especially because of tourism. Labor-intensive patterns of land management declined, as they were both economically inefficient and increasingly unattractive to young people who increasingly migrated to urban areas.

     In many eastern European countries, smallholders and local outlets still raise and market most of the agrifood products (especially livestock, potatoes and other vegeta­bles). For example, in the Caucasus and southern Balkans, small farmers produce cereal and oil crops for subsistence and fruit, vegetable and animal products to supplement of­ten very low incomes, in agrifood systems that are largely independent of the rest of the economy (Dixon et al., 2001). Disproportionate numbers of limited-resource and minority producers in the US sell their products through fragmented agrifood systems.

Globalized agrifood systems, responsive to economic sig­nals.   Post-WWII Europe  faced massive  food  shortages. While food rationing was an effective crisis-management tool, the longer-term policy in western Europe and the US was to stimulate production by economic instruments (tar­iffs, quotas and subsidies) and by providing AKST in the form of new varieties, synthetic fertilizers, synthetic pes­ticides, machinery and advice on their use. Production in­creased, and the successful farmers were often those who re­sponded to market signals and produced commodity foods at competitive prices, increasing efficiency by increasing in scale and productivity. The numbers of people employed in agriculture (including forestry, fishing and hunting) fell to less than 5% in the EU in 2005 (EUROSTAT, 2007a) and 1.5% in the US (Hecker, 2004). This happened through­out the supply chain, resulting in fewer, larger corporations providing seed, fertilizers, agrochemicals and machinery to farmers, and consolidation of the supply chain from the farm. This has increased inequality of wealth and assets in the agrifood system.

     In the EU, food insecurity gave way to surpluses during the 1980s. In the Soviet Union, food production increased more slowly than in the West. Food prices were kept artifi­cially low, with rationing and inflation, periodic food short­ages and long lines in shops (Patterson, 2000).

     NAE now produces more than enough food to meet its basic needs, and abundant food supplies are now taken for granted across most of NAE. The share of total income devoted to food varies from 14% in the US to well over 50% in the Balkans and Ukraine (FAOSTAT, 2006). After long periods in which the food supply has been constrained by economics, technology or politics, it became increasingly driven by consumers (Ponte and Gibbon, 2005). The expe­rience of buying food has been transformed: at the turn of the 20th century, the goods in shops were on shelves behind a counter, and were packaged and passed to the customer by a shop assistant. Supermarkets reduced costs by enabling the customers to select the produce themselves. They first appeared in the US in the 1930s, and after WWII became part of suburban culture, combining car parking, low prices and an increasingly wide choice. There is now an abundant variety of affordable native and exotic foods available in all but the poorest countries in the region. Consumption of pre­pared food from shops, fast food outlets and restaurants has grown rapidly. Post-production sectors of agrifood systems

(processing, distribution and sales) now employ a substan­tial proportion of the workforce throughout NAE. Agrifood systems have become dominated by fewer, larger actors as companies have integrated both horizontally and vertically. Wal-Mart now dominates the American market, Carrefour in France and Tesco in the UK, integrating food production, distribution, preparation and supply into value chains and adding value at each step.

     However, the increasing scale and productivity of ag­riculture became associated with increasing concerns over environment and human health. Environmental concerns included low levels of agricultural biodiversity:  80%  of calories consumed worldwide (directly or through milk, eggs and meat) come from just four crops, wheat, rice, soy­beans, and maize (Gressel, 2007). The loss of non-cropped biodiversity and landscape quality is regarded as an even more important issue, especially in Europe. Few unmodified habitats remain beyond the poles and high mountains, be­cause so little potentially suitable land is not currently used for agriculture (Fischer et al., 2001). Farmland birds have declined from the 1970s across Europe, although losses of birds of prey due to bioaccumulative pesticides have now been reversed. Traditional agricultural landscapes are threatened by the twin pressures to either intensify or aban­don production, resulting in landscape homogenization and further reduction in biodiversity (Petit et al., 2001). The in­crease in intensive agriculture has also been associated with the decline of other ecosystem functions, including resource protection, water supply and pollination (MA, 2005ab).

Fragmented value chains, responsive to multifunctional sig­nals. Increasing numbers of consumers are concerned about the ethical, social and environmental concerns raised by intensive agriculture, new technologies and globalization (see e.g., Harvey, 1997; Pretty, 1998; Heller, 2003; Tudge, 2003). The vegetarian movement is largely a reaction to fac­tory farming of animals and concerns over animal welfare. In Britain, for example, there were 100,000 vegetarians in 1945 and by the 1990s there were three million, the num­ber having doubled during the 1980s. Purchasing goods certified as produced under standards of fair trade is a re­action to concerns that global trading systems and TNCs disadvantage those who are already poor. Health concerns focus on both the presence of undesirable "contaminants" in food and the overall diet. The increasing market for or­ganic produce largely reflects the wish by some consumers to avoid pesticide residues, growth hormones, antibiotics and GMOs. Organic and locally-produced goods are also valued as ways of avoiding the perceived blandness and stereotypical nature of much modern food (Spencer, 2000). Local foods also benefit from increasing recognition that long-distance transport of food contributes to greenhouse gas emissions (Pretty et al., 2005). Each of these alternate systems has in turn promoted these concerns as a means of increasing their market share.

     These trends have expanded markets for higher value, differentiated goods, not least to small farms that were not competitive in more integrated agrifood systems. Some are charging premium prices through farmers' markets, special­ist retailers and on the Web. They have achieved this by adding value to the food more widely available in the su-