ABSTRACT

Poultry has been the first livestock sector to industrialize. The processes of vertical integration plus horizontal integration have rationalized the poultry commodity sector. Over the past 50 years poultry has steadily gained market share compared to beef and pork. The modern poultry commodity system has been characterized as the model of agri-food globalization based on neoliberal restructuring and flexible accumulation where a few global firms dominate the industry. This model is criticized as a system that exercises market power to marginalize production growers and process workers. This chapter applies an agri-food regimes conceptual framework combined with a commodity systems methodology to investigate the role of financialization in the emergence of JBS of Brazil as a dominant agri-food TNC. During the last 20 years JBS has utilized both public and private financial options to become the largest meat company in the world. This chapter presents the term ‘poultry grabs’ as an extension of the concept of land grabs and as an example of the variations of asset grabbing in crises ridden late capitalism.