Global Food Economy Research Articles

The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming ‐ By Tony Weis

Journal of Agrarian ChangeVolume 8, Issue 4 p. 618-623 The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming - By Tony Weis HARRIET FRIEDMANN, HARRIET FRIEDMANN Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Rd, N. Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, CanadaSearch for more papers by this author HARRIET FRIEDMANN, HARRIET FRIEDMANN Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Rd, N. Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, CanadaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 September 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0366.2008.00182.xCitations: 2 Harriet Friedmann, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, 3359 Mississauga Rd, N. Mississauga, Ontario L5L 1C6, Canada. e-mail: [email protected] Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume8, Issue4October 2008Pages 618-623 RelatedInformation

Global Resources and Market Impacts on US Pacific Northwest Fisheries

Fish and fishery products represent a dynamic sector of the world's global food economy. Changes in supply, market demands, and fishery regulations have major impacts on regional fisheries in the US. Many small and mid-size fishing operations have been adversely affected by these changes and have undertaken different strategies to overcome economic hardships and survive in the global marketplace. This paper will discuss two such fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, the Pacific salmon and troll-caught albacore fisheries, and show how they have met the challenges of globalization. Different examples of branding, marketing, and responses to market change have helped mitigate some of the negative impacts of increasing competition. The need for working cooperatively among disparate groups for resource management, utilization, and marketing is becoming more critical for small and mid-size enterprises to survive and prosper in a global economy. A Chinese version of this article's abstract is available online at: www.informaworld.com/rglo

Breeding for Africa's new smallholder maize paradigm

This paper describes the evolution of a newly emerging smallholder maize paradigm in southern Africa beginning in 1996. This new paradigm involves the breeding, extension, and adoption of a new generation of open-pollinated ‘flinty’ maize varieties that specifically address the needs of southern African smallholder farmers for seed varieties that can be replanted (recycled) and that resist drought and low fertility problems increasingly common in southern Africa. The described mechanism is the extension and breeding work of the Southern Africa Drought and Low Fertility programme (SADLF) of the Centro Internationale por la Mejoridad de Maize y Trigo (CIMMYT). This paper explains the devolution of southern African maize production in the past two decades from centralized large-scale producers to smallholder farms, signalling a shift in research and plant breeding needs. The research/extension approach described here had profound consequences beyond the technical benefits of screening maize varieties for tolerance to stress; it empowered small-scale farmers to become informed consumers of agricultural technology. The transformation of the smallholder from a passive consumer to one actively seeking the best opportunity and seed to produce food, create economic opportunities and address local social conditions is an important development in the history and sustainability of maize production in southern Africa, and one consistent with modern African history of economic liberalization in the global food economy.

Water Scarcity and Food Import: A Case Study for Southern Mediterranean Countries

Taking six southern Mediterranean countries as a case study, this paper addresses the water-food challenges facing water-scarce countries and the implications for the world food economy. By accounting the volume of virtual water embedded in food imports into the countries concerned, a close relationship between water endowment and food import dependence is elaborated. A projection of the cereal demand suggests an increment of 40–60 percentage points in these countries by 2020 above their 1998–99 levels, raising the aggregate volume of cereal imports to around 40 million tons. The analysis also finds that the trend of shifting from staple grain crops to higher-value cash crops was weak during the past two decades. A deteriorating trade deficit for both cereal and noncereal agricultural products was evident in almost all the countries, suggesting a rigid and persistent constraint of water scarcity on overall agricultural development. The results of this case study highlight two important points: (a) food imports are imperative for compensating water resource deficiency; (b) water scarcity-related food imports will continue to expand and impose increasing impacts on the global food economy.

A Global Interpretation of the Rise of the East Asian Food Import Complex

The last quarter century explosion of consumer affluence in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and China, accompanied a new phase in the organization of the global food economy. It also conditioned the increasingly speculative capital investments in the region. This paper argues that the restructuring of production and consumption relations involved a movement away from the US-centered bilateral food surplus regime, and toward a multilateral food regime based in WTO-led agricultural liberalization, and the corporate restructuring of agriculture. The East Asian food import complex advances the neoliberal project of global free trade, spawning agro-export zones throughout Southeast Asia.

Aid, Food Policy Reform, and U.S. Agricultural Interests in the Third World

global food economy. One component of this new agricultural nationalism is a growing disenchantment with American aid to agriculture in the third world. The New York Times, on 4 June 1987, for example, featured the story, World Bank Loans Stir Ire of U.S. Farm Groups, in which a halfdozen leading agricultural organizations argued against aid and stimulating competition against American farmers . .. This paper assesses the aid-to-agriculture question from a food policy perspective. It seeks to answer two broad questions: Is food policy and agricultural growth in the third world in the interest of U.S. agriculture? If so, is aid, and the conditions attached to it, an effective means for achieving this reform? These are immense topics, and the rather bold series of propositions presented here provide only partial answers. Four clarifying comments seem necessary before proceeding with the analysis. First, the focus of this paper is on food policy and its reform. Such a concept is not necessarily synonymous with simply increasing agricultural output, although typically leads to additional production. Food policy is instead a broader view that embraces consumption, marketing, and trade, as well as production (Timmer, Falcon, and Pearson). Some types of policy might significantly improve consumption but leave agricultural production unaffected or even lowered. For example, many developing countries now have domestic prices higher than those in comparable world markets. If reform means using world or border prices as the pricing norm, an imposition of that norm would increase consumption but negatively affect farmer incentives and hence reduce the production of certain commodities.