Thursday, September 3, 2009

Agribusiness?

"...the World Bank report strongly advocates the formation of producer organisations and cooperative schemes as a way, supposedly, of achieving economies of scale.

The benefits of such organisation should include greater smallholder participation in markets and increased producer bargaining power, and thus should enable cooperating farmers to share more equitably in the profits generated by agribusiness. However, Amanor demonstrates that such producer organisations would still be embedded within existing disadvantageous market structures and entrenched hierarchical global production systems. Moreover, the World Bank’s effort to promote and integrate producer organisations into global value chains ultimately spreads confusion about the fundamental differences between the market-based governance relations of food chains, which are inherently hierarchical, and democratic governance, which should be empowering." (Thanks Karin)

This is an extract from the excellent "Development Viewpoint focusing on the World Bank's approach to "Agribusiness for Development", and summarizing articles from a special issue of The Journal of Agrarian Change. Required reading.

No comments: