Value Chains

Abstract

This chapter studies the third pillar of sustainable intensification by focusing on the development of sustainable socioeconomic intensification. This encompasses the intensification of the relationships between farmers, which results in the development of innovative and sustainable institutions on the farm, in the community, and across regions and nations as a whole. Part of the response of rural people to the isolation they experience is to create associations, such as savings and loans associations and formal cooperatives. The critical question is how these institutions can be taken to scale. This chapter argues that the successful transformation of African agriculture lies in the effective integration of smallholder farmers into modernizing value chains. A food value chain describes the complicated process of transformation involving a sequence of events from the molecular product of one or more genes in crops or livestock, through intermediate stages of husbandry, harvesting, processing, marketing, and consumption, to the final molecular changes in the human who consumes the food product. Each component of the value chain, each structure or process has its distinctive characteristics, especially its own capacity to generate value.