Green Giant Kernel Corn

          A commodity chain is able to identify the different aspects of a network of labour, production and packaging processes which generate a finished commodity item (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1986:159).

         Gereffi proposed the concept of a commodity changing during the mid-1990s, the Global Commodity Chain (GCC) was developed within an analytic framework of the political economy of development and underdevelopment, originally derived from world-system theory and dependency theory. It was developed primarily to analyse the impact of globalisation on industrial commodity chains. The commodity chain shows the link between production, consumption and distribution of goods (Watts, 1999).

Timeline of the History of Minnesota Valley Canning Company

History of Green Giant 

A popular brand of frozen and canned vegetables is Green Giant. Established in 1903 in Le Sueur, Minnesota, the Minnesota Valley Canning Company (MVCC) produced canned vegetables under the brand Le Sueur Z in 1903. By 1925 the new brand Green Giant Great Big Tender Peas was introduced. Founded by John S Hughes, he started the MVCC cannery which at that time was a relatively new process. Years later Ward Cosgrove joined the board of directors and changed and influenced a new concept to the cannery which made it more efficient and effective.

Corn is grown it the valley on the fertile alluvial floodplains of the Minnesota River around Le Sueur under environmentally sustainably and friendly conditions with the consumer in mind. In an attempt to gain costumers attention, the Jolly Green Giant was appointed mascot of their products. This green friendly giant appears on television commercial and the packaging of all their products.

Though they were profitable MVCC merged with Pillsbury in 1979. General Mills, in turn, bought Pillsbury in 2001, and in the early twenty-first century Green Giant remains a division within that larger company. Currently they are one of the largest producers of canned and frozen corn and peas, their main crops, in the United States along with a variety of other crop produced on a smaller scale (carrots, peas, broccoli, green beans, and spinach). Green Giant Company has been able to take advantage of new technological process and inventions which has allowed them to climb the economic ladder in the food industry.

Upon questioning the Operations Manager, Mr. A. Kocher, of seven different Hilo Food Stores in Trinidad and Regional Assistant Fresh Buyer, Ms. S. Ramjattan, of Pricesmart in Chaguanas, both described a similar process by which Green Giant corn is brought into Trinidad and by extension other Green Giant products, which can be seen in the flow chart below. Green Giant is U.S based where processed and packaged goods are kept in MVCC. Distributors are granted the license to market and distribute Green Giant products to local supermarkets. Goods are shipped via sea freight in a refrigerated container on a ship where it arrives at the port and cleared by port authority and collected by M&D Company in Trinidad. From here it is redistributed to local food stores where it is publicly advertised and purchased by customers.