Sustainability Standards, Differentiation and Green Capital Accumulation in Global Agrifood Value Chains

Abstract

The mainstreaming of sustainability standards in agrifood industries has often been accompanied by adverse distributional outcomes. While powerful lead firms in global value chains obtain reputational benefits and premiums, costs and risks are transferred to suppliers. Yet, we still know little about how producers resist this form of green capital accumulation and with what results. In this paper, I draw on a comparative study of Chilean wine and farmed salmon to contrast a sector with globally fragmented sustainability standardisation (wine) with one in which standards are globally homogenised (salmon). I show how in both industries, green capital accumulation is characterised by power struggles over capturing value through standards, and from differentiated forms of sustainability efforts. I highlight how, by exercising control through standards, powerful actors externalise costs and risks, while by exercising control through intangible assets they appropriate value from other actors’ differentiated sustainability efforts.