عدالت رویه در زنجیره ارزش با مشارکت دولتی و خصوصی Procedural Justice in Value Chains Through Public–private Partnerships

1. Introduction This paper is about making agricultural value chains work for smallholder farmers, and the way that governments can achieve this aim through public–private partnerships (PPPs). Agriculture has traditionally been dominated by market arrangements involving many farmers and many buyers of undifferentiated commodities. Since the 1980s, however, the sector has changed dramatically. New corporate strategies, changes in regulation and standards, greater competition, and changing consumer demands have meant a higher degree of explicit coordination such that these loose trading relationships have been replaced by tightly structured ‘‘value chains” that spatially link farmers and firms (Dolan & Humphrey, 2004; Gereffi, Humphrey, & Sturgeon, 2005; Gibbon & Ponte, 2005; Lee, Gereffi, & Beauvais, 2012). The result has been the emergence of networked forms of value chain governance arrangements which are neither arm’s length markets nor characterized by vertically integrated corporations, but in which ‘‘lead firms” exert varying degrees of power to explicitly coordinate production (Gereffi et al., 2005). Partnerships that engage companies in development cooperation are part of a recent trend toward private sector development and market-based approaches to poverty reduction (Humphrey, Spratt, Thorpe, & Henson, 2014). Spending by members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee through public–private mechanisms, for example, rose from US$84.8 mn in 2005 to US$671.4 mn in 2015 (OECD, 2016). These include public–private approaches to boost agricultural investment that enables smallholders to access new value chains and derive greater benefits from chain participation. However, the findings in this paper suggest that investment alone is insufficient to achieve these outcomes. The arrangements facilitated by the PPPs and the value chain relationships they catalyze also matter. The empirical work that underpins this paper was carried out within the project ‘‘Enabling Factors for Public-Private Partnerships in Agriculture”, supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) during 2014-15.1 Four case studies in Ghana, Indonesia, Rwanda, and Uganda were developed, identifying enabling factors for agricultural value chain PPPs and outcomes for smallholder farmers. While the PPPs all supported productivity increases with benefits for households and communities, productivity was negatively affected by farmer failure to implement new production techniques or apply new inputs as expected. More surprisingly, farmers in the PPP with the strongest achievements (in terms of productivity and farmer incomes) expressed dissatisfaction with the arrangements, while farmers experiencing much more modest gains were more positive. This unexpected result prompted a systematic re-analysis of the case evidence to understand how value chain arrangements that strengthen farmer satisfaction and commitment can be catalyzed by PPPs.