Abstract This paper considers the domestic and international ramifications of financialization and grain price instability in the US agri-food sector. It finds that during the recent period of high and volatile prices, the average income of large-scale farms reached the earnings threshold of the top percentile of US households, and agricultural commodity traders markedly outperformed […]
Continue ReadingHoward, ‘Concentration and Power in the Food System’
Abstract This book seeks to illuminate which firms have become the most dominant, and more importantly, how they shape and reshape society in their efforts to increase their control. These dynamics have received insufficient attention from academics and even critics of the current food system. The power of dominant firms extends far beyond narrow economic […]
Continue ReadingBaines, ‘Fuel, Feed and the Corporate Restructuring of the Food Regime’
Abstract The agrofuel boom has brought about some of the most significant transformations in the world food system in recent decades. A rich and diverse body of agrarian political economy research has emerged that elucidates the conflicts and redistributional shifts engendered by these transformations. However, less attention has been given to differences within agri-food capital. […]
Continue ReadingNo. 2014/03: Baines, ‘The Ethanol Boom and the Restructuring of the Food Regime’
Abstract The agrofuel boom has brought about some of the most significant transformations in the world food system in recent decades. A rich and diverse body of agrarian political economy research has emerged that elucidates the conflicts and redistributional shifts engendered by these transformations. However, hitherto this point, less attention has been given to differences […]
Continue ReadingThe Geopolitical Economy of the Ethanol Boom
Joseph Baines The corn-ethanol boom represents one of the most dramatic changes in the world food system in recent decades. The ethanol sector now absorbs around 40% of the corn produced in the US. Surging biofuels production (of which US corn-ethanol production accounts for about half) is widely considered to have played a key role […]
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