The Multi-Level Perspectives of Agribusiness

The following sections are included:

• DEDICATION
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION

The agro-production mentioned in the introduction strongly evolved. People gradually organized themselves another way to produce and consume their food. In classifying jobs whether they are “production” or “services,” it is possible to accentuate the phenomenon of the increase of activities in the service sector that occurred in the world economic dynamics: more than half are in services…

The agribusiness system’s primary function is to feed the population from the natural resources available on the planet. In reality, population and resources belong to the same ecosystem: they interact. They are forces of nature whose functioning must be understood so that people can ensure their own sustainability by protecting the whole viability. Thus, it is necessary to look for the dynamic balance of these forces. What happens at the demographic plan, globally and locally?…

The tensions of “forces of nature” are not the only ones to happen. And the pressure on agribusiness doubles, when the institutional discussions are sine die put back: the agricultural aids cause the failure of the liberalization of trade. Never commercial cycles had gone so far in agriculture, before ending suddenly. So, by the cycles intended to favor the activity of the poor countries are suspended, quite logically with millennium development goals. In first position, the United Nations put the “fight against poverty”: Halve the proportion of the population whose income is lower than a dollar a day and half malnutrition…

Understanding that today we are in a global-finite ecosystem in the many interactions, we try to see how the demographic, natural, and organizational constraints previously discussed draw “agribusiness models” by the year 2050. Let us detect the global drivers and let us put agribusiness — or the agribusiness models — back in this group. By the example of a cooperative group, let us understand capacities and limits of producers to organize themselves and let us see how certain large companies, partners of producers design a sustainable agribusiness…

The agribusiness system no longer really has a center, or origin, as the “primary” nature of production might suggest. Rather, it reveals multiple sequences of companies of all sizes; the link with production is, however, an obligation, a must. We have just seen that agribusiness cooperatives are an impetus for agro-production and that, conversely, very large firms are concerned about the permanence of their link with production. In the first case, agribusiness is a “raison d’être”; not in the second, where it is, however, a sine qua non condition, as long as the object of the firm remains food (this point is not a detail: Danone is the result of successive transformations of BSN, operators in the glass, whose strategy was for a moment, from the container to the contents, from the glass to the beer, then to the agriculture production in general, which is not quite the case anymore today). In addition, companies that absolutely need agribusiness are very diverse in size and influence over their agricultural supplier, sometimes confined to the role of subcontractors (but cooperatives have agro-production subsidiary). We will explore this part of the agribusiness system in depth in this chapter…

“The future will not be what will happen, but what we will do,” wrote Bergson. We need to take the initiative for change in a world of many interactions. The realities, as we have seen, are not fragmented and linear; mechanical images are no longer sufficient to obtain a satisfactory representation of our world. Food is not only the fuel that allows our bodies to function and agricultural commodities are not just the crude oil from which they are extracted. What we are going to do can no longer look like mechanics; we must now reconsider the subject by placing it in the biosphere. What we are going to do is complex and living; to change, we will have to innovate and intensify research…

To note that the agribusiness of the G7a countries has, in recent years, become the world leader, does not allow, of course, to affirm that it will be able to respond to contemporary global issues. Nevertheless, this observation is an essential preliminary for three reasons: firstly, by demonstrating its ability to adapt and to diversify, agribusiness in rich countries appears today as an unstable player in the global economy. Today, more than ever, the environment is in perpetual motion…

The adaptability that agribusiness has shown in the face of history will be more necessary tomorrow that it will face critical issues. These are numerous and varied, but form, in fact, a very homogeneous triptych in which each element is dependent on the other two; thus, the increasing internationalization of the food exchanges, the enlargement of the regional markets, and the future international agreements, will make for example, changes in world food demand that are key to the evolution of the agribusiness sector…

To survive in this new globalized food order in which the consumer will increasingly succeed in making its individual demands prevail, where new technologies will be ubiquitous, agribusiness industries will have to make profound changes. To think that the only obtaining of an ISO qualification or any other, the maintenance of the export turnover, and the conclusion of partnerships with the large distribution via the development of the private brands, could be enough for the sector to face the challenges of international competition, the upheavals of consumption patterns, the imperatives of quality and safety … would be a decoy…

The following sections are included:

• CONCLUSION
• GLOSSARY
• REFERENCES