Search results

Collaboration in agricultural value chains (AVCs) has the potential to increase smallholders’ participation in international value chains and increase their benefits from participation. This scoping review explores existing collaboration models among stakeholders of AVCs in developing countries, examines enablers and constraints of collaboration and identifies policy gaps.

We systematically searched three databases, CAB Abstracts, Econlit (EBSCO) and Agricola, for studies published between 2005 and 2023 and included 59 relevant studies on AVC collaboration.

The primary motivations for collaboration are to enhance market access and improve product quality. Key outcomes of collaboration include improvements in farmers’ welfare, market participation and increased production; only a few studies consider improved risk management as an important outcome. Robust support from government and non-governmental entities is a primary enabler of collaboration. Conversely, conflicts of interest among stakeholders and resource limitations constrain collaboration possibilities. Collaboration involving high-value crops prioritizes income increases, whereas collaboration involving staple crops focuses on improving household food security.

This study may have publication bias as unsuccessful instances of collaboration are less likely to be published.

This study is unique in highlighting collaboration models’ characteristics and identifying AVC policy and programmatic areas where private firms, farmers’ groups, local governments and donor agencies can contribute.

WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, is a widely studied public food assistance program that aims to provide foods, nutrition education, and other services to at-risk, low-income children and pregnant, breastfeeding, and postpartum women. From a policy perspective, it is of interest to assess the efficacy of the WIC program – how much, if at all, does the program improve the nutritional outcomes of WIC families? In this paper, we address two important issues related to the WIC program that have not been extensively addressed in the past. First, although the WIC program is primarily devised with the intent of improving the nutrition of “targeted” children and mothers, it is possible that WIC may also change the consumption of foods by nontargeted individuals within the household. Second, although WIC eligibility status is predetermined, participation in the program is voluntary and therefore potentially endogenous. We make use of a treatment–response model in which the dependent variable is the requirement-adjusted calcium intake from milk consumption and the endogenous variable is WIC participation, and estimate it using Bayesian methods. Using data from the CSFII 1994–1996, we find that the correlation between the errors of our two equations is strong and positive, suggesting that families participating in WIC have an unobserved propensity for high calcium intake. The direct “structural” WIC parameters, however, do not support the idea that WIC participation leads to increased levels of calcium intake from milk.

Bayesian Econometrics is a volume in the series Advances in Econometrics that illustrates the scope and diversity of modern Bayesian econometric applications, reviews some recent advances in Bayesian econometrics, and highlights many of the characteristics of Bayesian inference and computations. This first paper in the volume is the Editors’ introduction in which we summarize the contributions of each of the papers.