Journal of Economic Literature
ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)
Agri-food Value Chain Revolutions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 60,
no. 4, December 2022
(pp. 1316–77)
Abstract
Agri-food value chains (AVCs) intermediate the flow of products between largely rural farmers, fisherfolk, or herders and increasingly urban consumers. The theoretical models that historically structured research on the economic development process assumed away AVC functions, however, and AVC firms and workers were necessarily omitted from the household data that generated most empirical findings in the agricultural and development economics literatures. As a result, the discipline has somewhat overlooked the rapid growth and structural change in AVCs over the past few decades that turned AVCs into major employers and sources of value addition, as well as key loci for technology transfer and foreign investment. This paper offers an integrated, structured, empirical narrative of how and why AVC revolutions occur in developing countries, the impacts of those changes, and the abundant economic research opportunities these structural changes afford economists.Citation
Barrett, Christopher B., Thomas Reardon, Johan Swinnen, and David Zilberman. 2022. "Agri-food Value Chain Revolutions in Low- and Middle-Income Countries." Journal of Economic Literature, 60 (4): 1316–77. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20201539Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- L14 Transactional Relationships; Contracts and Reputation; Networks
- L81 Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
- O13 Economic Development: Agriculture; Natural Resources; Energy; Environment; Other Primary Products
- O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
- Q12 Micro Analysis of Farm Firms, Farm Households, and Farm Input Markets
- Q13 Agricultural Markets and Marketing; Cooperatives; Agribusiness
- Q17 Agriculture in International Trade