Patterns of accumulation in South Africa’s grain-livestock complex: raising questions of agrarian structure

Abstract

• What is the grain-livestock ‘complex’ (GLC)?: – ‘Complex’ rests on the key linkage between maize and soya key inputs and central cost ingredients in production of feed for intensive livestock production (pigs, chickens beef). – Central to ‘Food Regime’ analyses, linking agro-food capitals in different countries/regions by trade, such as US and Europe (Friedman and McMichael), China and Argentina. – Also increasingly important to theorizations hidden environmental cost of agriculture and its centrality to agro-industrial accumulation (Weis; Moore) – Of growing centrality to the wider social reproduction of labour and capitalist development, e.g. ‘meatification’ of diets; ‘nutrition transition’