ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s transnational food corporations were identified as the key agents coordinating and driving cross-continental food systems (e.g. Bonanno et al. 1994; Heffernan and Constance 1994; Friedland 1994). Although large food companies had played a role in the global trade of food and fibre commodities for some time, usually associated with plantations of traditional crops such as coffee, tea and rubber (Dinham and Hines 1983), their role from the 1990s was seen as quantitatively and qualitatively different. These agents were arguably responsible for the coordination of global food chains in multiple production sites for rapid delivery to distanced consumption locales. While more recent research has tended to qualify the extent to which the food system is ‘truly global’ and comparable to globalized industrial production systems (Goodman and Watts 1994; Watts 1996), case studies of multinational food companies confirm that they continue to play an important role in the global agri-food system and in cross-continental food chains. Research on companies such as H.J. Heinz, the Charoen Pokphand Group, Nestlé, Cargill and ConAgra, among many others, has focused on the flexibility of sourcing practices, but also on the impact and response of producers in a wide range of local contexts (Heffernan and Constance 1994; Pritchard and Fagan 1999; Goss et al. 2000).
