IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/agspub/v8y2019i1-2p30-63.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Global Value Chains and Agribusiness in Africa: Upgrading or Capturing Smallholder Production?

Author

Listed:
  • Kojo S. Amanor

Abstract

This article critically examines the concept of agrarian value chains in Africa, exploring the extent to which they reflect the expansion of agribusiness and its influence on agriculture. It traces the rise of agribusiness in the United States as a system based on extracting value through control over input marketing, processing and retailing in the post-war period. It examines the close relationship between US imperialism and the expansion of agribusiness and the facilitation of agribusiness interests by the rise of neoliberalism and the opening of global markets. Against the backdrop of monopolies, mergers and takeovers, it questions the extent to which conceptions of upgrading through smallholder integration into agribusiness chains accurately reflects the fortunes of smallholder farmers. It argues that far from constituting a dynamic system of entrepreneurship that facilitates acquisition of new skills by farmers, upgrading of production, and higher incomes, agribusiness constitutes a system of value capture in which transnational corporations extend their control over production and marketing through takeovers and contractual arrangements that control farmers’ production. This is largely absent from value chain frameworks, since they focus on the transformations of commodities rather than the existing relations of production, make assumptions about the relationship between upgrading and integration into global markets, and assume that failures to upgrade result from the peculiarities of national and regional settings rather than agribusiness practice. Three case studies are presented focusing on monopolies within the seed breeding, cocoa and pineapple and their impact on smallholders and national patterns of accumulation.

Suggested Citation

  • Kojo S. Amanor, 2019. "Global Value Chains and Agribusiness in Africa: Upgrading or Capturing Smallholder Production?," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 8(1-2), pages 30-63, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:agspub:v:8:y:2019:i:1-2:p:30-63
    DOI: 10.1177/2277976019838144
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2277976019838144
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2277976019838144?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philip Golub, 2013. "From the New International Economic Order to the G20: how the ‘global South’ is restructuring world capitalism from within," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(6), pages 1000-1015.
    2. Unknown, 2005. "Forward," 2005 Conference: Slovenia in the EU - Challenges for Agriculture, Food Science and Rural Affairs, November 10-11, 2005, Moravske Toplice, Slovenia 183804, Slovenian Association of Agricultural Economists (DAES).
    3. Jones, Geoffrey, 2002. "Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199249992.
    4. Bruce W. Marion & Donghwan Kim, 1991. "Concentration change in selected food manufacturing industries: The influence of mergers vs. internal growth," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 7(5), pages 415-431.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Pilar Lopez-Llompart & G. Mathias Kondolf, 2016. "Encroachments in floodways of the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 81(1), pages 513-542, March.
    2. Cheng, Jianquan & Bertolini, Luca, 2013. "Measuring urban job accessibility with distance decay, competition and diversity," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 100-109.
    3. M. De Donno & M. Pratelli, 2006. "A theory of stochastic integration for bond markets," Papers math/0602532, arXiv.org.
    4. Prilly Oktoviany & Robert Knobloch & Ralf Korn, 2021. "A machine learning-based price state prediction model for agricultural commodities using external factors," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 44(2), pages 1063-1085, December.
    5. Michelle Sheran Sylvester, 2007. "The Career and Family Choices of Women: A Dynamic Analysis of Labor Force Participation, Schooling, Marriage and Fertility Decisions," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(3), pages 367-399, July.
    6. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    7. Karen K. Lewis, 2011. "Global Asset Pricing," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 435-466, December.
    8. DAVID M. BLAU & WILBERT van der KLAAUW, 2013. "What Determines Family Structure?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(1), pages 579-604, January.
    9. Panagiota DIONYSOPOULOU & Georgios SVARNIAS & Theodore PAPAILIAS, 2021. "Total Quality Management In Public Sector, Case Study: Customs Service," Regional Science Inquiry, Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists, vol. 0(1), pages 153-168, June.
    10. Afanasyev, Dmitriy O. & Fedorova, Elena A. & Popov, Viktor U., 2015. "Fine structure of the price–demand relationship in the electricity market: Multi-scale correlation analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 215-226.
    11. Peter Viggo Jakobsen, 2009. "Small States, Big Influence: The Overlooked Nordic Influence on the Civilian ESDP," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 47(1), pages 81-102, January.
    12. Julie Holland Mortimer, 2007. "Price Discrimination, Copyright Law, and Technological Innovation: Evidence from the Introduction of DVDs," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1307-1350.
    13. Suwan Shen & Xi Feng & Zhong Ren Peng, 2016. "A framework to analyze vulnerability of critical infrastructure to climate change: the case of a coastal community in Florida," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 84(1), pages 589-609, October.
    14. Jean-Bernard Chatelain & Kirsten Ralf, 2017. "Can We Identify the Fed's Preferences?," Working Papers halshs-01549908, HAL.
    15. Billio, Monica & Casarin, Roberto & Osuntuyi, Anthony, 2016. "Efficient Gibbs sampling for Markov switching GARCH models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 37-57.
    16. Jan Babecký & Fabrizio Coricelli & Roman Horváth, 2009. "Assessing Inflation Persistence: Micro Evidence on an Inflation Targeting Economy," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 59(2), pages 102-127, June.
    17. Lloyd, S. P., 2017. "Unconventional Monetary Policy and the Interest Rate Channel: Signalling and Portfolio Rebalancing," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1735, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    18. Fischer, Andreas M. & Ranaldo, Angelo, 2011. "Does FOMC news increase global FX trading?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(11), pages 2965-2973, November.
    19. Mazzlida Mat Deli & Ruhizan Mohamad Yasin, 2016. "Quality Education of Orang Asli in Malaysia," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 6(11), pages 233-240, November.
    20. Ichiro Fukunaga, 2007. "Imperfect Common Knowledge, Staggered Price Setting, and the Effects of Monetary Policy," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(7), pages 1711-1739, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:agspub:v:8:y:2019:i:1-2:p:30-63. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.