Abstract

The politics of food and agriculture are changing fast in the 21st Century. Farm lobbies remain as dominant as ever over policy within their own sectors in OECD countries, but in the realm of culture, the sophisticated elite that claim to speak for food safety, food quality, social justice, and the environment have put industrial farming squarely on the defensive. The resulting debate has produced few significant policy changes so far in rich countries, but global institutions of several kinds, including the intergovernmental institutions of the UN system, transnational advocacy networks, and of course transnational corporations, have now brought this cultural debate somewhat prematurely into the politics of non-OECD countries as well. The consequences are not always good for the rural poor.