Building a life as a beneficiary of philanthrocapitalism

Future and recent developments in the retail vegetable category – a value chain and food systems approach

Value chain interventions are increasingly used by international organizations and national donor agencies in the context of their private sector development strategies. This paper argues that an understanding of Global Value Chains (GVCs), their drivers, and their governance structures is necessary for effective interventions to further enterprise development. The focus of value chain interventions is to improve market access conditions, upgrade opportunities, and change the distribution of risks and benefits in GVCs in favor of developing country firms and producers. The paper offers an overview of relevant interventions by international organizations and donors, and analyzes a sample of IDB value chain projects to develop broad conclusions regarding its value chain approach and logic. However, so far there appears to be limited overview and coordination of and no common understanding or framework for value chain interventions. The paper concludes arguing that a deep and common understanding of core value chain concepts and approaches is needed, and that tailor-made, context-specific upgrading strategies need to be developed and supported. It proposes to consider the potential role of the involvement of lead firms and first-tier suppliers/ intermediaries, and the importance of innovation systems and local learning efforts to enable upgrading processes within GVCs.

This chapter reviews the growing body of work on reducing gender-based barriers to value chain development. It highlights key questions that are emerging within the gender and value chain community related to methodologies for promoting both greater gender equity and efficiency. The authors lay out the rationale and evidence for promoting gender equitable value chains focusing on business, social justice, and development goals. The chapter then reviews the terms and assumptions used in value chain approaches and provides evidence and examples of different gender and value chain approaches. The authors also look at gender issues in value chain performance and gender issues benefitting from value chain production, including employment and income and social capital and networking. This is followed by a review of current debates in the field of gender and value chain studies. The concluding section identifies new questions and challenges facing researchers and practitioners, for example, on chain selection, targeting of women, and achieving food security and improved nutrition in value chain development.

A value chain approach is the most viable and pragmatic strategy to develop an effective, inclusive, competitive and sustainable seed system for many crops globally. This study was conducted in the Kailali, Dang and Siraha districts of the Terai and Inner Terai regions of Nepal to map and thoroughly analyze the value chain of the lentil seed system. Primary data were collected through a household survey, key stakeholder interviews and focus group discussions. Altogether, 300 lentil grain-producing and 100 seed-producing farmers were selected for the study. Descriptive statistics, value chain mapping, stakeholder price spread calculation and return on investment were the major tools for the study. Conventional cultivation practices along with incidence of biotic and abiotic stresses ensured non-significant differences in yield, income and benefit-cost ratio (B:C) between local seed users and improved seed users, resulting in a distorted demand pull chain and eventually leading to the lamentable lentil seed system. Total value addition from farm gate to end user was 63.84% of the total retail price. Seed conditioners and processors contributed 28.38% of total value addition. Return on Investment (ROI) per total cost was higher for seed-producing farmers (59.3%). However, ROI per added cost was higher (214.8%) for retailers followed by seed conditioners and processors (96.37%). The total price spread along the chain was 45.21% of the total consumer price, revealing the inefficient marketing system. Scaling up the major factors behind improved seed adoption, like package of practices, use of a specialized production area, the development of stress resilient varieties, technical assistance, training, and subsidy schemes based on production and efficient market system development, can economically benefit lentil-producing farmers, thereby reinforcing the major pulling force of the lentil seed value chain. Appropriate infrastructure, government prioritization, a coordinated policy environment and innovative public-private partnership models across the seed value chain are necessary for overall sectoral growth.

Nowadays the Romanian garment enterprises struggle to compete in the global marketplace. As a leading exporting sector, the Romanian garment industry could lead the successful integration of the country in the global economy. This requires maximizing competitiveness and national value addition and retention in the industry. The goal of this paper was to show how the value chain approaches, focused on the dynamics of inter-linkages within the productive sector, can be used as managerial tools meant to outline the strategic choices of Romanian garment companies for the purpose of attaining a significant increase in the competitiveness of the products and a consolidation of the place of this industry on the traditional markets and the acces to new markets.

<div> <p><span>The weather information value chain provides a framework for characterising the production, communication, and use of information by all stakeholders in an end-to-end warning system covering weather and hazard monitoring, modelling and forecasting, risk assessment, communication and preparedness activities. Warning services are typically developed and provided through a multitude of complex and malleable value chains (networks), often established through co-design, co-creation and co-provision.  </span><span> </span></p> </div><div> <p><span>A 4-year international project under the WMO World Weather Research Programme is using value chain approaches to describe and evaluate warning systems for high impact weather by integrating physical and social science. It aims to create a framework with guidance and tools for using value chain approaches, and to develop a database of high impact weather warning case studies for scientists and practitioners to review, analyse and learn from previous experience using value chain approaches.</span><span> </span></p> </div><div> <p><span>Since its start in November 2020, the project has made significant progress to achieve its aims through contributions from a continuously growing, interdisciplinary project team. It has developed an interim database template for high-impact weather event case study collection and analysis and used it to describe and learn from several high impact weather events that happened in 2021. It has also created a glossary for a common terminology between social and physical scientists and outlined a conceptual high-level value chain framework.</span><span> </span></p> </div><div> <p><span>Here we focus on the interim database template that provides a tool for scientists and practitioners involved in researching, designing and evaluating weather-related warning systems to review previous experience of high impact weather events and assess their efficacy. The interim database leverages and extends existing databases, such as EM-DAT, ECMWF Severe Event Catalogue, SHELDUS, DesInventar, etc., collecting rich information on </span><span>the many components of the warning value chain. It will enable in-depth case studies and cross-cutting analysis of end-to-end warning value chains, from simple to complex, to understand effective practices, and support the value cycle of review and learning from past events to identify improvements that would enhance future warnings.</span><span> </span></p> </div><div> <p><span>We encourage the research and operational community to participate in this project by contributing case studies of high impact events and collaborating in their analysis. </span><span> </span></p> </div><div> <p><span> </span></p> </div><div> <p><span>Corresponding/presenting author: David Hoffmann, Bureau of Meteorology, Melbourne, Australia; </span><span>david.hoffmann@bom.gov.au</span><span> </span><span> </span></p> </div>

Many of us dream of a world free of poverty, but how can this be realistically achieved, especially for farmers who make up the majority of the world’s poor?1 Traditional aid redistributes resources to many who are in need, but too often falls short of allowing poor producers to increase their productivity and reduce income poverty in a self-reliant and sustainable way.2 CARE has pursued a route different from traditional aid approaches. Simultaneously working with smallholder farmers—mostly women—to improve their productivity and working with others within the entire market system to ensure that incomes are distributed as fairly as possible, CARE has put farmers, markets, and incentives at the center of its work. CARE has taken a value chain approach—one that focuses on working with farmers, companies, traders, and entrepreneurs end to end along a commodity’s chain—to remove obstacles and to improve the creation and distribution of value. A value chain approach (also known as value chain facilitation, inclusive market development, or pro-poor value chain development) works with market forces and commercial value chain actors to grow the economic pie and ensure that all parties, especially the most vulnerable, have as much information and market power as possible.

This paper analyzes the value chain approach in the red biotechnology sector from a bibliometric perspective, using Scopus and Web of Science databases from 2011 to 2021. As a result, 82 documents that cover this topic are analyzed with VOSviewer and R studio. The main findings show that scientific interest increases with a positive publication trend during the considered time period. However, there are no authorship networks in both database. Furthermore, the main reason to use the value chain approach in the red biotech sector is that it highlights the government’s implication on the industry, given its social impact. As a research gap, we recommend to study the effects of Industry 4.0 on the red biotech value chain approach.

Cybersecurity has become a top priority for policymakers these days, but as the engineering saying goes: if you don’t know what you want, it’s hard to do it This paper finds considerable shortcomings in current conceptual and legal frameworks for communications security policymaking. The misleading concept of cybersecurity incorporates a wide range of social issues under its umbrella, such as child protection, foreign policy and intellectual property protection. Cybersecurity distracts communications security conceptualizations and policies from the technical conception that should be at their core, i.e. ensuring confidentiality, integrity and availability of communications to authorized entities. The paper develops a value chain approach for the conceptualization and legal governance of communications security. This value chain approach is informed by an empirical case study into HTTPS governance and multilateral security engineering methods SQUARE and MSRA. It offers a 9-step framework for granular, functional communications security conceptualizations, tailored to specific communications settings. The framework enables policymakers to devise technical security goals, apprise constitutional values, confront stakeholder interests and balance associated public and private interests. The value chain approach should assist policymakers in deciding what they want, and to know whether they are the appropriate actor to get it right.

Late Lawson-Lartego, director of the economic development unit at CARE USA, who was responsible for developing the initial proposal to work in the dairy sector in Bangladesh, offers a view of CARE’s approach: “A value chain approach is really an exercise in seeing the entire economic and social market system. As we see it, developing, strengthening, or upgrading a value chain is the process of increasing the value that is created and ensuring that value is distributed as equitably as possible, with emphasis on benefits for participants that are the least well-off, and especially women.”1 For CARE, the value chain approach takes a systems perspective and is holistic; quite simply, CARE sees a chain in which each link is as important as any other and, therefore, one must identify the weakest links and their obstacles or constraints and devise strategies to strengthen them in partnership with other value chain actors. It looks holistically at various pieces—the adoption of updated agricultural methods, gender, access to services and inputs, and relationships between other value chain actors—and looks for leverage points that can be addressed to improve the functioning and competitiveness of the entire chain.

Measuring the degree of novelty of innovation based on Porter's value chain approach

<p>The  weather information value chain provides a framework for characterising the production, communication, and use of information by all stakeholders in an end-to-end warning system. Since the generation of weather warning and climate services has become more complex, both technically and organizationally, the  value chain concept has become a popular tool for describing and assessing the production, use and  benefits of such services.</p><p>The end-to-end warning system for high impact weather brings together hazard monitoring, modelling and forecasting, risk assessment, communication and preparedness activities and systems and processes which enable timely action to reduce risks. Weather and associated warning services are typically developed and provided through a multitude of complex and malleable value chains (networks), often established through co-design, co-creation and co-provision.  </p><p>A new international project under the WMO World Weather Research Programme is using value chain approaches to describe and evaluate the end-to-end warning system for high impact weather. Its aims are</p><p>(1) To review value chain approaches used to describe weather, warning and climate services to assess and provide guidance on how they can be best applied in a high impact weather warning context that involves multiple users and partnerships;</p><p>(2) To generate an easily accessible means (an End-to-End Warning Chain Database) for scientists and practitioners involved in researching, designing and evaluating weather-related warning systems to review previous experience of high impact weather events and assess their efficacy using value chain approaches.</p><p>We encourage the research and operational community to participate in this project by contributing case studies of high impact events and collaborating in their analysis. Integration of the physical and social sciences in this project will lead to new insights that we hope will ultimately improve the effectiveness of warnings for high impact weather.</p>

Late Lawson-Lartego, director of the economic development unit at CARE USA, who was responsible for developing the initial proposal to work in the dairy sector in Bangladesh, offers a view of CARE’s approach: “A value chain approach is really an exercise in seeing the entire economic and social market system. As we see it, developing, strengthening, or upgrading a value chain is the process of increasing the value that is created and ensuring that value is distributed as equitably as possible, with emphasis on benefits for participants that are the least well-off, and especially women.”1 For CARE, the value chain approach takes a systems perspective and is holistic; quite simply, CARE sees a chain in which each link is as important as any other and, therefore, one must identify the weakest links and their obstacles or constraints and devise strategies to strengthen them in partnership with other value chain actors. It looks holistically at various pieces—the adoption of updated agricultural methods, gender, access to services and inputs, and relationships between other value chain actors—and looks for leverage points that can be addressed to improve the functioning and competitiveness of the entire chain.

<p>The weather information value chain provides a framework for characterising the production, communication, and use of information by all stakeholders in an end-to-end warning system. Since the generation of weather warning and climate services has become more complex, both technically and organizationally, the value chain concept has become a popular tool for describing and assessing the production, use and benefits of such services.</p><p>The end-to-end warning system for high impact weather brings together hazard monitoring, modelling and forecasting, risk assessment, communication and preparedness activities and systems and processes which support people to take timely action to reduce risks. Weather and associated warning services are typically developed and provided through a multitude of complex and malleable value chains (networks), often established through co-design, co-creation and co-provision.  </p><p>A 4-year international project under the WMO World Weather Research Programme that started in November 2020 is using value chain approaches to describe and evaluate the end-to-end warning system for high impact weather. Its aims are</p><ul><li>To review value chain approaches used to describe weather, warning and climate services to assess and provide guidance on how they can be best applied in a high impact weather warning context that involves multiple users and partnerships;</li> <li>To generate an easily accessible means (an End-to-End Warning Chain Database) for scientists and practitioners involved in researching, designing and evaluating weather-related warning systems to review previous experience of high impact weather events and assess their efficacy using value chain approaches.</li> </ul><p>We encourage the research and operational community to participate in this project by contributing case studies of high impact events and collaborating in their analysis. Integration of the physical and social sciences in this project will lead to new insights that we hope will ultimately improve the effectiveness of warnings for high impact weather.</p>

In this paper, we analysed how the adoption level of food safety practices varies with milk procurement system in the informal milk processing sector and also developed a composite food safety index (FSI) deliberating the interplay of factors and actors. Primary data were collected from value chain actors, viz ., small and micro dairy processing units (main actors), milk supplier, i.e. , dairy farmer and milk vendors (upstream actors) and traders (downstream actors) in Karnal district of Haryana state of India. FSI of two identified milk procurement systems, viz. , (i) own collection centres, and (ii) private vendors were compared. Processing units with own collection centres in production catchments have been able to establish better linkages with dairy upstream actors and resulted in better overall FSI (0.66) than those processing units procuring milk from private vendors (with FSI as 0.51). Further, the profitability of the processing unit is positively associated with the FSI, as consumers are willing to pay higher prices for safe milk. There was a need to design efficient milk procurement systems; design and development of efficient milk transport systems and processing technology along with training in post-milking handling for small vendors and processors for better food safety compliance in the milk value chain of the informal sector.