ABSTRACT
Most governments in the Western world subscribe to the primacy of economic growth, the need for free trade to stimulate the growth, an unrestricted ‘free’ market, limitations on government regulation, and consumerism allied to a Western corporate vision. It is this model that the West has promoted throughout the world, producing tendencies leading towards global homogenisation of culture, lifestyle and level of technological development. Within the ongoing arguments over the limits to the future extent of this globalisation are different views over who will benefit. In examining the experience of globalisation to date, there have been strong contentions that benefits are highly confined to those at the hub of the process or to those retaining particular connections to it. Elsewhere the overwhelming mass of humanity has either not experienced any significant benefits or are actually being impoverished (Gallup et al., 1999). These disbenefits have furthered the world divide between the West and the rest of the world, sometimes refashioned into a divide between North (Developed) and South (Developing) and, within the South, between the small wealthy urban elites and the countryside (Lipton, 1982). Moreover, in recent times trading relations between the rich North and the poor South have not changed sufficiently to enable Developing Countries to trade themselves out of poverty (Watkins, 1997). Indeed, recent analyses suggest that the growing openness to trade following the GATT Agreement on Agri-
culture in 1994 has had a negative impact on the income growth of the poorest 40 per cent of people in Developing Countries (FAO, 1999; Lundberg and Milanovic, 2000; Madeley, 2000). The tendency has been to accelerate food imports into the South, especially to meet the demands of small wealthy elites pursuing food consumption trends similar to those in the Western world.
