Value-chain Agriculture and Debt Relations: contradictory outcomes

Abstract In the context of the world food crisis ‘value-chain agriculture’ is emerging as a new frontier of publicly subsidised corporate investment, incorporating smallholding farmers into commercial relations to redress apparent food shortages. This paper conceptualises value-chains as technologies of economic and ecological power, using cross-regional case studies to explore the impact of debt relations in extant value-chain relations. While the value-chain project envisioned by the development industry in partnership with the private sector is geared to ‘feeding the world’ the likely outcome is (differentiating) smallholders serving corporate markets at the expense of local food security. I argue that developmentalists seek to resolve the crisis through a ‘spatio-temporal fix’, enclosing smallholders in value-chain technologies financed through debt relations that appropriate value from smallholder communities. At the same time some farmers are seeking to avoid the debt trap by developing strategies to decommodify farming practices to preserve and revitalise their farms as creators of ecological values, rather than simply converters of economic value.

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