The objective for the development of this international research collaboration is to explain the roles and implications of transnational corporate involvement in global food and agriculture governance. Recent years have seen a growing literature examining the globalization of food and agriculture, and the role of transnational corporations in that process. But there has been little academic work which examines the role that corporations play in the establishment and implementation of international rules, norms and institutions that have emerged to govern the global food system. Global food and agriculture governance is in many ways geared toward providing some degree of global regulation on global agro-food corporations, as they are the key agents in the globalization of the food system, responsible for a growing percentage of global product! ion, trade, and marketing of food and agricultural products. But at the same time, these corporations play a key role in the establishment of the very rules that seek to govern their activities at the international level. This raises important theoretical and policy questions about the impact that this corporate influence has on sustainability – environmental as well as social – of the global food system and the rules that govern it.