Restructuring Vegetable Oil Supply and Demand in Asia Under Food Regimes: �A Preceding Example of Japan to Be Compared with Rapid Increase of Vegetable Oil Availability in Asian Countries

Abstract

The global availability of modern vegetable oils has been increasing with state support into the 1980s, and trade liberalisation in the 1990s. Asian countries have rapidly increased vegetable oil availability in last few decades. China and India transformed from mostly self-sufficient countries of vegetable oils before the mid-1990s into the global leading importers of vegetable oil and oil crops today.

This research employs the food regime frameworks (starting with Friedmann and McMichael, 1989) to study the historical development of global vegetable oils, especially soybean oil and palm oil, and argues that significant dissemination of modern vegetable oils began as non-food use to support industrial development of colonial countries in the First Food Regime, then their production and consumption were expanded with the active support of nation-states in the Second Food Regime.

The research first historically examines how the Japanese colonial force made soybean the global commodity in the First Food Regime, triggered by fertilizer demand for modernising its agriculture. Then, soybean production was promoted by nation-state of the USA during WW2, and vegetable oil consumption was promoted in post-WW2 Japan especially with the US Food Aid. Trade liberalisation, deregulation in foreign investment, and development of domestic food industries, like instant noodle, based on cheap and abundant oils facilitated increase of fat intake among Japanese nation. In the Global Corporate Food Regime of today (McMichael, 2005), now established Japanese food companies have been expanding abroad, especially in Asian countries.

This Japanese preceding example provides a good comparison suggesting the similar trade liberalisation and food industry development, together with deregulation in foreign investment, have been shaping oil-consuming food environment in other Asian countries in recent years. Recent neoliberal trade liberalisation, especially direct foreign investment and corporatisation, are suspected to be facilitating (re)structuring of supply chains of vegetable oils with development of food industry based on imported vegetable oil and oil crops, like building large-scale oilseed crushing facilities or developing instant noodle industry in China. The increased availability of oils and fats, and the concurrent change in diet toward higher-fat, lower-carbohydrate, more processed food, can jeopardise the public health among Asian nations, as cheap oils are considered to be forerunner of nutrition transition, which enable even poor nations to have access to a relatively high-fat diet (Drewnowski and Popkin, 1997).

The conclusion suggests that modern global vegetable oils that are solvent-extracted and highly refined, mainly soybean oil and palm oil, are not only increasing fat intake among Asian nations but also replacing manually-pressed unrefined oils squeezed from variety of local oil crops in Asian countries. The study also suggests that the capitals accumulated in the first and second food regimes, including Japanese and other Asian, are active in this global vegetable oil complex under the Global Corporate Food Regime.