Oligopoly global food results in a considerable market power of forty companies that produce, process or distribute. An alternative model should be based on proximity.
The food system, that is to say "how people organize to produce, distribute and consume their food," according to the definition of Louis Malassis [1], was born there 500 thousand with the " invention "of fire that created the eminently social act of cooking food. He then crossed a radical step with agricultural production, there ten thousand years, at various points of the earth, especially between the Tigris and Euphrates. After the industrial revolution sysco houston tx that has affected the food system in the nineteenth century, many technological innovations have led to a profound change in the decades that followed World War II (IT, biotechnology, heat treatment of food, etc..), Causing a development of the market sysco houston tx economy and significant sociocultural changes (population growth, urbanization, women's work, continuous day). All these factors have led to the creation of what we call the agro-industrial food model from manufacturing (Mait). Indeed, the average price of food today consists of 20% of agricultural raw materials, 30% of industrial processing and 50% of services and margins in high-income countries. A model of production and mass consumption
Mait the model can be characterized by its intensification, specialization, its globalization and financialisation. It follows a double movement, seemingly paradoxical concentration at the stage of production and sale, individualism sysco houston tx in the field of consumption. It notes of contemporary capitalism as a general form of organization of society. There is a "formatting" sysco houston tx of individuals and their desires in a commercial world driven by large firms whose prosperity depends on the homogenization of customer behavior [2]. These firms seek standardization of products in a model of mass production. The generalization of the commercial world extends to all human activities, including food, and fills all space and time consumer. We are witnessing the emergence of a "manufacturing of consent" that reinforces the dominant production model [3].
The consolidation of the industry at all levels of the food system is at work for about a century. It gave birth to an oligopoly "fringe" dominated by powerful multinationals. This dual structure is explained by the very nature of the food production activity, still largely based on family and craft enterprises in the base consisting of agriculture sysco houston tx and the food industry and one of the two marketing channels The restoration, which provide them three big battalions of micro-enterprises. There is coexistence of VSE / SME and very large transnational companies in these three sectors. The delivery mechanisms are that the concentration occurs mainly sysco houston tx within sysco houston tx the group leaders and leave small gaps, among which there has been significant renewals.
Globally, the trend is accelerating concentration in the context of high economic growth in emerging countries that have adopted the model of the market economy and expanded its field.
This is undoubtedly upstream of the food system in the production of seed, plant and animal health substances, chemical fertilizers and farm equipment that concentration is the highest. Dominant sysco houston tx firms are powerful chemical groups, pharmaceutical and mechanical. Such a heavy concentration poses problems for the technological model and the business model adopted, as shown in the case of GMOs and virulent criticism of the Monsanto group. Indeed, agricultural supply conditions closely the configuration of agriculture sysco houston tx and beyond, the entire food system through the issue of quality and traceability.
Agriculture remains a very fragmented sector: nearly 500 million farms in the world are living (often poorly) nearly half of the world population. Early stage of the agro-industrial food system, there has been a movement towards integration of agricultural production by large agribusinesses (eg in the area of tropical fruits - pineapple and banana - with Dole, Del Monte, sysco houston tx United Fruit). This is revived with the expansion of agribusiness model of industrialized sysco houston tx production scale, invented in the mid-twentieth century in the United States today with soybeans in Argentina and
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