Rural Sociology 64(2), 1999, pp . 334-350 Copyright © 1999 by the Rural Sociological Society Global Sourcing and Retail Chains : Shifting Relationships of Production in Australian Agri-foods l David Burch and Jasper Goss School of Science, Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia ABSTRACT In the decades following the Second World War supermarkets and retail outlets in North America, Western Europe, and Australasia be- came the most important sites for the sale of food products . This domi- nance in food sales was generally confined to the retail sector as super- markets tended to act as a nexus or distribution point between agri-food producers and consumers . In the 1970s this relationship began to break down as supermarkets moved up the chain of production . Supermarkets began to directly source materials from producers to use in "own" brand and generic products, which soon came to compete with the branded products of agri-food manufacturers . This paper traces the beginnings of these shifts and investigates the consequences of globally-sourced super- market goods in the context of the Australian agri-food system, with pineapples and wine as case studies . The paper concludes that the in- creasing size and scope of supermarket buying power and the presence and growth of "own" brands suggests that capital organized through retail channels is coming to rival manufacturing capital as a significant fraction of the Australian agri-food system. Introduction The ever-growing body of literature devoted to the analysis of globalization and agri-food restructuring has only begun to address the role of the retail sector in current transformations . Hughes (1996) has outlined the dominance that the retail sector is coming to assert over the processing/manufacturing sector, and Pringle (1998) has identified the reasons behind the specificities of New Zealand's retail sector, where cooperatives continue to dominate re- tail food sales . However, there have been few attempts to include other elements of the production chain in order to analyze the changes caused by the retail sector. Parsons (1996) has considered some of the implications of the direct sourcing of fresh fruit and vegetables by Australian supermarkets, Lyons (1996) has analyzed some of the impacts that fast-food chains have had on on-farm op- erations as a result of the specifications and standards they lay down for production of raw materials, and Sparks (1997) has ex- amined the consequences of the introduction of generic Cola drinks in North America and the United Kingdom . But there is lit- We are grateful to a number of people within the wine and pineapple sectors of Australia, who wish to remain unnamed, for providing insight and information into the various themes of this paper. We also appreciate the comments and suggestions of Geoff Lawrence, Roy Rickson, Bill Pritchard, and three anonymous reviewers .