Aiding Trade

Résumé du livre

This thesis presents an inquiry into agricultural development. More specifically it addresses the question: how do development agencies construct and reconstruct new and existing agricultural commodity chains to assist the rural poor to trade their way out of poverty? Growing unevenness in the development process has led to calls for development to become more pro-poor. An increasingly popular tool employed in such efforts is agricultural commodity chain development, more recently and perhaps more salubriously called value chain development. The key idea here is to assist poor rural agriculturalists (the majority of the world's poor) to upgrade their livelihoods through appropriately configured commodity chains. Although conceptions vary about what sort of commodity chain is best engaged or how to engage it, the primary tenet of this approach is that given appropriate assistance the poor may trade their way out of poverty. As such this thesis is as much about examining the aid agencies enrolled to instigate commodity chain development, as it is an investigation into agricultural commodity chains themselves. The four case studies of this thesis: rice seed, organic rice, fresh vegetables and chilli sauce provide examples of the different ways that aid processes may interact with trade processes with varying outcomes.