Beyond Contracts: Supply Chains and Dynamics of Incorporation Among Classes of Capital in the Aftermath of Global Outbreaks of Avian Flu

Abstract

This study investigates how agricultural producers are incorporated into commodity circuits under contemporary capitalism, in the context of growing pressures from emerging infectious diseases. Focusing on poultry production systems in Denmark and Norway currently under threat from highly pathogenic avian influenza, we argue that understanding these dynamics requires an expanded conception of agriculture that accounts for the contractual arrangements binding poultry growers to both upstream and downstream actors in a supply chain defined by spatially dispersed operations with growers positioned midstream. Specifically, we explore how risk diffuses along supply chains, how forms of knowledge and resources originating upstream and downstream of the farm-level organise production processes, and the managerial efforts aimed at reconciling contradictory interests. We contend that these dynamics have significant implications for how outbreaks of infectious diseases ramify across variously situated actors in natural resource industries under contemporary capitalism.