Green protectionism and organic food exporting from New Zealand: crisis experiments in the breakdown of Fordist trade and agricultural policies.

摘要

This discussion argues that the exporting of organic produce from New Zealand is a response to the ongoing breakdown of Fordist regulatory measures for agriculture in destination markets. The unambiguous neoliberal revolution in New Zealand has survived only through the expansion of food exports, especially by large corporate entities and producer marketing boards. It has also rendered the country's exporters of food products particularly sensitive to the trade and agricultural policies of the USA,Japan, and the European Union. Some commentators consider New Zealand's experiment in agricultural deregulation indicative of a wider coherence in global food trade, a new stability institutionalized in the Uruguay Round of the GATT and regulated underthe auspices of the World Trade Organization. The case of organic and low-input food exporting from New Zealand shows that no such 'new times' exist. Rather, these new types of food exporting are crisis experiments induced by green protectionism (the useof health and food safety issues as an impediment to trade). In turn, green protectionism is a direct result of the continuing breakdown of Fordist agricultural regulation in key nations: the global trade in food products remains in crisis.