Theorizing Agri-Food Economies

Jan Douwe Van der Ploeg
Additional contact information
Jan Douwe Van der Ploeg: College of Humanities and Development Studies (COHD), China Agricultural University (West Campus), No.2 YuanMingYuan West Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100193, China

Agriculture, 2016, vol. 6, issue 3, 1-12

Abstract: This paper discusses agri-food economies and how they evolve over time. It also analyses how these economies, which often have contradictory dynamics, are theorized. A central thesis of the paper is that different theoretical representations not only reflect the differences in agro-economies and their developmental tendencies, but are also important drivers that actively shape the trajectories that they describe. The paper concludes by arguing that, more often than not, it is the newly emerging alternatives that are taking the initiative, responding to changing socio-economic demands while the hegemonic systems are merely reacting to the emerging alternatives. While it is possible that the alternatives might be appropriated and ‘conventionalized’ by the hegemonic systems, it is equally possible that the alternatives, especially when interconnected and rooted in democratic institutions, might induce a generalized crisis in the food systems that are currently dominant.

Keywords: food; agro-food economy; food system; co-production; crisis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/30/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/30/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:6:y:2016:i:3:p:30-:d:74563

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().