Enterprises: The New Leaders of Agricultural Modernization

This chapter demonstrates how state agencies limit their ability to directly address the issues of inflation and food safety and preferentially rely on food-processing enterprises based in rural areas to modernize agricultural production. The chapter explains why these enterprises are the sole stakeholders really capable of addressing the issues of agricultural modernization, compared to NGOs or farmers. This chapter also investigates the recent (while limited) enlargement of this industrial and private-led agricultural sector to other private actors, essentially from downstream of the food chain (retailers) and, to a certain extent, from upstream of the food chain (agrochemical companies).