Sustainable Agribusiness and Agri-food Prospects

Dear Colleagues,

The expression ‘agribusiness’ was coined in the 1950s to evoke the range of technological and socio-economic transformations of agriculture under national and international development pressures. One main consequence was that the ‘business of the agro’ gradually became less about sustenance and health and significantly more concerned with short-term financial gains and the legitimisation of intensive agri-food systems. There is nothing new in the fact that food is purchased and sold, given that agricultural markets had existed for many centuries. The novelty is that the operational and commercial apparatus of large agri-food companies has come to be seen as natural and constantly re-naturalised, while other fundamental properties of food and agriculture—such as nutrition, the well-being of farmers and their families, the preservation of local knowledge and cultural practices, the biological equilibrium necessary for sustained harvests—are all being lost due to the imperatives of profit, low costs and consumer satisfaction. The focus on food’s life-supporting properties has been diluted or negated by the money-making priorities of the contemporary agri-food economy. Most food is now sold in plastic bags and paper boxes, prepared by agro-industrial companies that rely on numerous, anonymous farmers and intermediary traders disconnected from consumer needs and preferences. This Special Issue will deal with those material, biophysical and social dimensions of modern day agribusiness and the multiple contradictions that prevent higher levels of agribusiness sustainability. This will necessarily be an interdisciplinary academic task and it will also require an open debate between scholars working in different parts of the world and with different approaches to agribusiness dilemmas. Selected papers will be subject to a rigorous peer review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments and applications.

Dr. Antonio A. R. Ioris
Guest Editor

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