ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter focused on the role of trade and trade policies as driving factors for increasingly integrated markets. This chapter on globalization will expand the analysis by identifying the other main factors that drive global economic integration and analyse their main effects on food and agriculture. These are presented in three major sections. The first part provides a definition of the process of globalization, placed in its historical context. Emphasis is given to the importance of factors that reduce transaction costs, notably on the impacts of new transportation and communication technologies. The second section presents the main features of globalization in agriculture, and discusses why some countries have been successful in integrating their food and agricultural economies into the rapidly growing world markets, but also why others have largely failed to do so. This includes factors such as openness to trade and capital flows, ability to adopt external expertise and technologies, but also the importance of factors relating to a country’s geographic location or its infrastructure endowment. The third part presents the options, the potential and the limits that developing countries are facing for future integration into global food and agriculture.
