New Book from Regoverning Markets

Regoverning Markets: A Place for Small Scale Producers in Modern Agrifood Chains? (eds Bill Vorley, Andrew Fearne and Derek Ray). Published by Gower, April 2007.

The internationalization of food retailing that has swept through the agri-food system in industrialised countries is now moving into middle- and low-income countries with large rural populations, causing significant institutional changes that affect small producer agriculture and the livelihoods of rural communities the world over.

Farmers and policy-makers are struggling to keep up with the wave of new demands being made on their supply chains by food manufacturers and retailers. In the process, new questions and challenges are arising: Can small-scale farmers organize to meet the demands of corporate giants? Should governments liberalize Foreign Direct Investment in the retail sector and expose numerous small shops to competition from multinationals? Can distribution systems be adapted to make markets work better for the poor?

This book offers a contemporary look at what happens when modernisation of food supply chains comes face to face with the livelihoods of rural and poor people. The authors are drawn from a eighteen countries participating in the ‘Re-governing Markets’ programme, which aims to improve our understanding of the way modernization and re-structuring of food supply chains is affecting food production and distribution systems, identify best-practice in involving small-scale producers in supermarket supply chains and the barriers to inclusion which need to be removed.

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