The sustainability of the agrifood system : determinants of the interaction between global and local agrifood governance

摘要

"The sustainability of today’s global agrifood system is shaped by a complex web of globaland local forces. These forces include local values and practices, transnational corporations(TNCs), agricultural policies and politics of the EU as well as the activities of the UnitedNations Development Program, for instance. This paper aims to develop a framework foranalyzing the interaction of various global and local forces in shaping the agrifood system andits sustainability characteristics. This framework allows the systematic and comprehensiveidentification of the relative impact of global versus local, material versus normative, andactor-specific versus structural forces. In a second step, the paper illustrates the framework’sreach in an investigation of determinants of policies and practices regarding geneticallymodified organisms (GMOs) in India. GMO practices and policies represent a contestedground where local and “international” values and interests frequently clash. In consequence,the commercial introduction of GMOs in India presents an excellent case study for theinteraction of forces in the agrifood system." [author's abstract]