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Supermarkets are traditionally viewed by development economists, policymakers, and practitioners as the rich world's place to shop. The three regions discussed here have a great majority of the poor on the planet. But supermarkets are no longer just niche players for rich consumers in the capital cities of the countries in these regions. The rapid rise of supermarkets in these regions in the past five to ten years has transformed agrifood markets at different rates and depths across regions and countries. Many of those transformations present great challenges-even exclusionfor small farms, and small processing and distribution firms, but also potentially great opportunities. Development models, policies, and programs need to adapt to this radical change.

This paper describes the transformation of agrifood systems in Africa, Asia (excluding Japan), and Latin America. First, we describe the traditional retail and …