The Neoliberal Food Regime: Neoregulation and the New Division of Labor in North America 

Gabriela Pechlaner Department of Social, Cultural and Media Studies, University of the Fraser Valley 

Gerardo Otero  Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University 

 Abstract

We undertake a comparative investigation of how neoliberal restructuring characterizes the third food regime in the three North American countries. By contrasting the experience of the two developed countries of the United States and Canada with that of the developing country of Mexico, we shine some empirical light on the differential impact of neoliberal regulatory restructuring on the division of labor in agriculture within the North American Free Trade Agreement region. In particular, we investigate these countries’ agricultural production markets, trade, and food vulnerability—with an emphasis on Mexico—as analytical points for comparing and contrasting their experience with this neoliberal restructuring. We start with a synthesis of food- “neoliberal food regime.” We then discuss our case-study countries in terms of food vulnerability and resistance in Mexico, their differential relationships to trade liberalization, and what these trends might mean for the evolution of the neoliberal food regime. We conclude that, while dominant trends are ominous, there is room for an alternative trajectory and consequent reshaping of the emerging regime: sufficient bottom-up social resistance, primarily at the level of the nation–state, may yet produce an alternative trajectory

https://www.academia.edu/1048900/Gabriela_Pechlaner_and_Gerardo_Otero_2010_The_Neoliberal_Food_Regime_Neoregulation_and_the_New_Division_of_Labor_in_North_America_Rural_Sociology_75_2_179_208

 

The Third Food Regime: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in North America

Gabriela Pechlaner and Gerardo Otero*

The agricultural sector is currently being shaped by two powerful dynamics as many nations reorganise their national agriculture according to free trade and other supranational agreements while new agricultural biotechnologies are increasingly adopted. This interrelationship between regulatory change and genetic engineering appears set to form the basis of a new food regime. In this article, we compare the role of national and international regulations relating to the technology, and the impact of local resistance to it, in the advanced capitalist countries of Canada and the USA and the developing country of Mexico. Similar to food regime perspectives, our study concludes that neoliberal regulatory reorganization is an important component of the evolving food regime.

Further, Mexico bore the brunt of the technology’s negative social impacts, demonstrating how it exacerbates existing inequalities between developed and developing nations. Resistance movements in the country have been sufficient to call into question the inevitability of a homogenous reorganization of agriculture, however. Evidence suggests that such resistance could modify, or even derail, this technology’s role in individual nations, and consequently, in the unfolding food regime as a whole

https://www.academia.edu/1048912/Gabriela_Pechlaner_and_Gerardo_Otero_2008_The_Third_Food_Regime_Neoliberal_Globalism_and_Agricultural_Biotechnology_in_North_America_Sociologia_Ruralis_48_4_351_371