Agrifood Industry Transformation and Small Farmers in Developing Countries

Thomas Reardon, Christopher Barrett, Julio Berdegue and Johan Swinnen

World Development, 2009, vol. 37, issue 11, 1717-1727

Abstract: Summary This article introduces this special issue on the rapid transformation of the agrifood industry in developing countries and its effects on small farmers. We review the literature from the late 1980s to the present and find evidence first of food processing then retail transformation, and mixed evidence of impacts on small farmers, both inclusion (particularly with "resource-providing contracts") and exclusion (sometimes from scale-constraint, sometimes from inadequate non-land assets). The special issue papers contribute to the debate by confirming the mix of cases of inclusion and exclusion. The cases are main in horticulture and dairy, key hopes for smallholder development.

Keywords: agrifood; industry; small; farmer; transformation; modernization; supermarkets; processors; contracts; institutions; vertical; coordination; foreign; direct; investment; consolidation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (324)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305-750X(09)00133-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:wdevel:v:37:y:2009:i:11:p:1717-1727

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().