Globalisation, commodity chains and fruit exporting regions in Chile

This paper explores the concept of the globalisation of agriculture and how export-oriented agriculture in Chile interacts with the global agri-food system. It tries to analyse change in the Chilean fruit sector within the framework of the global commodity chain in which production in one part of the world economy can be linked through contracts and the agency of fruit companies to consumption in other global locations, The commodity chain analysis is traced down to the local scale of an export-oriented fruit-producing area in Chile where the impacts of contract farming on land markets, small- and large-scale farming, labour relations and peasant communities are explored.