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3 results

  • 4 - The Dynamics of the Glasshouse Agrifood Value Chain

  • Adrian Smith, University of Sussex
  • Book:
    Fields of Glass
    Published online:
    16 June 2025
    Print publication:
    19 June 2025, pp 65-93

  • Summary

    This chapter examines the changing nature of the glasshouse agrifood value chain and the dominant role played by powerful lead-firm supermarkets. It highlights the tight margins that growers operate under and the consequences for their sustainability and food security before turning to the types of upgrading strategies that growers have deployed in the value chain over time.

  • 1 - Food Security and the ‘Total Ecology’ of Glasshouse Agrifood Value Chains

  • Adrian Smith, University of Sussex
  • Book:
    Fields of Glass
    Published online:
    16 June 2025
    Print publication:
    19 June 2025, pp 1-14
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  • Summary

    This introductory chapter sets out the enduring food security crisis that the UK has faced over the post-War period and positions it in relation to how the UK is situated with respect to global value chains of food supply, labour provisioning and the adoption of new technology. It introduces the core concept of the ‘total ecology’ as a way of understanding attempts to enhance food security through glasshouse agrifood production, but highlights the fragilities of this system of food production.

Fields of Glass
  • Labour Regimes, Techno-Science and Biopolitics in Agrifood Value Chains
  • Adrian Smith
  • Published online:
    16 June 2025
    Print publication:
    19 June 2025
  • What is the relationship between technology and labour regimes in agrifood value chains? By deploying the concept of agrarian biopolitical articulations, Field of Glass formulates new perspectives that bridge the hitherto distinct worlds of value chain research, agrarian political economy, labour regime theory, and agrarian techno-science to explain the enduring insecurity of food systems in the United Kingdom. Using both historical and contemporary research, Adrian Smith explores how the precarity and exploitation of migrant labour intersects with ecology and techno-science/innovation, such as hydroponic and robotic technologies, to explain the development and changing nature of glasshouse agrifood value chains in the UK. Smith concludes by reflecting on how agrarian bio-politics have shaped the glasshouse agrifood sector and the emergence of contemporary 'high road' and 'low road' strategies, highlighting their contradictions and negative consequences for local development and food supply security.