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There has been an increase in the integration of global agricultural value chains in recent decades. This trend has created opportunities for smallholder farmers and agrifood industries in developing countries through forms of international exchange. At the same time, demographic changes and rising incomes across the developing world have affected the food security status of citizens in developing countries. Institutions have a prominent role to play in how integrated countries and smallholder farmers are in global value chains. This dissertation seeks to answer these questions first by studying coconut value chains. The first paper does this by first on a macro level by analyzing the role of institutions on the trade of coconut products. Second, I study a case study in Fiji qualitatively to understand the discourses and perceptions of farmers involved in coconut farming. Finally, the third paper takes a theoretical model to assess the effects of a transition of rural smallholder farming to selling or renting landholdings and supplying labor to larger commercial farms on the food security and economic welfare of in-country urban consumers. In line with the two previous papers, it emphasizes the importance of institutions since positive and negative institutional forces within the home country play a part in the persistence of smallholder farming. Chapter 2 presents the first paper, titled "The role of institutional quality on the performance in the export of coconut products." It aimed to answer three research questions. First, we are interested in how the overall institutional environment in exporting countries affects the bilateral trade of coconut products. Second, we look into whether improvements in the exporters' individual indicator scores lead to an increase in trade with consideration to the exporters' and importers' overall institutional setting. Lastly, we investigate the effects of institutional similarities for coconut trade and its different compositions of value addition. To address these questions, we utilized structural gravity models to measure how institutional quality affects the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the span of 20 years. The results suggest that increased government effectiveness enhances trade of high-value products, whereas better voice and accountability scores decrease the trade of coconut products in both categories of value addition. The second paper, presented in Chapter 3, investigates the coconut value chain in Fiji. It is titled "Fiji's participation in the global coconut value chain: Opportunities and constraints." Field research was conducted in the islands of Fiji. I use predominately a qualitative approach to understand the rhetoric and discourses of each stakeholder group involved in the coconut sector and their perceptions of the challenges and opportunities. This chapter then follows the first paper and looks into the effect of institutional indicators on the performance in the export of coconut products from Fiji. The empirical results show that increased scores in the government's effectiveness and voice and accountability indicators enhance coconut exports from Fiji, suggesting that domestic institutions play an important role. Interviews with key actors reveal that communications among each stakeholder group are fragmented. The main institutional actors and the producers have different perceptions of the industry's challenges, thus resulting in different ideas on how to address the issues. Chapter 4 of this dissertation is titled "Modern agricultural value chains and food security of urban consumers in developing countries." The work is a collaboration stemmed from my research stay at the University of California Davis. The study builds on previous research (Ma & Sexton, forthcoming) that assessed the future of smallholder farming systems in modern agricultural value chains. Their findings show that smallholders gain higher incomes and larger production outputs when they can supply inputs and labor to large commercial farms compared to working on own small farms across a range of plausible market settings. We address the unanswered question of how this improved productivity effect can affect the welfare and food security of domestic smallholders and urban consumers. We obtain price elasticities of demand for staple food commodities in developing countries from 15 peer-reviewed articles. Based on these figures, we embed a demand-side framework into the Ma-Sexton model to study the impacts of land consolidation and the advent of commercial farming systems on the dietary diversity of home country urban consumers. Some general conclusions and implications can be drawn from the results of these chapters. First, we confirm that institutions matter, but not merely as one entity. Different aspects of institutional quality affect integration differently. When assessing coconut producing countries collectively, the findings of our first paper suggest that government effectiveness matters the most when enhancing trade of coconut products of varying degrees of value edition, while the indicator, voice and accountability, had contrasting effects. However, chapter 3 demonstrates that for Fiji, a small island economy, both government effectiveness and voice and accountability increase Fiji's export of coconut products. This implies that the heterogeneities of each country play a role and must be taken into consideration for future research. Each country has its specific institutional set-up and enabling environment. The integration of each country will differ albeit to a lesser or greater degree than another. Findings from the last paper suggest that urban consumers, especially the poorer households, can benefit when prices of staple crops increase. Their overall welfare and diet improve as a result. Smallholders also see an improvement in welfare as the utility in consumption and leisure increases. Though governments and international donors have an egalitarian and development in mind when implementing policies and strategies that support smallholder farming, our findings suggest that there is a large welfare gain if policies enable smallholders to supply land and labor to commercial farms.

The literature that addresses the role of institutions in bilateral trade is extensive. However, research that links institutional quality to specific products and their different levels of value addition is lacking. In this study, we look into institutional quality, based on three indicators from the World Bank's world governance indicators, and its indicator-specific effects on bilateral coconut trade. In particular, we study coconut products with varying degrees of value addition. We use structural gravity models to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the years 1996–2016. Our results suggest that increased government effectiveness enhances trade of high-value products, whereas better voice and accountability scores decrease trade of coconut products with both levels of value addition. No clear trade effect is observed when two countries are more similar in each of the three indicators. We conclude that each indicator has different trade effects on each of the coconut product categories. We end by giving recommendations that will help to improve the coconut export performance in their respective countries and for future research.

The literature that addresses the role of institutions in bilateral trade is extensive. However, research that links institutional quality to specific products and their different levels of value addition is lacking. In this study, we look into institutional quality, based on three indicators from the World Bank's world governance indicators, and its indicator-specific effects on bilateral coconut trade. In particular, we study coconut products with varying degrees of value addition. We use structural gravity models to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the years 1996-2016. Our results suggest that increased government effectiveness enhances trade of high-value products, whereas better voice and accountability scores decrease trade of coconut products with both levels of value addition. No clear trade effect is observed when two countries are more similar in each of the three indicators. We conclude that each indicator has different trade effects on each of the coconut product categories. We end by giving recommendations that will help to improve the coconut export performance in their respective countries and for future research.

The literature that addresses the role of institutions in bilateral trade is extensive. However, research that link institutional quality to specific products and their different levels of value addition is lacking. In this study, we look into institutional quality, based on three indicators from the World Bank, and its indicator-specific effects on bilateral coconut trade. In particular, we study coconut products with varying degrees of value-addition. We utilize structural gravity models to measure how institutions affect the trade performance of the top 26 coconut producing countries to the top 15 importing economies over the years 1996-2016. Our results show that increased voice and accountability reduce bilateral trade of both highvalue and low-value coconut products while government effectiveness increases trade flows of high value products. Better control of corruption decreases trade of coconut oil. Furthermore, similarities in the voice and accountability and government effectiveness indicators between trading partners decrease trade of coconut products on an aggregate level. We conclude that each indicator has different effects on each of the product categories. We end by giving recommendations for policymakers that will help to improve the coconut export performance in their respective countries.

The Coconut Industry Development for the Pacific (CIDP) Project is a joint initiative of the Pacific Community (SPC), European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP). CIDP aims to bolster the coconut sector in the region by improving the competitiveness of small producers, and strengthening production and regional integration of related markets. In the framework of this project, French Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD) led and assisted with the design of improved seed production systems and developed a risk analysis for the coconut value chain. In June 2018, CIRAD launched an online survey on incentives and risks by contacting more than one thousand coconut stakeholders worldwide. The initial results of this survey and meeting output were presented at the 2018 COCOTECH conference, where the risk analysis study was also launched. A meeting was conducted in December 2018 in Fiji, both to train participants in risk mitigation and to improve this manual. Each individual risk assessment is authored by two to five experts and/or participants in the training session. The 40 risks presented in this document cover a wide diversity of themes and recommendations. They are organized in eight sections which explore the following themes: climate change and hazards; pests and diseases; planting material; agricultural practices; organizational and policy issues; post-harvest and processing; economics and marketing, and socio-cultural habits. The introduction to each of these eight sections provides generic perspectives addressing coconut development for the Pacific region. Each risk is first briefly described; then its occurrence and severity are examined, and the issues associated with its mitigation and adaptation are discussed. Finally, actions to undertake are proposed, and a short bibliography gives key information sources. In total, contributors to this manual included 52 experts from 26 countries, of which 19 are located in Oceania, and seven are located in Africa, Asia, and Europe.