Last updated on October 24, 2021
For the past year, Jeff Bloem, Sunghun Lim, and I have been hard at work on a chapter for the forthcoming volume 6 of the Elsevier-North Holland Handbook of Agricultural Economics on agricultural value chains in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We finally managed to finish writing a draft of it, and so I thought of posting it here. I apologize in advance for any oversight on our part. Given the comprehensive nature of those chapters, and given our blind spots, and given that this is not the pre-print version and that it will be going out to reviewers for comments, we welcome any and all comments if you have them.
Here is the abstract:
We present an overview of the literature on agri-food value chains in low- and middle-income countries. Starting from farmers’ decision of whether to move away from subsistence agriculture to participate in agri-food value chains, we study the process whereby agricultural commodities make their way from the farm-gate to the final consumer, documenting the procurement relationships that arise and the organization of markets at every step of the way. In each step, we take stock of the empirical evidence, critically assess the research so far, and offer a number of directions for future research. We further discuss the challenges and opportunities for global agri-food value chains.
Writing one of these chapters is a lot of work, especially right on the heels of writing a book. Given that, I expect I will be going back to writing plain-old articles for the foreseeable future.