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Despite the strong interest on the role of agri-food value chains in advancing health and nutrition goals, guidance on how to actually design and assess related development programming has only recently emerged. This paper begins with a brief review of research on nutrition-sensitive value chains in developing countries. It then presents the Value Chains and Nutrition framework for intervention design that explores food supply and demand conditions across a portfolio of local value chains that are relevant for improving nutrition outcomes. We explore the framework in a case study on rural Malawi. Available evidence highlights the dominance of maize in diets, but also the willingness of rural households to consume other nutritious foods (e.g. leafy greens, tree fruits, dried fish) during the year. Addressing the supply constraints (e.g. low productivity, seasonality) and demand constraints (e.g. low income, preference for maize) along local value chains will require carefully sequenced interventions within and across value chains. Strategies for achieving nutrition goals in this context will require stronger collaborative ties between NGOs, government agencies and the private sector and deeper learning among stakeholders than has typically been the case. We conclude with recommendations for future work on frameworks and tools for supporting the design of value chain interventions with potential to advance health and nutrition goals. ; IFPRI3; CRP4; CRP3.2 ; A4NH; PHND ; PR ; CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH); CGIAR Research Program on Maize (MAIZE)

Background: Staple cereals always have been important dietary components, yet recent debates on their role in human diets are riddled with myths and misinformation. Scope and approach: This article examines the informational controversies, particularly about wheat, and reviews the evidence. The discussion centers on three nutritional cereal debates: i) 'empty calories', ii) over-consumption, and iii) how 'free-from' fads confound dietary transitions. Key findings and conclusions: This article makes two principal points, that i) advances in nutrition are a complex, slow process, and that ii) they can be easily confounded and undone by misinformation. Hence we suggest that more consumer-oriented work is needed—including behavioral approaches and political economy—in order to improve the quality of information, communication and dietary decision making. There is a clear need to tackle nutritional misinformation given the costs of inaction and the need to formulate a coherent agri-nutrition agenda.

In Eastern and Southern Africa, as the public sector has retreated from maize seed production and the private sector has emerged to fill the resulting void, a key issue for researchers, governments and private donors has been the capacity of privately owned, typically small scale, seed businesses to effectively produce and distribute hybrid seed. Roughly two decades on, research and development programming continues to focus on supply side issues in supporting the maize seed industry to bring new varieties to farmers. Motivated by thinking on agri-food value chains, this article explores the potential for achieving a stronger demand orientation in programming to support the maize seed industry, a requirement for varietal turnover. In 2019 data were collected in Kenya from i) 80 agro-dealers on their relations with seed businesses and their marketing of maize seed, ii) 466 farmers on their seed choice and engagement with agro-dealers and iii) 8 seed companies on their distribution and sales strategies. Results confirmed the overarching supply-push orientation of the industry, characterized by limited innovation and risk taking, weak collaboration between actors, low margins for retailers, and limited investments in seed marketing. Farmers showed weak appetite for acquiring new seed products, preferring instead to purchase seeds that they knew from experience. Better strategies for building seed value chains will require deeper insights on stakeholders needs and strategies, to include the capacity of seed businesses and retailers to innovate in business management and marketing.

Research linking agriculture and nutrition has evolved since the mid-20th century. The current focus is on child-stunting, dietary diversity and 'nutrient-rich' foods in recognition of the growing burdens of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases. This article concerns the global dietary and health contribution of major cereals, specifically maize and wheat, which are often considered not to be 'nutrient-rich' foods. Nevertheless, these cereals are major sources of dietary energy, of essential proteins and micronutrients, and diverse non-nutrient bioactive food components. Research on bioactives, and dietary fibre in particular, is somewhat 'siloed', with little attention paid by the agri-nutrition research community to the role of cereal bioactives in healthy diets, and the adverse health effects often arising through processing and manufacturing of cereals-based food products. We argue that the research agenda should embrace the whole nutritional contribution of the multiple dietary components of cereals towards addressing the triple burden of undernutrition, micronutrient malnutrition, overweight/obesity and non-communicable diseases. Agri-nutrition and development communities need to adopt a multidisciplinary and food systems research approach from farm to metabolism. Agriculture researchers should collaborate with other food systems stakeholders on nutrition-related challenges in cereal production, processing and manufacturing, and food waste and losses. Cereal and food scientists should also collaborate with social scientists to better understand the impacts on diets of the political economy of the food industry, and the diverse factors which influence local and global dietary transitions, consumer behavioural choices, dietary change, and the assessment and acceptance of novel and nutritious cereal-based products.

AbstractThis article examines why and how nine coffee businesses in Central America engaged with multiple certification systems and the related functions and benefits. The businesses implemented, on average, four systems. Certification, in general, strengthened their negotiation position vis‐à‐vis exporters and international buyers, whereas multiple certification reduced the risks inherent in their reliance on any one certification, allowing businesses to sell as much coffee as possible at a relatively higher price. However, commitments to the certification's underlying goals were tenuous: Businesses engaged a subgroup of their supplier base in any one label, and coffee buyers purchased relatively small volumes of certified coffees, at times, conditioned on access to larger volumes of noncertified coffees. Although certification facilitated capacity upgrading, in many cases, the changes were minor and might have taken place without certification. Results suggest that multiple certification helps sustain small‐scale coffee exporters but dampen expectations that certification will drive long‐term systemic change in the sector. We conclude with recommendations for certification agencies and others that seek to support coffee businesses to expand their engagement in certified coffee markets.

Over the past decade, many governmental, private or donor-funded programs have adopted value chain development (VCD) to address goals related to poverty reduction and economic development. Underlying the design of these programs is the assumption that smallholders will climb out of poverty when they organize into rural enterprises, when these enterprises link them to business partners committed to win-win relationships, and when the chain actors have access to the right mix of technical, business and financial services. However, despite considerable investments in VCD, we have a poor understanding of whether the underlying assumptions hold true. A major stumbling block to understanding has been the absence of sound metric systems to monitor progress and assess the impact of VCD initiatives. The 5Capitals tool, developed jointly by an alliance of research and development organizations, addresses this shortcoming by proposing an asset-based approach to assess the poverty impacts of VCD. The tool has been tested through 23 case studies carried out over two iterations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America. This chapter summarizes the process for development of the tool and the concepts that underpin its design, including the rationale for adopting an asset-based approach to pro-poor VCD. It introduces the five case studies selected for this volume to document the versatility of the tool for diverse value chains in various stages of development. It concludes with an overview of what the reader can expect in terms of insight from the case studies.

Over the past decade, many governmental, private or donor-funded programs have adopted value chain development (VCD) to address goals related to poverty reduction and economic development. Underlying the design of these programs is the assumption that smallholders will climb out of poverty when they organize into rural enterprises, when these enterprises link them to business partners committed to win-win relationships, and when the chain actors have access to the right mix of technical, business and financial services. However, despite considerable investments in VCD, we have a poor understanding of whether the underlying assumptions hold true. A major stumbling block to understanding has been the absence of sound metric systems to monitor progress and assess the impact of VCD initiatives. The 5Capitals tool, developed jointly by an alliance of research and development organizations, addresses this shortcoming by proposing an asset-based approach to assess the poverty impacts of VCD. The tool has been tested through 23 case studies carried out over two iterations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and North America. This chapter summarizes the process for development of the tool and the concepts that underpin its design, including the rationale for adopting an asset-based approach to pro-poor VCD. It introduces the five case studies selected for this volume to document the versatility of the tool for diverse value chains in various stages of development. It concludes with an overview of what the reader can expect in terms of insight from the case studies.

Since the early 2000s, value chain development (VCD) has figured prominently on the agendas of donors, governments, and NGOs in pursuit of market-based options to poverty reduction, food security, gender equity, and other goals. Researchers have shown interest in value chains as a theoretical construct for studying interactions between farmers and markets, while practitioners have focused their attention on approaches and tools for applying VCD in the field. Despite considerable investments in VCD, limited evidence exists on the extent to which different approaches to VCD have advanced diverse development goals. This knowledge gap sounds alarms, not least because of the complexities involved and the multitude of options for getting it right (or wrong). The 16 chapters in this book offer unique perspectives on VCD from both practitioners and researchers. They explore how VCD is implemented in the field, options for innovation in design, and the potential for VCD to achieve impact at scale. Altogether, the book provides a timely critique of current approaches, pointing at options for more reflexive learning, new collaborative frameworks, and faster innovation of VCD. Here we introduce the chapters and extract some of their principal lessons in terms of the promise, delivery, and opportunities for impact at scale.

Value chain development (VCD) with smallholders forms a central element of the poverty reduction strategies of governments and NGOs in developing countries. Nevertheless, too little is known about how VCD interventions are designed and implemented, the approaches and tools used, and the challenges faced in the process. This paper helps to fill this gap with evidence from six cases in Uganda. For each case, data was collected from interviews with NGOs, government organizations, buyers, and smallholder business organizations. Results indicate that use of available VCD guides and tools facilitated productive partnerships among chain actors, engagement with support organizations, and feedback mechanisms on intervention processes. Results also challenge NGOs, government agencies, and researchers to better understand the circumstances of resource-poor chain actors, the implications of VCD on gender relations, and the cultural and business context when designing and implementing VCD. This calls for stakeholders to employ a broader approach to VCD, using a combination of available and new tools, and to seek out deeper collaboration with key actors within and outside the value chain.

Chapter 2 (Stoian et al.) draws attention to the link between VCD and smallholder livelihood strategies that comprise a complex mix of subsistence and market-oriented activities and that are diversified to meet multiple livelihood goals and mitigate risks; and the authors address the related implications for the design and assessment of value-chain interventions. They question some of the underlying assumptions of NGOs, government agencies, and private-sector agents seeking to link smallholders to higher-value markets ; PR ; IFPRI1; CRP2; C Improving markets and trade ; MTID; PIM ; CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM)