by Thomas Reardon, Julio A. Berdegué and John Farrington

ODI Natural Resource Perspectives Number 81, December 2002

Supermarkets' share in retailing has quadrupled in Latin America since 1990. They have penetrated all parts of the food economy, including those which are scale-neutral and previously were the domain of small farmers and traders, such as fresh fruit and vegetables and dairy products. This paper identifies why supermarkets have grown so rapidly there, what the impacts on producers have been, and whether the pattern might be repeated in other regions.

Full paper available for download at http://www.odi.org.uk/nrp/81.pdf [1]