ABSTRACT
This chapter’s primary aim is to examine how the rise of ‘international competitiveness’ has become a key vector in the government of agriculture and food in recent decades and how through the analysis of ‘risks’ the international competitiveness of a national space called New Zealand comes into existence. A secondary aim is to open up room for contemporary understandings of risk that are more situated. The chapter explores recent experience as a vehicle to ask questions about the emergence of a culture of riskification under neo-liberalizing international agriculture and food relations. This approach highlights both specific and general dimensions of governing competitive participation in the globalizing food economy, as understood from within the context of New Zealand.
