Transnational Networks of Pork Production: Fragile Linkages Between Germany and CEE Countries
Klein Oliver ()
Additional contact information
Klein Oliver: Institute for Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Straße 17a, 17487Greifswald, Germany
European Spatial Research and Policy, 2018, vol. 25, issue 1, 93-111
Abstract:
The intention of this paper is to explore the internationalization efforts of German pork producers towards Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with a special focus on recent dynamics, market development strategies and policy conditions. The added-value potentials offered by CEE countries have become increasingly lucrative for the German pork industry, particularly as the domestic market currently shows a certain degree of saturation in terms of consumption. The results of this study which is mainly based on qualitative interviews with selected pork producers from North-West Germany reveal that transnational pork production networks between Germany and CEE are shaped by a high degree of fragility and discontinuity. This is reflected not only by the fluctuating development of foreign trade in piglets, live hogs and pork products, but also by the uncertainty and hesitancy of the interviewed pork producers with regard to business operations in CEE markets. It will be shown that the policy conditions on the national level still have a clear impact on internationalization processes in the pork industry. The paper further illustrates that the configuration of transnational pork production networks can be explained, in part, by insights from the global production networks (GPN) and the agri-food geographies literature.
Keywords: global production networks; agri-food geographies; pork industry; internationalization; exports; foreign direct investments; economic policy; Germany; Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.18778/1231-1952.25.1.06 (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:vrs:eusprp:v:25:y:2018:i:1:p:93-111:n:5
DOI: 10.18778/1231-1952.25.1.06
Access Statistics for this article
European Spatial Research and Policy is currently edited by Tadeusz Marszał
More articles in European Spatial Research and Policy from Sciendo
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Peter Golla ().