Controversial Frontiers of Agricultural Development and Environmental Change

As discussed in detail in the other chapters in this book, although agricultural production has increased considerably in absolute terms since the post–World War II years, various problems continue to affect the agriculture industry’s image worldwide. These problems include a lack of access to affordable, nutritious food in many countries; the impacts of agrochemicals on communities and ecosystems; and the enormous concentration of power held by a small number of mega-supermarkets and agri-food corporations to control food production, distribution, and consumption. There is a growing understanding today that the increasing industrialization of agriculture represents an important chapter, perhaps the most important, in the renovation of the global capitalist economy (Busch and Bain 2004) and, in particular, the transition to post-Fordist modes of production under the sphere of influence of globalization and neoliberalism (McMichael 2009). If neoliberalism—as a complex, inherently variegated ideology of critical importance across scales and regions (MacArtney 2009)—comprises beliefs and practices centred on the idea that market efficiency is the best mechanism for regulating socio-economic relations and renovating politico-economic strategies (Schmalz and Ebenau 2012), agro-neoliberalism is a highly idiosyncratic phenomenon that combines free-market pressures and flexibilization approaches with renewed forms of protectionism, trade barriers, and labour movement restrictions (Potter and Tilzey 2005). Agro-neoliberalism is essentially a politicized ideology that ultimately deepens the contradictions of capitalism across time and space (Araghi 2003), such as the disturbing contrast between southern areas of production (and environmental degradation) and northern spaces of consumption (and capital accumulation).