The past decade has witnessed an effective globalization of supply chains and an unprecedented increase in foreign investment in agricultural commodities and food markets worldwide, the rise of food quality and safety standards in the rich countries and the spread of these standards – often set by private companies – to developing and transition countries and a dramatic growth in high-value food exports from developing countries. One of the most striking features of these developments has been the dramatic rise of investments by global retail chains (‘supermarkets’) in emerging, transition and developing countries. Most recently, Russia, China and India were the top three destinations of foreign investment flows by multinational retail companies. Not surprisingly, these changes in the global food system are having important effects on farmers, fishermen and households in developing and transition countries. In the wake of foreign investments or through global trading relationships, high standards for quality and safety of agricultural and food commodities have been imposed on their production systems. In several cases these changes in standards and investments are coinciding with a growth in vertical coordination in these modern supply chains, contributing to access of the local producers to inputs, credit, technology, etc. as part of contracts with companies that purchase the commodities they produce. The combination of these developments is causing dramatic changes in the supply chains in developing, emerging and transition countries, and the production circumstances for local producers – and particularly poor, often rural, households. However, there is a lot of debate on the impact of these developments on developing and transition countries, and in particular on the poor households in these countries. Some have pointed at the benefits from these developments as farmers have gained access to high-value international markets and to inputs, credit, technology and output markets, and thereby to higher productivity and higher incomes. Others argue that these developments are likely to lead to a further marginalization of the poor as small, poorly educated and weakly capitalized farmers are likely to be excluded from these new markets, with their traditional markets being taken away from them.