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Original Article
Landscapes of Social Inclusion: Inclusive Value-Chain Collaboration
Through the Lenses of Food Sovereignty and Landscape Governance
Mirjam A.F. Ros-Tonen
a
, Yves-Pierre Benoît Van Leynseele
a
, Anna Laven
b
and
Terry Sunderland
c
a
University of Amsterdam, Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
b
KIT Sustainable Economic Development, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
c
Centre for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Abstract Value-chain collaboration (VCC) aims to increase smallholder productivity and market inte-
gration. Higher productivity, better incomes and innovations have been documented, but also exclusionary
trends and loss of biological and dietary diversity. New forms of VCC ‘beyond the chain’hope to tackle this
through collaboration with non-chain actors. Drawing on territorially embedded VCC, food sovereignty and
landscape governance theories, this article presents a conceptual framework to analyse whether and how
inclusive VCC, greater farmer autonomy and sustainable landscapes can be achieved. Key elements of our
approach are knowledge of smallholders’various livelihood trajectories and selective value-chain engage-
ment; multi-stakeholder definition of the sustainability choice space; and smallholder inclusion in adaptive
learning and empowerment processes that bring together and integrate different and oft-competing knowl-
edge systems and governance levels. This approach will support further action research in learning platforms
in Ghana and South Africa. The article discusses the link with the broader inclusive development debate.
La collaboration au sein de la chaîne de valeur (CCV) vise à accroître la productivité des petits exploitants et
l’intégration du marché. Une productivité accrue, de meilleurs revenus, et des innovations ont été
documentés, ainsi que des tendances d’exclusion et la perte de la diversité biologique et diététique. De
nouvelles formes de CCV ‘au-delà de la chaîne’espèrent régler cela grâce à la collaboration avec les acteurs
non-impliqués dans la chaîne de valueur. Cet article d’appuie sur les théories CCV intégrées au territoire, sur
la souveraineté alimentaire et sur les théories de gouvernance du paysage afin de présenter un cadre
conceptuel pour analyser si et comment une CCV inclusive, une plus grande autonomie des agriculteurs et
des paysages durables peuvent être atteints. Les éléments clés de notre approche sont la connaissance des
différentes trajectoires de subsistance des petits exploitants et l’engagement dans la chaîne de valeur
sélective; la définition de différentes parties prenantes de l’espace de choix de la durabilité; et l’inclusion des
petits exploitants dans les processus d’apprentissage adaptatif et d’autonomisation; ces processus
rassemblent et intègrent des systèmes de connaissances et des niveaux de gouvernance différents et souvent
concurrents. Cette approche permettra de soutenir davantage la recherche-action sur les plateformes
d’apprentissage au Ghana et en Afrique du Sud. Cet article examine le lien avec le débat élargi sur le
développement plus inclusif.
European Journal of Development Research (2015) 27, 523–540. doi:10.1057/ejdr.2015.50
Keywords: value-chain collaboration; food sovereignty; smallholder agency; landscape governance; learning
platforms; inclusive development
Introduction
Smallholders –who are defined as farmers who produce goods and services for both markets and
subsistence, based mainly on family labour and limited access to land (Chamberlin, 2008;
Cousins, 2011) –produce 80 per cent of all the food grown in Africa and Asia, but are among the
© 2015 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811
European Journal of Development Research Vol. 27, 4, 523–540
www.palgrave-journals.com/ejdr/
most marginalised and food-insecure components of rural society (IFAD, 2013a). Governments,
NGOs and action researchers have therefore promoted value-chain collaboration (VCC) with the
private sector as a way to increase farmers’access to technology, inputs and markets, assuming
that this would increase their income and overall food security (Bitzer, 2011). This particularly
applies to tree crop farmers, whose products (for example, cocoa and macadamia nuts) can be
exported to high-value markets with large growth and employment potential (Chamberlin, 2008;
Traub, 2012). Ghana and South Africa are among the countries that explicitly promote such
forms of VCC (MOFA, 2007; NPC, 2012). VCC is understood in this article as voluntary
associations between different actors in a chain, including producers and buyers and often, but
not necessarily, other societal actors such as non-governmental and (in the case of public-private
partnerships) governmental organisations (c.f. Helmsing and Vellema, 2011).
Although positive effects on farmers’productivity, income and innovation capacity have been
documented (Swinnen et al, 2013; Burnett and Murphy, 2014), scientists and practitioners also
warn that VCC may reproduce existing inequalities and power imbalances between value-chain
actors; lacks a genuine representation of producer organisations and smallholders from
developing countries; and may not automatically benefit the poor if not properly designed
(Sahan and Fischer-Mackey, 2011; Bitzer and Glasbergen, 2015). Examples of risks include
growing gender inequalities (Bolwig et al, 2010; Laven, 2010; Pyburn, 2014); loss of decision-
making power regarding crop choice and marketing, inequitable risk and benefit sharing (Kirsten
and Sartorius, 2002; Laven, 2010; Spierenburg et al, 2012, Greenberg, 2013); declining dietary
diversity (Ecker et al, 2012); and biodiversity loss because of production intensification and
increasing landscape homogenisation resulting from monoculture development (Donald, 2004;
Perfecto et al, 2009). This raises the question of how VCC can be made more inclusive, taking
into account the most marginalised of those smallholders, as well as the environment.
Existing approaches only provide partial answers to how adverse inclusion in VCC can be
avoided. The instrumental view (for example, World Bank, 2007) considers smallholder
integration in VCC as being conditional to technology transfer and increased productivity and
income, but tends to ignore diversity among smallholders, power imbalances between value-
chain actors and sustainability issues. Social action views, mostly emanating from the food
sovereignty and agro-ecology movements, emphasise traditional values, knowledge and diver-
sity, and local production-consumption cycles (Altieri and Toledo, 2011), but are generally
hostile to value-chain integration (for example, Holt Giménez and Altieri, 2013). Value-chain
analysis focuses on governance arrangements and power constellations within value chains (for
example, Kaplinski, 2000; Gereffiet al, 2005), and therefore runs the risk of losing sight of
the socio-economic, cultural, political, institutional and territorial contexts in which the chains are
embedded (Bolwig et al, 2010; Helmsing and Vellema, 2011). Agricultural innovations literature
acknowledges the importance of contextual factors, but tends to focus on interactions within
innovation networks and key institutional actors redistributing resources and transferring skills
(for example, Spielman et al, 2009; Klerkx et al,. 2010).
What is lacking, and what we are proposing here, is a critical approach towards value-chain
integration and collaboration that takes smallholders’agency and struggle to access food, attain
autonomy over production and marketing, and achieve sustainability as a starting point. It thereby
looks ‘beyond the chain’to include non-commodity (food) production and sustainability issues,
and horizontal collaboration with non-chain actors to address these. We do so within the context
of a recently commenced research programme, funded by WOTRO Science for Global
Development (see acknowledgement), that examines how VCC involving tree crop farmers in
Ghana (cocoa and oil palm) and South Africa (macadamia and avocado) can enhance food
sovereignty, inclusive value-chain integration and sustainable landscapes. The framework
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presented can, however, be applied in any action-oriented research at the interface between
(vertical) chain relationships and (horizontal) collaboration embedded in landscapes.
There are three reasons for focusing on smallholder agency ‘beyond the chain’. First, it
provides a better understanding of why smallholders differ in their engagement (or capacity to
engage) in VCC with the private sector and how this affects processes of inclusion and exclusion.
Second, it corresponds with a recent trend within the private sector to ‘deliberately work beyond
the farm-scale to support food production, ecosystem conservation, and rural livelihoods across
entire landscapes in an integrated manner’(Kissinger et al, 2013, p. 1), often in partnership with
development and conservation organisations. Third, upcoming landscape approaches that aim to
reconcile environment and development through multi-stakeholder negotiation (Sayer et al,
2013) increasingly involve agro-food businesses (Kissinger et al, 2013), extending VCC from the
vertical commodity chain to the geographical, socioeconomic and political space in which the
value chain is embedded.
Hence, the objective of this article is to present a conceptual framework to analyse whether
and how inclusive VCC and more equitable terms of engagement, greater autonomy in food
production and marketing, and sustainable landscapes can be achieved. We thereby draw on
theories on territorially and contextually embedded value chains (Bolwig et al, 2010; Bowen,
2010; Helmsing and Vellema, 2011), food sovereignty (Altieri, 2009; Edelman, 2014;
McMichael, 2014) and landscape governance (Sayer et al, 2013; Ros-Tonen et al, 2014). Within
the framework of this special issue, we also discuss how the presented framework contributes to
the broader inclusive development debate (Gupta et al, 2015, this issue).
The article is structured as follows. The next section elaborates on the tendency towards VCC
‘beyond the chain’and its implications. After that, we focus on concepts and approaches for
analysing smallholder agency as regards realising food sovereignty and sustainable landscapes.
We pay specific attention to the concept of sustainability choice space within the context of
multifunctional landscapes (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2006). In the discussion we advocate
new institutional spaces to enhance smallholder inclusion in novel forms of VCC and landscape
approaches, and position the framework within the broader inclusive development debate.
In concluding we make suggestions for further research and practice.
Towards Territorial Grounding of Value-Chain Collaboration
This section provides the most common examples of VCC ‘beyond the chain’, including public-
private partnerships (PPPs); creating social value (CSV) arrangements; and innovation platforms.
PPPs are multipartite arrangements involving (foreign) private firms, the government and
parastatal bodies, which sometimes also include NGOs and international aid and lending agencies
(Kirsten and Sartorius, 2002). PPPs evolved from the introduction of neo-liberal reforms in the
1980s, which resulted in a withdrawal of the public sector from economic activities and the
consequent shift from state to corporate governance (Ton et al, 2008; Laven, 2010; Bitzer, 2011).
Partnering with the private sector became a way for both the state and farmers to maintain access
to credit, agricultural inputs, extension services and marketing channels no longer provided
by governmental marketing organisations and parastatal processing companies (Kirsten and
Sartorius, 2002; Swinnen and Maertens, 2007; Ton et al, 2008; Bitzer, 2011). PPPs gained
institutional momentum after the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
in 2002 and are increasingly advocated in international cooperation as a vehicle for attaining
multiple goals, oriented towards both private sector development and sustainability (Laven and
Pyburn, 2015). For the private sector, being a partner in a PPP often goes hand-in-hand with
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access to public funding (for example, matching grants) for investments in innovations and
sustainable livelihoods. This explains why PPPs function as a vehicle for investments ‘beyond
the chain’(or beyond the sector) in which the private partner operates. Examples of PPPs are
the Word Cocoa Foundation and Sustainable Tree Crop Programme in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana,
Nigeria, Cameroon and Guinea.
A second type of VCC emanated from the corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse the
1990s. It is generally framed as a response to consumer demands for safe, socially responsible,
sustainably, and preferably fairly traded and/or organically produced food (Morsello, 2006;
Bitzer, 2011). This discourse is currently shifting towards Creating Shared Values (CSV), defined
as ‘policies and operating practices that enhance the competitiveness of a company while
simultaneously advancing the economic and social conditions in the communities in which it
operates’(Porter and Kramer, 2011). It is based on the idea that failure to address societal
problems (for example, food insecurity or environmental damage) may present internal costs in
the form of water shortages, waste of materials, supplier failure or limited labour productivity.
In the words of Porter and Kramer (2011, p. 2), ‘Shared value is not social responsibility,
philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success. It is not on the
margin of what companies do but at the center.’CSV is widely used among global companies that
source from smallholders. Examples are Nestlé and Olam International that are pursuing
sustainable sourcing strategies, while aiming at improving smallholder livelihoods and making
production more efficient and sustainable by supporting local suppliers’food and commodity
production through capacity building (Kissinger et al, 2013; www.nestle.com/CSV). It has
resulted in new kinds of VCC ‘beyond the chain’involving donors, NGOs, entrepreneurs and
government agencies assuming that shared value can be created only through collaboration
(Porter and Kramer, 2011). In CSR and CSV, smallholders tend to be beneficiaries of the
collaboration, rather than active participants.
Critics argue that, despite emancipatory rhetoric regarding ecological, social, ethical and
transparent performance, CSR (and CSV for that matter) primarily serve the financial interests of
multinational corporations and as a strategy to legitimise their power (Banerjee, 2008). Crane
et al (2014) acknowledge strengths as being appealing to practitioners and academics, elevating
social goals to a business strategy, assigning a clear role for governments, and providing rigour to
the ‘conscious capitalism’concept. However, they also criticise the concept for not offering
anything new compared with CSR, stakeholder management and social innovation ideas;
ignoring inherent tensions between social and economic objectives; being naïve about business
compliance with legal and moral standards; and being based on a narrow and corporate-centric
view of the role of businesses in society.
The third kind of VCC ‘beyond the chain’are innovation platforms. These platforms are not
primarily the initiative of value-chain actors, but mostly of action research programmes that aim
to tackle the institutional causes of limited technology uptake and persistent poverty among
smallholders. These include institutional constraints to farmers’self-organisation, collective
action and capacity to negotiate agreements between different users; insecure tenure; and a lack
of transparent information flows about prices and stocks, resulting in a mismatch between the
technology and knowledge transferred and farmers’realities (Röling et al, 2012; Struik et al,
2014). To deal with these institutional challenges, action researchers created ‘innovation
platforms’for joint learning and action with NGOs, policymakers, extension officers, farmers,
traders, processors and retailers, where problems are jointly diagnosed, opportunities identified,
and scientific and local knowledge combined to undertake action and, hopefully, effect
change (Nederlof and Pyburn, 2012; Cullen et al, 2014). Examples are the Sub-Sahara Challenge
Programme and Nile Basin Development Challenge, both under the umbrella of the Consultative
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Group for International Agricultural Research, and the Convergence of Sciences: Strengthening
Innovation Systems Programme, carried out by a consortium of four research institutes from the
Netherlands, Benin, Ghana and Mali (Hounkonnou et al, 2012; Röling et al, 2012; Struik et al,
2014). These initiatives share the aim of creating a space for smallholders to articulate and
negotiate their needs vis-à-vis more powerful chain actors (Cullen et al, 2014). They represent a
decentralised and networked form of VCC that aims to be adaptive to the contingencies
associated with complex systems and the uncertain institutional environments in sub-Saharan
Africa (Spielman et al, 2009). In potential, such platforms go beyond a ‘one size fits all’
technology transfer, and develop more tailored and inclusive ways of learning. In South Africa,
similar initiatives emerged in the form of ‘Living Labs’(Pitse-Boshomane et al, 2008; Leminen
et al, 2012), but we found no examples of their application in smallholder contexts.
1
ThetendencytoextendVCC‘beyond the chain’–with governance agencies in PPPs or with
NGOs and research organisations in innovation platforms –has three major implications. First, it
results in a broadening of objectives beyond optimising the value chain, to include the improvement
of livelihoods and environmental conditions (Cullen et al, 2014). Second, it merges (vertical)
commodity chain relations with (horizontal) place-based interactions and effects (Bolwig et al,
2010; Purnomo, 2014), introducing new contexts, actors and enabling factors in which VCC plays
out, while also implying that ‘effective adaptations to environmental and resource vulnerabilities
will need to be inherently “place based”’ (Marsden, 2013, p. 215). This forms the basis of our
objective to bring the analysis of vertical chain relations, smallholder agency and autonomy, and
landscape approaches together within the same frame of analysis. Third, it problematizes the role of
scientific knowledge in society as being negotiated (not prescriptive) and envisions a role for
scientists in supporting existing negotiation processes (Giller et al, 2008).
The Challenges of Inclusive VCC
Actors have various interests, capacities, powers, agency and societal legitimacy as regards
organising or influencing several value-chain dimensions (production, technology development,
marketing, standard-setting) (Klerkx et al, 2010). Value-chain relations unfold in a conditioning
environment. The relationship between a structuring environment and actors’ability to innovate
and effectuate change is one of a dialectic ‘mutual embeddedness’: actors observe and respond to
critical dynamics and contingencies of the environment in which they operate and, in doing so,
modify that environment (Klerkx et al, 2010, p. 191). For the most marginalised, the barriers for
VCC are high and may involve trade-offs and a reduction of their autonomy.
This implies that, despite their apparent pro-poor focus, new forms of VCC are not
automatically more inclusive or sustainable. Corporations tend to focus on the ‘low hanging
fruit’and ‘easy win-win projects’rather than on addressing fundamental social and environ-
mental problems of which they are part (Crane et al, 2014, p. 140). Neither are innovation
platforms neutral regarding who is targeted or reached (Pyburn, 2014). Younger and female
farmers and those with fewer assets tend to be excluded because of a blindness to the diversity of
the very same poor (Barrientos, 2013; IFAD, 2013b; Pyburn, 2014). This raises the question
of why one should embark on research into inclusive VCC while there is so much evidence of
adverse effects and exclusion. We do so, first, because we consider engagement in value chains
and VCC as (partly) deliberate choices of smallholders, which is not only backed up by theories
on peasant agency (Long, 2008; van der Ploeg, 2014) addressed below, but also by social
movements and epistemic communities involving smallholders and farming organisations
(Muñoz and Viaña, 2012). It is in the interest of these farmers to analyse the conditions under
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which they can exert agency to advocate changes regarding the terms on which they engage in
VCC. Second, we consider it important to grasp the dialectics of autonomy and dependency in
VCC and the paradox of diverging outcomes in terms of livelihoods and sustainability. Looking
‘beyond the chain’then implies analysing the impacts of VCC on the availability of natural
resources and the sustainability of their use at both farm and landscape levels.
Food Sovereignty: A Focus on Smallholder Autonomy and Agency
This section introduces food sovereignty as a normative principle and analytical concept.
Following Altieri and Toledo (2011, p. 588) food sovereignty is defined as the right to (i) good
quality and culturally appropriate food, (ii) smallholder autonomy regarding the way in which
food is produced and marketed and (iii) sustainable production.
Food sovereignty has been described as a programme of action for a more equitable food
system ‘reconnecting food, nature and community’(Wittman et al, 2010) and a ‘democratic
rebuilding of domestic agricultures’(McMichael, 2014, p. 2), related to strategic questions of
practices, scale and identity. Although contested and expressing a wide array of paradigmatic
positions (Edelman, 2014), it provides a common frame of understanding of more or less shared
principles regarding the right to nutritious and diverse food, autonomy and sustainability.
This framing is closely associated with agro-ecology; a proposal for small-scale agriculture
based on traditional ecological principles; genetic, species and cultural diversity; and local markets,
production-consumption cycles, energy and technology (Altieri and Toledo, 2011). Agro-ecology
is driven and supported by social movements –farmer-to-farmer networks, peasant and indigenous
movements, and organisations of landless farmers (Perfecto et al, 2009). It challenges conventional
agricultural institutions that are seen as being associated with neo-liberalism, privatisation and
corporate control over value chains (Altieri, 2009; Altieri and Toledo, 2011). Seen as the product of
individual and collective agency, agro-ecology is considered as a way to prevent or reduce
smallholders’dependence on genetically modified crops and external inputs such as agrochemicals
and credits, to combat land grabbing and to promote social and environmental equity (Perfecto et al,
2009; Rosset, 2011).
Stressing farmers’autonomy, social and environmental justice, and sustainability, the food
sovereignty and agro-ecology debates make an essential contribution to the conceptualisation of
inclusive VCC and its operationalisation in smallholder contexts. However, the emphasis on local
production-consumption cycles and markets, autonomy regarding energy, inputs and technology
(Altieri, 2009), and opposition to corporate industrialised agriculture and food regimes (Altieri,
2009) seems to be at odds with the integration of smallholders in international value chains.
Indeed, strong stands have been taken against such integration (for example, Holt Giménez and
Shattuck, 2011; Holt Giménez and Altieri, 2013) based on arguments that smallholder modes of
production and environmental sustainability worldwide are threatened by dominant market forces
(Patel, 2006; Holt Giménez and Altieri, 2013). Opponents to market integration argue that the
dominant trajectory of agricultural development unfolds through a number of crises across
different scales, which include the steady erosion of local farming knowledge, a narrowing of
(institutional) choices for producers and consumers, and an increased incapacity of food systems
to feed the world in a sustainable and healthy manner (Edelman, 2014). As such, these debates
foreground struggles for alternative patterns of consumption and modes of production that
minimise dependency on industrialised farming and restore sovereign rights of decision making
to community and smallholder levels. This resistance to dominant market forces and neo-liberal
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agrarian structures emphasises ‘development from below’in support of smallholders’multiple
livelihood strategies.
While valuing the above problematizing of unequal power in international trade as being
central to more inclusive VCC, we take a less radical stand towards smallholder engagement in
markets. First, smallholders contribute substantially to export-oriented trade in agricultural
commodities, and this trade contributes considerably to their incomes and food security (Vorley
et al, 2012; Burnett and Murphy, 2014). These farmers are less concerned about inequalities in
the global food system than they are about their economic rights and ‘bargaining position’in the
commodity chains for which they produce (Murphy in Burnett and Murphy, 2014, p. 7).
As Vorley et al (2012) suggest, the hostile position towards value-chain integration and
international trade may therefore impose an ideological agenda that does not match with these
smallholders’aspirations, and hinders effective partnerships that would help them to realise their
goals (Green in Vorley et al, 2012, p. 58). Extending the sovereignty principle to smallholders’
choices to invest in the relationships they deem valuable, or have reason to value, is a valid
argument for reconsidering the food sovereignty movement’s stand on international trade.
Second, we challenge the assumption that complete withdrawal from international trade and
value chains equals sovereign control over production and consumption and suggests a revisiting of
the notion of agency. In the food sovereignty discourse agency is typically framed as ‘resistance’.
According to Bernstein (2014, p. 9) there is the ‘larger and heroic scale of resistance’associated with
coordinated, internationalised social struggle and the ‘smaller mundane, scale’associated with James
Scott’sWeapons of the Weak. Whereas the former entails an emphasis on how peasants mobilise
using collective action through social movements together with a progressive state (c.f. Desmarais,
2002; Borras, 2010), the latter refers to everyday struggles for autonomy at farm level.
For the analysis of these farm-level struggles, we suggest an actor-oriented approach that
conceptualises resistance in terms of local agro-ecological practices through which farmers
strengthen resilience and food security (Long, 2008; van der Ploeg, 2008). Smallholder agency is
strongly linked to processes of endogenous development and growth (Helmsing and Vellema,
2011) that are at once grounded in local interests, availability of resources, place-based identities,
smallholder histories of learning and market engagement, as well as a larger conditioning
environment (Long, 2008; Klerkx et al, 2010). Locality is problematized, following the notion
that local heterogeneity in agricultural patterns cannot be attributed to ‘one dominant set of
‘driving forces’located in markets, agrarian policy and technology development’(Long and
van der Ploeg, 1994, p. 4).
Smallholder responses to the agrarian crisis are then seen as being expressed through skilled
interventions in the organisation of labour and production towards greater autonomy regarding
market forces (van der Ploeg, 2010). This conceptualisation foregrounds the notion of ‘co-
production’between man and nature through which smallholders build resilience by strengthening
their natural resource base. They do so through qualitative improvements in soil, labour, farming
implements and biodiversity enhancement through crop diversification. In this way they expand their
‘ecological capital’and enhance the sustainability of their production (van der Ploeg, 2008, 2014).
Importantly, these smallholder innovations occur through partial or selective engagement in
markets, and temporal and variable combinations of production in commodity and non-
commodity circuits (van der Ploeg, 2008). This dialectic process of engaging with and distancing
from the market is key to understanding smallholders’inclusion in and –partially deliberate –
exclusion from value-chain relations. Analytically it means that a distinction should be made
between different ‘degrees of peasantness’(van der Ploeg, 2008, pp. 29–30), which result in
variegated configurations of subsistence and market-oriented production and livelihood trajec-
tories. This conceptualisation recognises that smallholders are integrated in differing ways into
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trade networks and that they do so constructively and creatively. They thereby ‘re-design and
materially rebuild agriculture through the development of new products, services and markets’
(van der Ploeg, 2014, p. 17) to create a multi-functional farming system. In stressing the
dynamics in smallholders’livelihood trajectories, we emphasise that these trajectories may lead
to ‘de-peasantisation’–implying stagnation, increased dependency on external inputs and
integration in unequal relationships –but may equally follow a ‘re-peasantisation’pathway that
marks increased self-reliance and sustainable intensification (van der Ploeg, 2008).
The above discussion of agency and reworking market relationships implies that value-chain
relations can be seen as a space for contesting smallholders’rights and autonomy. Peasant agency
as ‘co-production’and varied modalities of smallholder market integration also establishes a firm
link between vertical commodity relations and the horizontal interactions in the landscape that
will be further elaborated below.
Smallholder Agency at Landscape Level
Agro-ecology offers a clear proposal for reconciling agricultural production and biodiversity
conservation in ‘mosaic landscapes’by building on traditional ecological knowledge and farming
practices based on genetic and crop diversity (Altieri, 2009). However, its focus on localised food
systems and deliberate exclusion from the ‘corporate food regime’(Holt Giménez and Altieri,
2013) makes the agro-ecology approach less suitable for the analysis of agency of smallholders
integrated into international value chains. Smallholders operate at the interface of vertical
relationships with chain actors (buyers, processors, exporters) and horizontal interactions within
the landscape in which they live and farm (Figure 1). This requires an analysis of agency beyond
‘local autonomy, local markets, local production-consumption cycles, energy and technological
sovereignty’(Altieri, 2009, p. 104).
For this reason we propose positioning the analysis of smallholder agency at the landscape
level within the current debate on landscape approaches. We thereby define landscapes as
dynamic configurations of human-nature interactions in geographical spaces of variable scale,
determined by both biophysical characteristics and perceptions
2
and a landscape approach as a
governance approach steered by institutions through which actors negotiate land-use objectives
= trees/forest patches/agroforests (carbon)
= fisheries
= food crop
= house
= tree crop
Horizontal
place-based
interactions
with effects
on poverty,
(gender)
inequality,
labour and the
environment
Market
Productive
landscape
Forest
fringe
Forest
Vertical commodity chain
relations and flows (products,
info, inputs, funds)
Primary processing
Trade
Export
Figure 1: Territorially embedded value-chain collaboration (after Bolwig et al, 2010 and Purnomo, 2014).
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and trade-offs (c.f. Görg, 2007; Pfund, 2010). The broadening playing field of VCC implies
increasing synergy with such approaches.
Landscape approaches aim to provide integrative responses to global challenges such as food
insecurity, climate change and biodiversity loss by creating multi-functional landscapes where
agriculture, fisheries, biodiversity conservation, and maintenance of other environmental services
(for example, water provision, carbon sequestration) are increasingly integrated (WWF, 2004;
Sayer et al, 2013). Known under several labels –for example ‘whole landscape approaches’
(DeFries and Rosenzweig, 2010) and ‘ecoagriculture’(Scherr and McNeely, 2008) –they have in
common that they pursue multiple objectives with negotiated and minimised trade-offs between
economic, environmental and social interests; are based on multi-stakeholder participation and
adaptive learning processes; take a dynamic long-term sustainability perspective; assign a key
role for communities and households as producers and stewards of the landscape; and try to
involve the most vulnerable groups and protect their livelihoods (Scherr et al, 2012; see also
Sayer et al, 2013). Trees and tree crops in smallholder settings can play an important role in
landscape approaches as they potentially contribute to ‘climate smart’(Scherr et al, 2012; FAO,
2013; Minang et al, 2015) and ‘sustainable’(O’Farell and Anderson, 2010) landscapes through
the provision of food, commodities and environmental services, notably carbon sequestration
(Tscharntke et al, 2012; Insaidoo et al, 2013).
For companies, a landscape approach can be a CSV strategy to deal with the risks of
unsustainable sourcing (Kissinger et al, 2013). Within the context of this article, the scale under
consideration is therefore the sourcing area at the producer end of the value chain.
3
This is the
context in which resource problems are identified and articulated, values understood, conflicts
resolved and choices made (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2013). It is also the scale at which
agency of VCC actors, particularly smallholders, is localised and embedded in structures
(institutions, rules and policies) (Minang et al, 2015). However, both ecological and institutional
phenomena interact across scales and levels (Cash et al, 2006), and hence a multi-scale and
nested approach should be followed in both landscape analysis and the facilitation of landscape
approaches (see Minang et al, 2015 and below for further details).
Agency within the context of landscape approaches is essentially about smallholders’capacity
to negotiate, interact, position themselves and make claims vis-à-vis companies, investors, NGOs
and donors; make good choices; and act accordingly (Muñoz and Viaña, 2012, p. 6). In addition
to analysing how smallholders reconstruct their ecological capital at farm level through
diversification (van der Ploeg, 2008), the analysis then also focuses on the opportunities and
constraints that shape smallholders’capacity to negotiate land-use objectives and trade-offs at
landscape level (DeFries and Rosenzweig, 2010; Sayer et al, 2013). A key element in these
negotiations is the ‘sustainability choice space’. This concept was coined by Potschin and
Haines-Young (2006) to denote different landscape configurations that provide ecosystem goods
and services in a sustainable way and in accordance with stakeholders’cultural and economic
values. Together they provide a set of landscape scenarios from which stakeholders can choose.
Elements of such landscape configurations include (i) biophysical boundaries of ecosystems in
the landscape, (ii) outputs of ecosystem goods and services, (iii) the economic, social and cultural
values that stakeholders attach to the landscape, and (iv) the risks and the costs they regard as
acceptable. At the basis of negotiating different landscape configurations lies the participatory
development of alternative landscape scenarios in a trans-disciplinary approach that combines
scientific knowledge of ‘neutral’biophysical metrics with stakeholders’local knowledge and
social perceptions (c.f. Wagner and Gobster, 2007).
Landscapes –such as those based on the sourcing areas of the value-chain arrangements that
we aim to study –do not necessarily coincide with administrative and jurisdictional boundaries
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531© 2015 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811
European Journal of Development Research Vol. 27, 4, 523–540
(van Oosten et al, 2014). Multi-stakeholder negotiations about sustainable landscapes within
the framework of territorially embedded VCC therefore require a new form of landscape
governance (Görg, 2007). We thereby define landscape governance as multi-sector, multi-
actor and multi-level interactions to solve societal problems and create societal opportunities
at landscape level (van Oosten et al, 2014; Ros-Tonen et al, 2014).
4
New institutional
arrangements are needed to bring together a broader range of actors than are conventionally
involved in landscape planning, facilitate multi-stakeholder processes, negotiate trade-offs
and manage conflicts (Colfer and Pfund, 2010). An increasing body of literature is defining
‘principles’and ‘benchmarks’for institutional arrangements that could steer landscape
approaches (Sayer et al, 2013) and be tested (Ros-Tonen et al, 2014 and 2015 (in press);
Wambugu et al, 2015) (Table 1). These design principles are meant to enable multi-
stakeholder interactions that help shape equitable access to, and the sustainable use of, land
and resources at landscape level. Examples are given in Box 1.
Table 1: Design principles for institutions in landscape approaches (adapted from Ros-Tonen et al, 2014,
pp. 3001–3002)
Principle Dimensions Authors
Multi-
stakeholder
negotiation
●Negotiated objectives, change logic and trade-offs Sayer et al, 2013
●Participatory and collaborative processes Scherr et al, 2012; Wambugu
et al, 2015
Polycentrism ●Hybridity of arrangements with clear rights and
responsibilities, legal options for self-organisation
Nagendra and Ostrom, 2012
●Multi-scale and multi-level governance Mwangi and Wardell, 2012;
Sayer et al, 2013
Continual
learning
●Single loop learning (improving daily practices),
double loop learning (challenging underlying
assumptions) and triple loop learning (transforming
underlying norms and values)
Armitage et al, 2008; Pahl-
Wostl, 2009
●Building institutional memory Gupta et al, 2010
●Participatory monitoring and evaluation Sayer et al, 2013; Wambugu
et al, 2015
Adaptive
capacity
●Being prepared for change Dietz et al, 2003
●Willingness to engage in collective decision making
and share power
Berkes et al, 2003; Armitage,
2005
●Accept a diversity of solutions, actors and
institutions
Berkes et al, 2003; Armitage,
2005; Gupta et al, 2010
●Room for autonomous change Gupta et al, 2010
●Building adaptive capacity Sayer et al, 2013
Gender
sensitivity
●Taking account of gender roles, rights and values in
resource access, collaboration and equitable benefit
sharing; representation of women
Wambugu et al, 2015
Ros-Tonen et al
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European Journal of Development Research Vol. 27, 4, 523–540
The growing hybrid nature of institutional arrangements resulting from VCC ‘beyond the chain’
has implications for smallholders’control and autonomy in agro-ecological processes and the re-
grounding of farming on ecological capital (van der Ploeg, 2014). The next section discusses the
way in which we propose bringing the analysis of agency at farm and landscape level together in a
coherent framework to assess whether and how VCC can be made more inclusive.
Discussion and Conclusion
We propose a critical yet constructive approach towards analysing new forms of VCC with
non-chain actors and their prospects for enhancing smallholders’agency and autonomy both
within the chain and the landscape in which the chain is embedded. This approach puts
smallholders’agency and empowerment centre stage in the analysis by combining –and
contributing to –debates on territorially embedded value chains, food sovereignty and
landscape governance, respectively; three fields in which the ability of farmers to exert
agency is key to their terms of inclusion.
This combination of strands enriches inclusive development theory –the theme of this special
issue –in several ways. First, a territorially embedded value-chain perspective provides an
analytical lens through which to view the global to local analysis of vulnerability causes,
structural constraints, policymaking and governance (Gupta et al, 2015, this issue) by positioning
vertical VCC in its geographical, social and political-cultural contexts (Bolwig et al, 2010;
Bowen, 2010, Helmsing and Vellema, 2011). Second, the ‘reconstruction of the peasantry’(van
der Ploeg, 2014) interpretation of value-chain engagement and disengagement as an act of
resistance highlights a link between farmers’agency and autonomy regarding their resource
base and sustainability that is typically overlooked in inclusive development approaches. Third,
the focus on diversification and variegated livelihood trajectories enables us to situate empower-
ment in a production space marked by multiple institutional linkages, public and private actors,
and various policies, which is relevant in a context of VCC ‘beyond the chain’and landscape
approaches. Fourth, the proposed approach recognises that the heterogeneity of responses in the
Box 1: Landscape approaches in practice
An extensive review of 191 landscape approaches in Africa and Latin America (Hart et al, 2015) reveals
commonalities regarding (i) a focus on mosaic landscapes (eight land-cover/land-use types on average); (ii) an
integrated approach with 79 per cent of the initiatives holistically targeting agriculture, conservation, livelihoods and
multi-stakeholder coordination; (iii) a primacy of conservation and sustainable management goals as a motivation to
start the initiative; (iv) involvement of multiple stakeholder groups (10 on average per initiative); and (v) a bias in
investments towards capacity building, institutional planning and stakeholder coordination. Major differences exist
in scale (from tens to tens of thousands of km
2
) and population size (from a few hundred to millions of people).
Institutionally, most initiatives are based on platforms for stakeholder mobilisation and negotiation.
The case of a corporation-driven landscape approach initiated by agribusiness Olam International in West Africa’s
cocoa sector provides more institutional details, revealing engagement in multiple and nested institutions from local
to global (Brasser, 2013; Kissinger et al, 2013):
●Local tenure arrangements, negotiated with traditional authorities and concession holders;
●A national multi-stakeholder platform, involving the Ghana Forestry Commission to negotiate better tenure
arrangements for cocoa farmers and the integration of cocoa farming in carbon schemes;
●A certification scheme with the Rainforest Alliance to enhance smallholders’income through certification of
‘climate friendly cocoa’.
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533© 2015 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811
European Journal of Development Research Vol. 27, 4, 523–540
production space may enhance new forms of learning and exchange on sustainable land use at both
farm and landscape level. Fifth, the food sovereignty concept stresses self-determination with
regard to production, marketing and sustainability, putting the inclusive development triptych
of agency/empowerment, well-being and sustainability into a coherent and critical perspective
(Figure 2). Sixth, the landscape approach provides a spatial context for multilevel and inter-
active governance through which multiple land uses, including conservation, and sustainable choice
space (Potschin and Haines-Young, 2006) are negotiated among chain and non-chain actors.
However, the three stances also pose challenges that need to be addressed in further research
as well as in practice. First are those related to the analysis of territorially embedded VCC,
including (i) connecting vertical relationships with their place-based contexts and (ii) dealing
with the institutional complexities of including marginalised actors in multi-scale arrangements
characterised by unequal power relationships (Helmsing and Vellema, 2011). Second, the notion
of food ‘as a right’in food sovereignty discourse, and food ‘as a commodity’in VCC is
inherently conflicting (Hospes, 2013) as illustrated by the debate on whether proponents of food
sovereignty should revise their stance on smallholder value-chain participation (Vorley et al,
2012; Burnett and Murphy, 2014). Where such conflicting norms and values cannot be overcome,
win-win outcomes in multi-stakeholder collaborations may not be achieved (Crane et al, 2014).
Third, landscape approaches face the challenge of translating the institutional design principles
into institutional arrangements for smallholder inclusion in allocating and monitoring land use at
the level of landscapes. These institutional arrangements are still largely experimental and
characterised by significant ‘muddling through’(Colfer et al, 2010).
These challenges offer scope for further action research for institutional innovation. Building
on the ideas outlined by Giller et al (2008) on the role of science in multi-stakeholder negotiation
processes, within the WOTRO research programme, we intend to do this by actively engaging in
‘learning platforms’. We see these learning platforms as arenas for joint learning and negotiated
Inclusive
development
INCLUSIVE
VCC
Enhances
human
wellbeing
ACCESS TO
FOOD
Promotes
sustain-
abilitity
SUSTAINABLE
CHOICE
SPACE
Empowers
AGENCY &
SELF-DETER-
MINATION
DEVELOPMENT CONTEXT: TERRITORIALLY EMBEDDED VALUE CHAIN COLLABORATION
Figure 2: VCC ‘beyond the chain’from a inclusive development perspective (c.f. Gupta et al, 2015, this
issue).
Ros-Tonen et al
534 © 2015 European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes 0957-8811
European Journal of Development Research Vol. 27, 4, 523–540
knowledge (Giller et al, 2008). They differ from the existing innovation platforms and networks,
examples of which were given in the section on territorial grounding of VCC, in their attempt to
stimulate new stakeholder coalitions where this is needed to build a bridge between local-level
innovation platforms and higher-level multi-stakeholder arrangements and policy communities.
Although we will liaise with existing innovation platforms, our primary aim is to mediate
between different knowledge systems across different governance levels. We thus hope to
contribute to facilitating technological and institutional innovation (Giller et al, 2008; Klerkx
et al, 2009; Devaux et al, 2010) in situations characterised by power imbalances and different
political agendas (O’Farrell and Anderson, 2010).
These learning platforms may act as bridging organisations (Cash et al, 2006) and catalysers
for innovation, enabling less powerful actors to respond to opportunities by providing ‘an arena
for knowledge co-production, trust building, sense making, learning, vertical and horizontal
collaboration, and conflict resolution’(Berkes, 2009, p. 1695). Through these learning platforms
we envisage (i) the co-production of knowledge about smallholder strategies and resulting
diversity into livelihood trajectories and how these play out in VCC and landscape approaches,
(ii) multi-stakeholder definition of the sustainability choice space of commoditised tree crop
farming, and (iii) smallholders’inclusion in adaptive learning processes related to innovations
and landscape approaches initiated through VCC. We hope that these platforms provide a space
for smallholder inclusion in exploring trade-offs and scenarios that may lead to socially just
agricultural systems, equitable VCC and sustainable landscapes.
Acknowledgements
This article is part of a research programme on inclusive value-chain collaboration for sustainable landscapes
and greater food sovereignty among tree crop farmers in Ghana and South Africa, financed by WOTRO
Science for Global Development of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (project
no. W 08.250.2013.122). The first version of this paper was written during the first author’s sabbatical leave,
spent at the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in Bogor, Indonesia, whose hospitality is
kindly acknowledged. Terry Sunderland’s contribution to this article was funded through USAID’s
Biodiversity Earmark.
Notes
1. The two applications in rural contexts target GSM and internet services (Siyakhula Living Lab; http://
www.openlivinglabs.eu/livinglab/siyakhula-living-lab) and ICT in the retail sector (Sekhukhune Living
Lab, http://www.c-rural.eu/Southafrica-LivingLab/) respectively.
2. This definition obscures a fundamental ontological debate that is beyond the scope of this paper about
whether landscapes are ‘real’spatial units, with coordinates, biophysical features and attributes, or
mental constructs that are ‘in the eye of the beholder’.
3. We acknowledge that this reduces the scale issue to geographical and institutional scales. Jurisdictional,
ecological, management, temporal, knowledge and network scales, and levels within these scales (Cash
et al, 2006) may also play a role in landscape analyses and approaches (Minang et al, 2015).
4. This definition builds on the definition of interactive governance by Kooiman and Bavinck (2013).
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