Mapping Heterogeneity in the Midstream: Trader Sourcing and Sales Behavior in the "hidden middle" of Agricultural Value Chains

Midstream actors such as wholesalers and transporters are essential to agricultural value-chain (AVC) performance, yet evidence on their strategies and performance remains limited. In this paper, we examine organizational heterogeneity among tomato wholesalers in Tanzania, documenting the relationship between scale, procurement and logistics strategies, and costs, revenues, and profits. Traders operating small-scale enterprises heavily rely on intermediate actors, while large-scale traders are highly disintermediated, procuring directly from farmers. Procurement and logistics strategies are associated with scale but equilibrate per-unit profits across strategies, with total profit differences driven solely by volume. A trader’s gender and years of experience are correlated with their respective procurement and logistics strategies. While market size and location are associated with scale and strategy, a market’s gender composition is the dominant market-level scale-correlate. The patterns suggest multiple organizational equilibria between disintermediated and intermediate-reliant models, where strategy and scale are correlated but dependent on choice sets that are conditional on trader, enterprise, and market characteristics. Policies therefore should focus on the development and efficiency of both model types while giving attention to individual constraints, particularly around gender and experience.