TRADE LIBERALIZATION, AGROFOOD POLITICS AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF AGRICULTURE

This paper examines the role of trade liberalization in advancing processes of globalization in the agricultural and food order. Recent struggles over liberalizing agricultural trade, evident within the GATT Uruguay Round and other forums, reflect broader social, political and economic dynamics of global capitalist restructuring. This paper focuses on the case of the US-Japan beef trade and the series of bilateral negotiations that culminated in the June 1988 US-Japan Beef and Citrus Liberalization Agreement. It explores the historical context of the highly-politicized issue of the US-Japan beef trade, including an investigation of the genesis and renegotiation of Japan's state-sponsored domestic beef sub-sector and the role of US and Japanese farm and meat industry organizations in shaping the nature and rhetoric of the debate. Liberalization represents a general de-nationalization of agriculture both in institutional terms, via the dismantling of state regulatory structures supportive of national farm sectors, and in terms of the relocation of agro-food capital, expressed by greater opportunities for global sourcing and direct foreign investment by agro-food transnationals. Liberalization of the Japanese beef market has intensified the international division of labor in the beef commodity chain. Japanese transnationals, formerly involved in meat import, reacted to liberalization by investing in the US and Australian beef industries. This was followed by direct foreign investment in the Australian meat industry by major US food companies. The relocation of agro-food capital has altered regional agricultures by creating intricate supply pipelines targeted specifically for Japanese and other high-income Asian markets.