Living local, growing global: Renegotiating the export production regime in New Zealand’s pipfruit sector

Abstract

The articulation between global food commodity complexes and the local production regimes of particular contexts is a major gap in the new political economy literature on food regimes, food complexes, agricultural restructuring and local adjustment. This paper explores how different regions of producers in the New Zealand apple industry in the mid-1990s have negotiated the local export regime of production fashioned by the New Zealand Apple and Pear Marketing Board. This paper’s focus on the Board’s introduction of an integrated fruit production programme in different growing regions is a contribution to understanding of local governance tensions arising in the export component of a national industry.