Agricultural Commodity Chains Research Articles

Al-ʿUcha

<i>Al-ʿUcha</i>

Sustainable Partnerships in Cassava Production and Industrial Sector: A Heckprobit Analysis of Indonesian Farmers

&lt;p&gt;Partnerships are instruments to overcome the inability of individual smallholders to solve the development problems associated with agricultural sectors and commodity chains. While vigorously advocated, a sustainable partnership is rare in the Indonesian cassava production and industrial sector. Knowledge of partnership from the sector is also limited. This study explores the reasons for previous partnerships in the cassava production and industrial sector discontinued and examine what factors determine farmers' willingness to partake in partnerships. The study administered a systematic random sampling to survey for 140 cassava farmers in Central and East Lampung Districts from November 2018 to April 2019. Farmers were interviewed and given a structural questionnaire. The quantitative data were analyzed by heckprobit regression. The results of the study show that the partnership ends because the two parties do not have the same vision for working together. Various variables (barriers to selling to non-industries, low prices, inaccurate weighing scales, high transaction costs, and discounted prices.) indicate the complexity of farmers' considerations for joining the partnership. This research impliesthat it is difficult to create partnerships in the future if farmers and industry have different visions and priorities.&lt;/p&gt;

Spatialising illicit commodity chains: Comparing coffee and cocaine

Among geographers, recent focus on the illicit and illegal has tended to fall into two camps. Economic geographers focus on regimes of illicitness and corresponding production of specific forms of economic space; political ecologists and land change scholars, on the other hand, scrutinised how illicit commodity flows shape land and resource use, especially in the global South. This paper offers an initial integration of these two relatively separate subfields, specifically in terms of their complementary attention to uneven development. We use the concept of “global commodity chains” to explore the ways in which the regulation of agricultural commodities shapes how they are trafficked and embed in space, with particular attention to sites of international transshipment. When a commodity is illegal, spaces of transit take on significant analytical importance. As a heuristic, we present a comparative mapping of two agricultural commodity chains linking Colombia and the USA: coffee and cocaine. Their comparison highlights how “illicitness” fundamentally transforms cocaine’s spatiality, requiring risk evasion that results in characteristically enlarged transit spaces and huge differentials between producer and consumer price. We show how rents circulate in those transit spaces, socially and ecologically embedding in diffuse, fluid networks with severe consequences for people and environments. We conclude with implications for work on illicit commodities and the collateral social and environmental harms they produce.

On-farm biosecurity in livestock production: farmer behaviour, cultural identities and practices of care.

Definitions of biosecurity typically include generalised statements about how biosecurity risks on farms should be managed and contained. However, in reality, on-farm biosecurity practices are uneven and transfer differently between social groups, geographical scales and agricultural commodity chains. This paper reviews social science studies that examine on-farm biosecurity for animal health. We first review behavioural and psychosocial models of individual farmer behaviour/decisions. Behavioural approaches are prominent in biosecurity policy but have limitations because of a focus on individual farmer behaviour and intentions. We then review geographical and rural sociological work that emphasises social and cultural structures, contexts and norms that guide disease behaviour. Socio-cultural approaches have the capacity to extend the more commonly applied behavioural approaches and contribute to the better formulation of biosecurity policy and on-farm practice. This includes strengthening our understanding of 'good farming' identity, tacit knowledge, farmer influence networks, and reformulating biosecurity as localised practices of care. Recognising on-farm biosecurity as practices of biosecure farming care offers a new way of engaging, motivating and encouraging farmers to manage and contain diseases on farm. This is critical given government intentions to devolve biosecurity governance to the farming industry.

How intermediaries' power affects contract farming decisions: evidence from the medicinal and aromatic plant sector in Albania

PurposeIn the debate on rural development, contract farming (CF) is pointed out as a mechanism that reduces constraints on farmers' access to resources and improves farmers' welfare. However, the role of intermediaries' power in farmers' contracting decisions has not been investigated thoroughly. Considering that intermediaries' power affects farmers' businesses, livelihoods, risk and profit sharing, it becomes imperative to understand its effects on contracting decisions. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the dimensions over which intermediaries exercise the power they hold over farmers and how these power dimensions influence farmers' participation in CF.Design/methodology/approachA survey was conducted in the leading Albanian MAP production region, Malësi e Madhe, with 168 sage producers interviewed using a structured questionnaire. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is employed to develop measures for the latent variables of the study (e.g. intermediaries' power), and a logit regression is used to assess CF determinants.FindingsThe study finds that intermediaries exercise their power over different dimensions of farmers' activities, namely profit margin and activities related to product quality. The results point out that intermediaries' exercised power over farmers' margins and product quality-related activities decreased farmers' likelihood to engage in CF. On the other hand, a farmer's commitment to the intermediary and investment in specific assets increased the likelihood of participation. Furthermore, the analysis shows that CF does not leave small farmers out of high-value agricultural commodity chains (HVAC) for highly labour-intensive crops.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis focuses only on one sector with export orientation. Generalisation to other sectors is limited due to the specific features of the MAPs value chain.Originality/valueThe paper expands the debate on CF by adding the concept of intermediaries' power and its different dimensions of influence on farmers' participation in CF.

Understanding the Stickiness of Commodity Supply Chains Is Key to Improving Their Sustainability

Summary Commodity trade is central to the global economy but is also associated with socio-environmental impacts, for example, deforestation, especially in producer countries. It is crucial to understand how geographic sourcing patterns of commodities and commercial relationships between places and actors influence land-use dynamics, socio-economic development, and environmental degradation. Here, we propose a concept and methodological approach to analyze the geographic stickiness of commodity supply chains, which is the maintenance of supply network configurations over time and across perturbations. We showcase policy-relevant metrics for all Brazilian soy exports between 2003 and 2017, using high-resolution supply chain data from www.trase.earth . We find that the Brazilian soy traders with the largest market share exhibit stickier geographic sourcing patterns, and that the supply network configurations between production places and traders become increasingly sticky in subsequent years. Understanding trade stickiness is crucial for supply chain accountability, because it directly affects the effectiveness of zero-deforestation commitments.

Commodity-Centric Landscape Governance as a Double-Edged Sword: The Case of Soy and the Cerrado Working Group in Brazil

Persistent ecological and socio-economic impacts from the expansion of industrial monocultures in the tropics have raised land use sustainability to the top of the environmental policy agenda. As major crops such as soy continue to experience growing market demand and threaten both natural ecosystems and traditional populations, a number of multi-stakeholder governance initiatives have been established around agricultural commodity chains or key landscapes. Effectiveness in curbing unsustainable land use, however, remains limited. In this context, innovative initiatives have blurred the lines to combine both supply chain and landscape governance. We analyze such arrangements-here conceptualized as commodity-centric landscape governance (CCLG)-with an in-depth case study of the Cerrado Working Group, a multi-stakeholder initiative led by civil society and the soy agribusiness to address land use change in that savanna landscape in Brazil. The paper examines how that initiative has come about, its agenda, as well as usually underexposed political dimensions using agenda-setting theory. The research is based on extensive fieldwork in Brazil, with data collected through document analysis and 56 key-informant interviews. The findings suggest that a sustainable development agenda for the Cerrado has been substantially narrowed to become mostly one of conversion-free soy supply, serving more the interests of that agroindustry and its consumers than those of the landscape's most vulnerable stakeholders, such as local communities. While the Cerrado Working Group has importantly broadened the policy scope beyond commodity certification, its limited inclusiveness and a skewed agenda have led to instruments that target only soy farmers as beneficiaries. We conclude that, although effective for targeting conversion drivers, CCLG can crystallize and reinforce existing land use patterns by granting disproportionate power to dominant stakeholders, thus limiting the agenda to incremental changes. As a consequence, distant demand-side actors may exert greater governance authority than the landscape's own population. If embodying norms of inclusiveness and equitable participation, CCLG may serve as an entry point, but it does not per se replace inclusive land-use planning and integrated landscape governance.

Hybrid governance in agricultural commodity chains: Insights from implementation of ‘No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation’ (NDPE) policies in the oil palm industry

Abstract In agricultural commodity chains, companies with sizeable market shares are stepping up sustainability commitments through so-called ‘No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation’ (NDPE) policies – yet the delivery is fraught with difficulties. Drawing on theories of hybrid public-private governance this paper explores how commodity chain actors themselves view the limitations of private regulation and the prospects for more effective supply-chain governance. As a case study, we present interview data from the palm oil commodity chains linking growers in Riau Province, Sumatra, Indonesia, with retailers in Europe. The findings demonstrate awareness of shortcomings in existing arrangements and the need for a stronger presence of both the Indonesian state and European governments. We discuss potential hybrid governance measures, highlighting the need for a pluralistic strategy that mobilizes the combined positive forces of civil society, business and government(s). We argue that, to advance such an agenda, hybrid governance must be conceptualized not simply as a matter of blending (and hence reifying) pre-existing and often highly problematic private and public institutions but as a question of how all such institutions may themselves be more thoroughly democratized in the process.

Women's participation in high value agricultural commodity chains in Kenya: Strategies for closing the gender gap

In developing economies, well-functioning markets are known to provide the poor with avenues for wealth creation. Using a value chain approach, this paper aims at examining bottlenecks to and opportunities for different categories of women to participate in markets for high value agricultural commodities, with a view to identifying feasible upgrading strategies for the different categories. The findings are based on a case study of Kenya's avocado value chain, which depicts export and domestic market orientation. The data were collected through focus group discussions, key informant interviews, in-depth interviews and household surveys. The results suggest that in the more commercialized and well developed chains like that of export, upgrading strategies vary for the different typologies of women. While women in female headed households may require limited efforts such as tailoring financial products to their needs or providing interlinked services coupled with prompt payment for their produce to allow them to produce quality fruits and access lucrative markets, women in male headed households need institutionalization of gender-sensitive policies in the governance of producer groups to enable them to upgrade as chain integrators and chain owners. In the less commercialized domestic chain, limited efforts may be required to upgrade women along the chain, but the need to change from the less marketable local variety to exotic variety is likely to alter women's position, thereby calling for the need to institutionalize gender-sensitive policies in the governance of existing organized groups and use the groups as a platform to introduce the new variety.

Trends in Hybrid Tomato Seed Production under Contract Farming in Northeast Thailand

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)IntroductionThe development of hybrid tomato seed production among small farmers in Northeast Thailand illustrates a key aspect of the agrarian transformation of the region in the form of increasing intensification and specialization. Over the last 30 years, Northeast Thailand has emerged as one of the most important locations in the world for hybrid tomato seed production under contracts between individual farmers and local or transnational seed companies. In 1995 US-based Asgrow, the world's largest seed company, obtained 90% of its hybrid tomato seed for global sales from Thailand. The majority of this was produced in Northeast Thailand, mostly by small farmers (Rosset et al. 1999).Veerapong Saenjan (1998) reported that hybrid tomato seed production in Northeast Thailand showed signs of instability due to the uncontrollable cost of production and increasing labor costs. However, despite having some cost control problems, seed companies continued to produce newer and more popular varieties of hybrid tomato seed in the Northeast while shifting production of old varieties and easier-to-produce seeds, such as melons and other cucurbits, to China and Vietnam, where the cost of production was lower than in Northeast Thailand (Rosset et al. 1999).Previous research on hybrid tomato seed production in Northeast Thailand focused on financial analysis, the socioeconomic implications, and environmental impacts but paid little attention to inter- as well as intra-village variations in sustainability of production. The present study focuses on this aspect of hybrid tomato seed production under contract farming in Northeast Thailand.This study was undertaken with the following objectives: (1) to understand the historical background of hybrid tomato seed production under contract farming at various sites in Northeast Thailand; (2) to identify sites where the numbers of growers are increasing and decreasing, and where seed production has totally disappeared; and (3) to identify the factors influencing the dynamic of hybrid tomato seed production.BackgroundContract Farming as a Mode of Agricultural ProductionContract farming is "a contractual arrangement for a fixed term between a farmer and a firm, agreed verbally or in writing before production begins, which provides resources to the farmer and/or specifies one or more conditions of production, in addition to one or more marketing conditions, for agricultural production on land owned or controlled by the farmer, which is non-transferable and gives the firm, not the farmer, exclusive rights and legal title to the crop" (Prowse 2012). It is a form of vertical integration within agricultural commodity chains that gives the agribusiness firm great control over the production process and final product. Therefore, contract farming is a system or a mode of production that has considerable potential for governing the linkage between farmers and agribusiness firms, as a supply chain management strategy (Kirsten and Sartorius 2002; Da Silva 2005; Prowse 2012).Contracts between firms and farmers were first recorded as an innovation more than 100 years ago (Prowse 2012). Nowadays, it has expanded and became a mode of produc- tion that allows small-scale farmers to be integrated into the global agro-food system (Eaton and Shepherd 2001; Kirsten and Sartorius 2002; Prowse 2012). It offers an important way for smaller producers to farm in a commercial manner and also provides agribusiness firms with the opportunity to guarantee a reliable source of supply, in terms of both quantity and quality (Delforge 2007). In addition, small-scale farmers can also overcome capital constraints, lack of capacity to adopt technological innovations, and lack of ability to meet the required standards from agribusiness firms further down the value chain (Prowse 2012).Contract Farming in ThailandCompared to other Asian countries, by the early 1990s Thailand probably had the most extensive experience with contract farming for the widest range of crops (Glover and Lim 1992). …

Environmental Impacts of Palm Oil Products: What can we learn from LCA?

Quantifying the environmental impact of production systems has become a milestone for agricultural commodity chains. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a unique ISO standardized methodology for estimating the environmental impact of human activities along a commodity chain. In the last decade, LCA has become the worldwide standard for environmental product declarations and the baseline model behind various GHG calculators and certifications (e.g. European Directive 2009; RSPO PalmGHG 2012). Various LCA on palm oil products have shown that the agricultural stage is a major contributor to most of the potential environmental impacts, including global warming, eutrophication and acidification for instance. This large contribution is due to combined important nitrogen (N) input levels in the field and low input levels at the mill and refinery stages. The agricultural stage remains a critical contributor even when the system boundary is extended to palm-based biofuel production. Focusing on global warming impact, main contributors are N-related GHG emissions in the plantation and methane emissions from palm oil mill effluent treatment. The impact from the plantation becomes overwhelming when forests or peatland areas are converted to palm plantations. Meanwhile, impact from palm oil mill effluent can be drastically reduced if the biogas is captured with electricity recovery. While nitrogen inputs are critical, LCA models still mostly rely on global emission factor. A better modeling of the nitrogen balance including a better accounting for soil processes would allow for a more accurate diagnosis of environmental impacts and control levers in plantation management.

Alternatives to land grabbing: exploring conditions for smallholder inclusion in agricultural commodity chains in Southeast Asia

Smallholder engagement with export commodities in Southeast Asia potentially offers a more inclusive development pathway than large-scale plantation production, which has been associated with the phenomenon of land grabs. This raises three questions which we explore in this paper: What are the agro-economic factors favouring or obstructing smallholders relative to plantations? What are the incentives for agribusiness firms to contribute to smallholder production other than by direct control of land? Can smallholder production be broadly inclusive in the face of internal differentiation and encroachment by external investors? We compare smallholder involvement with four cash crops which have experienced strong market demand – rubber, oil palm, cassava and teak – based on fieldwork in six Southeast Asian countries. We conclude that smallholder production can be a viable and inclusive strategy, contingent on the case-by-case confluence of a number of key factors which we enumerate.

Identification and Elimination of Gaps for Inclusion of Smallholders in Horticulture Value Chain

The agriculture environment is changing in terms of trade practices, business opportunities and availability of technology. There is also pressure on the farmers to generate more income from reduced landholdings. Alternately, there are opportunities offered through emergence of new integrated high value agricultural commodity chains. Diversification towards higher value crops like fruits and vegetables and rising prices has emerged as dominant sources of growth in agriculture during 1990 (1). However, the participation of farmers is observed to be restricted by limitations likeaccess to market, access to training, poor vertical and horizontal linkages and access to finance (2). Poor information flow along the chain, have also been identified as a vital constraint (5). It is thus important to understand the constraints and find out their probable remedies. The value chain approach generating insight into the limitations and opportunities of the chain (1), may help in suggesting solutions to the constraints limiting farmers ’access to markets and help them integrate with high value chains. With this background, the paper attempts to identify the various components to be covered under the value chain approach for horticultural crops and to identify the constraints faced by formers in integrating with the higher value horticulture value chains and realize better income from same level of land resource. The paper also attempts to provide suitable suggestions to eliminate the gaps identified for enhancing the participation of farmers in the high value chain.

The Coupling of South American Soybean and Cattle Production Frontiers: New Challenges for Conservation Policy and Land Change Science

Different drivers and places of land use change in South America have often been studied in isolation. Evidence suggests, however, that in many instances, both places and drivers are becoming increasingly interconnected. The growing diversification and internationalization of agricultural commodity chains is creating new linkages across production frontiers and sectors that have important implications for conservation. In this article, we explore the implications of the sectoral and geographical coupling of soybean and cattle production frontiers for forest conservation in South America, with particular attention to the potential for policy-induced deforestation leakage. We conclude that the existence of coupled frontiers creates a need for more actor-centered approaches to conservation policy and research.

Food Provisioning and Wholesale Agricultural Commodity Chains in Northern Vietnam

Recent research examining the functioning of agricultural wholesale markets in the Global South tends to aim at understanding how these connect commodity chains between Global South suppliers and Global North consumers (often via large chain supermarkets), identifying groups of winners and losers en route. Often, the everyday lived experiences of individual actors along these chains, and how they maintain a livelihood within these vast networks, is omitted in favor of macro-level interpretations. Focusing on agricultural food provisioning in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital city, we analyze the complex negotiations among numerous actors operating both local commodity chains as well as regional South-South networks through the city's Cho Long Biěn wholesale market. These negotiations and trade relations rely on intricate networks, ties, and social capital. In present day socialist Vietnam, long-standing agricultural commodity chain actors are not necessarily losing out to new players such as supermarkets as one mi...

Specialization on a global scale and agrifood vulnerability: 30 years of export agriculture in Mexico

Large-scale specialization in monoculture production for export markets infringes upon the agricultural and food systems and security of the populations of exporting countries that adopt export-oriented policies because it: (a) entails adopting production patterns that over-exploit and deteriorate the natural and human resources of agricultural regions; (b) subordinates producers and consumers in agroexporting countries to the interests of transnational intermediary companies and the regulations of foreign government agencies that prioritize the interests of their own citizens; and (c) restricts the right of domestic consumers to access a nourishment that is sufficient, healthy and culturally acceptable. The study of this Mexican case allows us to better understand the agricultural and food situation that is currently emerging in developing countries that choose to broadly apply neoliberal policies. Mexico has one of the most open agricultural sectors and is a leading international exporter of several fruits and vegetables; but at the same time it is a net importer of basic foods for its domestic population. This case study is analyzed from the perspectives of plantation-oriented agricultural practices and global commodity chains; however, neither of these perspectives considers the problems of environmental degradation and food security, both of which are studied in this work.

Exploring the potential of intersectoral partnerships to improve the position of farmers in global agrifood chains: findings from the coffee sector in Peru

Despite their recent proliferation in global agricultural commodity chains, little is known about the potential of intersectoral partnerships to improve the position of smallholder farmers and their organizations. This article explores the potential of partnerships by developing a conceptual approach based on the sustainable livelihoods and linking farmers to market perspectives, which is applied in an exploratory study to six partnerships in the coffee sector in Peru. It is concluded that partnerships stimulate the application of standards to receive market access and therefore emphasize human capital development of farmers to facilitate certification. By transferring knowledge to farmers, partnerships present a new source of technological change, which, in combination with certification, holds potential for improved environmental management and price premiums for producers. However, the emphasis on certification results in a comparatively narrow target group of farmers and is associated with high financial burdens for producer organizations. At the same time, other assets of producer organizations are often not strengthened sufficiently for them to operate successfully without further external support. This suggests that preparing producers for certification is prioritized over empowering organizations toward self-dependence.

Botswana’s beef global commodity chain: Explaining the resistance to change

In an era of increasing global agricultural trade, many firms and farms seek to upgrade their agricultural commodity chains to become better integrated into global markets. Utilizing a global commodity chain (GCC) approach, this analysis unravels the challenges to and the potential consequences of upgrading Botswana’s beef commodity chain. Specifically, the argument is made that political, economic, and cultural influences in the GCC contribute to distinctive driving factors that have prevented upgrading or niche marketing of Botswana’s beef. In comparison to two other countries in the region (South Africa and Namibia) that have upgraded their beef GCCs, Botswana’s producer driven GCC has not upgraded due in large part to the existence of three disparate producer groups: commercial feedlot, commercial extensive grazing, and communal producers. The diverse expectations, norms, daily practices and identities of the various actors in Botswana’s beef GCC contribute to contradictory policies and practices. This study reveals that cultural differences in a GCC can affect the capacity of the actors to upgrade the chain. Although culture does not drive or determine the action of actors in a commodity chain, it does shape the meanings associated with particular commodities and influences the ways in which actors think and behave. Moreover, if upgrading strategies are culturally alien or alienating to a significant segment of actors within the chain, upgrading efforts will be resisted by those alienated actors.

Developing capacity for agricultural market chain innovation: Experience with the ‘PMCA’ in Uganda

AbstractThe Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA) was developed originally to foster pro‐poor innovation in potato market chains in the Andean highlands of South America. After promising results in Peru and Bolivia, two questions emerged: (1) Could the PMCA be successfully used to stimulate innovation outside the Andes and in other commodity chains? (2) What would it take to successfully introduce and apply the PMCA in a new setting? The first test application of the approach outside of the Andes was in Uganda. This paper outlines how the PMCA was developed in the Andes and its main features. It then describes the strategies used to introduce the PMCA to Uganda and some of the results to date. The Ugandan experience indicates that the PMCA can, in fact, stimulate technological and institutional innovation in locally relevant agricultural commodity chains in Africa. Since the PMCA requires researchers and development professionals to work in new ways with diverse stakeholders, including not only small farmers but also market agents and policy makers, its successful introduction requires an intensive capacity‐development process that fosters the development of social networks, changes in attitudes, and the acquisition of social as well as technical knowledge and skills. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley &amp; Sons, Ltd.

Reforming Land Rights: The World Bank and the Globalization of Agriculture

Since independence, landholdings in Southern Africa have remained highly skewed between the rich and poor, reflecting the land and agricultural policies adopted in colonial times and after independence. More recently, agricultural policies have been prescribed by the World Bank as conditionalities of multilateral loans which have both facilitated and also driven the growing integration of such countries in the world economy. This article argues that such integration is being played out on an increasingly unequal global playing field, structured by global agricultural commodity chains and international trade, and strengthened by those very policy prescriptions of the World Bank. Instead of overcoming the dual economies and regulatory systems created in colonial times, people living in the region have only seen growing poverty and deepening inequality. This provides the context necessary for analysing the World Bank’s recently published policy position on land reform. It argues that the approach taken by the Bank does not address the structural reasons for the distortions of land-holdings in the region, and moreover that such inequality is likely to be reaffirmed and reproduced by the Bank’s proposals. It further argues that the model of market-based land redistribution favoured by the Bank will be insufficient to dissipate the pressures of this ever-growing inequality. With considerations of ‘efficiency’ given prominence over other concerns, it concludes that the Bank’s policies are unlikely to meet both of its overarching goals of poverty reduction and growth.