Food Safety and Contract Edamame: The Geopolitics of the Vegetable Trade in East Asia

Abstract

This paper examines how the proliferation of the new Japanese food‐safety regime has influenced the edamame industries of China and Taiwan—the two largest producers of edamame beans in the world. Edamame is not only a popular cuisine in the Asia‐Pacific region, it is also responsible for the largest‐scale frozen vegetable flow in East Asia. This study addresses how the interaction between geopolitical realities and the subcontracting of edamame crops has created an access regime governing the vegetable trade in East Asia. By addressing the complexity of the geopolitics related to contract farming, this study considers the extent to which the Japanese edamame trade has subordinated edamame producers in multiple places in Asia, while Taiwan's edamame industry has positioned itself to obtain preferential access to the edamame flow between Japan, Taiwan, and China.