterers and
distributors with growers and producers. It is a business-to-business website, so the focus
is to help Ontario growers and producers tap into large markets close to home. Since
advanced registration began, Ontariofresh.ca has seen steady growth in the number of
registrants and now includes hospitals, major food service providers, large-and smaller-
scale producers. Information is collected by profile types: grower/producers, buyers,
distributors and friends/supporters; location; farm practice; availability and traceability.
Other key features include the advanced search functionality and the ‘Marketplace’, in
which buyers and sellers can make up-to-the-minute requests or offers for products.
As part of the research we interviewed key informants about different aspects of the
food system to better understand the challenges and opportunities. Franco Naccarato,
the Program Manager for the BPS, identified the need for transparency, especially in
labeling and traceability as an important issue to maintain the integrity of the Ontario
brand. He also pointed to the problems of the distribution networks that are set up to
support economies of scale, which is a major barrier to shifting food paradigms effec-
tively. On the positive side, Naccarato was enthusiastic about communication technolo-
gies that have made it easier for North Americans to share thoughts about food with
one another. He was also optimistic about culinary work that emphasizes freshness and
quality, as well as culinary tourism initiatives.
As an alternative to the more mainstream approach of OMAFRA, and by way of

filling a gap in the province, Sustain Ontario can be characterized as evolving more
towards the center of the spectrum between the local, sustainable food system and the
conventional food system. Officially launched in January 2009, Sustain Ontario devel-
oped from two years of province-wide consultations initiated and facilitated by a private
foundation. The consultations identified the need to create a group that would link the
various initiatives in Ontario, provide space for dialogue, and do research and advocacy
work. Somewhat modeled on the original UK version, Sustain Ontario is a non-profit
organization that describes itself as:
a province-wide, cross-sectoral alliance that promotes healthy food and farming. Sustain
Ontario takes a collaborative approach to research, policy development and action by address-
ing the intersecting issues related to healthy food and local sustainable agriculture. Sustain
Ontario is working towards a food system that is healthy, ecological, equitable and financially
viable. (Sustain Ontario, 2012, paragraph 1)
Based on the constellation model, the organization now has over 275 members, oper-
ates as not-for-profit and is funded through NGO and government grants. Sustain
Ontario’s main role is to convene participating partners and promote province-wide
conversations. Its biennial conference is a key activity. There are two full-time staff
(the Executive Director and the Program Coordinator), with additional part-time and
temporary staff for specific project work. There is also substantial volunteer and student
intern support, as well as a steering committee and an advisory council for guidance.
Sustain Ontario’s mandate is multifaceted. During an interview, the Executive Director,
Ravenna Nuaimy-Barker, emphasized the importance of holistic understandings of food
and food systems. She indicated that one of Sustain Ontario’s roles was to help build
capacity across the province, share good examples, and assist communities in finding
local solutions. Nuaimy-Barker indicated that the largest barrier to local food had to
do with global markets and global trade, including subsidies and worldwide policy. In
Ontario, this is compounded by many local and provincial policies that limit the growth
of local and sustainable food systems. Accordingly, more attention needs to be given to
ways in which policies and practice can support small-scale, local, sustainable produc-
tion. Sustain Ontario was constituted to help fill this gap.
Before we present the case study work, we will report the findings from three other
organizations that are making notable contributions to the sustainable local food land-
scape in Ontario. They complete our sampling of province-wide initiatives, making it
sufficiently comprehensive, albeit far from detailed, in order to illustrate the range of
initiatives currently taking place. The first of these is the Ontario Culinary Tourism
Alliance (OCTA), a project initiated by the Ontario Ministry of Tourism with support
from OMAFRA. OCTA’s purpose is to roll out Ontario’s ten-year Culinary Tourism
Strategy that aims to support the tourism industry alongside Ontario’s food and bever-
age producers. Guided by a Board of Directors and relying on a variety of grants, OCTA
works on promoting Ontario as a culinary destination and is currently working with
over 35 local destinations in the province. Its membership includes farmers, winemakers,
restaurateurs, accommodation businesses and producers’ associations. Achieving and
maintaining economic sustainability for producers and tourism service providers under-
pins OCTA’s mandate, but it also works towards safe and secure foods system, a healthy
environment, and vibrant communities. Rebecca LeHeup, the Executive Director of

OCTA, credits OCTA’s success to the province-wide momentum around local food.
LeHeup encourages better and more multifaceted collaborations across sectors and loca-
tions, and applauds the work of other initiatives. In particular, she highlighted the work
of Savour Ottowa2 in creating a space for collaboration across sectors, and the efforts of
Sustain Ontario, especially for their ability to bring the various players together at the
‘Bring Food Home’ conferences. OCTA’s work also includes developing toolkits and
culinary tourism best practices for both members and the public, and a research report
on local food distribution in Ontario (in collaboration with Sustain Ontario). LeHeup
identified the absence of real and sustained enthusiasm for collaboration and sharing
as one of the barriers to greater success, suggesting that the potential for strengthening
Ontario’s food systems was still largely untapped: ‘organizations need to bring their
“ingredients” and help make the “pie” bigger’. She also identified the cultural com-
ponent of food as critical to strengthening the Ontario food system, ‘there are a lot of
amazing treasures across this province in terms of food culture and how the different
places can be experienced through food’.
The second notable organization, the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers
(OGVG), is a lobbying and research group representing over 200 producers with over
2000 acres of greenhouse production (tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers). OGVG
supports local food branding campaigns but as its focus is on Ontario food it is par-
ticularly supportive of Foodland Ontario branding. Even though 70 percent of its
product goes to the USA, OGVG has benefited from Foodland branding. It is careful
about how it approaches local branding because of the diverse interests at stake, but it
would like to be able to see more OGVG produce marketed and sold in the province.
OGVG is hoping to get into the province’s food service market more aggressively
and perhaps take advantage of the Broader Public Sector Fund. Despite being a
large entity and representing some large producers, OGVG encounters barriers in the
food system, such as competition from cheap imports and public misunderstandings
around food scares.
The third organization that needs to be highlighted is the Nutrition Resource Center
(NRC), an Ontario Public Health Association initiative that is supported by funding
from the Ministry of Health Promotion and Sport. The key program for present pur-
poses is the Community Food Advisor (CFA) program. CFA is a train-the-trainer
program offered by 14 health units across the province. Volunteers are trained in nutri-
tion, cooking skills, and budgeting. In 2010, the program had over 350 CFAs in the prov-
ince. Although local food is not in the mandate of the program, the CFAs are themselves
taking on the local food promotion. Many of them are heavily involved with community
gardens and other local food initiatives. Some of the material also promotes local food
and seasonality. As a result, the CFA program has inadvertently become a program that
can help strengthen communities’ food systems by supporting community gardens and
kitchens, promoting local and seasonal foods, and teaching valuable food skills to local
populations. The program director indicated that, in her opinion, price and convenience
were still driving much of the food economy and that educational programs can really be
helpful in ‘relocalizing’ the food system through teaching the importance of fresh food
that is safe and nutritious. She thought that food hubs can easily double up as commu-
nity centers. She also felt that the use of co-ops and CSAs has not been fully realized and
shows promise of being increasingly important.

This overview of the interviews provides a glimpse at the landscape of provincial

initiatives in Ontario and suggests that the existing work is highly diverse in both goals
and motivations. All of the above noted initiatives are dedicated to improving the food
system in Ontario. However, one particular initiative, Ontario Natural Food Co-op,
captured our attention for its innovative and sustained work and its enthusiastic efforts
to not only improve, but also help redesign Ontario’s food system. We chose to do a
case study with this organization to better understand its work in the above-described
context. We next report on that case study and the interviews we conducted with the
organization’s general manager, Randy Whitteker, and with Hannah Renglich, who
heads their local organic co-op initiative.
Ontario Natural Food Co-op (ONFC)
In existence for 35 years, ONFC is a model of a sustainable operation that has resisted
being absorbed by transnational distribution giants. While relatively large, ONFC
continues to work based on principles of cooperation and sustainability and deliber-
ately addresses economic, social and environmental considerations. The Local Organic
Food Co-ops network, as one of the ONFC projects, is aiming to create collaborative
networks and one of its mandate’s pillars is the creation of regional food hubs. ONFC,
a not-for-profit consumer cooperative, was founded in 1976. The organization’s vision
is ‘Living in a sustainable world from seed to plate’ (ONFC, 2012). There are 1400
members from Manitoba to the Maritimes. Most of the members/customers are inde-
pendently owned retailers or foodservice establishments, but the co-op also sells to
almost 400 food buying clubs and a number of food cooperatives. ONFC also has a
private label, ‘Ontario Natural’, which is produced and distributed only in Ontario.
Renglich notes that there is also a ‘wide range of affiliations, memberships and link-
ages in the co-op, organic food, food security and local food communities’. ONFC is a
hybrid as it focuses on small-scale initiatives but also distributes to chains like Whole
Foods and Loblaw.3 ONFC is one of two remaining independent natural food co-ops in
North America, as most have demutualized or been absorbed by United Natural Foods
(UNFI). With the continued trend of ownership concentration, ONFC is increasingly
concerned with preserving and supporting independent initiatives and small- scale
production. The overarching goals of ONFC are to support and scale up the existing
organizations, create synergies to foster value-based supply chains, create local food
hubs, and create awareness and education. ONFC is in favor of thinking of local as
trusting relationships (e.g., fair trade) in addition to geographical proximity. ONFC
emphasizes the ethic of cooperation and collaboration, and is involved with many
groups while also seeking to expand the networks. However, it sometimes has to rely
on products from outside Ontario and it ultimately has no overarching limitations on
products. Instead, its affiliates create their own rules and the ONFC carries products
that align with its values.
ONFC employs 90 people with an additional nine volunteer directors on their Board.
Whitteker explained that those numbers also include ‘a strong, long term core group of
employees and board members’. ONFC has a 53 000 ft2 warehouse located near Toronto
and it uses seven trucks as well as some common carriers. With 4000 products, the pro-
jected sales for 2011 were at CAD37 million. . .:

generating about CAD800 000 in operating surplus that is allocated to carry out the initiatives
identified in our operational plan for 2010–12. Members contribute an additional CAD140 000
in equity, in the form of a member loan, based on 1 percent of invoice. These financial
resources, coupled with the occasional grant program are generally sufficient to help us achieve
our operational objectives. Surplus does fluctuate from year to year depending on a number of
factors. . . We seem to have adequate resources to carry out the occasional grant application,
but are fortunate that we are very self-reliant. (Whitteker)
ONFC’s longevity and success give it a reputation that is an asset in itself, but it also
provides an example that cooperative food work can be economically viable while still
upholding environmental and social justice principles. This despite operating in the
shadow of the US-based United Natural Foods Inc., which has absorbed nearly all
natural food co-ops in North America. Whitteker also noted, ‘Our structure makes us
unique amongst privately owned distributors. Our triple bottom line and social entrepre-
neurial approach to the market is also a differentiating factor’.
There is a strong awareness about sustainability issues on the part of people working
with the Ontario Natural Food Co-op, as Renglich notes:
With food’s increasing commodification and industrialization, the things people have to eat
are not necessarily safe or nutritious, and may contribute greatly to ill health. Lack of access to
food is a source of shame and indignity, bringing Canadians to food banks or soup kitchens,
to dumpster diving, begging, and chronic hunger. . . Social justice is a natural extension of the
right to food belief I have, though I’m working on building communities with regard to food
and environmental justice.
More specific to ecological issues, this key informant went on to explain, ‘Unsustainable
agricultural practices contribute tremendously to pollution and carbon emissions and
global warming, while land-grabbing, biofuel production, and “development” contrib-
ute to unsustainable land use on prime agricultural land’. There is also a very strong
recognition of the potential from building sustainable local food systems, ‘If we hope to
encourage others to pursue alternatives in sustainable production, co-production, pro-
cessing, distribution, consumption, etc., it must be because it is empowering, enriching,
and fulfilling’. Whitteker added, ‘We need to invest more in developing a strong group
of volunteer board and committee members and could benefit by governments of all
levels supporting co-ops throughout Ontario and beyond’, and also noted that ‘we have
a well-developed network within the “alternative” food system, but could benefit from
wider public knowledge’. Despite ONFC’s continued success, Whitteker is modest about
its non-material assets: ‘Though we continue to grow and adapt both professionally and
personally, we are constrained somewhat by skills and training challenges at all levels of
the co-op. We are steadily increasing budgets to address these areas’.
The Local Organic Food Co-ops (LOFC) Network
The LOFC emerged in 2009 at a meeting of the Ontario Co-op Association. The initial
meeting brought together several local organic food co-ops who decided to work together
– whether the group will interact as a loosely affiliated network, a membership category
at ONFC, or as a co-op of co-ops continues to be discussed. Within months of launch-
ing, the LOFC came under the umbrella of ONFC and became one of ONFC’s nine stra-

Table 22.1 The 2012 list of LOFC member co-opsa
Worker-owned Eater-owned Co-ops Farmer-owned Solidarity Co-ops

Co-ops Co-ops (Multistakeholder)
The Big Carrot, The London Co-op Organic Meadow, Ottawa Valley Food
Toronto Store, London Guelph Co-op, Pembroke,
La Siembra, Ottawa Karma Food Co-op, Fitzroy Beef Farmers Ontario
Agri-Cultural Toronto Co-op, Fitzroy Niagara Local Food
Renewal Co-op, ONFC, Mississauga, Harbour, Ontario Co-op, Niagara Falls,
Durham, Ontario Ontario Sexsmith Farm Ontario
Your Local Market, Eat Local Sudbury, Co-op, Ridgeway, West End Food Co-op,
Stratford, Ontario Sudbury, Ontario Ontario Toronto
Quinte Organic By the Bushel
Farmers Co-op, Community Food
Picton, Ontario Co-op, Peterborough,
Ontario
True North Community
Co-op, Thunder Bay,
Ontario
Eastern Ontario
Local Food Co-op,
Hawkesbury
The Village Co-op,
Kingston, Ontario
Note: a. Additionally, there are several co-ops on the horizon including On the Move Organics, London;
Karma Marketplace, Penetanguishene, Ontario; Lunik Co-operative Café, Glendon College, Toronto;
Sustainable Business Co-op Café, York University Campus, Toronto; Co-op Food Co-op, University of
Toronto; 123 Farm! Co-op, Hamilton, Ontario; Wellesley Mill Redevelopment Project, Wellesley, Ontario.
For current list see http://cultivatingfoodcoops.net/members/.
tegic initiatives. In March 2010 baseline market research was completed, followed by the
second meeting in April of that year. This meeting helped create shared vision, mission,
values and purpose documents. Shortly after, the research results report and business
and marketing plan were published (Ontario’s Local Organic Food Co-ops, 2010). The
LOFC recently launched a website (http://cultivatingfoodcoops.net) filled with resources
and tools. The LOFC project is intended to support small-scale and independent initia-
tives. Right now, it is a loosely linked network of co-ops (Table 22.1). LOFC has one
Animator, Renglich, in a temporary full- time position. However, the coordination
team for LOFC includes support from ONFC with the General Manager, Purchasing
Manager and Member Relations and Education Manager all on the team – as well as
representation from the Ontario Co-op Association, and an independent consultant. The
more than three dozen individual co-ops that are now officially participating all have a
contact person who also provides input and support. Additionally, there is an advisory
panel forming in the larger community including people from retail, NGOs, educational
and farming groups.
Its purpose is to create a strong network, to educate about and promote sustainable
farming and food co-ops, and to connect and scale-up local and regional food hubs. In

terms of food hubs, their purpose is to both support existing initiatives,4 and to assist in
the creation of new regional hubs. Creating incubator kitchens and clusters of produc-
ers and processors is also being considered by the ONFC as a part of the LOFC work.
Whitteker added that creating a community of thought around sustainable food was one
of the underlying aspects of ONFC’s work and its LOFC project, in addition to facilitat-
ing creation of actual physical hubs.
ONFC’s continued success and province-wide reach makes it uniquely positioned to
assist in the development of a ‘local organic co-op value chain’ in Ontario. As Renglich
explains ‘Through co-operative development and network-building, I think it’s possible
to create an alternative affordable system in support of local food procurement and
access’. The LOFC project has already created connections and clusters of producers
and other food initiatives: ‘These clusters are then able to link into similar clusters in
other locales, strengthening and scaling up the local food programs and activities into
networks with larger reach and influence, but which still maintain their “small is beauti-
ful” principles/operations’.
In addition to the financial support from ONFC, the LOFC project has received seed
funding from OMAFRA, not-for-profits, foundations, retailers and businesses. They are
still trying to determine how to make LOFC economically sustainable beyond the start-
up phase, ‘Most of the groups we work with are assets rich but not cash rich, so member-
ship fees are not the most feasible way of creating revenue’. In contrast to the BPS that
is focused on value chains, LOFC will be looking to create a values-based supply chain
with groups funneling their raw product through LOFC, where LOFC could be partici-
pating as processors and distributors and either creating a new LOFC label, or working
with the existing ONFC label. So far, producers are very receptive of these ideas.
Outside of an OMAFRA grant, there seemed to be few government programs or poli-
cies that could be identified as resources. Nevertheless, Renglich pointed out that there
was a palpable growth in attention to local food: ‘General public policy embracing of
local food in Ontario has sort of normalized it, it’s more mainstream, it is now more
recognized as important and valuable. . . I can’t tie that to a specific policy but in general
the trends are changing’.
Renglich also identified several current challenges. Referring to Ontario’s vast size,
she noted that ‘[t]he geography we are working with sometimes makes it difficult to
connect the groups with the limited time and money for in-person meetings’. She also
added that part of the challenge was ‘working with groups that have difficulty thinking
about profitability. . .to accept that making initiatives economically sustainable does
not have to include compromising values’. Renglich further indicated that she would
like to see more representation in OMAFRA of small-scale production that straddles
both environmental and social sustainability. More public education around co-ops,
local and organic food, and labor practices was needed. Renglich also noted that the
continued success of ONFC was necessary for LOFC to flourish: ‘ONFC is one of the
last remaining co-op distributors in North America and it definitely feels the pressure of
the big natural food distributor, UNFI and its subsidiaries’. She also indicated wanting
to see government put its support behind small innovative initiatives, and pay attention
to community/grassroots work, and not just the already recognized and/or commercial
initiatives. In terms of local food initiatives more generally, Renglich identified the fol-
lowing barriers: lack of local processing and distribution capacity, lack of government

support, divided resources, loss of farmland, zoning, and access to appropriate space for
processing, warehousing and other food activities.
SCALING OUT OR UP?
Returning to the CAS and the scaling up and out literature review elaborated at the
beginning of the chapter, in the context of Ontario provincial food system initiatives, it
seems there are grounds for cautious optimism. First, adopting a CAS lens, the Ontario
provincial local food system is increasingly diverse and prolific. There has been a steady
increase of initiatives both by the provincial government and civil society organizations
especially in the last five years. Several government ministries (agriculture, health and
tourism) are working to support local food either directly or indirectly. These initia-
tives primarily address economic development opportunities through increased access
to local markets and tourism opportunities. As well, there are substantial collaborative
networks emerging at the provincial level with Sustain Ontario leading the way in this
regard. There seems to be evidence of both replication (scaling out) as well as different
ways of ‘doing food’ that have the potential for system change (scaling up). The LOFC
is an excellent example of a hybrid organization developed to meet community needs
not being addressed by government or business, and a place-based example that brings
together a unique mix of circumstances to create a Central and Eastern Canada informed
solution. If we apply the typology developed by Westley et al. (2009), we have evidence of
diversity and complexity needed for robust and resilient food systems moving forward.
We also have emergence occurring whereby unique and unpredictable programs and
initiatives are developing across the province adding to overall adaptive capacity. The
infrastructure and information flows are also growing with Sustain Ontario at the fore-
front of these efforts (Meadows, 2008). To Sustain’s credit, it is tackling the hard work
of bringing together divergent interests and getting conversations initiated on thorny
issues. There are examples of all of the five typologies proposed by Westley et al. (2009).
Learning and experimentation is taking place in many organizations. The NRC is a
good example whereby the core group provides a structure and the people on the ground
create gardens, kitchens or other programs based on community needs and opportuni-
ties. Whitteker from the ONFC is clearly a champion for local sustainable food and
provides much needed leadership, vision and mentoring. The ONFC and OMAFRA are
both seeding new local food initiatives. The difference between the types of organizations
being created can be framed with respect to the level of commitment to sustainability
goals with the ONFC committed to sustainability goals and OMAFRA focused almost
exclusively on local. Sustain typifies the fourth type as it strives to build networks and
partnerships. As yet, the opportunity to ‘think like a movement’ has yet to emerge.
On the sustainability front there is probably less cause for optimism. While the ONFC
and its associated project are impressive, they are the only organization that is able to
bring a committed focus to bear regarding the three dimensions of sustainability (social,
economic and environmental). However, its scale of the operation is still relatively tiny
(90 employees and seven trucks compared to, for example, Loblaw that has over 135 000
employees and the largest fleet of trucks in the country). Sustain Ontario is philosophi-
cally dedicated to sustainability but as an organization trying to bring conventional

producers and businesses into conversation with local, sustainable groups it is challenged
to uphold clear sustainability goals. And, while OMAFRA has become more open to
moving from export to local considerations, it has its eye on the economic ball. ONFC’s
Renglich frames it this way: ‘[T]he fact that local organic food is being recognized as a
priority for ONFC is a success in itself. . .the ONFC’s desire to support farmers directly
and play a role in strengthening small-scale production [should be recognized as a
success]’. Renglich also thought that the scale of engagement with LOFC is already a
success as was LOFC’s ability to already bring all the different groups together, ‘to be
able to reach out to isolated groups and say “you are not alone in what you are doing;
there are 25 other groups in other communities doing what you are doing”’. On a more
ideological level, Renglich thought that both the ONFC and the LOFC project carried
a great deal of relevance to communities across Ontario: ‘It’s just this basic thing of co-
operation. We are all in this together, so we should be sharing resources and connecting
around ideas and willing to bring other people in with us, rather than protecting our
individual projects’. Using the language from the CAS literature and Westley and her
colleagues’ (2009) work, scaling out through replication seems to be taking place. The
challenge now is to see if the leadership, network building, cooperation, complexity and
adaptive capacities can be established in a way that ensures sustainable AND local food
systems are maintained and not displaced by an emphasis on just the local. The food
system is littered with examples of large companies co-opting niche opportunities devel-
oped by well-meaning NGOs (Guthman, 2008; Jaffee and Howard, 2010). Hopefully,
this will not be another case in point.
We are optimistic that the ONFC’s growing complexity and multifaceted resilience is
indicative of the greater complexity and resilience of the entire alternative food system in
Ontario, as ONFC’s work (and particularly its LOFC initiative) is in a way the embodi-
ment of CAS. ONFC fittingly illustrates several of the key concepts described by Westley
et al. (2009): scaling up, scaling out, champions, networks and partnerships, and plat-
forms. Moreover, and equally important, ONFC’s work is set against the backdrop of
the other province-wide initiatives that, while generally less promising than ONFC, still
seem to at least acknowledge the need to diversify, redistribute, and strengthen Ontario’s
food system. That need appears driven by the growing awareness of how problematic the
dominant, conventional food system has become. The initiatives we observe (albeit still
problematic at times) are indicative of adaptive change and suggest that there is poten-
tial, if not always substantial action, to grow cooperation, improve food economies, and
consider environmental sustainability more seriously – in short, to rethink food and agri-
culture in Ontario in a way that offers us better food and better communities. Our opti-
mism is echoed in our interviews where the participants seemed equally hopeful about
possibilities that lie ahead. Renglich and Whitteker (Ontario Natural Food Co-op) noted
the need for rethinking institutional structures at governmental levels, and creation of
such things as Ministry of ‘good food’ and/or co-op secretariat – arguing that, while
ambitious, those ideas are not unrealistic and citing Brazil as one place where implemen-
tation of such ideas has already been quite successful. The participants also point out
that varying conditions may mean varying approaches: ‘How regional hubs will develop
will have to differ from community to community. . . In the North, we may see that we
need more freezer space and more places where meat that is hunted can be butchered
and prepared. . .whereas in Toronto, that would not be a concern’ (Nuaimy-Barker).

Perhaps this place-based dimension is the ingredient that will help these movements to
continue moving forward.
NOTES
* We would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Ontario Ministry
of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for their financial support. We are also very grateful to everyone who
participated in interviews.
1. In January 2012, CAD220 000 was allocated to either multinational corporations or large-scale producers
(Aramark, Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers,
and SKOR), CAD221 000 to health-based initiatives focused on increasing access to healthy food in
schools and hospitals, and CAD100 000 community-based local, sustainable food initiatives.
2. Savour Ottawa promotes food from the Ottawa area and connects producers, retailers, restaurateurs, and
consumers (see www.savourottawa.ca).
3. Loblaw is Canada’s largest food distributor and retailer serving over 14 million Canadians every week
through its more than 1000 retail outlets. Loblaw has the largest fleet of trucks in the country and employ-
ees more than 135 000 people throughout its operations (Loblaw, 2012).
4. ONFC is also supporting existing initiatives through other activities, for example Organic Central in
Eastern Ontario (http://www.organiccentral.ca/).
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23. The ‘White Revolution’ and dual dairy economy
structures
Bruce A. Scholten
INTRODUCTION
The term ‘White Revolution’ is linked to India, but can also be used generically to
describe modern globalised dairy systems. This chapter explains the White Revolution
and its effects as a bridge to modernity in dual economies, in the context of other agricul-
tural revolutions and the political-economic Food Regimes framing them.
In India, national gains in dairy production, availability and consumption accompa-
nied its Green Revolution in cereals. Anil Sharma notes that success in India’s Green
and White Revolutions led to cognate efforts called a Yellow Revolution in oilseeds, and
Blue Revolution in aquaculture (FAO, 2003). These transformations improved India’s
food security whilst agriculture’s share in GDP decreased from over 50 per cent in 1950
to 25 per cent at the end of the millennium. Significantly, due to India’s elastic demand
for milk and dairy products, dairy’s share of GDP actually rose, surpassing paddy rice
and wheat in value-added, as the aggregate farm sector diminished, in the context of
gains to industrial and service sectors (Dairy India, 1997, 2007).
References to the White Revolution are less ubiquitous in agricultural literature
than to the Green Revolution, which is commonplace in globalisation texts. However,
increasingly sophisticated dairy-fish-crops-biogas systems have been promoted in Dairy
Industry Development Programmes by the Food and Agricultural Organization of
the United Nations (FAO-UN) in various countries including Bangladesh, Ethiopia,
Mongolia, Thailand and Uganda (Dugdill et al., 2013). Thus, terms such as White and
Blue Revolution are becoming generic, and applied in food systems globally.
BACKGROUND TO FOOD REVOLUTIONS
A food ‘revolution’ connotes a great increase in production and supply of a certain food,
usually accomplished by increases in participation by farmers, or in productivity of seeds
and technological inputs. The White Revolution is shorthand for improvements in the
dairy subsector of livestock agriculture, while the Green Revolution generally refers to
improvements in cereals that multiplied yields.
The Green Revolution was the result of research begun in the 1940s sponsored by US
institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation, with government support. The ‘Father
of the Green Revolution’, Dr Norman Borlaug, led a team of scientists in Mexico helping
to establish the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). This
technology was transferred to India, facing famine in the 1960s as population exceeded
grain yields. Led by the late Shri C. Subramaniam, known as the ‘Father of India’s Green
461
Revolution’, and assisted in field trials by Dr M.S. Swaminathan, the country enjoyed its
own Green Revolution as rice yields tripled from the 1960s to the 1990s. However, by the
turn of the century grain yields were falling along with aquifers in the Punjab, and soil
quality suffered from salinisation and misapplication of chemicals. Thus, Swaminathan
has called for an ‘Evergreen Revolution’, with nuanced integration of inputs to sustain
resources and minimise impact on climate and environment.
India’s White Revolution will be detailed below. Here it can be noted that it relied on
the participation of many farmers to supply small amounts of milk to increase national
milk availability. Smallholders and women of all castes, comprising up to 75 per cent
of cooperative participants, benefited from small but reliable payments for milk. This
met household expenses between seasonal bouts of agricultural labour – and kept many
from indebtedness to moneylenders. Because dairying requires daily milking, it is a much
different agricultural activity from arable crops harvested yearly. Milk begins to spoil
within hours of milking, so a complex cold chain from cow, to processor, to retailer,
to consumer is necessary to preserve the fragile substance. Creditworthy cooperatives
or corporations can manage such large investments, but cooperatives have returned a
higher percentage of the sale price to Indian farmers, and offered better inputs and exten-
sion services for their cattle.
Dr Verghese Kurien (1921–2012) is called the ‘Father of India’s White Revolution’. In
1965, Kurien was charged by Prime Minister Lal Shastri to establish the National Dairy
Development Board (NDDB) in Anand, Gujarat. Its mission was to replicate, across
India, the successful low-input/low-output ‘Anand Pattern’ of dairying practised by
Anand Milk Union Limited. Its Amul (meaning ‘priceless’ in Sanskrit) brand products
trumped multinational rivals Glaxo and Unilever for Indian market share. Aware that
Europe’s dairy surpluses were about to be dumped on India – which would crush its
dairy price structures – Kurien negotiated the largest dairy programme in history sup-
ported by the FAO and World Bank. Operation Flood (1970–96) accepted European
dairy aid (EEC butter oil, milk powder), which was sold at market prices in a national
marketing system, with the profits monetised into infrastructure.
Kurien planned Operation Flood with Michael Halse, a protégé of Ray Goldberg who
coined the concept of agribusiness at Harvard Business School in the 1950s (Gill, 2013).
Dairy bovines were fed Green Revolution crop wastes, so feed for cows did not subtract
from food for humans. Relying on small-scale participation, rather than high-input/
high-output Western technology, India’s milk production soared from 20 million metric
tons (MMT) in 1970 to about 122 MMT in 2010, creating millions of rural jobs and
surpassing the USA as leader of global bovine milk production in 1998. A World Bank
(Candler and Kumar, 1998) report lauded Operation Flood for showing that no inter-
vention alleviates poverty better than one that raises smallholder incomes. Kurien was
awarded the World Food Prize in 1989, and honoured by peers such as Borlaug (USDA,
2012). Four days before Kurien’s death on 9 September 2012, a series of lectures in his
honour was inaugurated in Mumbai by Swaminathan. In 2013, Ray Goldberg moder-
ated an agribusiness panel at Harvard on a case study on ‘The White Revolution’. He
praised the iconic Amul model, which has inspired dairy industry development projects
in other countries assisted by the FAO (Rupera, 2013).
Food revolutions were accelerated by scientific and technological advances in the
twentieth century, but their ancient roots relate to a succession of Food Regimes

The ‘White Revolution’ 463
c omprising the social and political economic networks of their day. The chronology of
the world’s White Revolution can be traced through the age of mercantilism and empire,
to the British repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and decades of trade globalisation until
World War I (1914–18), through the Great Depression until World War II (1939–45),
followed by decolonisation in the Cold War as the capitalist West ‘contained’ com-
munism. This was concurrent with General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)
negotiations from 1947, which, after the fall of communism (1989–91), resulted in the
present multilateral trading system in the framework of the World Trade Organization
(WTO) established in 1995. After a brief discussion of food regimes we will return to the
‘White Revolution’ in India.
FOOD REGIMES
Food regimes conceptualise the nexus between the technological and the social dimen-
sions of agricultural revolutions, which reflect drives toward increased productivity and/
or increased participation by producers, respectively (Basu and Scholten, 2012). Atkins
and Bowler (2001, pp. 23–36) draw on French regulation theorists Michel Aglietta (1979)
and Alain Lipietz (1987) to define food regimes as ‘frameworks that organise hundreds
of different food chains at one time’. This is a process of political-economy, in which
macro actors exert power in the food chain to determine the composition of the eco-
nomic pie, and from which actors receive shares in the wealth.
In the First Food Regime, pre-1914, the key event was repeal of Britain’s Corn Laws
in 1846, removing tariffs on imported grain. Repeal was resisted by Britain’s landed
gentry, but welcomed by new manufacturing classes keen to moderate wage demands
with cheap wheat and meat from abroad. Although Britain retained lively trade with its
empire, the repercussions of Corn Law repeal were global, spurring exports from North
and South America, and boosting an unprecedented period of globalisation until it was
constrained by World War I. Trade contracted from 1918 to 1946, in post-war recession,
beggar-they-neighbour economics, and unabated Depression from 1929 until World
War II (Kindleberger [1973] 1986).
The Second Food Regime, 1947–1970s, was framed by the Cold War, as the USA and
its Western allies pursued a General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, but largely ignored
farm trade (GATT excluded dairy and sugar, which were subsidised in many countries).
Western European governments supported farmers with price supports that achieved
continental food self- sufficiency to about 1960 – and problematic grain and dairy
surpluses in the 1970s. Morgan (1979) describes how the USA used Public Law (PL)
480 (Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act 1954) food aid shipments in
surplus disposal from the 1950s (Scholten, 2011). Communist governments in the Soviet
Union and China largely ignored the GATT negotiations, as they relied on collective
farms to supply mass markets, but often resorted to barter rather than cash payments,
for example, trading oil for sugar with Cuba. Non-aligned third world countries picked
a policy mix from East and West after independence. The UK relied on empire prefer-
ence in trade with the British Commonwealth, until it joined the European Economic
Community in 1973.
The Third Food Regime is dated by Atkins and Bowler (2001, p. 29) as 1980s–present,

beginning with the political eras of Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher
in the UK. These transatlantic soulmates touted market solutions to stagflation spawned
by oil crises, US abandonment of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, and the expense
of farm supports. Le Heron (1993) describes this third regime as consisting of increased
global trading of food, consolidation of capital in food manufacturing, government
certification of new biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), con-
sumer fragmentation and dietary change, amid declines in farm supports and regulation.
Storing Europe’s surplus commodities was costly: in 1980, 70 per cent of the EEC budget
was allotted to farming, and milk support was half of that. But subsidy removal was
politically difficult in the face of farmers’ lobbies. Finally, on 1 April 1984 milk quotas
were imposed to curtail production (Scholten, 1989).1
Reaganism-Thatcherism (aka neoliberalism) interpreted Adam Smith in laissez-faire
terms (Harvey, 2003, pp. 62–73; Morgan et al., 2006), praising New Zealand that aban-
doned farm subsidies in the early 1980s. While the social construction of rich Europe’s
subsidised food system was assailed as a selfish trope of Fortress Europe by the Cairns
Group of low-cost farm exporting countries (including Argentina, New Zealand and
Australia), the potential of biotechnological improvements to productivity was extolled
by a succession of US and UK governments, which expected improvements to their trade
balances from trade-related intellectual properties.
Two events boosted neoliberalism, as China and Russia forsook communism and
Western countries abandoned Fordist corporatism for market solutions (Amin [1990]
2000). First was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, which Fukuyama (1992) portrayed as
the ‘End of History’ of the struggle between capitalism and socialist planned economies.
Next was the Uruguay Round Agricultural Agreement in the culmination of the multi-
lateral GATT process in 1994, establishing the WTO in 1995. Biotech companies such
as Monsanto had lobbied GATT negotiators and the US Department of Agriculture
(USDA) to permit GMOs, such as glyphosate-resistant seeds and the recombinant bovine
growth hormone (rBGH/rBST). These were certified by the USDA in the 1990s under
the policy of ‘substantial equivalence’ developed by the supranational Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This meant that GM foods that
could not be distinguished easily from non-GM foods were not subject to biological or
toxicological safety tests, because it was assumed that people had eaten their equiva-
lents for centuries. GM opponents protested the lack of testing, and European farmers
opposed GMOs as superfluous amid surpluses (Scholten, 1989).
In the Third Food Regime the WTO is central to regulation of macro actors such as
transnational corporations, as they organise reconstitution of food in industrial and
bioindustrial processes via global sourcing of generic commodities (McMichael, 1995).
This process was disrupted by food scares over E. coli, mad cow disease (BSE), salmo-
nella and other panics in the 1990s, which sparked a turn to quality in organic and local
foods – even raw milk, in what were informal parts of dual economies in developed coun-
tries (Murdoch and Miele, 1999; Scholten, 2007, 2011).
As the Third Agricultural Revolution continues, Lang and Heasman (2004, pp. 34–40)
see the chemically dependent productionist status quo as untenable, and likely to succes-
sion by either a life sciences approach to individual health needs advocated by private
sector agribusiness and pharmaceutical firms, or an ecological paradigm of public partic-
ipation in healthier food systems built on traditional sustainable farming methods. Lang

and Heasman favour the latter solution, while many neoliberals favour the former. It has
become common to hear of a ‘Gene Revolution’ of GMOs, following the original Green
Revolution led by Borlaug globally, and Subramaniam and Swaminathan in India. The
Gene Revolution is different from previous ones due to its technology, which allows
transfer of genes from one kingdom to another, such as fish genes to a vegetable, as in the
Flavr Savr tomato developed by Calgene (now owned by Monsanto). Another difference
is that Gene Revolution research has not been funded by governments and foundations,
but by private corporations for profit. Pingali and Raney (2005) ask a pertinent ques-
tion: ‘From the Green Revolution to the Gene Revolution: how will the poor fare?’ A
wave of suicides by indebted farmers followed adoption of biotech Bt Cotton in rainfed
(i.e., unirrigated) areas of India. Earlier, Green Revolution high yield seeds were deemed
a public good, and appropriate institutional mechanisms offered farmers extension to
support the transition. The private GMO seed and chemical companies headlining the
Gene Revolution have not always been able to guide farmers to success. Pingali and
Raney (2005, abstract) conclude: ‘A strong public sector – working cooperatively with
the private sector – is essential to ensure that the poor benefit from the Gene Revolution’.
Having discussed the social construction of food regimes, we turn to the series of agri-
cultural revolutions beginning in prehistory, characterised by technological approaches
to productivity and social approaches to participation, leading to the White Revolution
beginning in the twentieth century.
BACKGROUND OF THE WHITE REVOLUTION
Few technological changes are socially neutral. Historically, they shed labour through
industrial ‘appropriationism’, such as the replacement of human labour and animal
traction with tractors, or ‘substitutionism’ of synthetic for traditional materials, such as
plastic for leather, or attacking weeds with chemicals instead of hoes (Fine et al., 1996,
p. 150; Atkins and Bowler, 2001, p. 60). The key to India’s White Revolution is that it
was achieved by widespread social participation by the rural poor in the informal part
of India’s dual economy. Poor and landless farmers prospered with grassroots coop-
eratives, rather than the mechanisation, irrigation and chemicals that characterised the
Green Revolution.
The First Agricultural Revolution following millennia of hunting and gathering in pre-
history was marked by the domestication of wheat and rice (Knox and Marston, 2007,
pp. 310–11). This is relevant because contemporary globalisation is unthinkable without
the surpluses afforded by settled domestic crops and livestock. Atkins et al. (1998, p. 17)
suggest cooks – often women – were pivotal in development of seed agriculture, perhaps
from observing volunteer plants in ‘nitrogen-rich household waste dumps’ around set-
tlements. The domestication of sheep about 9000 years before present (BP), and goats
about 7500 BP (p. 18), presaged the White Revolution in utilisation of mammals’ milk
for humans in the hearths of the Fertile Crescent, Nile Valley and probably South Asia.
Domestication of plants and animals enabled food surpluses that contributed to the rise
of cities and specialisation of labour.
The Second Agricultural Revolution’s timing and sites are disputed, but there is consen-
sus that it accelerated in the early nineteenth century, concurrent with political-economic

developments and the Industrial Revolution centred in Britain (during what Atkins and
Bowler, 2001 call the First Food Regime). Capitalist finance exploited new inventions
and diffused manufactured farm implements and processes worldwide such as iron
tools, water power, pumps, coal-powered steam engines, bridges and breweries that
fed brewers’ wastes to adjacent milk cows in cities such as London (Atkins, 2010). The
results were better crop and livestock yields, with improved yokes for oxen and new uses
for horses. In the face of Malthusian predictions of famine, new inputs such as fertilisers
and technologies including crop rotation improved yields and soil fertility, while ditches
widened grain production in areas such as East Anglia. Massive landscape modifications
were made possible by innovations in capitalist finance and government fiscal capac-
ity. The Bridgewater Canal in Northwest England, finished in 1769, and the Erie Canal
joining the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean, completed in 1825, improved distribu-
tion and lowered transport costs to farmers far from population centres and seaports.
But canals could be zero-sum technology. The reason New England is more forested
today than the past is because depleted northeast farms that once supplied New York
City were displaced by farms in the Midwest breadbasket linked by canals and trains. US
government support for the ideology of Manifest Destiny promoted western expansion,
as the McCormick reaper decreased labour and increased productivity.
Before transport improvements of the nineteenth century, most food and dairy con-
sumption depended on local production. DuPuis (2002) details how milk trains, on a
growing rail network from New York City up the Hudson River Valley, linked remote
farmers to urban consumers. Such vertical linkages and upscaling weakened the prac-
tice of colonial era families to keep a milk cow in the backyard. DuPuis’ book Nature’s
Perfect Food echoes growing reverence for nature amid nineteenth-century industrialisa-
tion. Bovine milk is nutritious but, unfortunately, many diseases are shared by humans
and domesticated animals, and milk proved an endemic source of bovine tuberculosis.
In Liquid Materialities (2010) Atkins documents how farmers’ opposition to tuberculo-
sis eradication measures contributed to perhaps 600 000 human deaths in Britain before
vaccination in the mid-20th century.
The Third Agricultural Revolution grew from the second in the late nineteenth century
as new technologies and social mobilities presaged the general White Revolution of
global dairy cold chains. In Merchants of Grain (1979) Morgan notes that train and ship
transport from the American Midwest enabled its heartland to rival traditional bread-
baskets such as the Ukraine. Refrigeration was a major advance in dairy cold chains.
A shift from sail to coal to oil power, and telegraphy enhanced global command-and-
control. The chemical industry turned from the use of nitrates for munitions in World
War II to fertiliser. Nerve agents were converted to inputs such as pesticides. Petroleum
use increased dramatically, making farming less environmentally sustainable. Lang and
Heasman (2004, pp. 235–6) note:
Between 1945 and 1985, US maize production changed in its energy mix. For example, labour
was reduced 5-fold while energy from machinery increased by a factor of 2.5. More strikingly,
energy input from fertilisers and irrigation increased 15-and 18-fold respectively, yet over the
40-year period, the yield/ratio actually declined from 3.4 to 2.9.
The biotechnological advancements of the Green Revolution starting in Mexico

in the 1940s constitute a genetic intensification of the Third Agricultural Revolution.

Success in Mexico spurred development of rust-resistant wheat and high-yield variety

(HYV) maize, and rice in partnership with the Philippines and Asia. In India, Borlaug,
the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation worked with Subramaniam and the
younger Swaminathan to multiply grain yields, especially in the Punjab breadbasket.
The ingredients of the Green Revolution were essentially HYV seeds, chemical inputs
such as nitrate fertilisers and pesticides, irrigation, electrification and mechanisation.
As the Green Revolution recorded bumper grain harvests, observers questioned why
India’s dairy sector did not adopt similar technologies, but the unique properties of milk
complicate answers.
Milk is fragile. Atkins (2010) notes how milk developed from a local by-product of
cattle raised for meat or traction to commercial products such as butter and powdered
milk in the First Food Regime. Like DuPuis, Atkins observes that, centuries ago in
Europe and North America, buffalo, cow, goat, sheep or other mammalian milk was less
often drunk as a liquid than turned into buttermilk, butter or cheese due to its propensity
to spoil. Ice was a less-than-ideal means to preserve milk or meat before the advent of
refrigerators, which pumped gases such as freon to chill. Refrigerated ships and trains
brought butter, meat and fruit from farms to metropoles.
India’s White Revolution is arguably a hybrid of the Second and Third Agricultural
Revolutions: while its cold chain relied on transport improvements akin to those in
America’s dairy expansion in the nineteenth century, the petrol-based ‘tractorisation’
that marked North American and European dairying is less intrinsic to India’s low-
input/low-output dairying.
Sceptics question conventional or organic confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs)
that have followed the zero-grazing models perfected in California in the 1960s. CAFOs
consume petrol to carry fodder and outsourced rations to cows in feedlots, then burn
more petrol to carry cattle wastes to fields – when cows perform those functions natu-
rally (Scholten, 2010b, 2010c, 2011). From 1950 to 2000 the average yield of US dairy
cows more than doubled, from 8000 lb (3636 kg) per year to 20 000 lb (9090 kg). But
each hundredweight (cwt) of milk yield requires greater investment that farmers try to
amortise by the economies-of-scale of large herds fed in the feedlots.
As a result of production stress many CAFO cows burn out, say dairy workers who
organise totally mixed rations, blending corn, soybeans, wheat, forages, concentrates,
minerals, proteins, and vitamins from industrialised food commodities. Such feeding
results in significantly more hoof, stomach and breeding problems among cows in
confined, concrete-floored mega-dairies than pastured cows grazing on grass pasture
(Haskell et al., 2006, 2007). The culling rate in some confined herds approached 50 per
cent even without GMO hormones. A case for intensive, high-input/high-output CAFOs
is made by Jude Capper of Washington State University, who insists that increasing
yield per cow is the best way to lessen dairy’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (Capper,
2012; see also Steinfeld et al., 2006). Family farm advocates disagree, prioritising pasture
grazing (Cornucopia Institute, 2013).
This begs Kautsky’s (1899) Agrarian Question: is agriculture different from manu-
facture? Are cows different from cars? The answer was yes to 300 dairy families in the
US Midwest who formed what became Organic Valley cooperative in 1986. By 2013, it
comprised over 12 000 families nationwide. Its website claims that many Organic Valley
farmers prefer to accept less than 50 lb (23 kg) milk per day rather than the usual 70 lb

(32 kg) conventional farmers expect, and that farmers observe that this practice reduces
stress on the animals and increases longevity.
Not only animals suffer from confinement dairying: mergers of family-scale dairy
farms into mega-dairies also shed human labour, threatening the socioeconomic sustain-
ability of communities, whose businesses, shops and services thrive with patronage from
surrounding rural workers (Scholten, 1997b). Fearing rural depopulation, Europe’s
post-war Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) encouraged community sustainability
with milk price supports and environmental payments to small farmers (Scholten, 1989,
1997a). In comparison, the Yale Sustainable Food Program (2005) reports the tally of
American farms fell from 7.8 million in 1935 to just 2 million in 1998, and weaned small
farmers off subsidies, while doubling subsidies to corn, rice, soy or wheat farms produc-
ing over USD250 000 annually. Small dairy farms dwindled in structural consolidation
during the 2000–08 terms of President George W. Bush.
This section’s discussion of food regimes and agricultural revolutions has identified
tension between the drive to raise productivity by displacing labour with technology, and
social planning to stabilise ruralities with cooperation. Different socioeconomic policies
have been favoured by the USA and continental Europe, respectively, in the Third Food
Regime, when UK–US leadership drove liberalisation of agriculture and dairying in the
GATT/WTO process. The aforementioned Organic Valley approach can be called a low-
input/low-output system. In its preference for participation by many thriving farmers,
rather than a few corporate-owned mega-dairies, and its consideration for animals, the
environment and local communities, it shares Europe’s policy of multifunctionalism,
that is, multiple socio-environmental goals along with food production. This is also akin
to the community ethos of India’s dairy cooperatives.
INDIA’S WHITE REVOLUTION2
Dairy development in India illustrates how political embeddedness facilitates or resists

different models, with diverse impacts on social groups and environments. It also shows
how productionist paradigms can recur where they had earlier been trumped by partici-
patory models. By the 1960s India’s dairy sector was in the doldrums. Milk production
of 20 MMT in 1950 rose to barely 22 MMT in 1970. In this time of rapid population
growth, per capita availability of milk fell from 124 g in 1950 to 114 g in 1970 (FAO,
1990, 1994; Dairy India, 1997, 2007). This was a public concern in a country where ghee
and buttermilk featured in most diets, and its proteins were crucial to the 40 per cent of
the population who were vegetarian.
It is little known that the origins of India’s White Revolution predate its Green
Revolution, with cooperative dairying underway in the western state of Gujarat, north
of Mumbai. Overall, India’s situation was complicated with numerous reasons why a
country that venerated milk had poor dairy performance. Many state dairy programmes
suffered political manipulation, over-manning and fiscal waste. In at least eight states
it was illegal to slaughter cows. Unproductive ones were released by urban dairies to
wander, slowing traffic and prompting calls to move dairying from cities. But if cattle
moved outside cities it compounded the problem of milk spoilage and adulteration to
consumers. With few exceptions, India lacked infrastructure to deliver fresh milk from

countryside to cities or process it for delivery; so urban dairies grappled with the logistics
of spoilage, fodder and wastes. How could the sector satisfy urban milk droughts while
facilitating transition from informal to formal sectors of the dual economy? The answer
was Operation Flood.
Kenda Cunningham (2009, p. 4) divides India’s dairy development into four stages:
(1) pre-independence, (2) post-independence, (3) Operation Flood and pre-reforms, and
(4) post-Operation Flood and post-reforms. These demarcations are used below.
Pre-Independence (before 1947)
India’s White Revolution was facilitated by social and political links to the independence
movement preceding the nation’s Green Revolution. In 1946, according to Heredia’s
(1997) book The Amul India Story, dairy farmers in Kheda (later Kaira) District of
Gujarat were unhappy with remuneration from Mr Polson, a local Parsi with a British-
sounding surname and the monopoly on supplying milk to the British Raj in Bombay
(later Mumbai), 250 miles (400 km) south of Anand (Heredia, 1997; Scholten and Basu,
2009). The farmers turned to Tribhuvandas Patel who won support from independence
leader Sardar Patel. Heredia (1997, p. 6) writes that Sardar Patel opposed communism,
doubted socialism, thought Gandhi’s rural idyll naive, and distrusted Soviet-style indus-
trialisation – but favoured a three-part development strategy balancing technology, uni-
versity education of agricultural leaders, and farmers’ cooperatives to maximise gains to
rural families and sustain village societies.
The farmers took Sardar Patel’s advice to boycott Polson. After a 15-day strike led
by Shri Morarji Desai (later Indian Prime Minister) and Tribhuvandas Patel (local
Tribhuvandas had encouraged such action for decades), the farmers won agreement
from the milk commissioner of Bombay to ‘bypass the middleman’ (a recurring phrase
in cooperative lore) and buy milk directly from them. Thus, Kaira District Cooperative
Milk Producers Union Ltd (KDCMPU) was founded on 14 December 1946, led by
Tribhuvandas Patel. The villages of Kaira supplied just 250 litres per day (lpd) of milk
to the union, but with input from hired technocrats gradually raised output to 5000 lpd.
Post-Independence (Pre-Operation Flood 1950s–1960s)
After Independence in 1947, the most historic decision of Kaira Union founder chair
Tribhuvandas Patel was hiring and retaining Verghese Kurien to run the dairy in 1950.
An ambitious Keralite who studied nuclear physics and earned a Master of Science in
metallurgy from Michigan State University, Kurien was obligated to repay his tuition
debt to the Indian government by working in Anand from 1949. Kurien told me in
interviews in 1998 that he did not know one end of a cow from another when assigned
his placement – from which he regularly demanded transfer. Ironically, he stayed in the
obscure cow town, eventually gaining a supportive wife, Molly. Kurien accepted Sardar
Patel’s insistence on economic policies that developed human capacity alongside agricul-
tural productivity, and later observed: ‘We are not here to develop cows, but to develop
people’ (George, 1994, p. 3).
Kurien became chief strategist in India’s dairy revolution. He was piqued that India
possessed more bovines than any other country but that its dairy market suffered

ultinational exploitation. Hardy indigenous buffalo were kept by many rural poor in
m
India’s dual economy, but Western experts airily suggested India switch to European
breeds of cows for higher yields, because they thought it impossible to make powder
from rich buffalo milk with its higher lactose and solids-not-fat (SNF) content. But
in 1953, against advice from UNICEF, the Bombay Milk Commission, Britain, New
Zealand and multinationals, Kurien and engineer H.M. Dalaya showed the world how
to produce buffalo milk powder (Kamath, 1989; Heredia, 1997; Scholten, 2010a).
In 1955, Kaira Union became parent to Anand Milk Union Ltd., called AMUL. By
the mid-1960s the farmers’ cooperative union (joining Kaira to other Gujarati coops
such as Dudhsagar Dairy), alternately called Amul or Anand, was known for prosperity,
and leadership accountable to farmers. The biological fragility of milk makes it apt for
cooperative organisation because, unlike arable crops that can be stored indefinitely, it
must be consumed locally and quickly unless it is converted to butter, powder, and so
forth (Figure 23.1). Costa Pinto (2009) acknowledges that neoliberal practises and glo-
balisation have marginalised cooperatives, but highlights their contributions to poverty
reduction due to advantages in the market place.
Kurien, Tribhuvandas and cooperative farmers were determined that by cutting out
the middleman, they controlled not only procurement of milk from fellow members, and
processing of raw milk into value-added dairy products, but also marketing (the only
point where earnings accrued). Amul (2012) describes its world famous Anand Pattern,
Source: Photo by Bruce Scholten and Martha Young-Scholten, used with permission.
Figure 23.1 Amul range of dairy products including milk powder, butter, ghee, cheese,
and infant milk

or Amul model, as a three-tiered structure with cooperative societies at village level,

federated under a milk union at district level, and a federation of member unions at the
state level.
Anand’s assistance in organising dairy cooperatives in neighbouring Mehsana, Surat
and other districts was noticed by Prime Minister Lal Shastri of the Congress Party
linked to the independence movement. After a visit with Gujarati farmers and consul-
tation with Tribhuvanadas and Kurien in 1965, PM Shastri established the National
Dairy Development Board in Anand, headed by Kurien, to replicate Anand Pattern
dairy coops across India. Instead of high-input, high-technology Western or Soviet
models, Anand strategised the low-input/ high-output Anand Pattern that did not ‘pit
man against beast’. Milk production was additional to arable crops for humans; cows
and buffalo often relied on roadside or forest grazing, with fodder such as rice paddy
stalks and concentrated pellets sourced from Green Revolution crops and food pro-
cessing waste, along with extension information, and artificial insemination (AI) from
cooperatives.
The three-tier Anand Pattern was as much a social as a technological model. While it
was lauded for improving national nutrition, and out-competing foreign multinationals
Glaxo, Lever and Nestlé to improve India’s trade balance, it also had a churning effect
when farmers from castes including Hindus, Muslims, Christians and tribals queued to
pour milk and receive payment together.
The Anand Pattern was sustainable when the monsoon was late because its environ-
mental demands were far more modest than Western-style intensive dairying. Amul
listed up to three-quarters of cooperative members as small, marginal, landless or women
farmers who supplied as little as a litre per day to village milk societies. But many drops
made a flood, which eventually met effective demand for milk from urban consumers.
Social effects of the Anand Pattern were profound in ruralities. The poorest of the poor
included many landless labourers whose income derived from seasonal work on large
farms – when cash flow stopped between labouring stints they were vulnerable to mon-
eylenders. Therefore, small but regular payments at village weighing stations improved
their economic resilience and ameliorated indebtedness. So, when India’s cities were
parched for milk, eyes looked to Gujarat for leadership.
The global dairy situation was unbalanced. Subsidies in the European Economic
Community’s Common Agricultural Policy (EEC-CAP) made Europe – ravaged in
World War II – self-sufficient in food by the late 1960s. Surpluses dubbed ‘butter
mountains’ and ‘milk lakes’ were policy jargon. Aggregate Indian demand for milk far
exceeded domestic supply, while European politicians envied the kudos reaped by the
USA for aid in its PL 480 Food for Peace programme, and attempts were made to extend
dairy aid from the EEC to India.
Unfortunately, food aid is a two-edged sword that can disincentivise production and
worsen food security or sovereignty. Many precedents document the perils of dairy
aid. For example, uncontrolled commodities undermined a UN FAO dairy restora-
tion project in Bangladesh after its secession from Pakistan in the 1970s, but another
post-conflict project in Uganda was relatively successful in the 1980s when commodity
aid disruptions were avoided (Scholten and Dugdill, 2012). It was not beneath venal
politicians to advance their careers in publicity over food aid – only to have cheap or
dumped commodity imports price local farmers out of the market. The NDDB realised

Europe’s dairy mountains – expensively refrigerated at taxpayers’ expense – were bound

for India. But rather than allow dairy aid to supplant India’s milch farmers, Kurien and
Michael Halse of the FAO, devised Operation Flood to monetise EEC commodities into
infrastructure to disperse potentially disastrous dairy aid around the country. As The
Economist put it in its 2012 obituary of Kurien: ‘[d]umping by foreigners, which might
have killed the domestic industry, thus enabled it to thrive’ (The Economist, 2012; see
also Scholten, 2010a, p. 9).
Operation Flood and Pre-reforms (1970s–1980s)
Operation Flood (OF) was one of the world’s largest ever development programmes,
certainly the largest using dairy commodity aid. Delays and extensions were numerous,
but these are the widely accepted three phases of Flood (NDDB, 1998, 2012a, 2012b;
Scholten, 2010a):
OF-I, 1970–80 Monetisation of commodity aid got underway on an unprecedented

scale, as dairy products were recombined from skimmed milk powder and butter oil from
the EEC via the World Food Programme (WFP). Terms were negotiated by Kurien and
the NDDB and Indian Dairy Corporation (which was project authority for OF, later
absorbed by NDDB). Original plans for OF-I aimed at linking India’s 18 best milksheds
with metropolitan Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Chennai. Later NDDB histories (1998)
say this was 27 milksheds in ten states, reflecting growing competencies and ambitions.
Much of the early phases were undertaken in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh
and Karnataka. About 1.5 million farm families took part in OF-I, and rural procure-
ment rose from a pre-project level of 0.46 lpd to 2.2 million lpd nationally. As a metric,
it helps to know that Amul coop’s membership in 2012 is over 3 million – double the
participants in OF-I, while national coop membership is about 15 million.
OF-II, 1981–85 While Kurien dealt with the EEC and the World Bank, the stamp of
the World Food Programme remained on OF-II, as about 136 milksheds were linked to
290 urban markets. Seed capital raised through a World Bank loan and sale of WFP/
EEC gifts created what the NDDB called ‘a self-sustaining system of 43 000 village coop-
eratives covering 4.25 million milk producers’ and direct marketing of milk by produc-
ers’ cooperatives (resulting in the transfer of profits from milk contracts) increased by
several million litres a day. In OF-II, production of milk powder (necessary to balance
seasonal and geographical availability of milk) rose from 20 000 tonnes in the pre-project
year to many times that in 1989 – a result of monetisation of dairy aid into the new
National Milk Grid System (Figure 23.2) and appropriate infrastructure. While it likely
took until the mid-1990s for the NDDB coops’ share of national milk output to exceed
10 per cent, the rapid increase in aggregate output underlined the benefits of monetising
the threat of dairy aid into productive infrastructure.
OF-III, 1985–96 OF-III consolidated gains from OF-II and extended NDDB’s ability
to procure and market more and more milk daily. More emphasis was put on veterinary
care and extension, feeding (symbiotic with the NDDB Yellow Revolution oilseeds
project), and breeding of non-descript cattle. Daily collections of 500 lpd in Anand in

Delhi
Calcutta
Bombay
Regular supply
Madras Seasonal supply
0 Km 500
Source: Created by Peter J. Atkins (1993), used with permission.
Figure 23.2 Final form of the National Milk Grid System with Mother Dairies in
Bombay/Mumbai, Calcutta/Kolkatta, Delhi and Madras/Chennai
1948, grew to 1 million lpd by 1990. The NDDB maintained that by eliminating ‘mid-
dlemen’ it increased an assured income to over 10 million farm families. From NDDB
claims that migrating population is settling down draws the conclusion that educating
children of former nomads was easier than in the past; NDDB literature says that in

OF-III about 75 000 village cooperatives were linked to 170 district-level cooperatives
in a federal cooperative marketing structure in each state in India. The NDDB claimed
coop products competed in the open market with other coops as well as the private dairy
sector that runs side by side (Scholten, 2010a, p. 19; see also NDDB, 1998, 2012a, 2012b).
Doubts were rife. Martin Doornbos, Shanti George and others at the Institute of
Social Studies at The Hague critiqued Operation Flood. George (1985, p. 249) predicted
that EEC donations might ‘well turn out to be Trojan horses’ to permanent depend-
ence. But Atkins attributed such scepticism to ‘academic fashion to criticise any pro-
gramme that was large’ (personal communications in the 1990s). Atkins met Doornbos’s
(Doornbos and Nair, 1990) criticisms in a rejoinder in the Food Policy journal (1988),
mapping successes in replication of the Anand Pattern of cooperative dairying in several
Indian states. Alvares called Operation Flood ‘a White Lie’ (1985), suggesting consump-
tion increases were entirely based on EEC dairy aid.
Based on work by Atkins, my research turned the Agrostat-FAO computer database
into charts, maps and tables comparing India’s dairy performance, superior to compara-
tor countries including Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Zimbabwe (Scholten,
2010a, pp. 172–9). Bangladesh was disinsentivised by dairy commodity imports after
its war of independence (Scholten and Dugdill, 2012). Zimbabwe suffered poor growth
with large-scale, top-down dairy farms, the opposite of the grassroots Anand Pattern.
Meanwhile, Indian per capita intake of butter and ghee rose 20 per cent from 1.0 kg in
1961 to 1.2 kg in 1992; per capita intake of milk excluding butter rose 40 per cent from 39
kg in 1961 to 54 kg in 1989. India’s consumption gains are doubly impressive considering
that its population swelled nearly 50 per cent from 539 million in 1970 to 797 million in
1988 (Scholten, 2010a).
FAO data show that in per capita consumption of milk (excluding butter), the world’s
exponential growth 1961–92 was positive (0.2 per cent), unlike that for butter and ghee,
which was negative (−1.1 per cent; see Scholten, 2010a, p. 179). In our comparison
group, India (1.9 per cent) shows a high rate of per capita consumption growth of milk
(ex. butter) next to Bangladesh (0.4 per cent), Egypt (0.8 per cent), Pakistan (0.1 per cent)
and Zimbabwe (−0.2 per cent). Turkey (−0.6 per cent) shows falling consumption.
Sri Lanka (1.9 per cent) shows identical growth to India in its rate of intake rise, perhaps
due to advice solicited from Anand.
Before 1984 Operation Flood experienced pricing problems, initially beyond control
of authorities in Anand. Lipton (1985) found evidence of counterproductive pricing.
There were scandalous instances of processors ignoring domestic milk because EEC
commodities were cheaper – the moral hazard that aid critics warned against. According
to Atkins (1988, p. 306) the Government of India (1984) report by L.K. Jha et al held
that ‘combined low urban retail prices and rural farmgate prices’ set by state politicians
in cities like Kolkata and New Delhi ‘offend against the principle of social justice’ and
disincentivise farmers (Government of India, 1985). Such moral hazard caused market
failure.
Known as the Jha Committee Report (GoI 1984), Scholten (2010a) claims it was a
tipping point toward success, by mandating that indigenous farmers receive remunerative
prices (Scholten, 2010a). Production curves improved after urban processors including
Mother Dairies (Figure 23.3) could buy domestic milk cheaper than EEC commodities.
The Jha Report also mandated better extension services and inputs for farmers. These

Figure 23.3 Mother Dairy Gandhinagar in Ahmedabad making Amul and Sagar

products for the Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation
helped milk flow from villages to Mother Dairies. In a controversial but successful mar-
keting tactic, milk was sold in new urban vending machines at non-inflationary prices, as
part of monetisation of EEC aid into appropriate infrastructure.
Crucial debates centred on the potential for new technologies to weaken the economy,
or harm traditional social networks. With regard to infrastructure, critics claimed that
importing stainless steel infrastructure for the National Milk Grid System would skew
the country’s trade balance. But that argument evaporated as monetisation of EEC com-
modities stimulated hundreds of domestic firms such as Larsen and Toubro to manufac-
ture 90 per cent of India’s dairy equipment (Kamath, 1989, p. 97).
Critics blasted suspected plans for wholesale introduction of European bovine genet-
ics, claiming Holsteins and Friesians would succumb to the subcontinent’s climate and
disease threats. George (1985) argued the case for indigenous buffalo, which produce
less milk but exist on a hardier diet than domestic Zebu-Brahmin or foreign breeds.
Fortunately, Anand was buffalo friendly. After all, they were world pioneers in making
powder from buffalo milk – and buffalo fit the low-input/low-output Anand Pattern. By
1997 buffalo produced 57 per cent of all India’s milk, compared with 20 per cent from
indigenous-Desi-Brahman cows, and 23 per cent from crossbred-hybrid cows (Dairy
India, 1997, p. 62; Scholten, 2010a, pp. 234–6). Although feeding is often more impor-
tant than breeding, cross-breeding of European with Indian stock gradually brought

Figure 23.4 Old and new cattle and cattleherds on the Anand-Ahmedabad road
more acceptance. A study of milch animals in 1138 villages and 13 682 milch animal
households by Bhide and Chaudhari (Dairy India, 1997, pp. 61–6) of the National
Council of Applied Economic Research for the NDDB found crossbreds accounted
for 14.5 per cent of dairy cattle. Cunningham (2009, p. 19) concludes that, ‘even if
crossbreeding has problems, harsh criticisms are indeed exaggerative’. Basu (2009) also
reports increasing success with crossbreds (Figure 23.4).
Gender questions rose. Traditionally, village women turned milk into buttermilk, ghee
and other preserved forms, so there was concern that an increase in cooperative market-
ing would harm family nutrition, devalue women’s labour or unduly increase women’s
workloads. Cunningham writes: ‘Important to note is that women play a vital role in
caring for the milch animals and therefore these extension services significantly impact
women’s knowledge, confidence and societal status’, in line with studies noting benefits
to women (Cunningham, 2009, pp. 18–19).
Debates subsided after 1998 when Candler and Kumar published their landmark
report for the World Bank, India: The Dairy Revolution. Candler and Kumar found that,
far from becoming dependent on Europe, India produced ever more milk of its own.
Operation Flood’s effects on women’s work and children’s nutrition were improved via
cash from milk sales. Candler and Kumar (1998, p. xxi) observed this lesson: ‘By raising
incomes, an apparently simple single-commodity project can have multiple beneficial
effects, including nutrition, education (especially of girls), and job-creation’.

Cooperatives prided themselves in the late 1990s when India surpassed the USA as
the premier global milk producer. However, in this phase of the Third Agricultural
Revolution, the Anand Model stressing social participation was at odds with the rising
ideology of neoliberalism.
Post-Operation Flood and Post-reforms
Candler and Kumar (1998) explain that the World Bank’s own 1996 Livestock Sector
Review signalled the end of its funding for cooperative dairying in India, in the belief
that the private sector was more efficient than the cooperative sector, and by a serious
misreading of the ‘cost of Operation Flood [at] $5.06 billion in 1996 dollars. . .versus a
re-estimate by [Candler and Kumar’s] study of $2.98 billion in 1996 dollars’ (Candler
and Kumar, 1998, p. 12). But it was not just arithmetical errors that caused the Bank to
withdraw funding. Candler and Kumar write, ‘the key argument is that the project is not
consistent with the present GOI and Bank strategy of levelling the playing field for agro-
industrial development between cooperatives and private entrepreneurs’ (ibid.).
Another factor in what Scholten and Basu (2009) call a ‘White Counter-Revolution’
was economic liberalisation, begun in 1991 amid foreign account deficits triggered by oil
price rises in the first Gulf War. The old Licence Raj of the Nehruvian planned economy
faded as hundreds of private entrants competed with dairy cooperatives for farmers’
milk, sometimes poaching them at unsustainable rates. The Economist (2012, paragraph
7) claims, ‘[l]iberalisation in 1991 came as an appalling shock. . . Asked why the mood
had turned against him when he was India’s dairy hero, its doodhwallah, he would snap
back. . . Why was Caesar stabbed?’
In my interviews with Kurien in 1998, he was upbeat, vaunting cooperatives’ gains and
calling for legal freedom from political meddling. Later, he was disappointed when his
erstwhile protégé and successor as head of the NDDB, Dr (Miss) Amrita Patel, granted
dairy farmers’ cooperatives less than 50 per cent control in joint ventures with the
NDDB’s Mother Dairies (which soon failed). But when around 100 000 farmer suicides
marked the genetically modified Bt cotton sector, Kurien claimed in his autobiography
that, wherever there were farmers’ cooperatives, there were no suicides (Kurien, 2007;
Scholten and Basu, 2009). Kurien reiterated his unshakable belief that the ‘entire value
chain from procurement to [processing to] marketing is the exclusive domain of the
farmer. The moment the farmer loses. . .it, he is nothing more than a contract labourer’
(Kurien, 2007, p. 8). The Economist (2012, paragraph 6) assayed: ‘“Socialism” never
described what he was doing. This was democracy: producers running everything them-
selves, the selling, the processing and, most of all, the marketing’.
For decades Kurien kept the consumer milk price in line with inflation, but after Patel
succeeded him at NDDB, retail prices exceeded inflation. Cooperatives also lag the
private sector in procurement, which affects development because private contractors
pay less for milk, reducing smallholders’ incomes and well-being. Critics say it would
be socially and environmentally advantageous to establish cooperatives in new areas
outside Gujarat and Karnataka – Patel nods to this, but much of a USD352 million
loan from the World Bank in 2012 for National Dairy Plan Phase 1 focuses on genetics
and other technologies of productivity (Basu and Scholten, 2012; Scholten, 2012). Pro-
Kurien dairy analyst R.N. Bhaskar (2012, p. 37) depicts this as the last rites of the Kurien

era: ‘NDDB has failed even to meet the overall national [production increase] average of
2.5 per cent. . . If this is the track record of NDDB in the cooperative sector, can it now
boost production in the country as a whole?’
On 1 March 2014, Dr Amrita Patel was succeeded as chair of the NDDB by Nanda
Kumar, a retired Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer. Bhaskar (2014, paragraph
2) claimed, ‘[t]he cooperative milk industry believes Patel destroyed much of the vision
promoted by Dr. Verghese Kurien’. There was also criticism that Kumar was not trained
in agriculture, but neither was Kurien when he first reached Anand. Optimists hope
Kurmar’s previous experience at the National Disaster Management Authority gives
him the logistical sense to stimulate social development along with dairy production in
untapped areas.
The cooperative movement continues to thrive in areas of Karnataka and Gujarat.
Amul Chair P.G. Bhatol (Amul, 2012, paragraph 3) boasts:
[W]ith the replication of the Anand pattern under the White Revolution, we have been able
to make this natural energy drink available to more and more people of India. Currently, per
capita availability of milk in India is 280 ml per day which is higher than the WHO’s minimum
recommendation.
Tribals such as Adivasis have formed new village societies linked to Amul – these former
nomads are vaulting from the First to the Third Food Regime in the early twenty-first
century.
India’s White Revolution remains a global model for UN-FAO dairy industry devel-
opment programmes (Dugdill et al., 2013). Although the European dairy surpluses that
were monetised in Operation Flood are no longer available, the World Bank (2008)
has announced plans to replicate the Anand Pattern in Africa. Anand’s principles of
democratic farmers’ cooperation, remunerative prices and appropriate technology
inspire efforts such as the East African Dairy Development project assisted by Heifer
International and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with the prospect that
transnational Nestlé will serve as a buyer (EADD, 2011). Government subsidies, which
primed European and US dairying in the pre-1980s as part of the Third Agricultural
Revolution, have waned in neoliberalism, so global corporations are turning to devel-
oping countries for low-cost milk. Lessons from India’s White Revolution will inform
future debates between productivity and participation, as globalising links tighten
among climate, nutrition, population and resources.
DUAL ECONOMIES: DAIRY AS A BRIDGE
Corbridge (2009, p. 173) writes that a dual economy is found where an economy is com-
posed of ‘the modern economy and the pre-modern economy’, for example in Dutch
economist J.H. Boeke’s (1953) study of Indonesia. Dairying illustrates dual economies
in many countries. A prime example is India’s White Revolution (Scholten, 2010a), a
global model of socioeconomic participation and human development. It hearkened to
the Gandhian policy of cooperation because, in its halcyon days (1970–96), it organ-
ised participation by many smallholders rather than deploying the highest technologies

among a few elite farmers. According to the idea that many drops make a flood, over 13
million farm families now participate in dairy farmers’ cooperatives.
A divide persists between informal and formal sectors in many developing countries.
Most Indian milk production still occurs in informal (i.e., subsistence) situations (Dairy
India, 1997, 2007). But the informal dairy sector was nearer 95 per cent before the White
Revolution brought millions of rural dwellers into the formal cash economy. Since
1991 private dairy firms have increased processing capacity in India. But cooperatives
have more actively disseminated extension advice on cattle breeding and feeding, which
inculcate modern attitudes to animal and human health care, as well as education and
employment in ancillary services, manufacturing, service and tertiary sectors.
The White Revolution bolstered national governance in post-Independence India.
Vorley (2012) notes informal economies become mainstream where governments are
weak. Therefore integrating informal farmers into national economies strengthens gov-
ernance. It also made the urban/rural divide more porous than previously. Before 1970
milk consumption in Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai was based on urban milk
colonies. This was augmented sporadically by surplus commodities from Europe and the
USA. This made India dependent on imports that, when bought commercially, worsened
current account deficits. In the late 1960s the USA informed India that future dairy com-
modities must be bought in cash. This focused India’s planners and cooperative leaders
on regaining dairy autonomy. Milk colonies also drained the nation’s genetics as the
best bovines were transported from rural areas to the cities, as they were in nineteenth-
century London (Atkins, 2010). Today cattle still mingle in cities, but their presence
abated in the White Revolution.
By facilitating socioeconomic mobility, India’s White Revolution fostered interac-
tion between its formal and informal economies. After the 2007 global financial crisis
hit, Amul Chair Parthi Bhatol welcomed sacked gem and luxury goods workers from
cities such as Mumbai, who returned to find jobs in the thriving milch villages they came
from. Today Bhatol (Amul, 2012, paragraph 3) sees a growing middle class: ‘We actually
need to ensure that [milk] is available to every single person in the true sense and not in
average terms. . .the middle class. . .by 2015 is expected to form 54% of the population
as compared to 26% in 2003’.
In many developing countries most mobile phones, TVs, computers and motor scoot-
ers are found in cities. By maximising marginal families’ incomes, dairy cooperatives
can bring more of these useful tools of modernity to ruralities, retaining talented youth,
stabilising rural-to-urban migration, and optimising imbalances in dual economies.
NOTES
1. EU milk quotas are due to end in 2015.

2. Unless noted this section draws on Scholten (2010a, 2012; based on FAO data and NDDB, 1998).
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Index
ABCD group 314 Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) 1933 (US)

absent bodies 361–2 157, 161–2
absentee landowners 333 agricultural development
Abu Dhabi 313, 317 alternative socio-ecology paradigm 406
access analysis 369 China 231–2
access and benefit-sharing (ABS) law 304 competition for global hegemony 237–8
access issues 84, 125, 126, 151, 152, 153, 266, grants 319–20
294, 332, 408 IPRs and path lock-in 301
access relations 17–18, 368–83 liberal-productivist paradigm 406
acidic soils 56 modern 406
acidification 312 United States 239
Acker, J. 351, 354, 359 agricultural economics 145, 147
actinomycetes 56 agricultural education programmes 240
adaptation 69, 404, 407–8, 419 agricultural exceptionalism 9, 145–9
Adger, W.N. 404 agricultural goods 1
Adkins, L. 359 global land use 110–111
affluence 126, 128, 129 prices see price(s)
Africa 3, 33, 189, 240, 281 agricultural intensification 79, 82, 86, 90, 92,
agricultural subsidies 205, 208 94, 109, 128, 130, 147, 241, 242
Anand Pattern in 478 agricultural policies
demand for land 109 across the world 157
export tax 178 Australia 395–6
Green Revolution 250 China 229–32
investment in 313, 317, 319 Europe see Common Agricultural Policy
secrecy of land deals 321 Green Revolution 239
vulnerable/endangered species 59 greening of 147
see also individual countries interventionist approach 146
Agenda 2000 (EU) 390 Morocco 331, 332
aging population 126 United States 9–10, 149, 157–72
Aglietta, M. 463 agricultural production
agrarian parties 145 Australia 396
Agrarian Question 467 China 214–33
Agreement on Agriculture (WTO) 197 deregulation/destabilization 171
Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of ecosystem damage 131–3
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) 247, European Union 390
291, 293, 303 irrigated 331
agri-chemicals 68, 77–8, 81, 90, 244, 263, limited opportunities for further expansion
267–8 407
see also pesticides; synthetic fertilisers regulation 162–3
agri-chemicals industry 145, 239, 298 subsidy impacts 198–9
agri-environmental programmes/schemes 137, see also overproduction
393, 394 agricultural productivity
agri-food companies 374, 376 CAP and 163
agri-food governance 5, 14–15, 274–87, 298 China 214, 219
agri-industrial infrastructure 331 decline and food insecurity 83
agribusiness 31, 143, 153, 311, 462 as a goal of future development 405
Agricultural Act 1954 (US) 165 Green Revolution and 241–7
Agricultural Act 2014 (US) 170–71 quelling of resistance 239
483
self-interest 136 nutrient cycling 55

and systemic complexity 408 production and productivity increases 405
under rainfall conditions 109 systemic complexity 408
United States 239 see also ecosystem services
Western Europe 239 agrobiodiversity 405
see also crop(s), productivity farming-landscape interaction 91–3
agricultural research 64, 69, 203, 239, 240–41, global food security 20, 405–7
246, 296, 299, 300–302, 426, 432–8, 441 lack of systemic analysis 404
agricultural subsidies 10–11, 194–211 major reasons to maintain 409
Australia 396 overlooked in developing systemic resilience
depression of international prices 175 and adaptive capacity 408
diversion/leakage 207, 210 policy agenda to support 418–19
domestic policies 144–9 valuing 410–418
European Union 391 agroforestry 59, 70, 404
impacts 195–210 Al Qudra Holding 317
national interest and 143 Alario, M. 407
United States 144, 148, 163, 172 alien introductions 64
agricultural trade 9, 143–55 Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy 269
conflict with international trade negotiations Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa
143 (AGRA) 250
Doha Development Round 151–5 Almeria 42, 46, 60, 69
regulation 162–3 alpha () diversity 407, 417
Uruguay Round 149–51 alternative food geography 425, 426
see also anti-trade bias; trade liberalisation alternative food movements 249–50
Agricultural Trade and Development Act alternative food networks 5, 20–21, 397–8
(1954) see Public Law 480 (US) definition and terminology 425
agriculturalists 130 food security 438–40
agriculture future development 442
access relations 17–18, 368–83 key features 426–7
depression, 1920s and 1930s 160–61 research 426, 432–8, 441
environmental context 5–8, 34–57 social benefits 397
environmental impacts 33, 44, 57, 60, 62, theorising and problematising 428–32
77–80, 241, 407 alternative food products 431–2
failure 64 aluminium oxides 53
financialisation see financialisation Alvares, C. 474
gendered 242–3, 377–8 Amano, T. 89
global concerns 31 ‘amber box’ support 197
investment in 109, 219, 222, 225, 309, American Farm Bill 148
312–13, 340 American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF)
origins 32–4 159, 161, 165
rethinking goals 82–4 ammonia 55, 56, 68
systems 31–2, 34 Amul 470–71
see also multifunctional agriculture; organic The Amul India Story 469
agriculture; organisational agriculture; anaerobic environments 66–7
sustainable agriculture Anand Pattern 462, 470–71, 475, 477, 478
Agriculture and Consumer Protection Act Andalucia 43, 44, 61
1973 (US) 165, 168 Anderson, K. 186, 190, 191
‘agriculture for development’ model 319 Andrews, T.G. 375
agro-ecology 249, 301 Anhui Province 226
agro-ecosystems 57–60, 90, 93 animal husbandry 32, 33, 69, 80
autonomous adaptation to risk 408 animals 51–3, 59, 68, 69, 89
conservation 136 see also cattle; individual animals
damage 131–3, 134–6, 137 anthropocentrism 396
diversity see agrobiodiversity anthropogenic emissions 65, 85
FACE experiments 41 anti-competitive practices 298

Index 485
anti-GM lobby 64 bananas 335, 342

anti-trade bias 178, 183 Bangladesh 44, 47, 191, 461, 471, 474
antibiotic resistant genes 65 ‘banker’ plants 60
APLING 380 Bardsley, D.K. 409
apple orchards 58, 92 barley 33, 38, 60, 416
apprenticeships 361–2 barn owls 58
appropriationism 465 Barnier, M. 154
aquaculture 279, 461 barriers for small-scale capital 278, 280, 282–3,
arable land 65, 78, 107, 108, 312, 396 285
Archer Daniels Midland 269, 314 BASF 298
Argentina 81, 109, 143, 151, 163, 189, 247 Bastalich, W. 355
Arias, P. 202 Basu, P. 476, 477
arthropods 56, 57, 88–9 bats 87
Article 9 (Plant Treaty) 294–5 Bayer Crop Science 260, 297, 298
artificial growth hormones for milk (rBGH) Beddington, J. 128
299 bees 51, 79, 89, 90, 91
artificial lighting systems 51 beetles 89
Asia 48, 202, 203–5, 210, 240, 241, 248, 303–4, Beijing 221
313, 467 Belgium 44
see also East Asia; South Asia; Southeast benefit-sharing 295, 304
Asia; Southwest Asia; Western Asia Bengal famine (1943) 266
Atkins, P.J. 463, 465, 466, 467, 474 Bengtsson, J. 87
atmospheric circulation 69 Benin 319
Attewell, P. 353 Berlin Wall, fall of 464
Attwood, S.J. 89 ‘best effort’ clause 293
aubergines 60 beta () diversity 407, 417
Australia 49, 143, 145, 151, 155, 162 Bhakra Nangal project 245
access relations 371–2, 373–4, 378–80 Bhaskar, R.N. 477, 478
agricultural policy 178, 189, 395–6 Bhatol, P.G. 478, 479
agricultural production 396 Bianchi, F. 92
agricultural subsidies 391, 396 Biesmeijer, J.C. 89–90
agroforestry and biodiversity restoration 70 bilharziasis 33
drought and food price hikes 268 biodiversity
family farms 378 above-ground 86–90
farmers’ markets 397–8 agricultural impacts 78–9, 84–8
food aid 163 biotechnology and threat to 248
food processing industries see food decline/loss 57, 58–9, 92, 109, 112, 113,
processing industries 418–19
GM-contaminated land 303 hotspots and domestication 33
investment in 313, 319 protection 249
IPRs and imperative to work with particular scientific difficulty with preservation of 404
companies 301 see also agrobiodiversity
multifunctional movement 396–7, 399 biofuel production 23, 65, 79, 107–8, 114–15,
organic agricultural land 81 170, 312, 320
requirement to sign Technology Use biofuels 23, 83, 109, 110, 268, 313
Agreement 302 biogeochemical cycles 56, 63
surpluses 163 biomass/biomaterials 86, 108, 109, 110, 112,
wheat exports 164 115
Austria 111, 414, 434, 435 bioplastics 108
average daily temperature 49 biota 63, 64
biotechnologies
B-carotene 65 and agricultural revolution 466–7
‘back to the future’ farming 64 see also food biotechnology
bacteria 56, 57 bird species 51, 58, 79, 87, 91, 92
Badgley, C. 64, 82 Blair House Accord 150

Bloom, J. 299 Canada 42, 49, 162, 163, 164, 294, 303, 317,
‘blue box’ support 150, 153, 197–8 331, 449–59
Blue Revolution 461 Canadian Wheat Board 152
Boeke, J.H. 478 canals 237, 242, 245, 466
Borlaug, N. 240, 245, 461, 467 Cancún ministerial meeting (2003) 151
Born, B. 431 Candler, W. 476, 477
boron 54 canola 294, 302, 303
bottom-up change 446, 448 capital/capitalism 219, 309–310, 321, 324, 370,
bovine genetics 475 432, 464, 466
bovine tuberculosis 466 Capper, J. 467
Bowler, I. 394, 463 carabids 79, 88, 89, 91
Brabeck, P. 262 carbon 56, 68
Braithwaite, J. 298 carbon capture 85
Brandth, B. 359, 361 carbon credits 312
Brazil 32, 109, 115, 143, 151, 166, 171, 247, carbon dioxide (CO2) 24, 38, 39–42, 65–6, 68,
249, 250, 319 69, 85
Brazilian Cerrado 112 carbon sequestration 65, 70, 312
Brazilian Project 317 carbon sinks 85
Briar, S.S. 86 carbon trading 69, 312
Bringezu, S. 108, 110, 112, 117 Cárdenas, L. 243
British Soil Association 80 Cargill 279, 302, 314
Brittain, C. 89 Caribbean 2, 160, 243
Broader Public Sector (BPS) Investment Fund Carrefour 279
449, 450, 452 Carson, R. 78
Bruinsma, J. 105 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety 249
Bryant, L. 353, 360 Carus, M. 108
Bt gene 64–5, 246, 301, 465 cash crops/cropping 243, 259, 302, 303, 412
Buchanan, J. 354 casino capitalism 310
buffalo milk/powder 470, 475 Castells, M. 352, 353
‘building a new countryside’ scheme 11, catch-up strategy (China) 219
230 caterpillars 92
bumblebees 90 cation exchange capacity (CEC) 54
Bunder Cement Untervaz (BCU) 381–2 cattle 33, 66, 68, 466, 468, 475–6
Burch, D. 370, 371, 376, 381 cellulose 56
Burkino Faso 257, 319 cement industry, access relations 381–2
Burton, R. 394 Central America 2, 3, 33, 48, 243, 257
Bush, G.W. 153 Central American Free Trade Agreement
bush meat species 59 (CAFTA) 248
business role, sustainable consumption 116, Central American pilot program 240
117 central governments, involvement in land deals
‘business-as-usual’ conditions 112, 113, 394 320
Buttel, F.H. 371 cereals 43, 126, 416–17
butterflies 90, 91 crop stubble 58–9
buyers, Moroccan fruit and vegetable 341–2 inspected increase in consumption 107
yields 106, 107, 203, 245–6
C3 and C4 pathways 38, 40, 41 see also corn; rice; wheat
CAFÉ Programme 285 certification 115, 274, 278, 279, 280, 281,
Cairns Group of Trading Nations 155, 405, 282–3, 284, 285, 286, 432, 433
464 cheeses 70, 432, 434, 435
calcium 37, 41 chelation 55
calculus of interest, in lobbying 144 Chicago Board of Trade 258
Calgene 263 chickpeas 50
calorie intake 126 children and young people 126, 268
Calvin cycle reactions 40 Chile 49, 178, 293
Campo de Dalías 44 Chilton, M.-D. 261

Index 487
China 23, 33, 51, 214, 250, 463, 464 Commodities Futures Trading Commission
agricultural production 11, 168, 214–33 (CFTC) 316
agricultural trade 144, 146, 147, 154 commoditization of risk 311
demand for grain-fed meat and rising food commodity agreements 164, 171
prices 268 Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) 161
economy 5, 11, 214, 220, 221, 222, 224–5, commodity exchanges 323
227, 231 commodity food price index (Sep-Oct 2012)
fossil fuel-based energy projects 371–2 316
greenhouse production 42 Commodity Futures Modernization Act (2000)
high-yielding rice varieties 239 316
reform of price distorting agricultural policy commodity index funds (CIFs) 313, 316
189 commodity speculation 15, 268, 315–16
sovereign wealth funds 317 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 146, 148,
US trade relations 169 149, 163, 167, 390–91, 391, 393–5, 399,
Chirwa, E. 206 426, 468
chitin 56 Common Code for the Coffee Community
chlorophyll 37 (4C) 285
choice editing 116, 117 Community Food Adviser (CFA) program
Chongqing Grain Group 317 452
citrus crops 43, 330, 331, 334, 342 community food security framing 439
civil society organizations 276 competence 353
Clapp, J. 150, 313 complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory
Clark, M.S. 89 447–9
class (social) 158–9, 160, 169, 242–3, 352, 358, compliance 16, 18, 280, 331, 332, 373, 374, 376,
359, 360, 362, 371 394
clay soils 53 compost, organic 85
clay-humus complex 53–4 concessional sales (PL 480) 163
climate change 3, 23–4, 40, 43, 46, 57, 62, 64, Conford, P. 80
69, 107, 115, 147, 312, 407 Connell, R.W. 360
climate modification (local) 49 consensus frame, food security as 438–9
Cline, W. 107 conservation 40, 43, 57, 59, 69, 90, 136, 137,
cloud seeding 44 170, 222, 409, 414, 416, 418
Clough, Y. 93 Consultative Group for International
co-evolution 447–8 Agricultural Research (CGIAR) 241, 248,
coal seam gas (CSG) 372–3, 378–9, 380 319, 410, 411
coalitions 164, 165, 166–7, 170 consumer choice 116, 117, 248
cobweb cycles 145 Consumer International 276
cocoa 164 consumer price index (CPI) 187
codes of conduct (CoC) 276 consumer support estimates 179
Codex Commission 80 consumer tax equivalent (CTE) rate 176
coffee 164, 171, 285 consumerism 2, 116
Cohen, J. 265 consumption patterns 3, 9, 19, 83, 116
Cohen, R. 374 see also food, consumption; global
Cold War 146, 149, 238, 240, 390, 463 agricultural footprint; overconsumption
collective action frames (food security) consumption-based approaches, sustainable
439 land use 116–18
colonialism 14, 239, 245, 266, 320, 396 contaminated run-off 33, 43, 57, 58, 78, 241,
Colwill, J.A. 108 301
comfortable environment 37, 48–53 contamination, GM-related 58, 248, 294, 303
commercialisation strategies, Souss farmers contested terrains 368, 372–4, 379
341–4 contingency relationships 370, 372–4, 375
Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary contract farmers/farming 328–9, 375–7
Measures (SPS) 279 controlled release fertilisers 68
commodities, packaged into financial assets Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
309 113, 249, 294

Convention on International Trade in crop(s)

Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and -environmental relationships 33
Flora (CITES) 59 and biodiversity 87, 248
convention theory 430 diversification 44, 46, 70
conventional food networks 427, 431, 432, 436, dominant 258, 406
438 drink-related 70
conventional or organic confined animal failure 49
feeding operations (CAFOs) 467 global demand 109
convergent evolution 40 innovation 61
Cook, Guy 264 insurance 170, 198, 417
Coolidge, President 161 investment-driven decisions 63
COOP 416 prices 267
copper 54 productivity 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 57, 58, 69,
Corbridge, S. 478 441
corn 33, 107, 406 protection 51
exports 165, 168, 169–70, 170 rotations 68, 88
genetically modified 64, 239, 243, 248, 296 selection 33, 42, 43, 49
market 164, 165, 169–70 species redistribution and isolation 64
nitrogen fertilizer take-up 78 trials 93
percentage of food calories produced 258 yields see yield(s)
prices 161, 258 see also genetically modified crops
production 171, 240, 244, 245 cropland 77, 108–9, 111, 112, 115, 118
protection of traditional varieties 245 cross-licensing agreements 298
segment (US) 159, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168, cross-pollination 58, 248
169, 170, 171, 466 CSIRO 299
Corn Belt 159, 161, 165 Cuba 169
corn borer 86 cucumbers 46, 60
Corn Laws (1815) 177, 178, 463 cultivation 55
corn-agribusiness-livestock coalition 170 cultural alienation 266
corporate control 249, 268, 296–7, 371, 374–5 culture 145, 354–5, 362, 396, 434, 435
corporate power 256, 269, 329, 373, 374 Cunningham, K. 469, 476
corporate social responsibility 276, 374 current pre-Green Revolution Saharan Africa
cost-benefit evaluations 70 situations 205–6
Costa Pinto, A. 470 Curtain, R. 353
cotton cyclical payments 170
exports 166, 167, 169
genetically modified 64, 247, 301, 465 Daewoo Company 317, 322
hormonal pest control 60 dairy aid 462, 471–2
international agreements 164 dairy cooperatives 462, 467–8, 469, 470, 471,
prices 161 472, 474, 476–7, 478, 479
segment (US) 144, 159, 161, 162, 165, 166, Dairy Industry Development Programmes 461
167, 169 dairy sector 107, 115, 143, 145, 152, 153, 201,
subsidy impacts 200, 201 436–7
surplus 166 see also individual products; White
yields 246 Revolution
‘Cotton Club’ countries 144 ‘damage payment’ requirements, patent
Cotton-Wheat Act 1964 (US) 165, 167 violations 248
cotton-wheat coalition 164, 165, 166–7 Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) 245
Cotula, L. 313 dams 33, 44, 242, 245, 246
counter-seasonal production 331, 332 Dänhardt, J. 91
courgettes 342 darkness 50
cows 467, 475–6 Daugbjerg, C. 145, 149
crassulacean acid metabolic (CAM) pathway Dawson, C. 379
38, 40 day length 49–50, 51
CRF Tables 5 A-F 110 day-neutral plants 50, 51

Index 489
De Ponti, T. 81 Dig for Victory 440

De Roest, K. 434 direct commercialisation 341
decision-making 60, 63, 130, 293, 376, 377, direct payments 390, 394, 416
382, 396, 407–8 direct selling 432–3
decomposition, organic matter 56–7 dirt, and gendered work 360
decoupled payments 148, 180, 181, 189, 191, ‘disclosure of origin’ requirement 304
198, 199, 394 disconnectedness 447
defensive localism 435 disease control 33, 37, 38, 48, 92
deforestation 48, 65, 78, 112, 113 disease resistance 56, 65
Del Monte 279 disease vectors 57
Delaya, H.M. 470 disease vulnerability 63
demand see supply and demand disembodied worker ideal 354–5
Democratic Party (US) 159, 164 dispute settlement mechanism (DSM) 151
demographic science 240 Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU)
denitrification 68 291
Denmark 177 distinct, uniform and stable (DUS)
Department of Agricultural Extension requirements 292, 303
(Thailand) 412 distributive justice 369
Department of Agricultural (US) 144–5, 163, DiTomasco, N. 362
239, 264, 295, 312, 464 diversification 44, 46, 69, 70, 404, 408, 414
Department for Environment, Food and Rural diversity 404
Affairs (DEFRA) 393, 440 see also biodiversity; system diversity
deregulation 171, 310, 311, 323, 405 division of labour 160, 299, 301
derivatives trading 314, 315 Djurfeldt, G. 208
desalinisation 44, 46, 70, 109 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill (US) 313
desertification 51 Doha Development Round 143, 150, 151–5,
‘desirable export market’ assumption 329, 344, 190
345 domestic consumption, land use see global
deskilling 354, 381 agricultural footprint
deterritorialisation 322 domestication 32–3, 465
developed countries Doornbos, M. 474
declining yields 107 Döring, T.F. 89
disproportionate land use 118 Dorward, A.R. 203, 205, 206, 208, 209
national interest and trade negotiations 143 dot.com bubble 310, 311, 313
subsidy impacts 195–202 double movement (state and market) 160, 172
developing countries double squeeze 378–80, 383
changing pattern of food consumption 107, Dow Agrochemicals 247, 298
126 Drahos, P. 291, 298
decline in agricultural output 107 drainage systems 47
estimated land conversion, by (2030) 112 drink-related crops 70
high prices and increased food import bill drip irrigation 336, 337, 340
316 drought 24, 43, 46, 48, 85, 147, 268
increased food production 83 drought-tolerant crops 248, 263
population increase 126 dual economies 478–9
subsidy impacts 202–210 dumping 150, 163
taxation on exports of plantation crops 175 DuPont 247, 260, 269, 297–8
Uruguay Round 150 DuPuis, M. 431, 466
Dewey, J. 369 dustbowl (US) 33
Diamond v. Chakrabaty 294
Diet for a Small Planet 446 Earth Summit (1992) 249
diet-related illness 265 earthworms (oligochaetes) 56, 86, 88
dietary accumulation, pesticides 78 East African Dairy Development Project 478
dietary change 107, 160, 312 East Asia 33, 169, 188, 281
diet(s) 78, 83, 118, 126 eating patterns, convergence of 126
diffuse shelter barriers 51 ecolabels/ecolabelling 117, 282

ecological concepts, sustainability and reduced meat consumption and land savings
intensification 129, 130 118
ecological sustainability 391, 405 rhetoric surrounding agriculture 148
economic liberalisation 246, 477 surpluses 163
economic polarisation 324 US corn exports 170
economic power 295–9 see also individual countries
economic recession 258, 321, 438 European Patent EPO301749 292
economic reform, China 214 European Union (EU)
economic rents, subsidies and 207 agricultural production 390
economics concepts, sustainability and agricultural subsidies/support 148, 197–8
intensification 129–30 biofuels 115, 313
economy-wide material flow accounting (ew- global agricultural land use 110, 113
MFA) 110 product-specific approaches, sustainable
ecosystem services 57, 112, 113, 390, 392–3 land use 114
edaphic aspects 53–7 regulations on import of GM foods 248
Edkins, J. 265, 266–7, 269 sugar regime 151
Edwards, P. 358 sustainable development 109–110
An Essay on the Principle of Population 265 trade reform 189
egg laying 51 Eurostat Comext online database 111
Egypt 33, 151, 166, 257 eutrophication of waterways 33, 43, 58, 60, 241
Egyptian National Bank 317 Evergreen Revolution 462
Ekroos, J. 90 ex situ conservation 410
electricity projects (US) 239 exchange conditions 266
Ellis, E.C. 77 experimentation 33, 94, 448, 457
embodied capability 354 expertise 62, 362
emergence, adaptive systems 447 Export Enhancement Program (EEP) 169, 170
emotions 361 export subsidies 145, 151–2, 157, 162, 163, 164,
‘enclosure’ movement 320 167, 169, 170, 171
endangered species 59 export tax 175, 176, 178
energy-intensive agriculture 31 export-oriented agriculture 143, 148, 149, 302,
entitlements failure 266, 267 328–45, 396
environmental context 5–8, 34–57 extreme weather 24, 49, 69, 107, 147
environmental controls 31, 32, 33, 48
environmental impacts 33, 44, 57, 60, 62, Faber, A. 113
77–80, 241, 407 face-to-face SFSCs 430
environmental modification 48 factory farming 31, 53, 301, 312
Environmental Protection Agency (US) 66, Fairtrade 283–5
299 Falconer, C. 153, 154, 155
epigeal arthropods 88, 89 Family Farmers’ Association (UK) 146
Epstein, G. 309 family farms/farming 18, 143, 146, 148, 340,
Erb, K.-H. 111 371, 378, 381
ETC Group 292 family-owned greenhouse systems 42
Ethiopia 317, 319, 461 famine 265, 266
EurepGAP 278 Fan, S. 203, 208
Euro Retailer Produce Working Group Farm Bloc 161
(EUREP) 278 farm income 161, 162, 163, 188
Europe 3, 47, 58 farm management 302
AFN research 426, 432–8, 441 farm organisations, response to agricultural
agricultural productivity 239 exceptionalism 147–8
food aid 163 farm products, increased demand for 312
free trade movements 177 Farm Security and Rural Investment (FSRI)
GlobalGAP 278 Act 2002 (US) 170
labour market understanding 353 farm size, India 246
organic agriculture 80, 81, 87 farmer incentives, policies distorting 10
price inflation 258 evolution of 177–9

Index 491
market and welfare effects 183–8 discussion and conclusion 323–4

national distortions forms and impacts 314–21
estimates since the 1950s 179–83 opposition to 321–3
indicators of 176–7 preconditions for, and drivers of 311–14
prospects for further reductions 189–91 Finewood, M.H. 379
farmers Finland 90
Australia 178, 371, 396 First Agricultural Revolution 465
benefits of Green Revolution 202 First Food Regime (pre 1914) 463, 467
choices about farming practices 303 Fischer, G. 108
India 246–7 fisheries 63, 281, 282, 283, 375
Mexico 244 fixed income supports 170
Morocco 329, 336–44 flat key, food security framing 439, 440
production orientation 395 Flavr Savr tomato 263
technology treadmill 300–301 flexibility 2, 47
see also contract farmers/farming; floating garden systems 48
local farmers; small-scale farmers; flood meadows 47
smallholders floods 43, 46, 47, 67, 223
farmers’ markets 397–8, 431, 432 flora and fauna 53
farmers’ movements 246 flowering 49–50
farmers’ rights 15, 294–5, 302–3, 304 food
farming see agriculture access to 84, 125, 126, 266
Farming Systems Project (US) 89 affordability 146
farmland 58, 226, 227, 228, 294, 303, 311–12, availability 125, 126, 127, 128, 146
313, 317–21 consumption 107, 118, 126
see also level of use of farmland (FUL) crises 171
farmland-grain elasticity coefficient (FGEC) demand for 65, 68, 115, 126, 146
215, 218–19 financialisation see financialisation
temporal variations, China 223–7 population increase and estimated need 62
Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform production 32, 33, 83, 127, 128, 302
(FAIR) Act 1996 (US) 157, 165, 169, 170, re-regionalisation/relocalisation 21, 430, 431,
171 433
female labour 242–3, 246, 340, 356, 361–2, 476 scarcity 265–6, 267
Ferrara, J. 299 shortages 24, 245, 249, 440
fertilisation, organic 85 supply(ies) 126, 312–13
fertiliser(s) 127 surpluses 152, 162, 163, 165, 167, 239, 394,
application systems (computerised) 58 462, 471
controlled release 68 utilisation 125–6
habitat destruction 79 wastage 83, 118
industry 145 see also meat consumption
and public health 78, 301 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 83,
subsidies 203, 204, 205 127, 199, 200–201, 240, 258, 259, 268, 282,
supplies of mineral 63 300, 303, 316, 319, 461, 462, 474
use 33, 48, 57, 214, 220, 225, 237, 241–2, 312 food aid 162, 163, 165, 167, 259, 471
see also synthetic fertilisers food banks 258
fibrous plant roots 53 food biotechnology 13–14
field margins 58 argument for 267–9
fields (organic) 87, 90, 91 controversy over 260–61
filamentous hyphae 56 response to global hunger 260–66
Filippi-Codaccionia, O. 91 see also Gene Revolution; genetically
financial capital 61 modified crops
financial incentives, sustainable intensification food chain(s) 4, 30, 37, 42, 57, 60, 126, 205,
136 329, 425, 439, 463
financialisation Food, Conservation and Energy (FCE) Act
defined 309–311 2008 (US) 170
of food and farming 5, 15–16 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 299

food geographies 425–6, 431 food systems

food import bills 200, 316 CAS theory 447
food insecurity 24, 83, 205, 210, 243, 245, 320, conventional-alternative divide 442
406, 407, 418 public discourse 300
food manufacturing, takeovers in 314–15 rethinking 82–4
food price(s) see also alternative food networks; global
CAP and creation of reasonable 163 food system; provincial food system
crisis, blame for 270 initiatives
decline, and hunger alleviation 127 Foodland Ontario 449, 450
fiscal impacts of changes 200 forage crop farmers 338, 340
impact of higher 202 Foras International Investment Company
and poverty 258–9 318
rises 107, 109, 256–7, 266, 268, 313, 324, forced labour 375
405–6 Ford Foundation 239, 240, 467
volatility 267–8, 323, 406 foreign direct investment 109, 275, 317–21,
food processing industries, Australia 17, 372
350–63 foreign genes, random insertion 65
at the organisational level 355–6 forest land 108, 109, 111, 112, 115
economic constraints 350 forestry 59, 70, 313, 404
economic value 350 fossil fuels 57, 58, 60, 63, 65, 85, 108, 268, 324,
gendering of work, place and organisations 371–2
357–62 Fraley, R. 269
and multiscalar processes 362–3 France 51, 91, 150, 151, 154, 162, 177, 350,
policy responses to market pressures 350–51 414, 433, 434, 435
skills 351, 352–5, 361, 362–3, 369 free air carbon dioxide enrichment (FACE)
workers 351 experiments 41
food regimes 159–60, 162, 171, 172, 463–5 free iron 53
food retail(ers) 3, 16, 276, 314–15 free market 10, 23, 160, 172, 185, 240
food revolutions 461–3 free oxygen 67, 68
see also Green Revolution; White Revolution free trade 13, 157, 159, 160, 167, 177, 248, 316,
food riots 178, 256–9, 260, 270, 321, 324 390
food scares 464 free trade agreements (FTAs) 247–8, 293
food security 33, 125–39, 461 see also North American Free Trade
agricultural commodity prices 316 Agreement
agrobiodiversity 405–7, 412–13 ‘freeze and thaw’ cycles 53
alternative food networks 438–40 freshwater 44
challenge of sustainable 125–8 Freudenberg, W.R. 373, 380
China 215, 226, 227, 228 friable soil 53
concerns 22–3, 31 Friedland, W. 371
conditions for 125–6 Friedmann, H. 163
defined 22 frost damage, avoidance 49
discourse surrounding 146 Frosta 279
emerging crisis 128 fruit and vegetables
food aid and 471 desirability of export markets 344–5
food regimes and 160 export, Morocco 16, 329
Green Revolution investments 203 inclusion/exclusion processes 334–5
responses to 303–4 integration of farmers in value chains
subsidy impacts 210 336–44
sustainable intensification see sustainable internationalisation 331
intensification key actors 331, 332
too precious to be left to the private sector market channels 341–4
323 Souss plain 330–33
UNEP assessment 106–7 global market 3
food sovereignty 249, 302–3, 322, 471 global production 328
food stamp programs 258 global trade 328, 329

Index 493
integrated pest management 60 Monsanto patents 297

protected status 435 need for understanding underlying
Fukuyama, F. 464 destructive dynamics 255
Fuller, R.J. 87 nutritionally enhanced 65
fumigants 57 patents 292
Fundación Cajamar 42, 60, 69 propelled to top of international agenda
fungi 53, 56 260
futures markets 315, 316 reduced need for pesticides 248
fuzzy knowledge 63 segregation from non GM crops 302
sold as tool for global humanitarianism 261
G4 153 techno-optimism 264, 270
G8 153, 316 see also individual crops
G20 151, 152, 316 Genetically Modified Language 264
Gabriel, D. 90 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) 80,
Galaty, J. 321 464
Galloway, J.N. 115 genetically modified seeds 255–6
gamma () diversity 407, 417 Genossenschaft Gran Alpin 416, 417
Garibaldi, L.A. 51, 89 George, S. 474, 475
gaseous nitrogen 56 Gepts, P. 33
Gates foundation 250, 478 Gereffi, G. 277
Gates, J.P. 80 Germany 86, 89, 108, 109–110, 110, 117, 162,
Gaud, W. 238 177, 433, 434, 435
Geiger, F. 79 germination 48, 51
gender Gibson, R.H. 87
in agriculture 242–3, 377–8 global agricultural footprint 7, 79
work, place and organisations 352, 354–5, consumption
357–62 assessing safe operating space 112–13, 118
see also female labour measuring 110–112
gene movements 65 steering towards a sustainable supply
gene pools 63, 64 114–19
Gene Revolution 247–50, 260, 465 trends and forecasts 106–9
genebank systems 410 Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) 279
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade global capital 370
(GATT) 149, 158, 162–3, 164, 171, 191, Global Crop Diversity Trust 410
463 global economy 1, 157, 160–64, 165–71
genes and gene sequences, patent protection global environmental outlook (UNEP) 113
292 global financial crisis (GFC) 9, 15, 147, 148,
genetic conservation 410, 414, 416, 418, 419 154, 310, 321, 479
genetic diversity 92, 413 global food crisis 259
genetic erosion 63, 406–7, 415, 416 global food economy, TNCs as dominant
genetic modification 42, 48, 58, 70, 249, 295–6 players in 275–6
genetic resources 294 global food riots 256–9, 270
genetic use restriction technologies (GURTs) global food security 20, 405–7
248–9, 296 global food system
genetically modified crops corporate influence 296–7
adoption of C4 pathway 38 as heterogenous and fragmented 370
as best response to global hunger 264–8 and hunger 266–7, 268
biodiversity loss 418–19 vulnerabilities in 257–8
Bt gene 64–5 global governance 274, 275, 277
environmental impacts 57 global health initiatives 240
failures and successes 263–4 global imbalances 62
high yielding see high yielding varieties global markets 3, 14, 342, 344–5
India 246–7 Global North 2, 15, 269, 282, 296–7, 297, 320,
investment in 301 324, 328, 329
low-water varietals 262 global patent systems 256

global population 40, 62, 65, 79, 83, 107, 126, grazing animals 68, 69
240, 312 grazing lands 322
Global South 2, 11, 12, 16, 18, 122, 144, 150, Great Depression 160, 162, 463
151, 152, 239, 242, 258, 259, 278, 328, 329, great tit 92
344 Greece 434, 435
Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) 184, green beans 335, 337–8, 342
191 ‘green box’ support 198
global warming 23, 24, 31, 46, 47, 107 green innovation 117
GlobalGap 155, 278–80, 332, 342 green manures 64, 68, 70, 85, 90
globalisation 1–3 Green Plan for Morocco 329, 331, 344
of agriculture Green Revolution 4–5, 13, 57, 64, 78, 83,
challenges to 18–22 237–51, 300, 301, 406
contribution of trade reforms 173–92 biotechnologies and replacement of 247–50
dependence on finance capital 324 declining food prices 127
global markets 3 effects/consequences 241–7
Green Revolution 237–8 globalisation 237–8
hypermodern food geography 426 India 245–7, 461–2
intellectual property regime as key feature political instrumentality 238
of 291 science and international development
marginalisation of cooperatives 470 238–41
risk and 407–9 subsidy impacts 202–6
and trade 143 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 31, 43, 63,
transnational corporations 12–18 65, 68, 78, 85, 114, 118, 467
and climate change 23 greenhouse production 38, 42, 44, 60, 63, 69,
difficulty in measuring land consumption 332, 338–40
115 greenhouses 48
economic 232, 368 Greenpeace 371
and food security 23 grey water reuse 46
and policy regimes 8–11 gross subsidy equivalent (GSE) 181
goats 33, 465 groundwater 43, 44, 127, 241, 332, 334
Gold, M.V. 80 ‘growing season’ 48, 49
golden rice 65 Grugulis, I. 354
Gomiero, T. 80, 87 Grunert, K.G. 350
Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) 278 guano removal 63
Goodman, D. 426, 427, 428, 431, 434, 436 Gurr, G.M. 93
Goodman, M. 427, 428
government policy Haber-Bosch process 58
agricultural subsidies 144–9 habitat 51, 58, 59, 79, 89, 90, 91, 92, 112–13
agrobiodiversity 418–19 Habitats Directive (EU) 46
food processing industries 350–51 Halpin, D. 147
and price distortions 175 Halse, M. 462, 472
and sustainable land use 119–20 hare 58
see also agricultural policy Harvard Medical School for Public Health 118
government support, aversion to, Australia 396 Hassad Food 318–19
GRAIN 322 Haugen, M.S. 359, 361
‘Grain for Green’ programme 11, 225 Hawesa, C. 88
Grain Pool of Western Australia v. Hazell, P.B.R. 203
Commonwealth (2000) 293–4 Heasman, M. 464–5, 466
grain production 168, 215, 301 Hebei Province 222
see also farmland-grain elasticity coefficient Heckman, J. 80
(FGEC) hedge funds 314, 316
Grant, H. 262 hedgerows 51, 58
grasses 38, 40 Heilongjiang Province 219–20, 222, 223, 226
grasslands 65, 69, 88, 108, 109, 112, 118 Helburn, N. 34
Graubünden 410, 414–18 Held, D. 369

Index 495
Henan Province 226 Idrac, A.-M. 154

herbicides 33, 57, 58, 65, 239, 248 Ife, J. 370
herders 59, 321–2 Ilbery, B. 429, 431, 433, 434, 435, 436
Heredia, R. 469 impact assessments 418
Hertel, T.W. 186 Imperial Agricultural Research Institute
heterosexuality 359–60 (IARI) 239
high yielding varieties (HYVs) 68, 237, 239, import protection 144, 149, 152, 167, 176, 177,
242, 243–4, 406, 407, 412, 413, 415 178
Hinrichs, C. 431, 447 import-substituting industrialisation strategy
Hodal, K. 375 175, 178
hog production 159, 165 in situ conservation 295, 410, 414, 416, 418
Hole, D.G. 87 income 83, 107, 161, 162, 163, 188, 229–30,
holistic viewpoint, need for 63 333, 479
Holmgren, P. 108 income supports 170
Holzapfel-Pschorn, A. 67 India 47, 189, 191, 249, 250
Holzchuh, A. 91 agricultural trade 144, 146, 147, 154
honey bees 51, 89 direct investment in 317, 319
Hoppe, P. 374, 381 economy 246, 477
hormonal traps 60 food revolutions see Green Revolution;
household level, subsidy impacts 200, 201 White Revolution
household responsibility system 219, 223, IPRs and imperative to work with particular
229 companies 301
housing bubble 310, 311, 313 PVP legislation 304
Howard, P.H. 277 subsidies impacts 203
Howden, D. 269 India: The Dairy Revolution 476
Hoy, M.A. 92 Indian Protection of Plant Varieties and
Hubert, B. 107 Farmers; Rights Act (2001) 304
human activity 3–4, 6, 48, 55 indirect land use change 110, 114
human appropriation of net primary indirect yield 263
productivity (HANPP) 79 industrial inputs, dependence on 265
human body 354, 360–61, 362 Industrial Revolution 177, 239, 257, 296,
human capital 61 466
human investment 61, 215, 218, 219, 227 industrial slavery 375
human rights 109, 274, 276, 316, 322, 370 industrial wastes 57
humidity 37 industrial water use 78
humus 53, 56 industrialisation 23, 127, 160, 175, 178, 215,
hunger 62, 83, 84, 244, 255 225, 231, 245, 256, 324, 426
declining food prices and alleviation of 127 Industry Functional Advisory Committee On
food security associated with 439 Intellectual Property Rights for Trade
meetings to eradicate 259–60 Policy Matters (IFAC) 293
political nature 266, 270 industry-community interactions 375
response(s) to 260–63, 264–8 inequality(ies) 175, 188, 242, 246, 344, 351–2,
three school of thought on 265–7 358–62, 431
Hunt, S. 438, 439 information availability, sustainable
hybrid food geographies 431 intensification 136
hybrid varieties 239, 240, 245, 296, 300 information flows 1–2
hybridisation 295–6 informationalism 352
hydrological cycle 48, 127 infrastructure 244, 331
hydroponic systems 63 innovation(s) 31, 33, 42, 61, 69, 70, 300, 419
hypermodern food geography 425–6 inorganic compounds 54
hyphae (fungal) 53, 56 input industries 145
Hyvönen, T. 88 input subsidies 205–6
insect resistance 64, 248
‘identifiability’ criterion, Malaysian PVP law insecticides 57, 78, 92
303 insects 51, 65, 89, 90

institutional restrictions, growing GM crops International Wheat Agreement (IWA) 164

302 International Wheat Council 164
integrated pest management (IPM) 60, 82 interseasonal decisions 130
intellectual property rights (IPRs) 5, 247, interventionism 116, 117, 146, 159, 162, 204,
291–5 208, 399
agricultural development 301 intrinsic yield 263
anti-competitive, monopolistic and cartel- invasive species 93
like practices 298 invertebrates 91
industry consolidation 303 investment
justification for 300 in agri-food industry 315
political power 296 in agriculture 219, 222, 225, 309, 312–13,
property rights-holders 291 340
undermining of food sovereignty 302 in agro-food industry 374
intensification 129–30 in biofuel production 312
intensive artificial lighting systems 51 decisions/decision-making 63, 130
intensive production systems 47, 53, 60, 63, 94 see also foreign direct investment; private
inter-farm diversity 405 investment
interbasin transfers 44 invisible organisation of work 359–60
interconnectedness 1, 2, 408 Iran 317
intercropping 64, 70 Ireland 145, 357, 433
interdependent power 373 Irmler, U. 86
interest rates 311 irrigation 33, 44, 46, 48, 63, 203, 241, 242,
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 331
(IPCC) 64 irrigation projects 239, 244, 245
International Association of Plant Breeders irrigation systems 43, 61, 336, 337, 340, 407
296 Isaan 410–414
International Association for the Protection of Isaksen, L.W. 360
Industrial Property 296 Italy 51, 88, 89, 177, 414, 433, 434, 435
International Center for Tropical Agriculture
(CIAT) 241 Jaffee, D. 277
International Coffee Agreement (ICA) 171 Jansen, K. 410
international commodity agreements 164, 171 Japan 89, 143, 150, 152, 162, 163, 177–8, 179,
International Federation of Organic 190, 239, 257, 297
Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) 80 Jarvis, D.I. 79
International Finance Corporation (IFC) 319 JEM AG Supply Inc v. Pioneer Hi-Bred
international food regimes 159–60 International Inc 534 U.S. 124 (2001) 294
International Health Commission (IHC) 240 Jha Committee Report (1984) 474
International Institute of Tropical Agriculture Jilin Province 226
(IITA) 241 Jin, C. 42
international institutions 162, 164 joint ventures 298, 299, 301, 332, 334
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Juma, C. 409
Centre (CIMMYT) 240–41, 461 ‘just-in-time’ requirements 350
International Monetary Fund (IMF) 4, 8, 162,
240, 324 Kaira District Cooperative Milk Producers
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) Union Ltd (KDCMPU) 469, 470
240, 245, 262, 408 Kao Dawk Mali 105 (KDML 105) 412, 413
international trade negotiations 143–4 Kao Khor 6 (RD6) 412, 413, 414
International Trade Union Conference (2009) Kautsky, K. 467
320 Keeney, R. 186
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Kennedy, J.F. 259
Resources for Food and Agriculture Kenya 59, 205, 321
(Plant Treaty) 294–5 Kew Millennium seed bank 63
International Union for the Protection of New Killing for Coal 375
Varieties of Plants (UPOV) 247, 291–2, Kindleberger, C.P. 177
293, 303 King, D. 262

Index 497
King, P. 353 land use

Kirwan, J. 438, 439, 440, 442 changes/patterns 43, 48, 65, 110
Kissinger, M. 111 China 215, 232
Klatt, B.K. 89 see also level of use of farmland
Kneafsey, M. 426, 429, 435, 436 developed countries’ disproportionate use
Konandreas, P. 200 118
Kraft 285 measuring global 110–112
Krippner, G. 309 multifunctional 389–99
Kristiansen, P. 80 policy change and sustainable 119–20
Kromp, B. 89 social and environmental consequences
Krueger, A.O. 175, 179 389–90, 391, 392, 393, 394, 398, 399
Kumar, N. 476, 477, 478 towards sustainable 114–19
Kurien, V. 462, 469–70, 471, 472, 477, 478 Landcare Programme 396
Kyoto Protocol 66 ‘landesque’ capital 61
landscape, and biodiversity 90–93
La Via Campesina 249, 302, 322 Lang, T. 464–5, 466
labels 434 Lappé, F.M. 446
labels/labelling 2, 117, 282, 284–5, 432 large mammals 59
labile nutrient forms 54 large-scale agriculture 143, 244, 246
labour Las Cuatro Vegas de Almeria 46
China 221, 222, 223, 227 Latin America 81, 108, 187, 188, 189, 201, 248,
confinement dairying 468 281
food processing industries 351 Lawrence, F. 375
forced 375 Lawrence, G. 371, 399
gendering of 352, 354–5, 357–62 Lawson, C. 292, 295
mechanisation and 203, 237 Le Heron, R. 464
Morocco 333, 340 leaching 55, 78
standards 285 learning, and system resilience/change 404,
see also division of labour; female labour 448, 457
labour market 352, 353 least developed countries 144, 190, 200
ladybeetles 92 legitimacy issues, mining 380
Lambin, E.F. 112 legumes 41, 56, 58, 68
Lamy, P. 155 LeHeup, R. 451–2
land Leopold, A. 95
access to 376 lepidopterans 90
acquisitions 109, 313, 322 Lerner, A. 176
competition for 32, 109–110 Let the Harvest Begin 261–2
conversion 112, 222, 312 level of use of farmland (FUL) 217–18
degradation 63, 301, 312 spatio-temporal pattern, China 219–23
demand 107, 112, 115 leys 90
loss of fertile 108 Liaoning Province 223
management 68, 69, 119 liberal world economy 162
organic 80–81 Libya 312
reform 14, 243, 246 Lidl 281
saving 117, 118, 241 life-cycle evaluations 70
scarcity 83 light reactions, photosynthetic pathways 40
speculation in 313 Limagrain 297, 299
value 313 ‘limits to tolerance’ 48, 49
see also cropland; farmland; forest land; Linkage model 184–6
grasslands; pastureland Lipietz, A. 463
land deals 320, 321 Lipton, M. 203, 474
land ethic 95 liquefied natural gas (LNG) 372
land grabs/grabbing 109, 250, 309, 320, 321, Liquid Materialities 466
322 Liu, Y.S. 231
land management 64 Livestock Sector Review 477

Lloyd, C. 351 Maniates, M. 116

lobbying 144, 145, 269 manual workers, as masculine 360
local communities relations 17–18, 368–83 manufactured capital 61
local farmers 64 manufacturing protectionism 179
local food 302, 433, 440, 451 marginalisation 408
local food networks 438–40 of women 360
local food politics 431 marine mammals 64
local food trap 431, 440 Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) 280–83
local knowledge 243, 320 market access 151, 152, 153, 154, 196
local landraces 20, 406, 412, 413, 415, 416 market channels 341–4, 436–8
local mobilisation 172, 368–9, 370, 371, 373, market competition 169, 170
377, 378, 383 market instability 126, 161
Local Organic Food Co-ops (LOFC) 449, 453, market signals 323–4
454–7, 458 market stabilisation 149, 157, 162, 163, 171,
localisation, tension between standardisation 313, 390
and 370 marketing 117
locality foods 427, 430, 433, 441 marketing cooperatives 20, 438
Lock the Gate Alliance 380 Marks and Spencer 279, 281
Lockeretz, W. 80 Marsden, T. 426, 427, 428, 430, 431, 435, 442
Loess Plateau 220 masculine norms 355, 362
logging 59 mass consumption 9, 19, 23, 116, 119
London Act (1934) 296 Matthews, A. 200
Long, H.L. 231 Matthews, C.R. 58
Longhurst, R. 203 Mauna Loa 39
loose integration 342, 345 Max Havelaar programme 283–4
Lorber, J. 354 Maye, D. 429, 431, 433, 435, 436, 438, 439,
Lotter, D.W. 80, 85 440, 442
Louis Dreyfus 314 Mayer, F. 277
low skills equilibrium 351, 354, 358, 362–3 Mayhew, K. 351
low-input agriculture 80, 81, 88, 94 Meadows, D.H. 448
low-input/low output 22, 462, 467, 468, 475 meat consumption 83, 107, 118, 126–7, 165,
Lu, C. 78 312
meat products 83, 115, 434, 435
McCarthy, J. 248 meatwork 360–61
McCulloch, N. 194 mechanisation 33, 51, 57, 58, 202–3, 219, 220,
McDonalds 1, 279, 284 265
McDowell, L. 363 medicinal use plants/animals 59
machinery subsidies 202–3 Mediterranean climates 43
McMichael, P. 320 mega-dairies 467, 468
McNary-Haugen Farm Relief bill 161 Mellon, M. 264
macronutrients 54, 55 Menalled, F.D. 92
macroorganisms 56 Menghi, A. 434
MacSharry Reform of the CAP (1992) 390 Merchants of Grain 466
magnesium 37, 41 methane 65, 66–8, 78
mahogany species 59 Mexican Agricultural Program (MAP) 240,
maize see corn 243
Malawi 205, 206 Mexico 33, 42, 109, 162, 166, 169, 170, 171,
Malaysia 303, 317 202, 243–5, 257
male body/embodiment 360–61, 362 Meyer, R.L. 194
Malin, S. 379 Meyfroidt, P. 112
malnutrition 84, 118, 243, 265, 266, 268, micro-aggregation 53
439 microfinance programs 205
Malthus, T.R. 239, 265, 466 micronutrients 54, 55
managers, agri-food companies 376 microorganisms 56
Mandelson, P. 154 mid-latitudes 43, 49, 51

Index 499
Mid-Term Review of the CAP 390 future direction 399

middle classes 109, 146, 147, 258, 312, 431, 479 as a political tool 391
Miele, M. 427 top-down 389, 393–5
migratory patterns 51 Murdoch, J. 427, 430, 435
milch animals 475–6 Murphy, D. 323
milk 107, 152, 299, 432, 467 mycorrhizae 56
see also White Revolution
milk colonies 479 Naccarato, F. 450
Millennium Challenge Corporation 319–20 Nagoya Protocol 294
Millennium Summit 2015 (UN) 260 Narmada Bachao Andolan 246
mineral balance hypothesis 86 National Dairy Development Board 462,
mineral fertiliser supplies 63 471–2, 473–4, 477–8
mineral nutrients 37 National Economic and Social Development
‘minimally trade distorting’ payments 198 Board (Thailand) 410
minimum environmental standards 393 National Farmers Union (US) 159
mining 313 National Framework for Environmental
access relations 17–18, 368–83 Management Systems 396
of nutrients 63, 108 national interest, and international trade
Ministry of Agriculture (UK) 393, 440 negotiations 143–4
Mintz, S. 160 national markets, Moroccan fruit and
mitigation strategies, greenhouse gases 65, 66 vegetable 342
mixed farming systems 31 National Milk Grid System 472, 475
modernisation 61, 232, 240, 244, 320, 406–7, National Research Development Corporation v.
410, 411–12 The Commissioner of Patents (1959) 294
molluscs 56–7 national sovereignty 115, 294
Mols, C.M.M. 92 natural capital 61, 136, 137
molybdenum 54 natural pest control 60, 86, 92
mono-cropping/monoculture 57, 92, 242 nature-society relationship 369, 373, 407
monopolistic practices 297, 298 Nature’s Perfect Food 466
Monsanto 239, 247, 250, 260, 261–2, 263, 269, Nehru, J. 245
292, 294, 297, 298, 299, 301, 302, 303, 464 Nelgen, S. 191
Montreal International Protocol 448 Nelson, C. 447
Mooney, P. 438, 439 nematicides 57
Moore, L.J. 354 nematodes 56, 86
Moore, N.W. 58 neo-colonialism 320
Moorish water conservation 43 neo-Malthusian arguments 240
moral worth (occupational) 362 neo-productivist regime 427, 438, 442
Morgan, D. 463, 466 neoliberalism 10, 147, 148, 204, 310, 320–21,
Morgan, K.J. 446 323, 324, 331, 395–6, 406, 464, 470, 477
Morocco Nestlé 262, 276, 284, 285, 478
direct investment in 317 Netherlands 42, 51, 60, 89–90, 92, 433
export-oriented agriculture 328–45 network approaches 428–9, 448–9, 457
free trade agreement with US 293 network connections 370
Morris, M. 206 network project (Swiss) 417
mortgages, securities-backed 311 network society 352
Mother Dairies 474 ‘networks of dependencies’ 369
motherhood and shiftwork 359 New Deal 162, 165
mountain agriculture (Swiss) 414–18 New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council
Mozambique 188 372
multi-cropping 215, 219, 221, 222 New Zealand 143, 171, 178, 189, 201, 281, 283,
multifunctional agriculture 19–20, 148, 389–99, 357
468 niche markets/products 18, 19, 70, 285, 286,
bottom-up 389, 395–9 337–8, 350, 397, 398, 413, 426, 433, 435,
a brief history of 390–93 441
defined 389–90 Nigeria 241, 319

Niggli, U. 88 olives 43
Ningxia 226 Olson, M. 144
nitrates 55, 56, 68 Ontario Culinary Tourism Alliance (OCTA)
nitric oxide 68 451–2
nitrification 68 Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers
nitrogen 37, 41, 54, 56, 58, 84–5, 241 (OGVG) 452
nitrogen fertilisers 33, 43, 58, 78, 84, 239, 241 Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
nitrogen fixation 58 Affairs (OMAFRA) 449–50, 456, 457, 459
nitrogen oxides 60 Ontario Natural Food Co-op (ONFC) 449,
nitropholous weed species 88 453–4, 457, 459
nitrous oxide 65, 68–9 Ontariofresh 449, 450
Noleppa, S. 111 open-air fruit and vegetable farmers 338, 340
Nölke, A. 321 open-door policy (China) 214, 219, 229
nominal rates of assistance (NRAs) 176, 177, Operation Flood 462, 472–7
179, 180–83, 189, 190 organic agriculture 6–7, 59–60, 64
non-agricultural policies 179–80 Australia 397
non-Bt resistant insects 65 comparison of conventional and 93
non-commercial speculators 315, 316 constraints to adopting 82
non-crop habitat 91, 92 critics of 81–2
non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 20, ecological sustainability 404–5
151, 205, 281, 305, 416, 417, 419, 451, 455, effects 84–8, 91
458 ethical considerations 80
non-labile nutrient forms 54 GM seed contamination 303
non-price effects, subsidies 198 marketing channels 436–8
non-productivism 392, 394 movement 80–81
non-tariff barriers 150 nutritional benefits 397
non-transgenic high-tech breeding 65 regulation 80
North Africa 60, 63, 330 research 433
North American Free Trade Agreement organic compounds 56
(NAFTA) 169, 170, 244, 247, 293 organic cooperatives 436
North, D.C. 374 organic diet 78
Norway 317, 391 organic fertiliser/fertilisation 85, 88, 242, 249
Novartis 299 Organic Valley Cooperative 467–8
novices 362 organic waste disposal 42
NPK ratio 241 organisational agriculture 371
Nuaimy-Barker, R. 451 organisations
nutrient mining 63, 108 administrative structures 370
nutrients 37, 41, 54, 55, 56, 63, 109 contingency pressures and access relations
Nutrition Resource Center (Ontario) 452, 370
457 culture and power in 354–5
nutritionally-enhanced GM crops 65 gendering of 357–62
and system change 448–9
oats 416 organophosphorus 78
Obama administration 149, 153 out-of-season production 50
occupational moral worth 361–2 outcome-based agri-environmental payments
Oceania 81, 118, 260 394
OECD 179, 392, 464 output price support/subsidies 194, 195
OECD countries 10, 152, 196, 197, 198, 199, overconsumption 107, 113, 118
300, 353, 391 overproduction 161, 162, 163
Office of the United States Trade Oxfam 151, 276
Representative (USTR) 293 oxygen 40, 47
‘official’ UK food security approaches 439 ozonation 46
oil prices 256, 267, 268, 477
oil-rich countries 312–13 PACER-PLUS 293
oilseed 47, 107, 461 paddy fields 47, 67

Index 501
Paechter, C. 360, 362 place

Pakistan 191, 257, 317, 319 gendering of 357–62
panarchy 447 process and 433, 435–8
parasitism 56, 92–3 product and 433, 434–5
Paris Convention on the Protection of Plant Breeders’ Rights Act (1994) 294
Industrial Property 296 plant breeders’ rights (PBR) 291
partnership(s) 299, 301, 382, 448–9, 457 plant breeding 15, 33, 42, 48, 50, 51, 57, 296
Pastor, S.K. 380 Plant Patents Act 1930 (US) 296
pastoralism 321 plant production 80
pastureland 77, 111, 112, 113, 321 plant selection 50, 51
Patel, A. 477, 478 Plant Treaty (International Treaty on Plant
Patel, S. 469 Genetic Resources for Food and
Patel, T. 469, 470 Agriculture) 294–5
patent-sharing agreements 298 plant variety protection (PVP) 291–3, 294, 303,
patents 247, 248, 249, 291, 292, 294, 302 304
PDO designation 434, 435 plant waste, CO2 generation 42
peak oil 320 plant-microbe interaction 56
peanuts 159, 161 plant-parasitic nematodes 86
Pearl River Delta 222 plant-related intellectual property 292, 296, 300
peatland 112 plantations/plantation crops 10, 14, 18, 57, 59,
Peluso, N. 369 115, 175, 275, 284, 285, 331, 333, 334, 335,
perennial weed species 88 336
perlite 63 plants 37, 41–2, 48, 51, 53, 59, 64, 87
permaculture 59, 404 plastic greenhouses 42, 44, 48, 331, 334
pest(s) plastic mulches 57
control 33, 48, 60, 79, 86, 92–3 poisons 242
crop damage 78 Polanyi, K. 159, 160, 172
parasite/parasitoids interactions 92–3 policy cycle decisions 130
pesticide-resistant 78 political economy perspective, AFN research
plant vulnerability 63 428
population explosion 57 political power 165, 170, 172, 266, 269, 296,
resurgence 60 299, 300, 303, 379
soil management 86 pollinators 51, 79, 89–90, 91
pesticides 33, 51, 57, 58, 60, 78, 79, 237, 239, pollution 57, 63, 84, 109, 241
242, 301 population ecology 60
Pfiffner, L. 88 population increase 6, 33, 40, 62, 65, 79, 83,
PGI designations 434, 435 107, 126, 127, 239, 312
Phelan, P.L. 86 Portugal 434, 435
phenotypes 51 post management farming 82
philanthropy 240 post-farm processing 126
phosphates 55, 63 post-Green Revolution Asian situations 204–5
phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) carboxylase 40 post-harvest grazing 47
phosphorus 37, 41, 54, 56, 241 post-productivist agriculture 19, 392, 393
photoperiodism 50–51 potassium 37, 54, 241
photorespiration 40 potatoes 33, 64, 296, 406
photosensitivity 49 poultry 51, 53, 115
photosynthesis 37–9, 40, 41 poverty 84, 175, 188, 203, 205, 258, 320
physical capital 61 poverty alleviation/reduction 128, 203, 204,
pigs 33, 115 205, 206, 210, 239, 240, 320, 462, 470
pineapples 38, 40 power/power relations 328, 329, 332, 353,
Pingali, P. 465 354–5, 362, 369–70, 381, 382, 442, 447
Pini, B. 360 see also corporate power; economic power;
Pinstrup-Andersen, P. 418 interdependent power; political power;
Pioneer Hi-Bred 239, 292 structural power
Piven, F.F. 373 pre-farm-gate standard 278

precautionary principle 113, 249 ‘protected commons’ approach 304

precision farming 58, 68, 70 protectionism 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 175, 177,
predators 51, 58, 60 178, 179, 189, 190, 226, 227, 391–2, 394
predatory control 37, 38, 48 protein(s) 37, 41, 56
premium prices 59, 393, 417 protests 246, 257, 322
prey species, loss of 58 protozoa 56
price(s) 160–61, 162 provincial food system initiatives (Ontario)
bubbles 324 21–2, 449–59
dairy sector, India 474 public awareness
deregulation and destabilization of 171 environmental problems 116–17
distortions 116, 175, 324 large-scale land acquisitions 322
fixing 298 side-effects of chemicals 78
food security 316 public health 46, 78, 301
inflation 258, 268 Public Law 480 (US) 163, 167, 463
instability 10, 162, 171, 186, 230 public research centres 240–41
regulation 157, 162–3 public-private partnerships (PPPs) 299, 301
rises 268, 319, 323 pulses 107
subsidy impacts 199–200, 201–2 Purcell, M. 431
see also food price(s) Purtauf, T. 89
‘Price Loss Coverage’ program 171
price premiums 283, 285 qanat systems 43
price supports 157, 161, 162, 163, 165, 168, Qatar 312, 318
169, 170, 171, 390, 468 Qinghai Province 226
primate species, threat to 59 Qinghai-Tibet Plateau 220
Pritchard, B. 370, 371, 381 quality food production 432, 433, 435
private agri-food governance 5, 14–15, 274–87, quality labels 21, 434
298 Quatar 317
private equity consortia 314–15
private interests 296, 299, 300, 301, 303 rail transport 416, 466
private investment 300, 301, 416 rainfall 43, 46, 47, 53, 109
private sector involvement 239, 332 rainmaking 44
private standards 155, 276, 278, 331, 332 rainwater 56
privileged investment 374 Raney, T. 465
privileged resource access 373–4, 383 rare mammals 59
Pro Montagna initiative 416 Raschka, A. 108
Probus 415 ‘ratchet effect’ strengthening IP norms 293
process, and place 433, 435–8 Ravindranath, N.H. 108
producer cooperatives 416–17 re-skilling 381–2
producer subsidies/support 179, 194–5, 195, Reagan administration 149, 464
199, 206–7 reconnection 429
producer-consumer relations 432, 436 Rees, W.E. 111
producer-driven multifunctional agriculture reflexive localism 431
396–7, 398 refrigeration 466, 467
producer-led governance 276 Regional Planning Interests Act (RPIA) 2014
product, and place 433, 434–5 (Australia) 380
product-specific approaches, sustainable land regional research centres 69
use 114–16 regulation, global land use and need for 115
production contracts 16, 377, 381 regulatory capture 277, 279–80, 281–2, 284
production controls 157, 161, 163, 164, 165, relative rate of assistance (RRA) 176, 177, 183,
167, 168, 169, 170, 171 189, 190, 191
production possibilities 266 Renglich, H. 453, 454, 455, 456, 458
productivist agriculture 19, 392, 393, 395, 396, Renting, H. 432–3
406 replication, scaling out through 449, 457, 458
profit(s) 82, 268, 309–310, 399, 465 reproducing bodies, women, work and 359–60
property ownership 371 reproduction, day length and 51

Index 503
reproductive system, effect of pesticides 78 Rockefeller Foundation 239, 240, 245, 467
Republican Party (US) 159, 164, 165, 170 Rockström, J. 112
reregulation 324 Roffe, P. 293
rescaling 429 Rome Conference (2008) 259, 260, 262, 263
reservoirs 44, 46, 51 Roosevelt, President 161
residue burning 57 rooting mediums 63
resilience 56, 82, 129, 404, 405, 408, 420, roots 107, 126
447–8, 457, 459 Rosegrant, M.W. 203
resistance Royal Society 83
productivity as an antidote 239 rubisco 40, 41
to homogenisation in agriculture 410 ruminants 66, 126–7
to large-scale land acquisitions 322 Rundlöf, M. 90
see also food riots; local mobilisations; Rural Development Regulation 393, 426, 431
protests; social movements rural sociology/development approach, AFN
resource(s) research 428
access relations 368–83 Russia 24, 42, 168, 250, 331, 464
conservation 57, 69 rye 38, 50, 416, 417
consumption 83
depletion 407 safe operating space 112–13, 118
exploitation 332, 334, 345, 410 Sainsbury’s 281
finite 8, 63, 127 salinisation 44, 78, 108, 242, 312
types 61 Sam the Banana Man 374–5
respacing 429 sandy soils 53, 68
‘revolving doors’ practice 299 Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement 150
Rhizobium 56 Sarkozy, N. 154
rhizosphere 54 Saudi Arabia 313, 317, 318
Ribot, J.C. 369 savannahs 109, 112
rice 150, 159, 161, 406 Savills Research 313
domestication 33, 465 Sayer, A. 361
genetically modified 47–8, 57, 65, 68, 239, scaling up/scaling out 448–9, 457–9
248, 408–9, 411–12, 413–14 Schaer, B. 434
import controls 178 Schafer, E. 263
imports 177 Schama, C. 374
nitrogen fertilizer take-up 78 Schiff, M. 179
percentage of food calories produced 258 Schmeiser, P. 294, 302
photosynthetic mechanism 38, 42 Scholten, B.A. 474, 477
prices 171, 258 Schütz, H. 110
restrictions on purchase of (US) 258 science and technology studies (STS) 238
riots 257 scientific uncertainty 63
subsidy impacts 201 Scotland 88
water management 47 Seafood Industry Council (New Zealand)
yields 245–6 283
rice rustling 258 seasonal contrasts 69
Ricketts Hein, J. 431 Second Agricultural Revolution 465–6, 467
Rickson, K. 378 Second Food Regime (1947-1970s) 463
Rickson, R.E. 371, 376, 381 second-generation biofuels 23
Rickson, S. 377 secrecy 256, 321
Right Livelihood Award 322 securitisation 310–311
risk 198, 302, 311, 407–9 seed banks 63
risk frame (food security) 439 seed industry 145, 295–9
Risk fund 417 seed patents 247, 249
risk management 69–70, 417 seed sterility 248–9, 296
risk reduction mechanisms 408 seeds patent 302
river water 242 self-interest 136
Robinson, G.M. 446–7, 449 self-organising capacity 448

self-sufficiency 4, 146, 178, 188, 201, 241, 244, social enterprises, and system change 448
245, 390, 439, 463, 471 social and environmental consequences
Sell, S. 293 fruit and vegetable production, Morocco
Selznick, P.J. 369 332–3, 344
semi-arid areas 43, 46, 63, 109, 332 global food system 274–5
semi-subsistence farmers 143–4 of Green Revolution 241–7
Sen, A. 265, 266 land use 389–90, 391, 392, 393, 394, 398, 399
sensitive products 143, 152, 154 mining 372, 373
set aside programs 161 see also environmental impacts
Seto, K. 108 social and environmental relations 431
Seufert, V. 81 ‘social licence to operate’ 374, 380
shade 51 social movements 19, 238, 246, 249, 322
shale gas development 379 social premiums 285
Shanghai 221, 223, 224 social science disciplines 240
Shapiro, R. 261 social structure, Souss region, Morocco 333
shareholder value 314, 315, 378 societal values 146
Sharma, A. 461 socio-economic systems 82, 266–7
sharp key, food security framing 439, 440 socio-ecosystem reform 419
Shashtri, L. 462, 471 soil
sheep 33, 465 aeration 56
shelter 51–3, 58 aggregation 53, 56
shiftwork, motherhood 359 carbon sequestration 65
Shiva, V. 408 degradation 107, 108, 112
short food supply chains (SFSCs) 429–30, 431, desalination 70
432, 433, 442 ecology 86
Sierra Nevada 44 effects of organic agriculture on 84–8
silage 43, 47 erosion 33, 51, 55, 63, 77, 79, 84, 94, 244
Silent Spring 78 fertility 80, 84, 108, 205, 412, 466
Sime Darby 276 loss 312
Singapore 304, 317 organic matter (SOM) 53–4, 55–7, 84, 86, 94
Single Farm Payments 393–4 organisms 56, 57
Skeggs, B. 361 permeability/penetrability 53, 56
skills, food processing industries 351, 352–5, pH 54, 55
359, 361, 362–3 and productivity 37
skills gap 354 quality 63
skills shortages 353–4, 359, 361 replacement 63
Skully, D. 199 salinisation 44, 78, 108, 242
small mammal prey 58 structure 53–4, 56
small woodlands 58 texture 55
small-scale farmers 79, 144, 154, 243, 244, 245, warming 55
248, 250, 259, 262, 335 water-holding capacity 55, 85
small-scale greenhouses 42 soil solution nutrients 54
Smallholder Ambassador and Observer for soil-binding agents 56
Africa 280 solar energy 37
smallholders 13, 14, 22, 202, 205, 206, 208, 242, Somerfield 315
246, 277, 278, 280, 284, 285, 291, 295, 323, Sonnino, R. 426, 427, 428, 430, 431, 435, 442,
328, 335, 462, 477, 478 446
smart subsidies 205–6 Souss plain 330–32
Smith, A. 464 South Africa 46, 49, 163, 249, 250, 282, 301,
Smith, H.G. 91 357
Smith, P. 85 South America 33, 115, 240, 241, 247
social capital 61 South Asia 185, 188, 191, 465
social change, technological advances 267 South Korea 143, 150, 171, 178, 190, 239, 317
social constructionism 361 Southeast Asia 33, 47, 108, 115
social embeddedness 430 Southwest Asia 33

Index 505
sovereign wealth funds 313, 317 sulphur 37, 54, 56

Soviet Union 149, 163, 463 sunflower 50
soybean 50, 115, 159, 167, 169, 170, 247, 292 super bacteria 57
Spain 32, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 60, 61, 69, 335, supermarkets 3, 16, 18, 20, 107, 314, 328, 329,
354, 433, 434, 435 376, 436
spatially extended/spatially proximate SFSCs supply and demand 145, 146–7, 148, 157, 316,
430 323, 354
special safeguard mechanism 154, 155, 190 supply management policy (US) 157, 159,
specialisation 2, 33, 92 160–64
speciality products 426, 432, 434, 435 Sustain Ontario 449, 451, 452, 457–8
species environmental response 48–51, 93 sustainability 79, 129, 370
species loss/elimination 33, 58, 64, 92 sustainability standards 277, 278
species richness 87, 89, 90, 91 co-optation see regulatory capture;
speculation 15, 268, 310, 313, 315–16, 408 weakening of standards
spelt 416, 417 sustainable agriculture 61–70, 94, 398, 399
spiders 87, 88, 89, 91 see also organic agriculture
spray irrigation 43 sustainable food system organisations
staged authenticity 432 (Ontario) 21–2, 449–59
Standard Material Transfer Agreement sustainable intensification 7–8
(SMTA) 295 agricultural decision-making 130
standardisation 291, 332, 370, 426 modelling the process 131–6
standards see minimum environmental origins and evolution of 129–30
standards; private standards; policy incentives 136–7
sustainability standards understanding and measuring 128
Starbucks 1, 284, 285 sustainable land use 114–19
Stark, D. 369 Swarna-Subl 47–8
steady-state systems 55, 65 Sweden 163
Steger, S. 110 sweet peppers 60, 342
Stehfast, E. 118 Swinbank, A. 145, 149
stewardship 146, 394–5 Switzerland 86, 88, 89, 110, 381–2, 391, 410,
stomata 37, 40, 41 414–18
strawberries 89 Syngenta 260, 292, 297, 298, 299
strict prescriptions, environmental and social synthetic fertilisers 60, 63, 77–8, 239
conduct 277 see also nitrogen fertilisers
Stroink, M. 447 synthetic fibres/materials 166, 465
strong AFNs 433 synthetic pesticides 57
Stroup, L.J. 379 system change 448–9
structural adjustment 215, 221, 222, 226, 227, system diversity 448
231, 250 system resilience 56, 129, 404, 405, 408, 420,
structural power 300, 301 447–8, 457, 459
sub-prime securities 311
Sub-Saharan Africa 2, 108, 114, 144, 257, 260, Taiwan 178, 190, 239, 409
280, 313 takeovers, in food industry 314–15
Subramaniam, Shri C. 461–2, 467 Tane Delta 321
subsidies see agricultural subsidies tariffs 150, 152–3, 163, 190
subsistence agriculture 12, 245, 248, 321, 416 Taylor, M. 299
‘substantial equivalence’ policy 464 techno-optimism 264, 267, 270, 380
Substantive Patent Law Treaty 293 technological advances 33, 267, 462, 465
substitutionism 465 technological knowledge 62
successful Asian Green Revolution 203–4 technology 42, 58, 61, 219, 267, 331, 340, 353
Sudan 51, 317, 319, 321–2 technology treadmill 300–301
sugar 107, 151, 160, 164 Technology Use Agreement 302
sui generis protection 291–2, 296, 303 TEEB 113
suicide (farmer) 246, 465 temperature(s) 24, 37, 38, 43, 48–9, 49, 50
sulphates 55, 68 Tennessee Valley Authority TVA 239

Terminator gene 248 Uganda 283, 461, 471

terraced agriculture 43 Ukraine 49, 466
territorial land use 110 UN Framework Convention on Climate
terroir 435 Change (UNFCCC) 110
Tesco 279 United Fruit Company (UFCO) 240, 374–5
Thailand 151, 304, 375, 376, 410–414, 461 United Kingdom 3
Thatcher, M. 464 agricultural trade reform 177
Thies, C. 93 CAP in 393, 394
Third Agricultural Revolution 466–7, 477, 478 distortion of farmer incentives 177
Third Food Regime (1980s-present) 463–4, labour market understanding 353
468 local food networks 438–40
third-party certification 284 organic farming 87, 433
Thomas, H. 201 PDO/PGI designations 434, 435
Thomas, I. 409 pollinator data 89–90
Tianjin 221 privatisation of research 299
tillage 53, 57, 68 skill development 354
tilth 53 skill policy 351
time-space compression 1–2 skills shortages 354
tobacco 159, 161, 169 stewardship survey 394–5
tomatoes 44, 60, 263, 330, 334, 335, 342, 381 vineyards 69–70
top-down change 448 wheat varieties 49
trade flows, and food regimes 159–60 United Nations 126, 259–60
trade liberalisation 8, 10, 147, 148, 149, 150, United Nations Committee on Economic,
152, 153, 155, 169, 170, 171, 172, 190, 323, Social and Cultural Rights 322
368, 405 United Nations Conference on Trade and
trade reforms 10, 175–92 Development (UNCTAD) 279
trade and retail TNCs 275–6 United Nations Educational Scientific and
traditional seeds 245, 248 Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 379
training 353, 354, 363 United Nations Environment Programme
Trans-Pacific Partnership 293 (UNEP) 106–7, 112, 300
transgenesis see genetic modification United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI) 453, 454
transnational corporations (TNCs) 4, 5 United States 3, 33, 63
and agri-food governance 274–87 access relations 379
dominance of agri-food industry 303 AFN research 426
globalisation 1, 2, 12–18 agricultural biotechnology 247
and local community relations 17–18, agricultural policy 9–10, 149, 157–72
368–83 agricultural productivity/development 239
reliance on public science 299 agricultural subsidies 143, 144, 145, 148,
see also corporate power 163, 172
transpiration 37, 41 biofuel support policies 313
transport improvements 416, 466 commodity speculation 268
tree planting 312 drought/failed harvest and financial loss 43
trees 51, 59 food banks 258
Tregear, A. 425, 428–9, 430, 431, 442 food processing 350
Trevélez 61 free trade agreements 293
triple bottom line 374, 454 GM crops 260, 263, 264
tropical agriculture 49 growing season 49
tropical mammals 59 intellectual property 293
tropical plants 38, 51 labour market understanding 353
trust 274, 284, 368, 375, 378, 381, 382, 425, 428 opposition to Cartagena Protocol 249
Tscharntke, T. 90 organic agriculture 80, 81
tubers 107, 126, 296 price inflation 258
Tuomisto, H.L. 81 reduced meat consumption and land savings
Turkey 42, 409 118
Turner, B. 334 restrictions on purchase of rice 258

Index 507
supply side, skill development 354 global demand 44

surpluses 163 management 46, 47, 70
tolerance of CAP 149 needs 63
trade liberalisation 153, 155 organic agriculture and 85
trade reform 190 plant needs 37
water abstraction 44 policy, sustainable regional 46
University of California 299 pollution 241
unreflexive localism 431 quality 241
uptake boost 277, 278–9, 281, 283–4 scarcity 83, 215, 262, 332, 407
urban population, rising food prices 258–9 storage 53
urbanisation 43, 48, 65, 79, 107, 108, 147, 215, supply 43, 44, 57, 242
225, 231, 249, 312 transfers 44, 46
Uren, D. 372 use/reuse 43, 46, 78, 85
Uruguay Round 149–51, 169, 189, 190, 464 see also groundwater
US Agency for International Development Water Framework Directive (EU) 45
(USAID) 238 water meadows 47
‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality 266 waterlogging 47, 108, 242
utility patents 294 watershed disruption 48
Watson, D. 354
Valdés, A. 179 Watts, D. 433, 435
Valenzuela, E. 184 weak AFNs 432, 433
value-added in agriculture 188 weakening of standards 277–8, 280, 282,
Van der Werf, W. 92 284–5
Van Vuuren, D.P. 113 wealth preservation 313–14
variety-use GURTs 296 weather 24, 47, 69, 107, 147
vegetable oils 107 weeds 57, 58, 87, 88, 89
vegetarian diet 83 West Africa 59, 144, 257
vegetation 88 Western Asia 260
vernalisation 48–9 Westhoek, H. 118
vertebrates 56 Westley, F. 448, 449, 457, 459
vertical integration 247, 298, 323, 332, 334 Whatmore, S. 425, 432
Vietnam 171, 258, 304, 317, 319 wheat 38, 406, 416
village cooperatives 472, 474 domestication 33, 465
village-level farming 338–40 exports 163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 170
vines/vineyards 43, 69–70, 88, 89 genetically modified 58, 239, 240, 245, 409
Violet Acquisitions 315 international agreement 164
Visser, M.E. 92 market 164, 167, 169
vitamin A 65, 248 nitrogen fertilizer take-up 78
volatilisation 55, 78 percentage of food calories produced 258
Von Witzke, H. 106, 111 prices 160–61, 168, 171, 258
Vorley, B. 479 production 167, 171, 240, 244
vulnerable species 59 segment (US) 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165,
167, 168, 169, 170, 171
Wal-Mart 276, 278–9, 281, 284 spring-sown 49
Washington Consensus 204 weather conditions 47
water 42–8 winter varieties 49, 415
access 332, 376 yields 245
availability 37, 42–3, 49, 53 Wheat Belt 159, 161
CO2 levels and plant absorption 41 White Revolution 461, 463, 465–8
conservation 40, 43, 222 India 22, 461, 462, 465, 467, 468–78, 479
control projects 237, 242 whitefly 60, 334
distribution, large-scale 43 Whitteker, R. 453–4, 457, 459
erosion 108 Whittlesey, D. 34
evaporation loss 43, 44, 51 whole chain methodology, market channel
exploitation 16, 332, 334 study 436, 442

wholesale markets, Moroccan fruit and World Economic Forum (Davos) 153
vegetable 341 World Food Programme (WFP) 83, 472
wild bees 79 World Food Summits 22, 259–60
wild biodiversity 87 World Intellectual Property Organization
wild crop species 63 (WIPO) 293
wildflowers 59 World Trade Organization (WTO) 4, 143, 144,
wildlife conservation 59 169, 171, 247, 279, 302, 335, 405, 463,
Williams, S.J. 361 464
Wilson, G. 393, 394 World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 276, 281
wind chill 51, 53 Wuesthoff Report (1952) 296
wind erosion 108, 312
wine 147 Yale Sustainable Food Program 468
Winters, L.A. 190 Yangtze River Delta 221
Wirsenius, S. 118 yellow leaf curl virus 334
Wiskerke, J. 425, 426 Yellow Revolution 461, 472
within-species variation 51 yellow rust immunity 409
Wolkowitz, C. 360 yield(s) 24, 81, 85, 106–7, 115, 130, 136, 203,
women see gender 241, 245–6, 263, 269
woodlands 58
woodlark 58 Zambia 188, 205
Woods, M. 363 Zenith 415
work/workers see labour Zerbe, N. 262
World Bank 162, 176, 177, 179, 180, 194, 238, zero tillage 85, 312
240, 259, 319, 320, 324, 410, 462, 476, 477, Zhejiang Province 225
478 Ziegler, R. 262
World Business Council for Sustainable Zimbabwe 188, 189, 205, 474
Development 116 zinc 54


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HANDBOOK ON THE GLOBALISATION OF

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc.

A catalogue record for this book

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015933355

This book is available electronically in the

ISBN 978 0 85793 982 1 (cased)

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

1 The globalisation of agriculture: introducing the Handbook 1

PART I THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF AGRICULTURE

2 Agriculture and environment: fundamentals and future perspectives 31

PART II GLOBALISATION AND POLICY REGIMES

6 Agricultural trade 143

PART III GLOBALISATION AND TRANSNATIONAL

11 Geographies and histories of the Green Revolution: from global flows to

PART IV CHALLENGES TO THE GLOBALISATION OF

19 Multifunctional agricultural transition: essential for local diversity in a

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Kym Anderson is the George Gollin Professor of Economics at the University of

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Simon J. Fielke is a PhD candidate in the discipline of Geography, Environment and

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Amani Omer is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Humanities

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Bill Winders is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the School of History, Technology,

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

INTRODUCTION: GLOBALISATION AND THE AGRI-­FOOD

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

STRUCTURE OF THE HANDBOOK

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

agro-­ecosystems (Jarvis, 2010). In addition to considering ‘environmental fundamen-

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Part I: The Physical Basis of Agriculture

In contrast to most economic activities, the physical environment is of fundamental

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

r­ elationship between environmental factors and agricultural activity. This relationship

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

is difficult and, in effect, organic production represents a range of different systems

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Part II: Globalisation and Policy Regimes

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

characterised by agricultural intensification, concentration and specialisation (Ilbery

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Part III: Globalisation and Transnational Corporations

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

forms of financialisation in the sector: takeovers of food manufacturers and retailers,

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Part IV: Challenges to the Globalisation of Agriculture

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

Guy M. Robinson and Doris A. Carson - 9780857939821

1 The globalisation of agriculture: introducing the Handbook 1

2 Agriculture and environment: fundamentals and future perspectives 31

6 Agricultural trade 143

PART III GLOBALISATION AND TRANSNATIONAL

11 Geographies and histories of the Green Revolution: from global flows to

PART IV CHALLENGES TO THE GLOBALISATION OF

19 Multifunctional agricultural transition: essential for local diversity in a

INTRODUCTION: GLOBALISATION AND THE AGRI-FOOD

agro-ecosystems (Jarvis, 2010). In addition to considering ‘environmental fundamen-

r elationship between environmental factors and agricultural activity. This relationship

The transition from hunting- gathering to agricultural systems began around

Table 2.2 Environmental factors influencing growth and productivity of agricultural

BOX 2.1 PHOTOSYNTHETIC PATHWAYS AND THEIR AGRICULTURAL

flowering in some short-day plants is stimulated at longer (though declining) daylight