ABSTRACT
Modern vegetable oils like soy oil and palm oil are industrial products made from key agro-industrial commodities. In an era of financialization they are regarded as flex crops attracting more investment for food, feed, and fuel. The focus of global vegetable oils has shifted to Asia, where more soybean is crushed and more palm oil is produced and imported than anywhere else in the world. In addition to so-called ABCD companies, Japanese sogo-shosha (general trading companies) are active in this process, and emerging Asian trading companies are joining forces. This chapter studies the structural development of Japanese sogo-shosha, oil refiners, and oil-related food industry firms, based on the Food Regime framework. It argues that the Japanese model is now expanding to other Asian countries and is promoting financialization in the global vegetable oil complex. Many of the Japanese sogo-shosha and oil companies developed in the First Food Regime in an Asian context helped to transform soybean into a global commodity. In the Second Food Regime, they facilitated importation of US grains, and provisioned cheap vegetable oils to the food industry. In the current global Corporate Food Regime, sogo-shosha have become more active – investing overseas and trading South–South. It is concluded that Asian traders and companies have been shifting their strategies, contributing to the restructuring of the global vegetable oil complex and helping to proliferate an industrial ‘mass’ diet derived from globally sourced grains and oils.