29 protagonists are taking shape. The contest over new rules and relations for food and agriculture also depends on transnational corporations and popular movements not formally present at the negotiations. Agricultural support programmes were put in place roughly half a century ago in response to farm politics. Since then, farms have become suppliers of raw materials within a transnational agrofood sector dominated by some of the largest, most technically dynamic corporations in the world. At the same time, urbanization and the rise of social movements expressing the concerns of consumers, environmentalists, and others, have shifted the focus from farm incomes to other interests.

In the long view, it is clear that the agricultural trade conflicts inside and outside the GATT are the culmination of longterm structural and inter-state changes. The rules implicitly governing agrofood relations were established in the years immediately after World War II and worked stably enough for nearly twenty five years to justify calling them a ‘food regime’. However, new relations were forged during that time, which by the early 1970s began to undermine the postwar system of food regulation.