Challenges to groundnut value chain development: lessons from an (attempted) experiment in Ghana

Sean Posey, Nicholas Magnan, Ellen McCullough, Vivian Hoffmann, Nelson Opoku and Abdul-Hafiz Alidu

Journal of Development Effectiveness, 2024, vol. 16, issue 4, 468-484

Abstract: In developing countries, value chains for many crops are underdeveloped, leading to low producer prices and poor quality produce. Value chain research using secondary data is made difficult by selection problems, whereas experimental research is logistically very difficult and lacks external validity. With the intention of conducting a field experiment, we piloted an intervention connecting smallholder groundnut farmers in Ghana to a premium groundnut processor through aggregators. While we successfully delivered inputs and training to farmers, we failed in our attempts to link aggregators with downstream processors over two growing seasons. In this paper, we situate the challenges we faced in the broader literature on value chains and identify three problems that prevented us from establishing a value chain for high quality groundnuts: uncertainty, cash constraints, and trust. To help inform future research on this topic, we propose three specific interventions that could mitigate these problems.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/19439342.2024.2319657 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:jdevef:v:16:y:2024:i:4:p:468-484

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJDE20

DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2024.2319657

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Effectiveness is currently edited by Howard White

More articles in Journal of Development Effectiveness from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().