Global Sourcing and Retail Chains: Shifting Relationships of Production in Australian Agri-Foods.

In the decades following the Second World War super markets and retail outlets in North America, Western Europe, and Australasia became the most important sites for the sale of food products. This dominance in food saIes was generally confined to the retail sector as super-markets tended to act as a nexus or distribution point between agri-food producers and consumers. In the 1970s this relationship began to break down as supermarkets moved up the chain of production. Supermarkets began to directly source materials from producers to use in "own" brand and generic products, which soon came to compete with the branded products of agri-food manufacturers. This paper traces the beginnings of these shifts and investigates the consequences of globally-sourced super-market goods in the context of the Australian agri-food system, with pineapples and wine as case studies The paper concludes that the increasing size and scope of supermarket buying power and the presence and growth of "own" brands suggests that capital organized through retail channels is coming to rival manufacturing capital as a significant fraction of the Australian agri-food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]