Preliminary Investigations into the Local Impacts of East Asian Agri-Food Restructuring

Shuji Hisano (Hokkaido University)
Raymond A. Jussaume Jr. (Washington State University)
Chul-Kyoo Kim (Korea University)
Philip McMichael (Cornell University)
Shigeru Otsuka (Shimane Prefectural Women's College)
Yoshimitsu Taniguchi (Akita Prefectural Agricultural College)
Lin Zhibin (China Agricultural University)

ABSTRACT

Globalization is a concept that focuses attention on the economic, political and socio-cultural organization of human activity on a global scale. In positing a universal process, the concept of globalization has many diverse empirical manifestations at various levels: regional, national and sub-national. Because globalization is instituted politically, via multilateral and regional agreements, and authored by nation-states, there is a tendency for the literature on the globalization of agri-food systems, to privilege empirical analyses of national and regional cases of global restructuring.

The study presented in this paper focuses on global restructuring in East Asia, which has become a dynamic regional hub of economic, political and cultural change within the global order. In the agri-food sector, where a transformation of agricultural production and food distribution and consumption is taking place, primarily under the control of firms indigenous to the region. The resulting changes are having profound impacts on the people and communities of Asia that grow, process, market and consume the foods that are being produced within this regionalized food system.

The paper develop preliminary insights into the dynamics and impacts of the regionalization of the East Asian agri-food system, within the context of globalization. Rural areas that specialize in agricultural production for regional trade have undergone a rapid transformation in what commodities are produced and how they are grown. We present data obtained during field research in Shandong Province, China, and in South Korea in the spring of 1999 that documents how the industrialization of agriculture has taken place over the past decade, and what some of the impacts of that process have been. Among other findings, our research indicates that 1) firm networks, rather than individual firms, are key organizational actors in this restructuring; 2) increased export activity increases producer vulnerability within the agri-food system; 3) that local markets are increasingly becoming residual markets for the agri food export sector, and 4) that producers and the day laborers they hire are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the vagaries of the global market.