The Final Foods Industry and the Changing Face of the Global Agro–Food System

Abstract

This article focusses on the challenges which current processes of global restructuring represent for the leading food industry firms, exploring, in addition, the hypothesis that both the new bio(techno)logy paradigm and novel patterns of food demand (nutriceuticals, organics) accentuate the vulnerability of firms organised around this link in the global agrofood chain. Two dimensions of the new demand oriented food system which assumed dominance as from the mid–70s can be analytically separated out. The leading food industry players can be said have responded well to the first dimension which involved above all the transition to multi–product demand and innovation oriented firm strategies. The second phase is not so much focused on the diversification of demand as on new contents of demand. These either push food further along the substitutionist trajectory up to the frontier with pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, nutriceuticals and functional foods, or radically challenge industrial transformation, harnessing preservation technologies to the reintroduction of the agricultural product as final food In this second phase the final food sector would appear to be in danger of being squeezed between the extremes of demand and supply. On the one hand, it is largely passive in relation to the drama of the new biotechnology paradigm, and on the other it lacks the nuanced knowledge of global demand made possible by information technology which provides a decisive advantage to retail. This second dimension of the new agro–food system places the future of the traditional giants of the food industry in considerable doubt.