Agricultural International Trade during the First Food Regime (1860-1913) and the Second (1947-1973): Mirror-Images or a Gradual Transformation?

Food regimes (FRs) are rule-governed structures of production and consumption of food on a global scale. They comprise two principal elements: the institutional framework, which includes the degree of state regulation and the forms that national and international agricultural policies adopt, and the economic organization, encompassing the global distribution of food production, consumption, and trade, as well as the international allocation of labor and capital. According to these variables, historiography generally distinguishes between a 1st FR during the First Globalization (approximately between 1860 and 1914) and a 2nd FR in the decades following World War II (1947 to the 1970s). It has been argued that these regimes were mirror images concerning trade regulation and the direction of grain trade flows, as the first would have been characterized by free trade and grain flows from the periphery to the core, while the second would have been marked by significant state regulation and grain flowing from the core to the periphery. The characterization of these two regimes regarding the direction of trade flows was, however, overly focused on staple grains (mainly wheat). This article utilizes data from the International Institute of Agriculture and the FAO to broaden the product coverage and systematically study the transformations in international agricultural trade over this period. The analysis contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the idea of a “flip” in the direction of trade flows between the two regimes.