ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to specify the definitive historical relationships emerging in the era of 'virtual' capitalism, or 'globalisation'. It considers the concept of the 'food regime,' a derivative concept concretising the historical relations of capitalism, in order to establish world-historical perspective. The concept of the food regime manoeuvred deftly between Immanuel Wallerstein's formulaic concept of the world system and Michel Aglietta's concept of regulation, analysing the rise and decline of national agricultures as part of the geo-political history of capitalism. The concept of the 'import complex' describes a new organisational logic of the global political economy under market rule. The recomposition of regional agricultures includes agri-exporting to service debt, and the offshore movement of Japanese agribusiness capital seeking to reduce costs, exacerbated by endaka, and anticipating liberalisation of Japanese food imports. The Japanese food processing industry, for example, expanded its foreign investments fourteen-fold between 1985-1989.
