Chain-Wide Learning for Inclusive Agrifood Market Development:  A guide to multi-stakeholder processes for linking small-scale producers to modern markets.

This new guide provides concepts and tools for working with actors along the entire value chain so that modern markets can be more inclusive of small-scale producers and entrepreneurs.

By James A. Lewis, Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), March 10, 2008  

Synposis: Government policies and practices affect economic outcomes.  Is government action (or inaction) an obstacle to global economic participation?  Do governments provide the environment for the services and infrastructure needed to be competitive?  The answers to these questions decide how much a country's citizens and businesses can benefit from globalization.  This means that governments need to think about economic policy in a new way.  The issues created by global economic integration go well beyond traditional trade policy.  If globalization is the engine of growth, how countries connect to that engine determines how well they will perform. 

Edited by Steven Haggblade, Peter B. R. Hazell, and Thomas Reardon. 2007. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that equates rural economies with agriculture, rural residents in developing countries often rely heavily on activities other than farming for their income. Indeed, nonfarm work accounts for between one-third and one-half of rural incomes in the developing world. In recent years, accelerating globalization, increasing competition from large businesses, expanding urban markets for rural goods and services, and greater availability of information and communication technology have combined to expose rural nonfarm businesses to new opportunities as well as new risks. By examining these rapid changes in the rural nonfarm economy, international experts explore how the rural nonfarm economy can contribute to overall economic growth in developing countries and how the poor can participate in this rapidly evolving segment of the economy. The authors address key questions about the role of public intervention in the rural nonfarm economy and how the rural poor can participate in and navigate the rapid transition underway in rural areas. The contributors offer new insights to specialists in rural development and to others interested in overall economic development. This book is the product of a joint study by the International Food Policy Research Institute and The World Bank.

The new World Bank World Development Report 2008, for the first time in 25 years, is dedicated to agriculture. The WDR includes a call to action in response to the modernisation of procurement systems in integrated supply chains and supermarkets, so that small farmers can share in these growth opportunities.

by Oli Brown with Christina Sander, March 2007. International Institute for Sustainable Development / Trade Knowledge Network

Summary

In recent years there has been both expansion and consolidation of the global supermarket sector.

Supermarkets (short for all modern retail) are spreading quickly in developing countries. The "take-off" occurred as recently as the early/mid 1990s, driven by an avalanche of foreign direct investment (FDI) sparked by retail FDI liberalization. A decade on, the power and dominance of supermarkets is already felt in the food markets of many developing countries, and tensions between supermarkets and traditional retailers, and supermarkets and their suppliers, are emerging as key policy and political debates. The paper analyzes those tensions. Then it reviews the US and Western European history and current experience in designing policies (regulations and support programs) to address those tensions. It ends with an analysis of emerging policy approaches to the supermarket sector and the tensions its growth is creating in developing countries, and recommendations.

Supermarkets and Agri-food Supply Chains. eds. David Burch and Geoffrey Lawrence. EDWARD ELGAR PUBLISHING, Cheltenham UK and Northampton, MA USA.

This book analyses the gradual shift in the distribution of power in agri-food supply chains, away from the manufacturers of branded food products to the global supermarket chains

A row to hoe: the gender impact of trade liberalization on our food system, agricultural markets and women's human rights  

Spieldoch, A. / Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) , 2007 

Niek Koning and Per Pinstrup-Andersen (editors)

Wageningen UR Frontis Series, volume 19. Springer Science & Business Media, ISBN: 978-1-4020-6079-3

Will poor countries benefit from agricultural trade liberalization? This question is of great importance now that efforts are being made to revamp the Doha Round and negotiations on European Partnership Agreements are entering their final phase. The Doha round was called a Development Round, but little was accomplished before the negotiations stalled in mid-2006. The assumption was that developing countries would gain from trade liberalization in agricultural commodities, but whether this is true for the 50 least developed countries (LDCs) remains hotly debated. Will gains from liberalization offset the erosion of the preferential access that LDCs currently have to OECD markets? Or will such gains be captured by middle-income countries with strong export potential in agriculture? Are LDC interests well represented by the Group of 21, which consist primarily of middle-income countries? How can LDCs respond to the continuation of trade-distorting policies of OECD countries? In this book, several experts on international trade and development address these and related questions. Unlike many other books on these issues, they embody divergent perspectives, spanning the whole range from neo-liberalism to new institutional approaches and the vision that managed trade rather than free trade should be the guiding principle for regulating agricultural markets.

27 April 2006. AT Kearney has published its 2006 Global Retail Development Index (GRDI). This index is designed to help retailers prioritize their global development strategies, by ranking 30 emerging countries based on more than 25 macroeconomic and retail-specific variables. Findings are as follows. On a regional level, Asia reclaimed the lead position from the maturing markets of Eastern Europe. As part of Asia, the Middle East posted the highest retail sales growth globally, led by United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. The Mediterranean held steady with mixed results, while Latin America recovered from its economic crises and enjoyed a strong return on the Index. Finally, Africa remains outside the game, but that is not stopping retailers from entering this populous region.