Niels Fold

Lead Firms and Competition in ‘Bi-polar’ Commodity Chains: Grinders and Branders in the Global Cocoa-chocolate Industry

Like most global agro-industrial commodity chains today, the global cocoa - chocolate industry is buyer-driven. However, the chain is characterized by the lead role of a few transnational companies in two different segments: the grinders (processors of cocoa)and the branders (manufacturers of chocolate), a structural pattern identified in other so-called turn-key industries consisting of contract manufacturers and brand-name firms. The paper examines two important spatial sub-systems of the chain: the national cocoa bean supply system in Ghana and the regional cocoa trading-storing-grinding complex in the Zaanstreek, Amsterdam. The structural patterns and relationships in these sub-systems suggest that the dynamics of ‘bi-polar’ buyer-driven chains is best comprehended in terms of various types of containment strategies of the leadfirms, i.e. efforts to defend and improve their positions on the global market by creating competition among their suppliers and expanding their customers.

Oiling the Palms: Restructuring of Settlement Schemes in Malaysia and the New International Trade Regulations

The FELDA resettlement program in Malaysia is internationally recognized as a success story in terms of cultivated area, number of settlers, and scope of vertical integration in the Malaysian palm oil industry. Since the mid-1980s, however, a series of reorganizations of work and property rights in the settlement schemes have taken place. It is argued here that the recent adjustments of FELDA are in accordance with the new rules for international regulation of agricultural production and trade in the WTO. International trade regulations increasingly influence the direction of socioeconomic and institutional struggles over rural reform programs in developing countries.

Upgrading of smallholder agro-food production in Africa: the role of lead firm strategies and new markets

This paper addresses the main dynamics in the global agro-industrial value chains for tropical products. It examines new upgrading opportunities for smallholder production in Africa as a consequence of two dominant trends within global agricultural value chains. The first is caused by the dynamics of the co-existing collaboration and intensified rivalry between lead firms within the same chain. The other is caused by new opportunities and challenges stemming from increased requirements on retailer-driven markets in the North and expansion of new markets in the South. The paper points out the need to rectify the heavily biased policy focus on standard compliance with the purpose of strengthening smallholder incorporation and upgrading in retailer-driven strands of global value chains ending in the North. Instead, markets in the South and in emerging economies may function as a training ground for upgrading of African smallholder production via increases in volume and consistency of exports.

Value Chain Dynamics, Settlement Trajectories and Regional Development

Fold N. Value chain dynamics, settlement trajectories and regional development, Regional Studies. Global value chain (GVC) analysis has little to say about the interaction between regions and global chain dynamics. However, recent calls to address broader development issues have resulted in efforts to incorporate a spatial dimension in GVC analysis. Addressing this issue, the paper argues that GVC analysis needs to be combined with the examination of livelihoods at settlement level. Livelihood diversification – or lack thereof – indicates particular settlement trajectories that constitute regional development pathways. It is also suggested that the understanding of how regions are shaped by value chain dynamics will improve by adding elements from global production network (GPN) theory to the combined methodology, namely by an examination of territorial embeddedness and value (creation, enhancement, capture, distribution) at settlement level.

Multi-level Modularity vs. Hierarchy: Global Production Networks in Singapore's Electronics Industry

Abstract An examination of Singapores electronics industry is used to construct a generalized model of organizational forms in global production networks within the electronics industry. The model includes an extension of the modular production network derived from studies of the US electronic equipment industry where brand name firms concentrate on product innovation, design and marketing while contracting out manufacturing to turnkey suppliers. In the case of Singapore, however, the original model is too simple to incorporate the multiple levels of contract manufacturing relationships within the electronics industry. The modular network in the semiconductor industry is compared with the hierarchical production network identified in the hard disk drive industry, the other dominant segment of Singapore s electronics industry. The two industries are differently inserted in their global production networks in response to different production technology and corresponding differences in codifiability of the information needed for transactions between buyer and seller within the network. Despite their different organizational forms, the presence in Singapore of both segments is dependent on the maintenance and further development of regional production networks that are able to match requirements determined by global dynamics. State industrial policies in Singapore are already directed at the challenges and seem to be sufficiently comprehensive to withstand the challenges from the rapidly upcoming electronics industry in China and rivalling Southeast Asian neighbour states.

Does FDI Create Linkages in Mining? The Case of Gold Mining in Ghana

After gaining independence from the former colonial powers, most African governments established various kinds of state intervention, including the nationalisation of plants and equipment in the mining sector. This was provoked primarily by disappointing returns from foreign-controlled mining activities to the national economy in terms of employment, fiscal revenues and foreign exchange earnings. The hopes and aspirations of the new administrations were to build local linkages and affirm national sovereignty over natural resources (UNCTAD, 2005). For various internal and external reasons, the record of these interventions was mixed and mostly resulted in high costs and low productivity operations that drained public funds.

Globalisation, state regulation and industrial upgrading of the oil seed industries in Malaysia and Brazil.

Palm oil from Malaysia and soybean meal from Brazil are of major importance in the world market. State regulation in both countries has played a crucial role in agro-industrial upgrading, i.e. the establishment, consolidation and diversification of manufacturing capacity in the oil seed chains. In particular, sufficient volumes of raw materials for local processing have been secured through systems of differential export taxes. This core set of regulatory mechanisms has been used in both countries, despite structural differences between the two chains related to the properties of the crops (oil palms and soybeans), the previous organisation of agricultural production, and the size and nature of the local markets. Globalisation in its present neoliberal form, institutionalised within the World Trade Organisation, gradually erodes the opportunity for other developing country states to upgrade agro-industries by adapting similar forms of regulatory mechanisms.

State Regulation of Agro-Industries in Developing Countries. Governance Systems in the Vegetable Oil Industry of Malaysia and Zimbabwe

Abstract Some observers of agro-industrial development in the Third World recognize the nation state as an important locus for mediation of conflicts between different social forces but fail to analyze the regulatory mechanisms and their effect on the dynamics of particular agro-industries. This paper proposes an analytical model to study agro-industrial regulation in a national framework. The purpose is to investigate the dynamics between changing forms of state regulation and particular industry governance system in the vegetable oil industry in Malaysia and Zimbabwe. State regulation and industry governance systems differ in a number of ways between the two countries. However, in each country there is a correspondence between the dominant form of state regulation and the industrial governance system. The study confronts some of the basic assumptions within the food regime approach and stress the need to incorporate the properties of the crops in the analysis of (agro-)industry governance systems.

South-South Trade and Development: Manufacturers in the New International Division of Labor . By Steen Folke, Niels Fold, and Thyge Enevoldsen. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. xiv, 267 pp.

List of Tables, Figures and Maps - Preface - List of Acronyms - PART 1: APPROACHES - Introduction: South-South Trade: The Global Context - Development of South-South Trade since the 1960s - South-South Trade and Cooperation: The Political Setting - South-South Trade and Development: Theoretical Viewpoints - South-South Trade in Manufactured Goods since the 1960s - PART 2: CASES - South-South Trade in a Regional Perspective: Three Cases - South-South Export of Manufactures as Part of Global Export-Oriented Industrialization: The Case of Malaysia - Transfer of Technology in South-South Trade: Indias Export of Capital Goods to Tanzania - Conclusion: Problems and Potentials in South-South Trade - Bibliography - Index

69.95.

Niels Fold: Industrial Organization and Sectoral Linkages: A Study of the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry. Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 94:xx–xx. Copenhagen, Dec. 1994. The paper analyses the industrial organization of the Malaysian palm oil industry, a case of agricultural based downstream industrialization linked to the world market. The objective is to identify salient policy lessons concerning the use of regulating mechanisms in order to link the agricultural and industrial sectors in developing countries. Data collection and analysis are structured by a model of a national vegetable oil complexe, i.e. the social agents involved in cultivation and processing of oil crops, and their mutual relations. The study reveals that there is a case for selective use of different institutions that do not fit into the state or market dichotomy within the discourse on development strategies.