Whither the pin factory? Modern food supply chains and specialization in India

Rajib Sutradhar, Chandra Nuthalapati and Marc Bellemare

Agricultural Economics, 2019, vol. 50, issue 4, 395-405

Abstract: What is the relationship between smallholder participation in modern food supply chains and their degree of economic specialization? We investigate this research question by looking at whether there is a systematic relationship between whether a household grows crops for a supermarket chain—participation in the supermarket channel—and how concentrated among fewer crops are that household's total landholdings and its output. Using longitudinal data from India, we find that there is no relationship between whether a household participates in the supermarket channel and that household's Herfindahl–Hirschman index for land, but there is a robust statistically significant and negative relationship between whether a household participates in the supermarket channel and that household's Herfindahl–Hirschman index for output. These findings hold true at both the extensive margin (i.e., when considering whether a household participates in the supermarket channel) and the intensive margin (i.e., when considering how much of a household's marketed output is sold through the supermarket chain). This suggests that instead of fostering a greater degree of specialization, participation in modern food supply chains might lead to greater diversification.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12498

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:agecon:v:50:y:2019:i:4:p:395-405

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0169-5150

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Economics is currently edited by W.A. Masters and G.E. Shively

More articles in Agricultural Economics from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().