ABSTRACT
For some 30 years now, Food Regime Analysis (FRA) has provided a macro-historical framework for Anglophone agri-food studies, serving as a touchstone both for understanding systemic change and setting research agendas. More recently it has become the conceptual perspective of choice for many scholars analysing the enormous transformations underway in the world agri-food system. In this chapter, we argue that the food regimes account of historical developments in agriculture and food systems is flawed and discuss how its analytical framework compromises an understanding of the changing international agrarian political economy in the early 21st century. We suggest that the limitations of this Food Regime Analysis stem from an over-emphasis on systemic rupture and processes of hegemonic succession. This has led to the corresponding neglect of multi-polarities in the evolving world capitalist system, as well as the historical continuities in the accumulation strategies based on agriculture and food sectors pursued by other ascendant economies. For these reasons, we suggest that it is more accurate historically and more revealing analytically to discuss a plurality of regional food orders, which increasingly share a common scientific and technological frontier and institutional arrangements rather than retain the concepts of hegemony and international food regime.
