This talk considers broader debates on food regimes and "unven and combined development" in relation to the Dominican Republic's food system. The Dominican state plays a central role in food production and consumption relative to many of its neighbors in the Caribbean, a region highly exposed to international markets for food and agricultural products. Based on a two-year pilot study with land reform rice producers and interviews with key private and public sector actors in the rice chain and beyond, I consider the possibile outcome of the liberalization of this and other sensitive agricultural products under the provisions of a free trade agreement with Central America and the United States (DR-CAFTA). The paper offers a basis for the consideration of novel forms of national governance of food systems in the context of neoliberalization, that is, spatio-temporally variegated regulatory development. 

Marion Werner is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Co-Director of the Center for Trade, Environment and Development at SUNY-Buffalo (UB). Her research is located at the nexus of critical development studies, feminist theory, and political economy with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean. She is the author of Global Displacements: The making of uneven development in the Caribbean (Wiley, 2016) and a co-Editor of the journal Antipode.