Towards a political economy of food

Abstract

A political economy of food is proposed by drawing critically upon existing literature. First, food is understood in terms of a system of provision in which the connection between production and consumption is viewed as a chain of activities, vertically integrated. Different foods give rise to different systems of provision, and these are distinguished relative to other non‐food systems by their heavy dependence upon organic properties throughout the linkages from production to consumption. While emphasis is placed upon the tendencies to vertical (dis)integration along the food chain and to industrialization of food processing and agriculture, these are not interpreted as empirical trends within the confines of given structures, as is standard in the most recent food systems literature, but as potential supports to the reproduction or transformation of those structures. In particular, the structural relationships between agriculture and industry are interpreted as the historically contingent outcome of tendencies and countertendencies associated with capital accumulation. These will vary across food products, undermining the validity of a general theory of the rise and fall of Fordist agriculture.