There is a global consensus that the current food system, involving the production, processing, transport, and consumption of food, is failing—threatening our food security, nutritional security and health, social justice, and natural resources—and therefore requires an immediate transformation if the global “zero hunger by 2030” agenda is to be achieved (HLPE 2017; HLPE 2020).
This book provides a thorough introduction to and examination of agricultural value chains in Sub-Saharan Africa. First, the authors introduce the economic theory of agri-food value chains and value chain governance, focusing on domestic and regional trade in (and consumption of) food crops in a low-income country context. In addition to mainstream and heterodox thinking about value chain development, the book pays attention to political economy considerations. The book also reviews the empirical evidence on value chain development and performance in Africa.
Wheat flour and bread have played a central role in Sudan’s political economy throughout the country’s post-independence history. In 2019, increasing bread prices precipitated the protests that ousted the government of Omar al-Bashir. How has Sudan’s recent political transition and economic circumstances impacted distortions within the wheat value chain? What are the policy preferences of relevant stakeholders for improving the affordability of wheat products and the productivity of domestic wheat farmers?
In situations with imperfect information, the way that value chain actors perceive each other is an important determinant of the value chain's structure and performance. Inaccurate perceptions may result in inefficient value chains, and systematic bias in perceptions may affect nclusiveness.
With the expansion of agricultural production for the global market, interest among research and developmentactors in developing more “inclusive” value chains has grown (Stoian et al. 2018a). While mainstream value chain development (VCD) has focused on enhancing the efficiency of processes along the chain, policies increasingly endeavor to address poverty, emphasizing the inclusion of poor and marginalized people in global markets (Bolwig et al. 2010).
Background
While it has identified that linking smallholders in the agri-food value chain remains to be a promising strategy to get out of the poverty trap in many developing countries, less is known about the food security implications of smallholders’ participation in the fruits value chain. This paper examines the effects of apple and mango smallholder farmers’ participation along the value chain, focusing on their household food security in north-western Ethiopia.
Methods
Food systems must serve different societal, public health and individual nutrition, and environmental objectives and therefore face numerous challenges. Considering the integrated performances of food systems, this paper highlights five fundamental paradigm shifts that are required to overcome trade-offs and build synergies between health and nutrition, inclusive livelihoods, environmental sustainability and food system resilience.
Driven by increased demand from both local and export markets and facilitated by far-reaching liberalization and privatization policies, the dairy sub-sector in Uganda has undergone significant changes in the last decade. With a comparative advantage in milk production, the southwest of Uganda has started to attract considerable Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in processing capacity, mainly targeting the export market. As a result, processing capacity increased five-fold and dairy became Uganda's third most important export product, coming from negligible amounts a decade earlier.
It is often claimed that cotton production is of significant economic and social importance in the French-speaking African countries (FSACs) but indicators of socio-economic impact are often not precisely measured, not based on updated data, and equity concerns are usually not addressed. Studies of the cotton value chains in Africa seldom account for the impacts of governance on value creation and income distribution. This paper showcases the relationship between governance and equity within the cotton sector in Cameroon in the 2017–18 season, through the concept of relational governance.
This study, based on a primary survey conducted in Bangladesh in 2016, assesses the impact of contract farming in broiler production on profits and the adoption of food safety measures at the farm level. It also estimates the determinants for participation in contract farming, finding a farmer’s education and broiler-housing structure to be significant determinants. This study uniquely assesses the association of contract farming with the provision of well-defined food safety attributes.
Agricultural Development: New Perspectives in a Changing World is the first comprehensive exploration of key emerging issues facing developing-country agriculture today, from rapid urbanization to rural transformation to climate change. In this four-part volume, top experts offer the latest research in the field of agricultural development. Using new lenses to examine today’s biggest challenges, contributors address topics such as nutrition and health, gender and household decision-making, agrifood value chains, natural resource management, and political economy.
In this chapter, for brevity, we focus on the output value chains, but the conceptual framework and most trends are also relevant to the input value chains, the lateral service value chains, and R&D&E suppliers. Output value chains in developing countries have transformed over the past 50 years but particularly quickly only in the past 25 years. In many countries the transformation of value chains has been abrupt, not gradual.
Today, agrifood systems are undergoing remarkable changes, reflected in the modernization of food value chains and rural transformation responding to urbanization, income growth, and expansion of international trade. At the same time, agrifood systems are expected to contribute to a wide range of development goals, reaching beyond agricultural productivity growth and food security.
Propelled by urbanization, rising incomes, and changing diets, food markets have been expanding in Africa and South Asia, creating the vast potential for job and income opportunities along food supply chains and, hence, for poverty reduction. The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that spread to a pandemic in early 2020 provokes enormous setbacks to this expansion. This, however, should provide lessons regarding the importance of resilient and inclusive food systems.
Since the early 2000s, value chain development (VCD) has figured prominently on the agendas of donors, governments, and NGOs in pursuit of market-based options to poverty reduction, food security, gender equity, and other goals. Researchers have shown interest in value chains as a theoretical construct for studying interactions between farmers and markets, while practitioners have focused their attention on approaches and tools for applying VCD in the field.
To guide the design of future agriculture and food value chain interventions, this paper combines two existing spatial food and nutrition security typologies and applies them to the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Apart from estimating absolute and relative inefficiencies along the food system from agricultural potential to nutrition, the integration of both typologies resulted in nine unique low efficiency profiles across the territories and major cities of the Greater Kivu region and Tanganyika.
This chapter in the RESAKSS ANNUAL TRENDS AND OUTLOOK REPORT aims to assess the performance of and policy responses to Africa’s rapidly emerging traditional staples value chains, which are dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the processing and trading segments.
This study examined consumers’ purchasing habits and demand in peri-urban Mexico City for three types of tortillas: i) machine-made white, ii) handmade white, and iii) handmade blue. As part of a sensory analysis, the participants rated the blue maize tortillas significantly higher across all categories (overall score, flavour, smell, texture in mouth, texture in hand, size, thickness, and colour). To explore how demand varies according to the intended use, we conducted a choice experiment using three scenarios: in-home daily use, in-home special event, and out-of-home consumption.
Photo credit: IFPRI
The COVID-19 pandemic is beginning to disrupt food value chains in Ethiopia and elsewhere, impacting the livelihoods of farmers and the diets of rural and urban households. These effects are likely to hit the poorest and most vulnerable farmers and consumers the hardest, but they are not yet well understood. More evidence is needed to guide the government and other organizations in devising responses.
The COVID-19 pandemic is beginning to disrupt food value chains in Ethiopia and elsewhere, impacting the livelihoods of farmers and the diets of rural and urban households. These effects are likely to hit the poorest and most vulnerable farmers and consumers the hardest, but they are not yet well understood. More evidence is needed to guide the government and other organizations in devising responses.
Using the product-space approach and BACI dataset for the period 1995-2014, we analyze the role of agricultural value chains selected under Agricultural Policy Support Project (PAPA) in Senegal’s structural transformation process. Overall, our findings suggest that the dynamics of economic complexity index (ECI) has been rather volatile throughout the period. Simulations results suggest that exporting only non-processed agricultural products, even with Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA), is not enough to substantially boost the country structural transformation process.
Photo credit: The Guardian
Understanding how policies affect price transmission and incentives for producers and consumers along the complete value chain is a relevant research question due to the more globalized structure of agricultural value chains. In particular, Nigerian agricultural value chains have been targeted by a number of policy decisions.
This paper explores the spatial heterogeneity in dairy production in the highland production area around the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. We look at how urban proximity – defined as the travel time from the farm to the central market of Addis Ababa – affects the production decisions of Ethiopian dairy farmers. We sampled 870 households from the major rural production zones around Addis Ababa, where villages were stratified according to their distance to Addis Ababa.
The majority of literature on aquaculture in Bangladesh focuses on “microsocioeconomics” and “value chains” (VCs) and tends to have a static perspective. However, this approach is at odds with several important emerging trends (Ali 1997; Ali, Haque, and Belton 2013). First, aquaculture is growing fast in Asia. From 1984 to 2014, Bangladesh’s farmed fish jumped from 124,000 metric tons to 1.96 million metric tons, increasing by 1,580 percent.
The importance of cities is rapidly growing. It is estimated that more than half of the world population was living in cities in 2010; this is up from 30 percent in the 1950s (UN Population Division 2010). Given this rapid urbanization, especially so in developing countries, and the increasing importance of the manufacturing and service sectors in these countries’ economies, more people are making a living outside agriculture. As part of this change, many more people do not grow their own food and rely on market purchases for their food needs.
The purpose of this chapter is to understand the changes that have been happening in the teff value chain in Ethiopia based on carefully fielded primary stacked surveys at different layers in the value chain.1 This chapter uses the same data as in Chapter 11 and takes a dynamic angle on the teff sector, as was presented in Chapter 12. However, the scope of the analysis is much broader than in the previous market-focused chapter.
Policies targeting agricultural value chains impact Tanzanian farmers, so it is important to understand how these policies affect producer incentives and price transmission along the value chain. This research focuses on maize and groundnut value chains, estimating Nominal Rates of Protection (NRPs) along the value chain and analyzing their implications for producers. The results for border NRPs and trade status imply an anti-trade bias in maize; imported maize faces an import tariff, while exported maize often faces taxes.
Value chain development is increasingly perceived as an important approach for agricultural development in developing countries. This paper uses a Rural Investment and Policy Analysis (RIAPA) model for the mainland Tanzania economy to identify the agricultural activities and value-chains whose expansion will be most effective at fostering economic development along four dimensions: generating economic growth in the agricultural-food sector of Tanzania; reducing national and rural poverty; generating employment; and improving nutrition by diversifying diets.
We extend the nominal rate of protection (NRP) methodology to a value chain framework. We develop our methodology for three types of value chains: a new value chain created by policy, a value chain in which a by‐product is created in the processing of a commodity, and a value chain in which processing of a commodity generates new product(s). We consider two cases of value chains: when the commodity is tradable and when it is non‐tradable.
This paper goes beyond the “business” case for agricultural value chain development and presents an economy-wide framework to make the “development” case. We show that there are several key transmission channels that determine the economy-wide impacts of promoting various value chains, including forward and backward economic linkages, price responses, and net employment effects. These impacts all matter for household incomes, poverty, and dietary diversity.
This chapter examines and compares four important but different types of value chains in Ghana: two export crops—cocoa and pineapples, and two import-substitution crops—rice and tomatoes. Apart from cocoa, these crops have under-exploited opportunities, and we examine the opportunities and constraints along their value chains, and the roles that the public sector has or might need to play. This leads to some more general conclusions about the best ways to develop these and related agricultural value chains in Ghana.
This chapter uses a statistical approach to explore African agricultural competitiveness. We illustrate competitiveness through all three means mentioned above: microeconomic drivers, macroeconomic drivers, and impact. We discuss the evolution of Africa’s competitiveness, comparing the competitiveness of Africa’s regional economic communities (RECs) with the world and among each other. We also analyze the competitiveness of value chains by commodity for the commodity value chains that are most significant for Africa’s trade.
Exchange rate policies can have important implications on incentives for export agriculture. However, their effects are often not well understood. We study the issue of foreign exchange controls and pricing in the value chain for Ethiopia’s coffee - its most important export crop. Relying on unique pricing and cost data, we find that coffee exporters are willing to incur losses during exporting by offering high prices for coffee locally in order to access scarce foreign exchange.
Smallholder producers in sub-Saharan Africa are often unable integrate into markets and access high-value opportunities by effectively participating in global chains for high-value fresh produce. Using data from a survey of large avocado farmers in Kenya, this study examines the determinants and impacts of smallholder-producer participation in avocado export markets on labor inputs, farm yields, sales prices, and incomes, using a switching regression framework to control for selection effects.
Purpose
Smallholder value chains are dynamic, changing over time in sudden, unpredictable ways as they adapt to shocks. Understanding these dynamics and adaptation is essential for these chains to remain competitive in turbulent markets. Many guides to value chain development, though they focus welcome attention on snapshots of current structure and performance, pay limited attention to the dynamic forces affecting these chains or to adaptation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
- Presents original empirical research on value chains in sub-Saharan Africa
- Studies a large variety of countries and sectors
- Offers contributions by leading scholars
Development largely depends on how given places participate in global economic processes.
International coffee markets are changing quickly due to market liberalization, increasingly stringent quality and safety standards, and the development of specialty coffee markets. Coffee production takes place primarily in developing countries, and such changes could have significant impacts on smallholder coffee producers. In Africa south of the Sahara, Ethiopia represents the largest coffee market actor, and the country’s coffee sector has seen improved productivity and increased prices in recent years. However, according to a recent study[1] from IFPRI, the Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI), and Bonn University, a wide range of challenges have slowed this transformation for smallholder farmers, who make up 95 percent of coffee producers in the country.
This tool was developed by CIP and partners to stimulate commercial, technological and institutional innovations and generate business opportunities that benefit small-scale farmers. This methodology structures a participatory process that involves different chain actors (public and private), including smallholders and business sector, focus on market demand, guided by facilitators and organized around three phases (diagnosis, analysis of opportunities and development of innovations).
Contract farming involves production by farmers under agreement with buyers for their outputs. This arrangement can help integrate small-scale farmers into modern agricultural value chains, providing them with inputs, technical assistance, and assured markets. Critics contend that contract partners may subject farmers to abuses.
source: https://cipotato.org/es/comunicados-de-prensa/lanzamiento-libro-experiencias-latinoamericanas-aplicacion-enfoque-cadenas-valor-inclusivas/ (written in Spanish)
• The publication collects the perspectives for the application of value chains and their consequences for rural development, as well as the evolution of the articulation of small producers with markets.
This report summarizes the experiences of the consulting firm J.E. Austin Associates in performing value chain analysis and interventions.
- Base project designs on good market analysis and direct them toward market opportunity.
- Conduct direct industry benchmarking to identify, design, and generate stakeholder buy-in.
- Leverage value chain analysis to empower stakeholders to participate in improving their sector competitiveness through sustainable interventions.