Niels Fold
Biographic Data
| ID | 94127 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Niels Fold |
| GIVEN NAMES | Niels |
| FAMILY NAME | Fold |
| SIGNATURE | FOLD N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Copenhagen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1133-6525 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 351 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Governance, Power, and Inequalities in the Tanzanian Broiler Chicken Value Chain
Farmers’ practices in hybrid food networks in peri-urban China
How to Assess Livelihoods? Critical Reflections on the Use of Common Indicators to Capture Socioeconomic Outcomes for Ecological Restoration workers in South Africa
Social outcomes from conservation and development activities on a local scale are often assessed using five livelihood assets—Natural, Physical, Human, Financial and Social—and their associated indicators. These indicators, and the variables used to measure them, are typically based on ‘common practice’ with limited attention being paid to the use of alternative indicators. In this article, we present a typical survey of socioeconomic benefits fo…
Global production networks and medicinal plants
Knowledge of spatial and temporal actor dynamics in global production networks (GPNs) based on renewable natural resources remains rudimentary. This article contributes to reducing this knowledge gap by showing how upstream actors shape the territorial embeddedness and value dynamics (creation, enhancement, and capture of value) of GPNs. Empirically, we present a fine-grained analysis of the upstream section of the global production network for c…
The role of external forces in the adoption of aquaculture innovations
Take back your fish
Could aquaculture lift farmers out of poverty and provide stability and an alternative livelihood to coca farming? Currently, aquaculture is pursued on a moderate scale, with the involvement of around 1500 small-scale farmers, in Caquetá, a department located in the Amazonian bioregion of Colombia. Some 400 farmers are organised in a grassroots non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Acuica. Cultivation and sale of fish provide a means for loc…
The coloniality of power on the green frontier
The dynamic frontier-making in Colombia’s Amazon department of Caquetá is the focus of this article. Since the mid-nineteenth century, booms and busts of commodity production have been associated with violent struggles as actors have challenged pre-existing orders and authorities. At different times, the area has been controlled by the Catholic Church, the Colombian state, FARC and paramilitary groups, following the different boom-and-bust cycles…
"Agrarian modernization through "ideal agricultural subjects
With an example from Rwanda, we ask how the State's policy strategy and attempts to construct "ideal agricultural subjects" resonate with the actual changes experienced by farmers themselves. We present three different empirical examples to show that a) when opportunities from agricultural transformation initially arise, only the wealthiest can capture them, and even then the government is seen as the main beneficiary; b) some priority crop growe…
Twenty‐five years of Living Under Contract
The expansion of contract farming schemes through regions of the developing world in the era of the globalization of agriculture raises questions that are central to the study of agrarian political economy. Contract farming has extended the footprint of commodity production and integrated land and labour not otherwise captured in forms of direct production and marketing. 25 years after the publication of Living Under Contract: Contract Farming an…
Land and contract farming
In the context of contract farming of sugarcane in an outgrower scheme in Tanzania, this paper explores how the scheme has fundamentally altered people's relationships with the land over the last 50 years, in particular, since 1999, when, after three decades, the sugar parastatal was privatized. The paper reviews the literature on the mutual relationship between contract farming and land ownership and examines the scheme with a focus on long‐term…
Resource-based industrial policy in an era of global production networks
Processes of industrialisation have long been associated with labour productivity improvements, rising incomes, and ultimately economic and social development. The preferred policy strategy to achieve these development objectives, however, remain intensely debated. A specific policy strategy of resource-based industrialisation (RBI), involving pre-export value addition to raw materials, is frequently pursued by resource-rich countries in the glob…
Social Change in South East Asia
Introduction: Changing Realities of Social Transition in Southeast Asia.PART 1: THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL CONFLICT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. 1. The Impact of US Strategy: Making Southeast Asia Safe for Capitalism 2. The Custodian State and Social Change - Creating Growth Without Welfare 3. The Emergence of the Middle Classes in Southeast Asia and the Indonesian Case PART 2: CLASSES, CULTURE AND POLITICAL LEGITIMATION 4. Class, Culture…
Competitors contained? Manufacturer strategies in the global rare earth value chain
Grounding institutions through informal practice
Global production networks, regional development trajectories and smallholder livelihoods in the Global South
Recent advances in global production network theory, known as GPN 2.0, provide a theoretically sophisticated framework for understanding the articulation of global production systems with regional development trajectories. However, this framework was largely derived from lessons out of empirical analyses of the strategic coupling and value capture trajectories of firms in certain manufacturing and service sector 'hot spots', primarily in East and…
Lead Firms in the Cocoa-Chocolate Global Production Network
Recent models of Global Production Network Theory (known as GPN 2.0) have attempted to theoretically explain the underlying determinants, or causal drivers, of particular industry network configurations, which in turn shape the territorial outcomes for regional development. To date, the ability of this ambitious conceptual model to thereby explain economic geography has remained largely untested beyond the select industry networks examined by its…
The Post-Privatization Role of Out-growers' Associations in Rural Capital Accumulation
Contract farming is widely promoted by multilateral agencies as an engine of economic growth in developing countries. The agencies often stress the need for governments to create strong farmers' organizations that can shoulder the risks associated with contractual relationships with large corporations. However, empirical studies of farmers' organizations in contractual schemes are few and tend to dismiss the performances of these organizations fo…
South-South Trade and Development
Resilience and reworking practices
The sustainability of cassava-based bioethanol production in southern Mali
The demand for biofuels has been rising, which has led developing countries to focus on production of feedstocks for biodiesel and bioethanol production. This has caused concerns for the impacts on food security, food prices and environmental sustainability. This paper examines a hypothetical case of cassava-based bioethanol production in southern Mali, assessing its environmental, economic and social sustainability. Results demonstrate that envi…
Upgrading to lead firm position via international acquisition
This article examines the case of a Chinese firm that has upgraded to lead firm position in the global biomass power plant industry mainly through acquisitions of technological frontier firms in Denmark. Sustaining the lead firm position was, however, challenged by difficulties in developing innovative capability. Drawing on the literature on (i) firm-level technological capability and (ii) knowledge transfer in international acquisitions, we exp…
Value Chain Dynamics, Settlement Trajectories and Regional Development
Fold N. Value chain dynamics, settlement trajectories and regional development, Regional Studies. Global value chain (GVC) analysis has little to say about the interaction between regions and global chain dynamics. However, recent calls to address broader development issues have resulted in efforts to incorporate a spatial dimension in GVC analysis. Addressing this issue, the paper argues that GVC analysis needs to be combined with the examinatio…
Buying into formalization? State institutions and interlocked markets in African small-scale gold mining
Globalisations in a nutshell
Pre-colonial patterns of trade in West Africa included exchanges of shea in periodic local and regional markets. The collection, processing and marketing of shea products in such markets continues to be predominantly by women to both meet subsistence needs, and exchange of surpluses. In the early part of the 20 th century, the British colonial administration considered the possibilities of starting large-scale exports of shea kernels to Europe. M…
Globalisations in a nutshell
Pre-colonial patterns of trade in West Africa included exchanges of shea in periodic local and regional markets. The collection, processing and marketing of shea products in such markets continues to be predominantly by women to both meet subsistence needs, and exchange of surpluses. In the early part of the 20th century, the British colonial administration considered the possibilities of starting large-scale exports of shea kernels to Europe. Mu…
From smallholders to transnationals
The World Development Report 2009 ‘reshapes economic geography’
By and large, geographers have had little to say about the World Bank's annual flagship World Development Reports (WDRs). However, with the just published WDR 2009 (hereafter referred to as the Report), things might be different, for it claims to be concerned with nothing less than ‘reshaping economic geography’. In his foreword, the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, writes that he expects ‘Reshaping Economic Geography will stimulate …
Re-thinking frontiers in Southeast Asia
The frontier has a long tradition in geographical study. Exploration, conquest and the colonial project were all about pushing back the frontier of civilisation, and seeking riches at and beyond the resource frontier. Turner's thesis put frontiers as geographical peripheries at the heart of what defines the national character (Turner 1920). In another sense, frontiers define the national ‘geobody’ (Winichakul 1994), so that cores are delimited an…
Lead Firms and Competition in 'Bi-polar' Commodity Chains
Like most global agro-industrial commodity chains today, the global cocoa - chocolate industry is buyer-driven. However, the chain is characterized by the lead role of a few transnational companies in two different segments: the grinders (processors of cocoa)and the branders (manufacturers of chocolate), a structural pattern identified in other so-called turn-key industries consisting of contract manufacturers and brand-name firms. The paper exam…
Buying into formalization? State institutions and interlocked markets in African small-scale gold mining
The coloniality of power on the green frontier
The dynamic frontier-making in Colombia’s Amazon department of Caquetá is the focus of this article. Since the mid-nineteenth century, booms and busts of commodity production have been associated with violent struggles as actors have challenged pre-existing orders and authorities. At different times, the area has been controlled by the Catholic Church, the Colombian state, FARC and paramilitary groups, following the different boom-and-bust cycles…
Global production networks, regional development trajectories and smallholder livelihoods in the Global South
Recent advances in global production network theory, known as GPN 2.0, provide a theoretically sophisticated framework for understanding the articulation of global production systems with regional development trajectories. However, this framework was largely derived from lessons out of empirical analyses of the strategic coupling and value capture trajectories of firms in certain manufacturing and service sector 'hot spots', primarily in East and…
Grounding institutions through informal practice
Lead Firms in the Cocoa-Chocolate Global Production Network
Recent models of Global Production Network Theory (known as GPN 2.0) have attempted to theoretically explain the underlying determinants, or causal drivers, of particular industry network configurations, which in turn shape the territorial outcomes for regional development. To date, the ability of this ambitious conceptual model to thereby explain economic geography has remained largely untested beyond the select industry networks examined by its…
Global-local interactions
Due to their dependence on a single crop, agricultural frontiers are often considered to be formed through phases of 'boom and bust'. These phases are closely related to fluctuations in world market prices of the commodity that constitutes the frontier's economic basis. This paper demonstrates how although migration patterns and economic growth are conditioned by world market dynamics, local socioeconomic outcomes within frontier regions are dive…
Value Chain Dynamics, Settlement Trajectories and Regional Development
Fold N. Value chain dynamics, settlement trajectories and regional development, Regional Studies. Global value chain (GVC) analysis has little to say about the interaction between regions and global chain dynamics. However, recent calls to address broader development issues have resulted in efforts to incorporate a spatial dimension in GVC analysis. Addressing this issue, the paper argues that GVC analysis needs to be combined with the examinatio…
Transnational Sourcing Practices in Ghana's Perennial Crop Sectors
Neo-liberal policies increasingly affect African agricultural production and the influence and power of transnational agro-food companies have deepened substantially since the turn of the century. As a consequence the conditions of transactions of many African export crops have been modified or changed completely. This paper examines the changes and emerging patterns of transnational buyers' sourcing practices within four of Ghana's perennial cro…
Restructuring of the European chocolate industry and its impact on cocoa production in West Africa
During the 1990s, both the European chocolate industry and the cocoa butter industry have become increasingly centralised. Today only a handful of companies in each segment control the production of intermediate goods and massmarketed brands. The cocoa sectors of the major producing countries in West Africa have at the same time been liberalised and privatised due to the dismantling of state marketing boards. This paper examines the relationship …
Upgrading to lead firm position via international acquisition
This article examines the case of a Chinese firm that has upgraded to lead firm position in the global biomass power plant industry mainly through acquisitions of technological frontier firms in Denmark. Sustaining the lead firm position was, however, challenged by difficulties in developing innovative capability. Drawing on the literature on (i) firm-level technological capability and (ii) knowledge transfer in international acquisitions, we exp…
Resilience and reworking practices
Oiling the Palms
Mining 'From Below'
Artisanal and small‐scale mining (ASM) is of growing importance for the livelihoods of an increasing number of Africa’s rural population. Therefore, the sector is increasingly being recognized by African governments, donor institutions and researchers for its role in national development processes. This paper reviews four issues that drive the dynamics within ASM and situates the sector in broader development and formalization problematics. These…
Resource-based industrial policy in an era of global production networks
Processes of industrialisation have long been associated with labour productivity improvements, rising incomes, and ultimately economic and social development. The preferred policy strategy to achieve these development objectives, however, remain intensely debated. A specific policy strategy of resource-based industrialisation (RBI), involving pre-export value addition to raw materials, is frequently pursued by resource-rich countries in the glob…
Land distribution and acquisition practices in Ghana's cocoa frontier
City networks and commodity chains
Any analytical framework for understanding actual forms of the intensified incorporation of cities into the world economy needs to go beyond the exclusive focus on advanced producer services, which is characteristic of most of the World City Network (WCN) approach. Simultaneously, an account of the role of advanced producer services will strengthen Global Commodity Chain (GCC) analysis. A combination of the literatures on WCN and GCC can contribu…
The Post-Privatization Role of Out-growers' Associations in Rural Capital Accumulation
Contract farming is widely promoted by multilateral agencies as an engine of economic growth in developing countries. The agencies often stress the need for governments to create strong farmers' organizations that can shoulder the risks associated with contractual relationships with large corporations. However, empirical studies of farmers' organizations in contractual schemes are few and tend to dismiss the performances of these organizations fo…
Multi-level Modularity vs. Hierarchy
An examination of Singapore's electronics industry is used to construct a generalized model of organizational forms in global production networks within the electronics industry. The model includes an extension of the modular production network derived from studies of the US electronic equipment industry where brand name firms concentrate on product innovation, design and marketing while contracting out manufacturing to turnkey suppliers. In the …
Globalisations in a nutshell
Pre-colonial patterns of trade in West Africa included exchanges of shea in periodic local and regional markets. The collection, processing and marketing of shea products in such markets continues to be predominantly by women to both meet subsistence needs, and exchange of surpluses. In the early part of the 20th century, the British colonial administration considered the possibilities of starting large-scale exports of shea kernels to Europe. Mu…
State regulation of agro-industries in developing countries. Governance systems in the vegetable oil industry of Malaysia and Zimbabwe
Global production networks and medicinal plants
Knowledge of spatial and temporal actor dynamics in global production networks (GPNs) based on renewable natural resources remains rudimentary. This article contributes to reducing this knowledge gap by showing how upstream actors shape the territorial embeddedness and value dynamics (creation, enhancement, and capture of value) of GPNs. Empirically, we present a fine-grained analysis of the upstream section of the global production network for c…
South-South trade in manufactured goods—with a case study of India's export of capital goods to Tanzania
Folke Steen, Thyge Enevoldsen, Helle Fischer, Niels Fold: South-South trade in manufactured goods—with a case study of India's export of capital goods to Tanzania. Geografisk Tidsskrift 88: 34–44. Copenhagen. 1988. South-South trade in manufactured goods expanded rapidly through the 1970s, but stagnated in the early 1980s. The leading exporters in South-South trade are the newly industrialising countries that account for about half of South-South…
South-South Trade and Development
The book gives a thorough analysis of South-South trade in a theoretical and political framework. The development of South-South trade in manufactured goods since the 1960s is treated in detail. Probl
Development of South-South Trade
Long-distance trade between regions in what constitutes the present day’s Third World has existed for centuries going back to before the first arrival of European tradesmen in the area.
Industrial Organization and Sectoral Linkages
Niels Fold: Industrial Organization and Sectoral Linkages: A Study of the Malaysian Palm Oil Industry. Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 94:xx–xx. Copenhagen, Dec. 1994. The paper analyses the industrial organization of the Malaysian palm oil industry, a case of agricultural based downstream industrialization linked to the world market. The objective is to identify salient policy lessons concerning the use of regulating mechanism…
South-South Trade and Development
Anmeldelser
Labor Shortages and Industrial Growth in Penang, Malaysia
Geografisk Tidsskrift, Danish Journal of Geography 97: 111–119, 1997. During the last two decades, industrial growth in Penang has been rapid. In particular, production and employment in the labor-intensive segments of the electronics industry have increased tremendously due to investments by transnational companies from the USA and Japan. In the first decade, the demand for adequately skilled and disciplined labor from Malaysia's rural areas was…
State regulation of agro-industries in developing countries. Governance systems in the vegetable oil industry of Malaysia and Zimbabwe
Globalisation, State Regulation and Industrial Upgrading of the Oil Seed Industries in Malaysia and Brazil
Palm oil from Malaysia and soybean meal from Brazil are of major importance in the world market. State regulation in both countries has played a crucial role in agro‐industrial upgrading, i.e. the establishment, consolidation and diversification of manufacturing capacity in the oil seed chains. In particular, sufficient volumes of raw materials for local processing have been secured through systems of differential export taxes. This core set of r…
Oiling the Palms
Anmeldelser
Restructuring of the European chocolate industry and its impact on cocoa production in West Africa
During the 1990s, both the European chocolate industry and the cocoa butter industry have become increasingly centralised. Today only a handful of companies in each segment control the production of intermediate goods and massmarketed brands. The cocoa sectors of the major producing countries in West Africa have at the same time been liberalised and privatised due to the dismantling of state marketing boards. This paper examines the relationship …
Lead Firms and Competition in 'Bi-polar' Commodity Chains
Like most global agro-industrial commodity chains today, the global cocoa - chocolate industry is buyer-driven. However, the chain is characterized by the lead role of a few transnational companies in two different segments: the grinders (processors of cocoa)and the branders (manufacturers of chocolate), a structural pattern identified in other so-called turn-key industries consisting of contract manufacturers and brand-name firms. The paper exam…
Multi-level Modularity vs. Hierarchy
An examination of Singapore's electronics industry is used to construct a generalized model of organizational forms in global production networks within the electronics industry. The model includes an extension of the modular production network derived from studies of the US electronic equipment industry where brand name firms concentrate on product innovation, design and marketing while contracting out manufacturing to turnkey suppliers. In the …
From smallholders to transnationals
Transnational Sourcing Practices in Ghana's Perennial Crop Sectors
Neo-liberal policies increasingly affect African agricultural production and the influence and power of transnational agro-food companies have deepened substantially since the turn of the century. As a consequence the conditions of transactions of many African export crops have been modified or changed completely. This paper examines the changes and emerging patterns of transnational buyers' sourcing practices within four of Ghana's perennial cro…
Finding zones of convergence in a world of continental drift
Rural-Urban Dynamics
It has increasingly been recognised that rural and urban areas are inextricably interlinked. This book adopts a fresh approach to the issue of rural-urban dynamics through a study of the changing nature of livelihoods, mobility and markets in ten study sites across four countries of Africa and Asia. Building on detailed fieldwork conducted in Ghana, Tanzania, Vietnam and Thailand, the authors explore how settlements and livelihoods are being tran…
The World Development Report 2009 ‘reshapes economic geography’
By and large, geographers have had little to say about the World Bank's annual flagship World Development Reports (WDRs). However, with the just published WDR 2009 (hereafter referred to as the Report), things might be different, for it claims to be concerned with nothing less than ‘reshaping economic geography’. In his foreword, the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, writes that he expects ‘Reshaping Economic Geography will stimulate …
Re-thinking frontiers in Southeast Asia
The frontier has a long tradition in geographical study. Exploration, conquest and the colonial project were all about pushing back the frontier of civilisation, and seeking riches at and beyond the resource frontier. Turner's thesis put frontiers as geographical peripheries at the heart of what defines the national character (Turner 1920). In another sense, frontiers define the national ‘geobody’ (Winichakul 1994), so that cores are delimited an…
Global-local interactions
Due to their dependence on a single crop, agricultural frontiers are often considered to be formed through phases of 'boom and bust'. These phases are closely related to fluctuations in world market prices of the commodity that constitutes the frontier's economic basis. This paper demonstrates how although migration patterns and economic growth are conditioned by world market dynamics, local socioeconomic outcomes within frontier regions are dive…
Spilling the beans on a tough nut
City networks and commodity chains
Any analytical framework for understanding actual forms of the intensified incorporation of cities into the world economy needs to go beyond the exclusive focus on advanced producer services, which is characteristic of most of the World City Network (WCN) approach. Simultaneously, an account of the role of advanced producer services will strengthen Global Commodity Chain (GCC) analysis. A combination of the literatures on WCN and GCC can contribu…
Land distribution and acquisition practices in Ghana's cocoa frontier
Mining 'From Below'
Artisanal and small‐scale mining (ASM) is of growing importance for the livelihoods of an increasing number of Africa’s rural population. Therefore, the sector is increasingly being recognized by African governments, donor institutions and researchers for its role in national development processes. This paper reviews four issues that drive the dynamics within ASM and situates the sector in broader development and formalization problematics. These…
Economics (35 works) · Business (31 works) · Geography (29 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (18 works) · Agriculture (17 works) · Political science (11 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (10 works) · Economy (10 works) · Industrial organization (10 works) · Market economy (10 works)