Developing Agricultural Value Chains

Abstract

This chapter asks how can agricultural value chains be further developed in Ghana given prevailing market failure problems that constrain the private sector from playing a greater role. Using first the experience of public interventions in the cocoa subsector through the Ghana Cocoa Board, the chapter evaluates how interventions in three other value chains compare: pineapples, rice, and tomatoes. These latter three crops have under-exploited opportunities because of the inability of farmers to produce sufficient amounts of high-quality farm products that meet urban market, agro-processor, and export demands. This is due to a lack of better seed varieties, an absence of quality control through grading and pricing along value chains, inadequate post-harvest handling, and few large-scale agribusinesses willing or able to take the lead in developing new export markets. The findings reveal opportunities and constraints along the value chains of these commodities, identifies the roles that the public sector should ideally play and, in turn, analyzes whether it has the capacity to feasibly do so.