This point will be revisited under theme 3 below. Industrialization is disquieting. Among the four drivers of change listed above, three are accepted with various degrees of equanimity, resignation, and enthusiasm. The fourth, the trend towards industrialization of the agri-food sector, is received more negatively. One source of disquiet is that industrialization means that traditional market institutions, processes, and comfortable icons are mutating and disappearing.
Market prices are the quintessential example.
As more transactions occur within intra-firm structures, traditional market prices are losing relevance. A common theme in this conference and in past conferences of the National Food and Agricultural Marketing Consortium is that this is a threat to producer sovereignty, producer welfare, and to public interest in food markets. This is a fundamental question for marketing policy analysts and decision- makers. The extent of public interest in transactions internal to vertically integrated consumer goods industries is very limited. If the answer is yes to the question, then we must find out how to accommodate the consequences of industrialization in our information-reporting and analyses.