ABSTRACT
A key ingredient in supply chain management is that every actor in the supply chain is expected to conform to a wide and ever-growing variety of (increasingly international) de facto standards. Conformity is enforced through systems of audit that extend from the behaviour of CEOs to janitors, from farm supply companies to farmers to processors to retailers. One can distinguish four components to this Brave New World in which we now live. First, there is the de facto tripartite standards regime (TSR) as noted in other chapters. Second, there is the extension of assembly line technologies, as perfected by Ford a century ago, to much of the agri-food chain. Third, there is a New Taylorism, in which something akin to the time and motion studies developed by Taylor has been extended to all professions. Fourth, there is the rise of Big Data, made possible by advances in information technologies, that permits all of this to become real. In this chapter, each of these four institutional transformations are examined as they relate to food and agriculture, asking how they are responding to the crises facing us today, of climate change, environmental pollution, financial instability and obesity, among others. In conclusion, the consequences for democratic governance are addressed.
