A handy guide a rough access right here as I need to level folks within the path of latest selection of research on price chains. Price Chains – Price Chain Construction and the Deficient: Promise, Supply, and Alternatives for Have an effect on at Scale, edited by way of Jason Donovan (CIMMYT), Dietmar Stoian (International Agroforestry), and Jon Hellin (IRRI) is printed by way of Sensible Motion Publishing. Its to be had as a unfastened obtain, or you’ll order a bodily reproduction.
The selection of 16 papers/chapters from practitioners and researchers is damaged down in 3 sections:
Phase I: Context for Price Chain Construction
Phase II: Design and Implementation of VCD
Phase III: Evaluate and Results of VCD
The primary access, Bankruptcy 1, “Striking price chain construction into viewpoint: Evolution, blind spots, and promising avenues”, I discovered specifically attention-grabbing because it equipped a pleasant snapshot of the advance of considering within the price chain sector. The development of concepts within the VC box is not up to instantly ahead, with a slew of terminology with ambiguous and overlapping meanings. As a practitioner, I’m often requested to give an explanation for the variation between ‘Price Chains’, ‘Marketplace Techniques’, ‘Markets for the Deficient (M4P)’, ‘Marketplace-Based totally’, and an entire host of different phrases. What represents a brand new method or new technique and what’s merely a rebranding?
It’s now not unexpected in any respect when even the professionals can debate over the place the traces are drawn: At first of meetings and conferences within the sector, it’s not unusual to have to these main the assembly outline the phrases for use.
The creator’s tackle that is to border the advance of ideas and focuses for the reason that early days of the sphere (Nineteen Eighties) as pushed by way of ‘Problems-Consideration Cycles’. As ever, we’re keen to transport at the subsequent ‘giant factor’ or silver bullet. Regardless of the driving force, the authors snapshot is useful for placing our paintings in viewpoint:
Every other focal point for me used to be that whilst the authors spotlight the successes of the method, they recognize the want to mix in non-market-based approaches to make certain that essentially the most prone will also be reached and made market-ready. In bankruptcy 12, “Price chain construction for rural poverty relief: A truth test and a caution” the authors spotlight the want to take an asset-based method, encouraging practitioners to lend a hand families to satisfy a minimal asset threshold prior to being enabled to interact in price chain programming.
The authors are interviewed by way of CGIAR, assessing their very own ebook.
And sure, I did supply an respectable endorsement for this ebook (within the ‘Reward for this ebook’ web page). I’m firmly of the view that promotion of a ebook by which you supply a promotion isn’t self-promotion.