Smallholder participation in high value agro-export chains in Peru. A study of the co-evolution of technology and institutions

[Introduction] In essence poverty is not only about lack of resources but also about the lack of opportunities. High value, tradable crops may provide opportunities to escape from what Dorward et al (2005) call a ‘low level equilibrium trap’ but as they observe there are important technological and institutional gaps that prevent small producers to produce for and transact in associated markets. The central question in this paper is how technological and institutional processes to overcome these gaps are interconnected. In these processes normally firms are the key players with a more or less active role of governments, but as Dorward and others have argued on different occasions for developing countries, NGOs can help overcome market and government failures in these processes (Dorward et al, 2003, 2005, Kydd et al, 2004, Helmsing & Knorringa, 2009) We will use a case study of a Peruvian NGO and its efforts to assist small producers to acquire technological competences and develop institutional arrangements amongst themselves and with new suppliers and buyers in new agro-export chains. These efforts concern simultaneously technological change and innovation as much as the construction of new institutional arrangements

Teorías de desarrollo industrial regional y políticas de segunda y tercera generación

Abstract This article observes that the conceptual bases for regional industrial policies has been undergoing substantial changes. A distinction is made between several generations of policies. The ‘first generation’ of regional policies was based on the importance of exogenous growth factors. The ‘second generation’ of policies focussed on local endogenous factors. The theoretical base supporting these policies received strong impulses since the mid-80s from new insights derived from flexible specialization and industrial districts literature. A new and ‘third generation’ of policies is emerging that goes beyond endogenous growth, and seeks to superceed the division between exogenous and endogenously oriented policies. The analysis of growth and competitiveness has moved from the firm itself, and clusters of firms and to incorporate basic and institutional conditions fostering growth. This article provides an overview of contributions to the theory of regional industrial development underlying second and third generations of regional policies. A distinction is made between macro-regional theories and those that have an industrial organization focus. The review includes a selected number of case studies drawn from Europe and Latin America

Analyzing Local Institutional Change

Institutional development has attracted more attention in the past two decades. However, institutional theory finds itself in a pre-consolidated phase and there are various theoretical and methodological challenges. One is to respond to the question whether institutional change is a spontaneous evolutionary or a deliberately designed process or a combination of the two. Another question concerns institutional co-innovation: i.e. the interaction between technological innovations, changes in institutional arrangements and changes in the institutional environment. A methodological challenge concerns the study of common institutional needs, which under different conditions can give rise to various concrete institutional forms. This paper researches how a common institutional need to develop institutional arrangements for rural collective action in order to enable small farmers to participate in newly created export chains in different contexts leads to different institutional arrangements and outcomes. By comparing two cases, the paper seeks to unravel which factors and actors play what roles and how these explain differences in the process of institutional development and in that way to arrive at a better understanding of local institutional change. After a general introduction, I present an overview of the diverse literature on institutional change. After that, bird’s eye views will be presented of the two case studies. The first refers to the development of export agriculture around asparagus in the North of Peru and the second relates to the introduction of new apicultural technologies in the North West of Uganda. In the final section the main commonalities and differences in institutional development are examined and an attempt is made to respond to the main challenges formulated above

Externalities, Learning and Governance: New Perspectives on Local Economic Development

In spite of growing mobility of production and production factors, economic development is increasingly localized in economic agglomerations. This article reviews three partially overlapping perspectives on local economic development, which derive from three factors intensifying the localized nature of economic development: externalities, learning and governance. Externalities play a central role in the new geographical economics of Krugman and in new economic geography of clusters and industrial districts. The dynamics of local economic development are increasingly associated with evolutionary economic thinking in general and with collective learning in particular. Inter-firm and extra-firm organization has experienced considerable innovation in the last few decades. New institutional devices are based on the notions of commodity chain, cluster and milieu. These innovations introduce new issues of economic governance both at the level of industry and of territory

Value chain governance Progress report 2008-2009

This document reports on the first year of the DPRN process entitled ‘Value chains, social inclusion and local economic development’, as organised by the Institute of Social Studies (ISS/EUR), Wageningen University (WUR), Woord & Daad, HIVOS, ICCO, Concept Fruits BV and the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV). International trade is increasingly undertaken through organised global value chains in which quality competition plays a central role. Quality competition is achieved by means of increasingly complex standards and the introduction of new technologies at the level of individual links in the chain, as well as at the level of their interaction (transaction and logistics) and therefore for the chain as a whole. These requirements and their associated costs make networked markets an increasingly predominant form of exchange. Chain governance consequently denotes the manner in which the various actors in the chain, namely firms, governments and NGOs, are coordinated. It shapes how standards are defined, implemented and enforced. This proposal concerns the degree of inclusion of governance mechanisms within a value chain configuration

Externalities, learning and governance perspectives on local economic development

In the late seventies, John Friedmann made an attempt to formulate a new paradigm for regional development. His basic proposition was that the then prevailing development paradigm had been dominated by functional integration (Friedmann and Weaver, 1979). The integrity of local territorial life had been surrendered in the interests of growth and efficiency. Efficient large-scale functional organisation meant centralisation at higher levels. The trans-national corporation was seen as the ultimate embodiment of this approach. In his view regional planning was at a crossroads; it would have to choose between function and territory. He subsequently formulatedthe'development of territory as an alternative paradigm. As a guiding principle this was more egalitarian, distributive and integrative, including economic, social as well as political dimensions of development. Friedmann and Weaver's book received a mixed reception. One of the critiques was by Jos Hilhorst, my predecessor (Hilhorst, 1980). The formulation of function and territory as two opposites had, in his view, a number of basic flaws. Subsequent developments in the literature have proven Hilhorst to be right in a number of respects. The interaction between function and territory became, in the late eighties and early nineties, an important dimension of localised economic growth and embedded development

Local economic development options for deepening economic and social transformation of Georgia

__Abstract__ Georgia is still deeply entrenched in economic and social transformation processes through which it tries to shake off soviet hierarchical and state led economic and societal structures and to become a pluralist democratic state with a modern market economy. Advances in the past decade have been spectacular on certain fronts, notably improving the rule of law, combat corruption and liberalizing the economy, opening up to FDI and seeking to integrate in the world economy, while at the same time cushioning the impacts of large scale privatization and deregulation reforms on the predominantly rural poor

Institutional co-innovation in value chain development: A comparative study of agro-export products in Uganda and Peru

Institutional development has attracted more attention in the past two decades. However, institutional theory finds itself in a pre-consolidated phase and there are many theoretical and methodological challenges. One is to respond to the question whether institutional change is a spontaneous evolutionary or a deliberately designed process or a combination of the two. Another question concerns the interaction between technological innovations, changes in institutional arrangements and changes in the institutional environment in the dynamics of processes of institutional development. This links to another key question concerning the synchronicity in or co-evolution of institutional change processes at various levels and in various public and private domains. Institutional innovation rarely concerns one single institution but normally concerns bundles of public and private order institutions created at various levels. This paper researches how a common institutional need to develop institutional arrangements for rural collective action in order to enable small farmers to participate in newly created export chains, each with its own technological requirements and in different contexts leads to different institutional arrangements and outcomes. By comparing two cases, the paper seeks to unravel which factors and actors play what roles and how these explain differences in the process of institutional development and in that way to arrive at a better understanding of local institutional change. After a review of literature and the elaboration of a framework to answer the above questions, the paper presents a bird's eye views of the two case studies. The first refers to the introduction of new apicultural technologies in the North West of Uganda and the second relates to the introduction of high value horticulture exports crops in the North of Peru. The final section examines the main commonalities and differences in institutional development and makes an attempt to respond to the main questions formulated above