Production Relations under GLOBALG.A.P: The Relative Influence of Standards and Retail Market Structure

Abstract

Retailer-led food standards are playing an increasingly important role in determining market access globally. These standards are generally interpreted as a mechanism by which retailers have increased their capacity to co-ordinate and control upstream actors, including farmers and processors. Taking an actor-oriented approach to determine the various ways in which a group of farmers respond to retailer-led standards, this study presents empirical detail on the impacts of compliance with retailer-led standards, including GLOBALG.A.P, on an Australian citrus growers' co-operative. This study found that while GLOBALG.A.P and similar standards are indeed de facto mandatory requirements for fruit producers, it was not certification to GLOBALG.A.P alone that led to relationships of dependency between producers and retailers. The oligopolistic structure of the retailing sector was found to be equally problematic for producers. This suggests that while GLOBALG.A.P constituted a novel form of value chain governance, it was not a defining feature of the food production system in these chains.