FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT © The authors 2011 Geografiska Annaler: Series B © 2011 Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography 41 MICEK, G., NEO, H. and GÓRECKI, J. (2011): ‘Foreign direct investment, institutional context and the changing Polish pig in- dustry’, Geografska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 93 (1): 41–55. ABSTRACT. The world’s meat market has had tremendous growth in the past decades. Global meat producers, particularly in developed economies, have grown bigger through expansion, mergers and acquisitions. The livestock markets in less devel- oped countries are particularly the prime targets for investments by these producers. This article looks at foreign direct investment in a transitional economy, using Poland’s pig industry as the em- pirical case study. It argues that such investments not only bring significant changes in the method of producing meat in the host country; they also have particular socio-political impacts and have thus been met with some level of resistance by local communities. Our study suggests that the relations of foreign firms to the local community are crucial for their long term presence; and these rela- tions are in turn dependent on a gamut of place specific features and the firms’ broader corporate philosophy and strategy. In gen- eral, foreign firms need to find ways to replicate the kinds of deep social-economic links between the livestock industry and places that existed in the socialist era. The case studies of American- owned Agri Plus and Danish-owned Poldanor illustrate some of the difficulties involved in the foreign investment in the meat in- dustries while demonstrating the viability and possibility of such companies becoming more accepted and welcomed in the local communities. Key words: agriculture, economic geography, foreign direct invest- ment, institutions, pig, Poland Introduction The burgeoning body of work on post-socialist economies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has three broad focuses: the transformation and re- structuring of domestic economies; the impact of foreign direct investment on these economies; as well as national, regional and local disparities in the transition process. Within each of these research strands, lies a gamut of theoretical approaches and empirical interests. For example, on the theme of restructuring economies to more market oriented ones, Jurajda and Terrell (2008) have discussed the impacts of structural adjustments on job creation in the Czech Republic and Estonia; while Wallace and Latcheva (2006) compare the relative importance of the informal economy in the transitional economies of CEE. Much has also been written on the “los- ers” and “winners” of the transition processes, often discussed in the broad framework of developmental trajectories and competitive advantages (Glębocki and Rogacki 2002; Brezis and Schnytzer 2003; Ezcurra et al. 2007). Nonetheless, this triple focus is tightly interrelated. For example, restructuring processes (for example, land reforms, privatization, financial liberalization) are often both a response to foreign direct investments and a strategy to attract more investments; further, because of the uneven- ness of these investments, different regions and countries receive unequal and disparate benefits. This article looks at the impacts of foreign direct in- vestment in transitional economies, using Poland’s pig industry as the empirical case study. 1 The choice of the pig industry is a timely one. The world is now in the midst of a “brown” revolu- tion. Farmers produced 276 million tons of chicken, pork, beef and other types of meats in 2006, four times more than in 1961 (Halweil and Nierenberg 2008, p. 61). The defining feature of the contem- porary meat industry is its unceasing intensifica- tion. For example, in the United States alone, the number of pig farms decreased drastically from 2 million in 1950 to 73,600 in 2005 while the produc- tion of pork in the same period rose from 80 mil- lion to 100 million pigs. This intensification process is accompanied by other key developments in the livestock industry. First, the production of meat has increasingly relied on contract farming where dif- ferent farms are contracted, by larger meat packing companies, to rear livestock at specific stages of the FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT, INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT AND THE CHANGING POLISH PIG INDUSTRY by Grzegorz Micek, Harvey Neo and Janusz Górecki