ABSTRACT
This note is in response to the article by Sojamo et al., “Virtual Water Hegemony: The Role of Agribusiness in Global Water Governance”, in the March 2012 issue of Water International. At the outset, I would like to submit that the analysis provided by the authors is extremely valuable in terms of how the political economy of global agribusiness and food trade is changing, with the rising economies of the East taking over the more rooted, Western agribusiness corporations. But the analysis becomes too divergent in identifying the drivers of change in global food trade. The authors’ argument that the Western agribusiness corporations had established hegemony over virtual water trade, and that this hegemony over “international virtual water flow” is being challenged by the rise of southeastern economic powers, is highly distorted and has its origin in the incorrect understanding of what determines global agricultural commodity trade, which according to Professor J.A. Allan is a global trade in virtual water (Ewing 2011).
